Sherab Zangpo

The fact that things appear dispels the extreme of taking things to be truly existent, because for things to appear they must lack inherent existence. Moreover, the fact that things are empty eliminates the extreme of non-existence, because it is only because things are empty that they can appear.
You should rejoice in all the virtuous things done by any person. If you can do this you will accumulate merit equal to that person. The great Dzogchen master Paltrul Rinpoche said, "If you want to accumulate merit without doing anything, rejoice in the merit of others." You can just sleep, lie in your bed and listen. If you hear that someone is doing a good thing, rejoice in that and you can accumulate merit.
--HE Garchen Rinpoche
REJOICE in others' virtue!!!Each time you rejoice in your own past, present, and future merits, it doubles or triples them. You collect so much merit by rejoicing, or feeling happiness about other sentient beings’ merit.If you rejoice in a sentient being’s merit, and the level of the person’s mind is lower than yours, you collect double the person’s merit. If the person’s level of mind is equal to yours, you collect the same amount of merit. If the person’s level of mind is higher than yours, then you collect half their merit. Since there are so many sentient beings, you can imagine how much merit you collect. You will want to practice rejoicing all day long, and night. If you rejoice in the merit generated by one bodhisattva in one day, you receive half of the merit. Because bodhisattvas have realized bodhicitta, they seek only the happiness of others, so whatever activity the bodhisattva does collects so much merit, every second. Can you imagine if you get half of a bodhisattva’s merit for one day? Now you can see how incredible it is. It is said by Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo that to get that kind of merit without rejoicing would take 13,000 years! You can see that this is a great thing to do, and is so easy to do. You can collect merit within seconds that would take 13,000 years. You don’t need to prepare anything, just your thoughts. You can do this while walking, jogging, eating, lying on the beach: any time. So, this is a really fantastic practice, if you want to have quick success, great wealth, realizations of the path, and benefit others, especially if you want to achieve enlightenment in order to liberate sentient beings from samsaric sufferings, and bring them to full enlightenment.There are also the four powers mentioned in the lam rim, in order to collect extensive merit and good luck, which is the cause of success. Among these is the power of the attitude, the bodhicitta motivation, which collects a lot of merit.
--Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Erick Sherab Zangpo [Erick Neiss]is a green-eyed, brown-haired, well educated, purpose driven, reality manipulatin, meditation practicin, mantra-recitin, risk takin, goal checkin, problem solvin, highly motivated, understandin, persistent, awareness recognizin, friendly, optimistic, deity visualizin, self-reliant, adventurous, erudite, and extremely humble... Buddhist, linguist, scholar, student, mystic, poet, english teacher, editer, web designer, writer, integral theorist, philosopher, blogger, Spiral wizard, voracious information and knowledge hound, and archetypal pisces rising. He's an extroverted introvert, an idealistic intuitive, an INFP (but sometimes seems like an ENFP), 9 on the Enneagram (but sometimes seems like a 5; or is the other way around?), and an insatiably curious seeker of truth. Simply put, Erick is one of life's runaway experiments who challenges people incessantly until they ascend to a higher level of consciousness... or flee naked into the desert screaming, "OM AH HUNG BENZRA GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG!
