Table of Contents
Title Page
Publisher’s Acknowledgment
Happiness
Meditation
Desire
Attitude
Peace
Compassion
Compassion for the Enemy
The Good Heart
Enlightenment
Self-Cherishing and Cherishing Others
Mind
Work
Love
Ignorance
Karma
Labeling
Emptiness
Death
Meditations
Taking and Giving
Giving Your Body Away
Dedicating Merit
About the Author
About Wisdom
Copyright Page
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous help of the Hershey Family Foundation in sponsoring the production of this book.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
EVERY ONE OF US WANTS HAPPINESS, and not only in each moment of our daily life: we want an unchanging, ultimate happiness that can be experienced forever. Every one of us is trying to stop our problems and find peace. No matter where we live, what race or culture we belong to, what religion or philosophy we follow, or what language we speak, we all wish to be happy and not have problems. Truly every living being has the basic wish to experience happiness and avoid suffering. But so often, our attempts to find happiness end up only causing more pain. We need to understand the full potential of our mind, and we need to understand the importance of loving-kindness for our own happiness and for the happiness of the world. We need to learn how to transform our daily work so that it becomes the cause of happiness rather than problems, now and in the future. And we need to learn how to transform every single experience—health and sickness, wealth and poverty, living and dying—into happiness. Meditation is the most powerful tool we can employ to do this. Through the power of meditation, we can find lasting peace and happiness and, more importantly, we can bring peace and happiness to others. Cultivate the thought that everyone you meet—in all circumstances—is fulfilling all your wishes. This is the gate to true happiness.
The sun of real happiness shines in your life only when you start to cherish others.
PROBLEMS AND THE ABSENCE of problems do not come from outside. Problems and the absence of problems, as well as all peace and all happiness, only come from your own mind. Your mind has the potential to stop the problems that come from your mind. And yet the same mind that brings the problem doesn’t stop the problem, but another mind—another thought, another attitude—can stop all problems and bring peace and happiness. The mind of a buddha or some holy being can’t be transplanted into you. Peace, happiness, and satisfaction have to come from your own mind.
AS LONG AS WE BELIEVE that happiness has to come from outside, from other people or from the external environment, we will always blame something outside whenever we have a problem. Many people, for example, think that their problems come from their parents. They say, “I’m like this because of my mother and father. My parents are to blame.” In a way, Western culture as a whole teaches children to blame their parents for their problems, rather than emphasizing how kind parents are in giving life to their children. But real happiness has nothing to do with the past, with our history, or our upbringing. Real happiness comes when we free ourselves from the dissatisfied mind of desire. Satisfaction comes when we give ourselves freedom from the always unhappy mind of desire. Suffering is the broom that clears away negative karma.
THE HAPPINESS OF MATERIAL progress is artificial, just some kind of external excitement—the briefest flash of lightning in the dark. True joy, lasting joy, comes from the depths of the heart. Renounce the happiness that produces suffering; cherish the true happiness that can come from suffering.
YOU CANNOT MAKE your body flexible just by thinking about making it flexible. You can only do that by training it; the body has to make the body flexible. Just as physical flexibility has to be created by our body, mental flexibility—which is another name for ultimate peace and happiness—has to be created by our mind, through mental training. Meditation is mental training.
MEDITATION is a profound psychological technique to stop wrong conceptions and to start the correct way of thinking that leads to peace, happiness, and harmony. Meditation sounds like some kind of religious term, but it is actually the deepest practice of inner psychology. Meditation protects the mind, and keeps it aware of reality. Meditation also helps you keep your mind in a state of loving-kindness by training you to be aware of all the ways in which others are kind to you; and it helps you maintain compassion by being aware of how others are suffering. How do we fill up the emptiness in our heart? The answer is meditation.
TO TAKE UP REAL MEDITATION, real spiritual practice, is to transform suffering into happiness—and that depends on transforming your mind, your attitude. YOU HAVE TO WORK to gradually develop your mind from day to day, and year to year. It might even take eons. Ultimately this kind of mind-training is a practice of patience. CERTAIN KINDS OF MEDITATION practices are like destroying the root of a poisonous plant so that it cannot produce seeds and grow again and again, causing a lot of harm: you destroy the root of suffering-causing karma so that that seed cannot grow to produce problems. A MEDITATION TEACHER is part of an emergency rescue operation, like when police, paramedics, and rescue workers go in with sirens blaring, red and blue lights flashing, helicopters whirling overhead with searchlights—to help people drowning in danger and distress. THE DHARMA ITSELF is like a life-jacket. But it’s up to you to wear the life-jacket as you cross the perilous sea of suffering; it’s up to you to practice. MEDITATION is the way to make your mind calm, clear, and stable; it is the way to stop creating harm. Meditation is the way to have peace; ultimately it is the way to stop creating problems. But just to have peace of mind yourself is not sufficient. The most important purpose of practicing meditation is to develop the good heart, bodhichitta—the aspiration to give others less harm and more benefit. But even though you might not have yet developed your mind to the point where you have completely stopped harming others and only benefit them, you should still strive to cultivate bodhichitta. ALWAYS STRIVE to improve your mind, improve your attitude. Rather than using your intelligence and the vast potential you have as a human being to create more problems for yourself and for the world, cultivate the good heart, bodhichitta, and cultivate wisdom. Train your mind to become less and less angry and more patient, less selfish and more loving, more compassionate and more concerned with the happiness of others. Without actively working to do this, however, your mind will remain just the same, or more likely become even worse, building up more anger, more pride, more desire, more dissatisfaction. This is how all violence happens. Wisdom simply means awareness of reality.
