Tibetan Buddhist Altar » Dharma

The Dharma

Jetsunma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:37:03 +0000

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

The Dharma is as vast as samsara, and is also as stable, as long as there is samsara there will also be Dharma.

As long as there is Dharma there will also be Samsara, because the Dharma is natural, uncontrived and would not exist without Samsara.

I Choose Enlightenment

Jetsunma — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:30:30 +0000

An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

People ask: “In your tradition, is Buddha like God?” No, Buddha is not like God. “Is Guru Rinpoche God?” No, Guru Rinpoche is not God. “Well, what do you call God in your tradition?” We don’t call anything God. There are gods, but they are not the goal. Westerners try to find a way around that, saying something like, “All right, then what is the goal?” I tell them, “Enlightenment.” They reply, “Okay, then Enlightenment is God.” No, it’s not. The goal is not anything as personalized and externalized as that. There is no “other.” The moment we are caught up in “self and other,” we have lost the essential Nature. We are fixated, stuck in duality.

This is about Awakening, which is the pacification of such fixation. You must understand the fundamental distinction between Buddhism and Western thinking––whether you are considering beginning the Path or are already a practioner. You must understand this difference, so that you will know what your true objects of refuge are.

The statement “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, and I take refuge in the Sangha” is an essential element throughout your practice of the Buddha’s teaching. What does this statement mean? It means you have looked at the faults of cyclic existence, and you have seen that it produces no real happiness. You have learned that the Buddha said there is a cessation of suffering, this cessation is Enlightenment, and it is also the cessation of desire. So you have decided to go for Enlightenment. That means you have to really understand the faults of cyclic existence––even if these ideas are difficult to swallow. It’s like taking a medicine that tastes bad until you get used to it. It is like that in the beginning.

Having decided to take this medicine, you look at those who deliver it. We look to the Buddha, and this includes all those who have attained Buddhahood, not just the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. We look to the Dharma, which is the revelation or teaching brought forth from the mind of Enlightenment. And we look to the Sangha, the spiritual community to which we belong. It is the Sangha who are responsible for treasuring and propagating the teachings.

In the Vajrayana tradition, we also say, “I take refuge in the Lama,” who is considered representative of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Without the Lamas, you would not hear the Buddha’s teachings. And without the Lamas, there would be no Sangha.

When you say you take refuge in all of these, what you are saying is: “I choose Enlightenment. I choose the cessation of suffering.” You move away from the faults of cyclic existence, and you remain focused on the ultimate goal.

In a deeper sense, however, you must understand that you are ultimately taking refuge in Enlightenment itself. You must understand it as both the Path and the intrinsic Nature. So you are taking refuge in the Nature of your own mind. If you understand this thoroughly, you can never be duped. But you do have to work very diligently and with discipline towards the goal.

The method is very technical, very involved. It isn’t easy because it must cut through aeons of compulsive absorption in self-nature. It must cut like a knife! It must be powerful––and it is powerful. You have to think of Dharma that way. The technology has to be strong––and real. You can’t just talk about it. There is work to be done!

Although it is strong, the technology is very flexible. You need not be afraid. You will not be forced to go any deeper than you want to go. You have the right to practice gently. You will still be accumulating causes for a future incarnation as a human with these auspicious conditions, and then you will be able to practice well and dilligently.

There are people who only do very small, very gentle practice. And that’s fine. There is a large tradition of that in the Buddha Dharma. There are also people who are more deeply involved, though in a mediocre way. They practice an hour or so a day. They do a good job, and they’re faithful, and that’s it. Then there are people who practice many hours each day. They continually try to propagate the Teaching, and they work very hard. So you have a choice. You can determine the level of your involvement.

To download the complete teaching, click here and scroll down to How Buddhists Think

It’s Decision Time: Who Are You? Full Length Video Teaching

Jetsunma — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:05:19 +0000

The following is a full length video teaching offered by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo in Sedona, Arizona:

While the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas offer the feast of Dharma and beg us to eat, we hold our egos and samsara on the thornes of our hearts instead. We are begged to adhere to the teachings of the Buddha and take real refuge, binding our hearts to the Three Jewels.

