2016 Discovering Minds Nature - The Heart of Buddhism

Discovering Mind’s Nature: The Heart of Buddhism. A Dharma Talk given to the students in Religious Studies course Rels 223: Buddhism, at Queens University,Kingston, Ontario, October 17, 2016. By Lama Mark Webber Lama Mark Webber was requested by Dr. Ellen Goldberg to give a Dharma Talk to her students in Buddhism: Rels 223. In the class Lama Mark briefly talks about the importance of starting with a very high aspiration of Bodhicitta and Refuge, how he came to study, practice and teach the Dharma, and the foundations of the Path, including why and how we have anxiety, dis-ease, and suffer. Then he shows that all experience, happy or sad, is conceptually built and can only be experienced by mind. Lama Mark points out, by having the students look directly at their experience and the space of the mind, that mind’s innate nature is empty of all suffering, confusion, and clinging. It’s nature is unobstructed, unfixed, and pervaded by love and compassion. This inexpressible nature is emptiness (shunyata). He emphasizes that understanding and correctly experiencing emptiness leads to ever more profound expressions of love and compassion— this defines what a Buddhist (in practice and conduct) really is.