Name: Erick Neiss (AKA Sherab, Sherab Zangpo, Shey-Zang, Pema, Erikku, Erikku-san, Muyuubyou (Sleep Walker), Erick Eevensen, Xiang-Zou, Zobu, Nguyen Tue Gang, Samita, Ananda, Konchog Dewai Ngodrub, Wick, Ewick, Max)
Birth date: October 15th, 1981 CE
Birthplace: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 166
Heritage: Greek/Norwegian/Swedish
Lineage: Katog Nyingma Vajrayana
Root Teacher: Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche
Other Teachers and Spiritual Friends: Lama Orgyen Zangpo, Venerable Thubten Chodron, Tulku Jigme Thrinley Rinpoche, Ven. Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche, Lama Shenphen Drolma, Ani K. Drubgyud Palmo, Rev. Hugh Gold, Gyurmed Khensur Rinpoche, Lama Chhokyi Nyima (Richard Barron), Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Ven. Bhante Gunaratana Nayaka Thera, Ven. Bhante Yogacara Rahula, Tulku Jigme Tromge Rinpoche
Dharma Heroes: Khentrul Rinpoche, Mipham (big up fo da main Mi-p'ham), Tulku Urgyen, Dilgo Khyentse, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dogen, Tsongkhapa, Guru Rinpoche/Padmasambhava, Thinley Norbu, Dzongsar Khyentse, Lama Zopa, Longchenpa, Rongzom, Ken Wilber, Bhante Gunaratana, Shantideva, Patrul Rinpoche, Atisha, Milarepa
Turn-Ons: Ever-Present Awareness, atemporal cognitiveness, full lips, big eyes, fearless curiosity, languages, wonder, conviction, integrity, mystery, friendliness, courage, compassion, love, equanimity, creativity, joyfulness, space dakinis, fire dakinis, lack of overbearing pride and ego-aggrandizement, humor, vision
Turn-Offs: dogma, reductionistic-flatland postmodernism, greed, fear in all forms which inhibit humanity and its capacity to Love, boomeritis, sectarianism, blindness to good qualities in others, non-curiosity, lack of existential inquiry, people who generally don't give others a chance, materialism, drinking, humor as excessive expresion of shadow-elements, people unwilling to look at their Shadows
My Fantasy: get my shit together in a way that benefits all those who have any connection to me
My Philosophy: the Four Noble Truths, Madhyama-Prasangika Middle Way, all phenomena are timelessly free from any and all conceptual elaborations, the nature of mind is primordially of the nature of radiant clarity, Integral theory
Siblings: 1
Languages Studied (formally): 4
States Lived In: 7
Countries Lived In: 2
Foreign Countries Visited: 3.. width="425" height="350" ....
The Buddha's fundamental insight was that we experience constant low- to high-level dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha) due to our strong habitual tendency to invest in limiting identities. This is the meaning of not-self (anatman): that the sense of personal identity is a limiting construct, a mere superimposition which has the felt-sense of confinement. The recognition that the imputed label of "self" to the endlessly fluctuating psycho-physical aggregates is a supposition and habituated assumption is the beginning of insight into Emptiness (Skt. shunyata, Tib: tong-pa-nyid).
This insight into the lack of any indepedent, inherently existent status as-such of the individual's self is then extended to all possible phenomena -- any and all possible objects in one's experience.
All phenomena have timelessly had the nature of emptiness -- a complete and utter freedom from any and all conceptual elaborations. Any object which arises in one's experience is completely without any status as-such.
Even as they arise in one's experience, all phenomena are totally beyond any true arising, duration, or cessation.