The Foundation of Dharma

Jetsunma — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:30:54 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Commitment to the Path”

Today I would like to begin to lay the foundation by which we will practice. Even for those of us that have been practicing for some time, if we lose the foundation or if the foundation, like in the analogy of a house, becomes weak or compromised in any way, it’s not long, then, before the house will topple or the house will lean or become unstable. It’s like that with our practice. If certain fundamental thoughts are not stable in such a way as to hold up the rest of our practice and support us on the path, then eventually our path, our practice, will decay, decline in some way.

Although practice, like life itself, is often cyclic, sometimes we feel we are in a position to do more practice and other times we are in a position to do less practice. Still in all, we have to make sure that we’re able to make slow and steady progress. The reason I say slow and steady progress is because oftentimes new students will trip themselves up by trying to go too fast without the depth of understanding. It’s exactly like building your house on sand. It’s exactly like that. We want to go into the neater stuff; we want to go into the cooler stuff. We want to learn the stuff that makes us look exotic when we practice, but none of us will really be practicing in truth if we don’t have certain foundational ideas and if we don’t constantly review them over time and constantly make them part of our contemplative life.

Of course those thoughts are engineered to turn the mind toward Dharma. In order to turn the mind toward Dharma, we have to have our eyes opened. We can’t be lightweights; we can’t be bliss ninnies. We just can’t say, “Oh, it’s so cool to practice Dharma. Let’s go on.” We have to understand why we are practicing Dharma, because Dharma is a path and a lifestyle and a method that one has to use throughout the course of one’s life. We have to be consistent. We have to be persistent. It can’t be the kind of faith that you have only on Sunday mornings or only on liturgical holidays. It’s a walking-through-your-life kind of thing, and it requires you to make enormous changes. Behavior and ideas that may have been acceptable before will gradually become unacceptable – not in a way that you should be filled with guilt or shame. It’s not like that. It’s more like when you really understand the Buddhadharma and you understand what samsaric existence is, and what the display of one’s nature is, it will become more natural to practice the bodhicitta and to give rise to compassion, to caring for all sentient beings.

In order to proceed effectively on this path that challenges us every moment of every day, we have to remain focused, remain mindful in ways we never thought we could or we’d ever have to. And the reason why again is that Dharma does not simply come from magical thinking. It does not come from the stars. It does not just descend upon us on some lucky day for no apparent reason. Dharma is the awareness of cause and effect relationships.

Now for me, that’s why Dharma makes so much sense. I know when I first introduced some of the ideas of Dharma to my students, they were, you might say, a little resistant. They would think things like “You mean, like path? Like you have to do something every day? Like you have to change the way you think and the way you act? I mean, couldn’t we just like get salvation?” And that’s the idea. We’ve been raised with the idea that religion is like a condiment on the plate of life. You know, something to sweeten it up with or salt it up with. A little oregano on the pasta.

But in fact, we find out that we have to learn something different. Dharma becomes our heart. Dharma becomes enthroned on the mind and heart. And the reason why is that Dharma has to accomplish something that is very breathtaking. Dharma has to accomplish something that is enormous, that seems almost inconceivable. It has to take our perception of ordinary samsaric cyclic existence, which is a state of delusion, a state of non-recognition, and it has to transform our capacity to be able to recognize our own innate nature. Yet, everything about us is geared to function in duality. Two eyes, two nostrils. All of our senses are extensions of our ego, so they always work to function in duality. So how can this thing happen? We ask ourselves, what in the world, what kind of experience, what kind of event could turn us around to where our perception could become so clear that we could be like the Buddha, awake to our primordial wisdom nature.

