MINDSPACE is administered by Sidney Burris for the meditation group that meets with Geshe Dorjee in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Over the several years of its existence, MINDSPACE has taken on a couple of projects, but none more pleasurable to me than the project I am currently undertaking —talking about Atisha's Seven-Point Mind Training. I have no special qualifications for this task, and I can think of many who are far more qualified than I am to provide such commentary. Let me, at least, cite a traditional weakness as a kind of strength: I don't know Tibetan, I'm not a monk (nor have I ever been one), and I don't make my living teaching the fine points of Tibetan philosophy. I'm an English teacher who has read and used Atisha's little book many times, and still find it fresh and powerful and convincing every time I go through it. Maybe I can share with you why I believe this to be the case and maybe I can do it from my own perspective. That is, at least, my hope.
And by the way—the picture to the right is of a sign I found on an overhanging staircase in a hotel in Dharamsala a stone's throw from His Holiness's compound and main temple. I read it allegorically.
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