Manifesting your desires & Buddhism: Do they go together? 🤔 

Hi, Charles, I'm so glad it was helpful to you -- and not all desire is bad. We have to have some desire to get and stay on the path, like you said. 💜🙏

Thank you, Laura 🙏

Hi, @primomezzo, sorry for the slow reply. But that's a great question! I'm actually outlining a short teaching as a reply, so hopefully that'll be out in a couple of weeks. But here's the short answer: It's both/and. Just to take Tara as an example, she doesn't inherently exist as some separate entity. When humans go extinct, whatever beings exist then will understand the ultimate nature of reality in terms of their own species. But right now, Tara is like a "face" that ultimate reality puts on when we encounter it. Every aspect of her being -- her color, what she's wearing, the sacred sound that's her mantra -- all conveys to us something about the nature of reality itself. And the nature of reality "outside" us isn't different from that "inside" us, the buddha nature of our own mind. I hope that made sense, lol! Tara is "real" in the sense that she's a distinct energy I can call on; she doesn't _just_ exist within me and can help when I need her. But then each of us is made up of the sacred nature of reality, so what's within us isn't really different from the rest of reality. She's definitely different from the way God was explained to me as a kid: he's out there, existing from his own side, not an energy that I can find inside myself, too. I'm not sure how well I've answered this question, but if you check back on my channel in a couple of weeks, I hope there will be a better answer!🤔💜