Well, what is it that Dharma is supposed to do, exactly, and how does it do it? The idea is to have a path on Dharma that is exacting and is a method that takes you to a to b to c to d, and also is flexible. You can go from a to d to m to t. Dharma is suitable for all sentient beings, because there is some element of Dharma that is compatible with one’s own karma. So it’s not a general here’s-the-true-label for everybody. There are teachings that the Buddha gives that are incontrovertible. They will never change. They are about the nature of samsaric existence. Yet the path is individualized. For instance, I really like to practice Guru Yoga. That’s my thing. That’s what I do. And somebody else might really like to practice Vajrakilaya. Ultimately it’s the same practice. One is a peaceful practice, one is a wrathful practice. One is based on deepening the connection with the root guru. The other is also based on that, and is also based on very actively manifesting one’s compassion.

Liberate Your Mind

Holly — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:30:57 +0000

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

There are many Dharma practitioners who practice for many years, go on retreat, and even take ordination. Then at some point, some karmic switch flips in their minds and suddenly they’re finished with Dharma! They don’t want to do Dharma anymore. They’re on to something else. We may think that’s strange, but it has happened, especially to Westerners. It’s not uncommon for a Westerner to practice Dharma sincerely and then flip tracks, and go back into a very ordinary kind of life. That need not happen to you. But it could. You should face that possibility.

The antidote for that event is to cultivate compassion in your mind every day. If you move along the path of Buddhadharma and become overworked by it, thinking, “I just can’t practice that many hours a day. I cannot do this activity that propagates the Dharma anymore. It’s just too much.” If you become dry inside, if you think you just can’t go on, there’s only one way that that could happen to you. You have forgotten the suffering of others.

You must cultivate the memory that even in this visible world where beings can be seen, there is suffering that you cannot comprehend. You must think that there are children being abused everywhere, that there is starvation and poverty. You must think about the terrible diseases that afflict the body, speech and mind. You must think about the horrible things that come along with suffering, and the depth of suffering that exists, even in the realms that you can witness. If you think about that everyday, more about that than you do about yourself, you will not fall off the path of Dharma. When you become weak, when you waiver, that is when you forget. That is when you think the path is all about you. It’s when you forget that you are practicing for their sake, and that you are practicing also to liberate your mind so that you can be of benefit to others.

A non-Buddhist practitioner might say, “I’ve got another idea. Why don’t I do what I know how to do best. I’ll go out and make some money, and then I’ll feed everybody. I can do that.”

I’ll tell you a story about when I went to India. In our innocence, we thought, “Let’s go see Bombay; this is really going to be great.” So we got in a taxi and we went through the streets of Bombay thinking that we were going to see the India on the postcards. What I saw were streets so filled with sickness – leprosy, deformity, unbelievable poverty – that I couldn’t see anything else. I know there were beautiful buildings. I know there was beautiful scenery, but I couldn’t see those things.

Every time the taxi stopped, people with only part of a limb and open sores of leprosy would stick their arms in the car and beg. Mothers would hold up their babies that they had done something to, saying, “Help us, help us.” So I started passing out dollar bills to everyone. I soon realized I was in deep trouble as I only had a limited amount of money, but that didn’t stop me.

I was traumatized by this. I was crying to the depth of my heart, because I had known that suffering existed, but I was used to my brand of suffering. I had never seen anything like this. I continued to pass out dollar bills, and finally the taxi driver stopped. He turned around and said, “Lady, don’t do this anymore. What is one dollar going to do for these people? Maybe they’ll eat today. What will you do for them tomorrow? And if you give out one dollar to everyone you see, there are so many people like them in India, you couldn’t help them all.” His saying that shocked me; he was right. Even if I could manage to become wealthy, I couldn’t feed the world. And hunger is only one kind of suffering. How can you help the other kinds of suffering? This kind of ordinary compassion ultimately does no good.

Why are those people suffering in India, and why were you born here in the West where things are relatively comfortable? Why are there animals and why are there humans? Why are there other realms of existence? Why is there so much suffering in one place, and much less suffering in another place? It is because of karma. That is the reason for all of this. Yet there is a cure for negative karma, which is the kind of karma that causes suffering. Ultimately, it is the only cure that will work. That cure is the eradication of hatred, greed and ignorance from the mindstreams of sentient beings. And the root of hatred, greed and ignorance is desire.

