From Bleakness to a Positive State of Mind: A Roadmap (Link #822)

Speaker: Moni Banerjee. Moni opens with an analogy between devotional dance and devotion to the guru. She then reflects on Rinpoche's teaching from NSS on the eight consciousnesses being a framework for working with mental proliferation and delusion. Rinpoche emphasized how every moment has self-awareness, which can be harnessed through the practices of shamatha, completing our thoughts, contemplating the four immeasurables, and applying Madhyamika logic. With this "roadmap", Moni concludes that we can work with our own minds to break free from a bleak mindset. She brings her analogy full circle by describing how the dance to Shiva enacts the eight consciousnesses and arrives at devotion.