LIKE BOILING WATER, our mind is bubbling with superstitions, hallucinations, and many unnecessary and wrong views, which bring only harm and no peace in our life. By learning methods to pacify our disturbing thoughts, to cool our boiling mind, we are taking the opportunity to free ourselves from the causes of problems and unhappiness. Meditation is the unfailing way to get free from problems.
WHEN ANY OF THE FIVE DELUSIONS arise—ignorance, anger, attachment, jealousy, miserliness—look at them as completely pure minds of wisdom. When strong desire arises, just concentrate on the nature of desire, thinking that it is the transcendental wisdom of discernment of a buddha’s pure holy mind, a manifestation of the dharmakaya, ultimately pure in nature. When you look at the pure nature of any delusion, the delusion is stopped. When you meditate like this, even for a moment, the five delusions disappear, and you also leave a positive imprint on your consciousness, which can ripen into that transcendental wisdom. SUBDUING YOUR OWN MIND is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching—and the basic method for subduing the mind is meditation. Yet even though we can accomplish so many other things in our life, we find it very hard to develop our mind. When a problem comes, our mind reacts the same way it did before we learned anything about meditation—our mind becomes disturbed, and we are dissatisfied and angry. This happens because we haven’t done the real practice of watching and, most importantly, working to subdue our mind. If subduing our mind had been our main practice, our mind would definitely have developed year by year, month by month, week by week, and even day by day. With the necessary causes and conditions—diligent practice of meditation, of mind-training—the mind surely develops. Please see for yourself! Right now, why not take the opportunity to enjoy your life with the Dharma?
THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF MEDITATING, of practicing Dharma, is to bring happiness to every living being, now and continuingly into the future. Our aim is to bring all beings happiness until we and they together end the cycle of death and rebirth into problems and suffering.
WHEN YOUR MIND IS OVERWHELMED by strong desire, it interferes with your seeing reality clearly. Desire clings to the exaggerated appearance of the object of desire as permanently, truly, self-existently good. After you exaggerate the good qualities of the object and label it “good,” you hallucinate that it appears as something good from its own side—and you then cling to that. Clinging to that exaggerated appearance interferes with the ability to see the ultimate nature of the object. When this happens, rather than looking at the object, the person or thing you desire, you should look at the subject, your mind. Simply watch your mind. Change the object of attention from outside (the thing you are hallucinating about) to inside (the hallucinating mind itself ). Instead of thinking of that external object, look at the mind that is thinking of that object. When you practice even this simple meditation there’s immediately a change. Overpowering desire suddenly has the potential to be stopped. There’s space in your mind to see the true nature of yourself and of the object of your desire. If you do this even for a moment, the desiring mind starts to become controlled, pacified, subdued. The dissatisfied mind of desire is one of the main causes of stress.
Letting go of attachment is not a loss; you are not losing anything. Truly, when you let go of suffering you gain inner peace and deep satisfaction.
YOU FOLLOW DESIRE WITH THE AIM of getting satisfaction. Your aim is worthwhile and you are right to wish to obtain it—but the method is wrong and results only in dissatisfaction. Following desire cannot lead to satisfaction.
YOU FOLLOW DESIRE and you are not satisfied. Again you follow desire, and again you are not satisfied. Again you try, and again you are not satisfied. Clinging to a small pleasure becomes an obstacle to obtaining the great pleasure of ultimate happiness.
WHEN I SAY that you should give up desire, it might sound as if I’m telling you to give up your happiness—but this isn’t so! If you ever really look deeply at desire and the objects of desire, you will see that even though such things appear as pleasures, there is no real pleasure to be found there. Cutting off desire, however, doesn’t mean that you cut off all happiness—far from it! Truly, when you renounce desire you open yourself in the only way possible to true happiness. Because you may not have experienced this true happiness yet, you mistake the subtle suffering of desire for true peace—but once you realize the infinite benefits of renouncing selfishness and desire, this kind of renunciation is a joyful act. Attachment is like honey on a razor’s edge: it looks like pleasure but offers only pain.
OFTEN, BEFORE THE BENEFITS of renouncing desire have completely become clear to you, it’s as if there are two warring parties in your mind: the party of desire and the party of wisdom. You have to take the side of one of them. Rather than taking the side of desire, choose to take the side of Dharma wisdom. This simple act is like choosing reality over hallucination. Any samsaric pleasure is nothing new, only more suffering.
SAMSARIC PLEASURE, which is dependent on external things, is only suffering. When one problem stops and another problem has started but is still small, we call it “pleasure.” We project the appearance of pleasure and believe in that. And in this way we see the unbearable prison of samsara as a lush, beautiful park—which is, after all, a hallucination. As long as you follow desire you will never find satisfaction.