This doesn’t mean if we see starving people we shouldn’t feed them, that we should immediately teach them the Dharma. That, of course, won’t work. We have to be skillful. If people are hungry, we feed them first, and then we teach them. But your job now is to do neither. You might not have money, and you might not have the ability to teach just yet. But you can do something. You can practice Dharma in such a way that you, yourself, become free of hatred, greed and ignorance. You can practice so that you can liberate your mind from cyclic existence for one reason and one reason only: that after liberating your mind, you can emanate in a form that will continue to benefit beings. You can liberate your mind from desire to such a degree that you have only one hope, and that hope is that you will be born again and again in a form that will bring this antidote to other suffering beings. That’s what you can do.

Bring the Love

Jetsunma — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:30:03 +0000

Thousand Arm Avalokiteshvara Mandala

From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

All Dharma, your practice, your teachers, and everything you have ever encountered that has brought you closer to enlightenment—is only one thing: a manifestation or an emanation of the enlightened, compassionate intention of the Buddha. That is why this path appears and why we are able to practice Dharma. If you wish to follow this path, abandon your drunken, compulsive need to be right, approved of, admired. You must rely on the Buddha’s great intention. And after you finally arise in the awareness of your own primordial-wisdom nature, you will of necessity appear again and again to benefit beings. For it is the nature of that state to do so. That pristine state appears in an emanation phase—a spontaneous, natural movement that we may call love.

Who stops the love? You do. Every moment you believe that you are inherently real, you stop loving. Every moment you focus on your “self” and its needs, you stop loving. As your churning desire compulsively creates a deluge of thoughts, you stop loving. As long as you hold on to a “self” and the idea of its eternal existence, you will never be anything but a cheap imitation of the supremely awakened mind. I asked a wonderful yogini in Nepal, “What would you say to women in America who are practicing?” She said, “Well, this applies to everyone, but especially to women. Have courage.” Your practice is meaningless—it amounts to nothing—unless you have courage. You must be strong. You must not let anything stop you. With that fearlessness, you can break through the lethargy in your life; you can break through the barriers that keep you from practicing sincerely; you can even break through the old ideas that keep you mired in garbage. You can understand that by believing in a surviving, eternal ego, you are following a fool off a cliff.

Western Baggage and Eastern Philosophy

Jetsunma — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:30:40 +0000

From The Spiritual Path: A Compilation of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

As human beings, we avoid looking deeply at our ingrained habits and beliefs. We avoid testing them for the qualities needed to develop properly on the Vajrayana path. It’s easier to “go with the flow.” We dislike challenging ourselves. Most of all, we dislike change. We are somehow more comfortable with remnants of our old beliefs, translated into Dharma terminology.

Eastern philosophy is difficult for Westerners to understand. There are so many major differences, including the basic premise and the value system. Though the various motivations for practice set forth by the Buddha are universally true, people tend to select what resonates most with what they learned while growing up. Your culture strongly influences your reasons for practicing Dharma—and how you under-stand it. Those whose needs are generally satisfied react very differently from people who have seen war, suffering, and famine. The latter tend to hang on to Dharma for dear life. But many Dharma-practicing Westerners complacently think: “If I can just get another precious human rebirth, I’ll be okay.”

Not so for those who have seen intense suffering. They are apt to think: “I want out. I want my mind to be free of the causes of suffering. I am sick of revolving helplessly on this wheel. I’m tired of watching my loved ones go hungry and die young.” When you have seen war, you know that death could be just a moment away. But we Westerners rely on medical marvels. We have faith that if someone can just get us to the hospital in time, we will be saved.

The great blessing here in the United States is that many people have a strong karmic relationship with compassion. Thus, I talk more about compassion than about suffering. But it may not be enough to practice Dharma because you feel a sense of mission and purpose—however pure your intention might be. That is not the same as hanging on to Dharma for dear life. If you have not understood in the depths of your being how impermanent this life is, if you have not really understood the terrible prospect of revolving endlessly in cyclic existence—you tend to be much more casual in your attitude toward practice. You may not challenge yourself to do your best.

