The “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind Toward the Dhama,” also called the Common Preliminaries and the Four Reversals are considered by many as the place to begin understanding, learning, and practicing the Dharma. Not some scholarly doctrine or list of imperatives, the Four Thoughts are already familiar to most people as part of their deepest inner sense of reality.

A series of easy-to-read and understand articles on how get started practicing dharma, where and how to begin.

Michael Erlewine has studied Buddhism since the 1950s, and practiced it for last forty years, running the Heart Center for meditation instruction since the 1980s. Trained in the Karma Kagyu system of Tibetan Buddhism, Erlewine has worked practiced Mahmudra Meditation for  27 years under the guidance of Karma Kagyu teachers.

Here are a series of nineteen articles written in 2015 by Michael Erlewine, all focused on Tibetan Buddhist mind-training methods, and geared for the beginning and intermediate practitioner. They are easy to read and understand and are based on hands-on practical experience rather than abstract theory.