-me
With all that said, I'm real into myself.
Patrul Rinpoche on Bodhichitta: "If you have it, Buddhahood is easily accomplished, If you don't, all efforts towards enlightenment are futile indeed!"
Mind Training Audio Meditation
1. This program plays a randomly selected proverb from the Mind Training practice over the sound system of your computer. You control the interval between proverbs and also the set of proverbs from which the selection is made.
2. You select a set of proverbs by checking the checkboxes opposite the proverbs you want to include and/or clearing the checkboxes for those you want to exclude. You can include or exclude an entire section by checking or clearing the checkbox opposite the section title.
3. Choose the interval between proverbs from the drop-down box and then click on the 'Play' button.
4. To turn the program off, click on the 'Stop' button or close the browser window.
http://lojongmindtraining.com/sound.aspx Constant Mind Training Audio
Now, when we remember that the Skandhas and Dhatus have been arranged according to decreasing density and that "materiality" (rupa) is placed foremost as having the maximum of density, we should assume that its colour must be the darkest one. Our intellect is inclined to compare the colour of the Skandhas and Dhatus, the Dhyanibuddhas and Saktis, to the refraction of light through a glass prism. Applying this physical law we should expect that the clear and bright light of the Void (sunyata), according as it is refracted and deflected through the prism of our mind, must be totally absorbed by our body and that of our fellow creatures as having the maximum of density, so that its colour ought to be blue or indigo or violet. But we are told that it is white. This clearly shows that the colours of the deities are not derived from the observation of physcial laws but stem from experiences and insight. The fact is that we only believe ourselves to be fully aware of the so-called outside world and that we fancy this belief to be knowledge. Materiality which we attribute to the outside world and the belief in it is not just another expression of man's unconscious mind, but it involves his unconscious mind. The roots of its emotional dynamism are there. Instead of admitting to ourselves that, because of this emotional dynamism, there are also irrational and contradictory elements in it, we invent ideologies and theories which rationalize our beliefs into neat and orderly systems that are capable of explaining anything, because they omit everything which their premises cannot explain. Such ideologies usually end by becoming systematic delusions, if they do not start already from delusions. For the basic fallacy of all our theories is the feeling that the abstractions we have construed should be "sound," that is, founded on truth. The Buddhists knew better. They were not ashamed of admitting that the convictions which the ordinary man calls knowledge are founded on emotion. Therefore, the light of our reason, our intellectual knowledge, which makes us turn our eyes toward the without and to which the outside world seems to be clear and bright, is not the bright light of an utter openness, which is all-comprehensive and not concerned with conceptual scaffolds, but the dim light of infatuation, the delusive light of the illusions we create in our minds about the nature of things which, since they have been illuminated by this light, we have not understood at all. For this reason, what we call materiality and as it is seen by our mortal eyes is bound up with delusion (moha).
-Herbert Guenther
Three Objects, Three Poisons, Three Seeds of Virtue
The three poisons continually arise in connection with three objects. Compulsive attachment arises for objects that are pleasant or useful; aversion arises for objects that are unpleasant or harmful; and stupidity or indifference for other objects. Recognize these poisons as soon as they arise. Then, for example, when attachment arises, think:
May every bit of every sentient beings' attachment be contained in this attachment of mine. May all sentient beings have the seed of virtue of being free of attachment. May this attachment of mine contain all their disturbing emotions and, until they attain buddhahood, may they be free of such disturbing emotions.
Aversion and other emotions are used in practice by working with them the same way. Thus, the three poisons become three limitless seeds of virtue.
From The Great Path of Awakening : An Easily Accessible Introduction for Ordinary People by Jamgon Kongtrul, translated by Ken McLeod. Copyright 1993 by Ken McLeod. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.
TrueLifeKarma.com - Online Karma Test
Erick, Your Karmic Alignment is: Enlightenment!
Score: 25 You have a lot of positive karma, and have good intentions in life. People would normally characterize you with being a kind, sensitive giving person. Remember that by creating positive karma seeds, they will soon blossom. If you work hard enough it is capable to gain enlightenment, and maintain inner peace.
You seem to understand that holding grudges and placing blame on others aren't positive ways to contribute to a situation. So when other people treat you unfairly, or make mistakes, forgiving people like you tend to give these people the opportunity to make amends. Retaliation simply isn't your style. And your capacity to genuinely forgive others strengthens your current relationships and may come back to you positively in the future. Through your concerted efforts to allow for others' imperfections, you generate good karma for yourself and the universe as a whole.
You scored as 0 - The Fool, The Fool is the most complex and most contradictory of all the Tarot cards. "I am not a number, I am a free man". The Fool represents naivety and childlike innocence - yet the Fool is wise. He carries only what possessions he really needs He journeys through life, tasting everything it has to offer then letting it go and moving on. The Fool is a risk taker, often shown with one foot over a cliff showing us every new beginning has a risk. Whether the Fool represents opportunity or danger one thing is clear: this world needs more fools.
0 - The Fool

XIX: The Sun

III - The Empress

VIII - Strength

XIII: Death

XVI: The Tower

I - Magician

II - The High Priestess

XI: Justice

X - Wheel of Fortune

IV - The Emperor

VI: The Lovers

XV: The Devil