Westerners need a constant shot of inspiration. We seek it out. We eat it like candy, and we love it! But just like candy, it soon lets us down. And even if we practice with the intention to help sentient beings, there is still a catch: our practice gives us a sense of identity. Right now, your sense of identity determines why you live, what you do, what is important to you. But it also makes you a traveler who is standing still. We can move very fast in our practice and yet remain quite stiff inside. If we practice because we want to be a good person who helps others, we become comfortable with that identity. We do not feel the urgency of someone living with the constant threat of being bombed—or someone who has known hopeless hunger.

We may adopt some new ideas, but our beliefs are basically unchanged. And so is our predicament. We still believe that we will exist as we are forever, if not in the same body, then with the same consciousness. We hope to attain the goal of realization as ourselves. We believe we can keep ourselves intact, and then, we will somehow appear in a celestial form in order to benefit beings. As to what we will actually do, we vaguely envision bringing love and light to the world, the bounty of our great wisdom. And to do that, we will continue to exist in some way that is recognizable to us.

We have now come to a delicate but crucial distinction, and we must tread carefully. We pray to retain awareness throughout the process of death—so that during the bardo transference we can achieve realization or, at least, rebirth in a most fortunate way. We also want to come back in an emanation form in order to benefit beings. However, we may not yet have really challenged our ideas of foreverness and sameness. That is, we haven’t given up on ego, on surviving. This is a product of our culture. Christians aspire to survive death and go to heaven. A Buddhist, however, hopes to remain awake and not faint during the time of transference in the bardo state, but understands that what remains is not the self or the ego: it is awareness itself, the pure, essential mind-nature, unobscured, un-hindered by dirty winds and channels. It is not the natural state of you, the person you are right now. If you are hoping that this “you” will remain intact, you have a different religion programmed into your brain. The correct goal is not to survive in an eternalistic way, reaching a heaven-like Dewachen and then returning as a Buddhist angel to help people.

When you pray for others, do you wish for all sentient beings to know love and light? As Buddhists, we can no longer have this as our prayer. Why? When you do that, you are wishing for sentient beings to remain intact forever, revolving in a state of impermanence. This is very different from praying that the causes for suffering will be erased from their minds, that they will realize the primordial-wisdom state.

What should you as a Buddhist hope for? That when you enter into the bardo, or into your prayers, or even into the next moment, you will instantly come to know the emptiness of all phenomena, the emptiness of self-nature. Self-nature is like a puffball. You should pray to see it for what it is: poof! Just like that. You should pray with all your heart to realize the primordial, natural, pure view—the Nature which is free of all concepts, all mind-chatter. That Nature miraculously survives beneath all the garbage we pile on top of it. That Nature is pure, all pervasive, with neither beginning nor end. When you attain that view, form and formless are seen to be the same, and self is only luminosity.

Discernment: Taking the Time to Examine the Spiritual Path

Jetsunma — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:30:35 +0000

The following is an excerpt from a public talk given by His Holiness Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok:

When we think about the validity of religions—in terms of traditions, in terms of sciences internal and external, and in terms of pith essential pointing out instructions—there is no religion that equals that of Buddhism. At this time there is no opportunity to really go into it; but in terms of the validity of the tradition which goes back for thousands of years and is documented in pechas, or scriptures, which are available at this present time, if one were really to investigate the qualities of the Buddha’s path, it is something quite extraordinary and unequalled by any other religion. I would be more than happy to explain every single reason why in absolute detail, but there wouldn’t be time for that today, nor would there be time in the days that I have here, and you probably would become quite bored with listening to it. So we’ll leave it at that, but please understand that these points are fully documented in the scriptures that we have available to us which date back some thousands of years.