DIFFICULT EMOTIONS OR MEMORIES are only problems if you don’t have methods to transform them. If you don’t remember or don’t apply those methods of thought-transformation, difficult emotions and memories bring only suffering. However, if you apply the right tools, the tools of thought-transformation, the more these things appear to you, the more practice you can do! Isn’t that wonderful? It is truly possible to transform your whole life and your whole mind into the essence of Dharma itself.
WHENEVER YOU EXPERIENCE a problem, think: “I am experiencing this problem on behalf of all other beings. Instead of allowing countless other people to experience it, I alone will take all these problems upon myself, so that everyone else can be free of them.” This attitude stops the problem by purifying the cause of the problem, which is always within your mind. Experiencing your problems in this way keeps your mind happy and benefits others—and when your problem benefits others, it also, of course, benefits you. Everything depends on how you use your mind.
WHENEVER YOU ARE at your lowest—when you are most depressed, when your partner has left you, when you’ve lost your job—that is the time to fight your true enemy: delusion. Think to yourself: “Now is the time to do battle, to go to war with the samsaric emotions. Samsara has never brought any real happiness and now is the time for me to realize this.” When you do this, you’re making war with your inner enemy; you are taking steps to conquer the enemy that has defeated you for endless samsaric rebirths, from time without beginning. All other seeming enemies cannot last long once the inner enemy has fallen. Cherishing yourself is the door to all obstacles. Selflessly cherishing others, even one other being, is the door to all happiness.
SINCE WE EXPERIENCE SICKNESS, why not experience sickness with the thought to benefit others? Since we experience loss, why not experience loss with the thought to benefit others? Since we experience hardships, why not experience hardships with the thought to benefit others? Since we experience relationship problems, why not do so with the thought to benefit others? Since we must experience death, why not experience even death with the thought to benefit others? What life could be happier or more meaningful than this? WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE any negative state—even depression—for others, for the numberless beings suffering everywhere, it becomes the path for you to achieve enlightenment. Even depression can be a wish-granting jewel, the most precious one of all, fulfilling your own wishes for happiness and those of all beings. Transform all undesirable conditions by voluntarily taking up all difficulties.
PEOPLE CAN’T SEE YOUR MIND, what people see is a manifestation of your attitude in your actions of body and speech. Practice with the bodhisattva attitude every day; let your actions of body and speech express your aspiration to bring ultimate happiness to all beings. Don’t get disturbed if you hear of problems—our ears are made to hear problems. Problems are like earrings—just decorations for the ear!
EVEN IF WE HEAR EVERY TEACHING taught by all the buddhas throughout space and time, as long as we don’t change our attitude, even this won’t help us to generate realizations in our mind. If we don’t change our attitude, we will never be truly happy, we will never be free. This is why, even though there are numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas working tirelessly, ceaselessly, constantly, so many beings are still suffering. It’s not because the holy beings are not helping us; it’s because from our side we haven’t attempted to change our attitude. If it were only in the hands of the buddhas and bodhisattvas (or in the hands of God, for that matter), there wouldn’t be any beings suffering now. But in fact, being free from suffering is dependent upon both us and the holy beings. The buddhas and bodhisattvas are like doctors, and their teaching is like medicine. And just as with physical illness, even if we have an excellent doctor who knows all about our disease and its treatment and can definitely cure us, we won’t recover from our illness if we don’t take it upon ourselves to follow her advice. If we don’t recover and we haven’t followed the doctor’s advice, it’s not the doctor’s fault! If we won’t listen to the doctor when we are sick, what can the doctor do? Nothing. It’s very important to understand and to remember this point. The way to solve the problems in your life is to open your heart to others.
No matter how many or difficult are the hardships, by receiving them for others we transform our life.
A PERSON’S DEVELOPMENT OF MIND can affect the environment; it can transform the environment. Take my teacher, Lama Yeshe, for example. Lama Yeshe saw everyone as very kind. In my observation, because of Lama’s own good heart, other people around him also became kind and good-hearted. Being around Lama transformed the other person’s mind or, we might say, blessed the other person’s mind. This means that other mind was transformed from having a negative attitude to a positive one, from a selfish mind into a kind mind. YOU NEED TO GUARD YOUR ATTITUDE all the time, twenty-four hours a day. Doing only what your mind says, believing everything your mind says, is very dangerous—it’s usually what the delusions want, not what the bodhisattva wants. Don’t underestimate the power of attitude!
WHEN YOU GET UP IN THE MORNING, think of the meaning of your human life, think of your universal responsibility: “I’m responsible for all beings. I will act to pacify all their suffering and bring them happiness.” As you dress, think: “I’m putting on these clothes because I need to fulfill my universal responsibility.” When you are eating, again remember the meaning, the purpose, of this precious human life. Think of your food as medicine to keep you strong in order for you to better serve all beings. When you go to sleep, again remember the meaning of this human life. Sleep too is like medicine—you are going to sleep to become refreshed so that...
Sharmik