All Buddhist teachings, be they Mahayana or Theravada, exoteric or esoteric, can be summed up by wisdom and compassion. In fact, the union of wisdom and compassion is the essence of Buddhism; it is ultimately what to be learned and practiced in Buddhism.

What about burning incense, performing prostrations, reciting sutras and the like? Do these activities signify the process of learning Buddhism? Yes, they are part of that process, but certainly not the main part.

~Depicted from THE RIGHT VIEW- Buddhism—the Definition

At the actual moment of death, it is necessary for the mother and child luminosities to come together. What is the child luminosity? The state of realization attained in one’s lifetime is called the child luminosity.

Highly accomplished practitioners have attained realization of the child luminosity already. At the actual moment of death, when the mother luminosity arises, they instantly merge the child luminosity with the mother luminosity and abide in this state. This is called liberation in the bardo.

~Depicted from GATEWAY TO VAJRAYANA PATH - Vajrayana Terminology

If you would like to know more about karma, you can read the fourth chapter of the Abhidharma-kosha-shastra, which clearly explains the workings of cause and effect. Not understanding karma correctly will cause many problems even for people with clairvoyance, let alone ordinary folks like us.

~Depicted from THE RIGHT VIEW - On Cause and Effect

The practice of facing suffering can be divided into four stages: understand what suffering is, know the origin of suffering, defeat suffering, and methods for overcoming suffering.

In the Buddhist view, suffering is neither a material thing nor physical motion; it is a special feeling.

Feeling is a specific aspect of the mind. Objects like steel, cement, brick, glass, etc. do not have feeling – they do not feel either suffering or happiness. After we die, the body is just like a stone or brick. When it comes in contact with earth, water, fire, wind or anything on the outside, it does not react. It is no longer conscious and thus cannot feel suffering or happiness.

~Depicted from ARE YOU READY FOR HAPPINESS -How to Face Suffering and Happiness-How to Face Suffering

Money may have something to do with certain negative mental states, but money is no solution to those mental problems. Although medication is effective to a certain degree in alleviating the symptoms, its side effect should not be underestimated. Then, the safest and the most effective way to overcome difficulties of the mind is spiritual practice.

~Depicted from THE HANDBOOK'S FOR LIFE JOURNEY - On The Three Poisons-How to Handle Desire

The generation stage of Vajrayana is a specific practice for the training of pure perception. Via the generation stage, even ordinary beings don’t have to wait too long to achieve accomplishment. Upon reaching the highest state, one sees everything around as nothing but manifestations of the buddha; nothing is defiled. This is where even ordinary beings who have not attained the first bhumi of the bodhisattva path can successfully reach. So, in terms of purification of phenomena, tantra has swift methods of its own.

~Depicted from GATEWAY TO VAJRAYANA PATH - Sutra and Tantra: Similarities and Differences--based on the view of Rongzom Pandita

There is suffering everywhere in the six realms of rebirth: if not suffering of suffering, it is suffering of change; if not suffering of change, it is all-pervasive suffering.  This is especially so in this degenerate time.  Even if we are unwilling to accept suffering, all of us have to confront it; we cannot ignore it. 

~Depicted from ARE YOU READY FOR HAPPINESS - How to Face Suffering and Happiness-How to Face Suffering

A lot of people are optimistic and hopeful when they are young, especially when their career or business is successful. However, once difficulties arise, they quickly fall into despair and become very pessimistic, to the point of taking their own lives. That is true pessimism. Many people today have an extremely passive and negative outlook on life, thinking they have only a few decades remaining in their lives, following which they will turn to stone, dirt, etc. Buddhism does not see it this way.

~Depicted from THE FOUR SEALS OF DHARMA -The Practice of Suffering

Presently, on all the continents except Antarctica, there are children who can remember their past lives. When these children first began to talk, they would say who they were, where they came from; they would give their parents’ names and details of their past lives. Their parents in this life would then check and validate the actual existence and subsequent death of the persons mentioned. Often enough these children inherited very strong habitual tendencies from their past lives—one who loved to smoke in past life would steal his father’s cigarettes to smoke in this life; one who died of a car accident in past life would be too frightened to go near cars in this life, and so forth. Some of them don’t feel close to their parents of this life but take the parents and relatives in the past life as their real parents and family instead. Many parents are unwilling to make this public lest others should think their children are mentally unstable, out of embarrassment, or because it violates their own religious beliefs. Nevertheless, the secret gets out eventually.

~Depicted from THE HANDBOOK FOR LIFE'S JOURNEY - On Death And Rebirth-What Life Truly Is