Because of my own qualifications and so forth, at this time I can tell you all that I am a practitioner of the Buddhist religion. I am a Buddhist, and yet I can assure you that at no time in my life have I ever felt a sense of attachment to Buddhism because that is my own religion, nor have I ever felt a sense of aversion to any other religion because it was not the religion that I specifically pursue. So please do not feel that I have any partial attitude towards my own tradition or a biased attitude towards any other tradition being inferior to it because I never have felt this way. However, for a very long period of time I have examined not only the Buddhist religion but many other religions, and Buddhism, as practiced in the land of Tibet, is practiced according to three great lineages or rivers of this tradition which have come down over the centuries from India, China and Tibet. Maybe many of you have heard of the Panchen Rinpoche who asked me to be personally responsible for examining the lineages and updating them and correcting any sort of discrepancies that may occur in present times. Due to that I spent a lot of time going into further examinations of the traditions, and I came to the conclusion that the path of Buddhism is absolutely unequalled by any other. It is absolutely superior.

Therefore I would encourage each and every one of you to carefully examine the spiritual path that you are involved in to make sure that you have not made any mistake. If you don’t examine your spiritual path and you just sort of mindlessly enter into a tradition which has no validity or true source, this is what is called delusion, ignorance. We Tibetans have a saying, “Don’t be like a dog.” If you put fresh lungs in front of a dog, the dog will just devour those lungs without even thinking for a moment, will just scarf them down. Don’t be like this in terms of pursuing a spiritual tradition. One should be very careful to examine in minute detail. And once one has found out for oneself through that process of analytical investigation that this is a true path and a path that is valid and has a true origin, then one can enter. But please don’t just aimlessly enter a spiritual path without thinking.

The Trap of Delusion

Jetsunma — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:00:17 +0000

The following is from a series of tweets by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo:

Nowadays so many people describe themselves as Buddhist but aren’t, as they do not practice what the Buddha taught. And don’t understand. I hear it is like that with other religions, philosophies, as well. It is easy to use the words, and much more difficult walking the talk.

It seems to me that if you have an enemy you fight with, then in truth, you have already lost the war. That is because the “enemy” is actually within; the real problem is our own poisons. Hatred, pride, greed, ignorance, jealousy, doubt, these are the true enemies, the real cause for all wars. I dare say that if we all conquered our “inner demons” our outer troubles would be defeated also, as what we perceive “outwardly” is our own consciousness, our own mind stream. Cause and effect, karma. We literally are trapped in a bubble of our own delusions.

Yet, people call themselves Buddhist with no attempt to pacify their own hurtful and negative tendencies. Some deny rebirth saying Buddha never taught it. Some feel that even though in Buddhism the path is considered “life after life,” Enlightenment can happen instantly, with no causing factors. Nothing happens instantly with no cause!

One guy I read sits under a tree every day, thinking he is Buddha. Yet if anyone disagrees with his words he is rude and hateful. And the rant begins. There is seemingly no understanding that compassion and kindness have anything to do with practicing Dharma. I enjoy watching this kind of thing as a “case study,” wondering how a person could fall down so far. And how it can happen that Buddhism is so misunderstood by people who call themselves great practitioners, scholars, etc and never look in the mirror to see what is really going on. These are the prisoners of their own, self-made war.

The prison is samsaric delusion. Even in a jail cell a person can be free. If the situation is such, change the mind to dissolve the bars that harm us all! Altruism is the way, charity, love, ethics and a genuine caring for the welfare of all beings equally. The inner jail always falls before the “outer” jail ever does!

OM MANI PEDME HUNG

OM AH MI DEWA HRI

What You Can Do

Jetsunma — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:30:33 +0000

White Tara

From The Spiritual Path: A Collection of Teachings by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

There are no sugar daddies in this world. You cannot be the conquering hero, the savior, because you cannot conquer someone else’s mind. Each of us must purify and conquer the hatred, greed, and ignorance we hold in our own minds. No one can do it for anyone else. You can however, liberate your own mind from all egocentricity. You can follow the Buddha’s teaching and take a vow as a Bodhisattva to eliminate all poisons from your mind until the very idea of self-nature is abandoned. You can decide to liberate yourself from all desire. And you can promise to return again and again in any form necessary to help sentient beings pull themselves out of endless suffering. As part of every practice you will say: “May I attain liberation in order to benefit beings.” The compassionate motivation to be of true benefit provides us with the strength to persevere until we ourselves are awake, until we have completely transformed or purged even the tiniest seeds of poison from our minds. The motivation to be a savior has no lasting value. It requires feedback, or “warm fuzzies.” You must get beyond that need. Your love should not depend on feedback.

