The goals of all Buddhist practice can be reduced to two simple points: removing our old bad karma and collecting new good karma. Here is a teaching by Geshe Michael Roach on the practice of the Four Powers, a powerful method for getting rid of old bad karma. This practice is especially important because karmic imprints can last so long in our mind streams: we carry around not only the imprints of negative acts, words, and thoughts that we can recall from this very life (whether from before the time we became Buddhists, before we knew any better, or afterwards, when we simply couldn't control ourselves), but also literally millions of past karmas from past lives, that we have long since forgotten. And until we remove these imprints we can never stop our suffering.
The Knowledge Base (www.theknowledgebase.com) is an ongoing project to preserve and publish the life work of Geshe Michael Roach. The Knowledge Base Archive currently contains over 10,000 hours of teachings by Geshe Michael Roach and more than 12,000 pages of original translations, books and course materials.
Geshe Michael is the first American to have been awarded the degree of Geshe, or Master of Buddhism, after more than 20 years of study in Tibetan monasteries. He has used this training to become a prominent international teacher, businessman, philanthropist, author, educator, public speaker, and textual scholar.
The Knowledge Base features thousands of classes and thousands of pages of translations. This is an ongoing project and every week we will publish at least one new course. Please keep checking back for new content and enhancements.