Lama Shenpen's Approach to Teaching Dharma in the West

Here in the West we need to realise that there is more help and hope available than perhaps we originally thought.

~Lama Shenpen

Lama Shenpen writes about her approach to teaching below:

Living essence and underlying principles

There is a living essence to the whole of the Buddha’s teaching and there are underlying principles that take us to that essence.  My aim is to draw out those underlying principles in order to guide students to the essence by linking them with a lineage of teachers that transmit it in a living way.  That essence is referred to by many names, among which perhaps that of ‘the Awakened Heart’ is the most directly evocative of its nature.

That link has been successfully accomplished when it sparks in students  some kind of direct experience of what is already within them. Because it sparks something that is intrinsic to everyone’s experience  it can be talked about in terms that anyone can understand. So Dharma—the Buddha’s way—can be brought into any area of human activity and could become integral to all aspects of  our lives in the West.

Focusing on our experience

By focusing on our own experience,  we can avoid the trap of thinking that being a Buddhist means abandoning our cultural roots or receiving some kind of alien implant from elsewhere.  It is easy to misinterpret the number and variety of images, rituals and practices on offer in Tibetan Buddhism as meaning that it is all about something quite other than our own direct experience.

That is why my whole approach is to keep bringing my students back again and again to the one practice of opening the heart because it is the way to discover and learn to trust the essence and underlying principles directly  through their own experience.

Here in the West we need to  realise that there is more help and hope available than perhaps we originally thought. Since my approach helps students recognize what’s already there and draws it out of them, it allows them to recognize their inherent reservoir of wisdom and compassion without imposing something foreign on themselves.