How can you develop love which sustains itself? How can you cultivate a fire that burns self-sustaining wood? That fire is based on the courage to understand. If your mind has deepened to the extent that you can no longer bear to be idle, knowing the profound despair of all those beings who revolve in endless cycles of suffering—you can become truly committed. Then you can begin to renounce your own causes of suffering.

Until you reach supreme Buddhahood, you must continue courageously to develop the mind of compassion at every moment. You must aspire to be of true and lasting benefit. You must offer yourself again and again. The prayer of St. Francis, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace,” is a good example of the aspiration of a Western Bodhisattva. Eventually, your commitment may take the form of saying: “Let me be reborn in whatever form necessary, under whatever conditions, so that beings might not suffer. If there is a need for food, let me return as food. If there is a need for shade, let me return as a tree. If there is a need for a path, let me return as a teacher. If there is a need for love, let me return as arms.”

Your job then is to purify your mind through strenuous activity. The path of Dharma is difficult. Any path that leads to enlightenment will be strenuous because enlightenment is a long way from here. You are not after a psychological “Aha!” You are aspiring to the state of Buddhahood. Your first thought should be that suffering must end. Your only concern should be that sentient beings achieve liberation.

There is a profound and simple practice that anyone can do to develop this great compassion. It turns ordinary activity into vehicles for extraordinary love. When you awake in the morning, think: “May all beings rise from the state of ignorance and be liberated until there is no more suffering.” As you brush your teeth and bathe, think: “May the suffering and seeds of suffering be washed from the minds of all beings.” Or: “May all beings be showered with the blessings of a virtuous path.” As you enter a door: “May all beings enter the door to a supreme vehicle and finally walk through the door of liberation.” Everything you do should have meaning in this way. Your entire life should be understood as a vehicle for practice.

You should dedicate all your virtuous activity, no matter how small, to the liberation of all beings. Learn to dedicate everything you do, everything. Train yourself to the point that this aspiration is constant. Once your motivation is firm, you can begin training in actual practices, in practical compassion. If you have decided to accept and follow the Buddha’s teachings, you will begin the actual practice of Dharma. If you choose not to be a Buddhist, you must still find a way to purify hatred, greed, and ignorance from your mind and the minds of others. Free of these poisons, you can become awakened; in other words, you can position yourself to be of true benefit to others.

A word of caution: some practitioners take solemn vows and make vast aspirational prayers, but then they turn around and act unkindly to others. As His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche has suggested, practicing Dharma without kindness is like trying to get light from the painting of a lamp.

Beware also of what I call “idiot compassion.” Do you know a needy or troubled person, someone who is psychologically or emotionally disrupted? We often try to give such people what they say they need. This only increases their dependency. It gives them an opportunity to increase the garbage in their minds and lives. Sometimes compassion must be harsh. In Vajrayana, there are at least as many wrathful forms of the Buddhas as peaceful ones. Sometimes compassion must take a wrathful form. If you are pure in your motivation, you will know what to do. You will not get hooked on idiot compassion. It feels good to make others feel good. But feeling good does not always help.

If you can do anything to ease or end the suffering of beings, do it. But understand that these remedies are only temporary. Consider that your power is limited by the condition of your mind. Even though you have the karma to practice—which is very fortunate—you are still an ordinary sentient being. The Buddha, however, embodies the fully awakened mind. He does not experience the confusion or delusion arising from the belief in self. His enlightened intention is powerful in a way that yours cannot be. Despite your good intentions and efforts, if you constantly experience confusion and desire within your mindstream, you can be of little help. The best way to end the suffering of sentient beings is to liberate your mind from the causes of suffering. For if you become a realized Buddha and are then incarnated or experience rebirth in an emanation form, you can offer the means to accomplish Dharma by offering the blessing of a complete path leading to liberation. To follow the Buddha’s path requires a vast amount of merit and virtue, as well as a great deal of compassion, discipline, courage, and unselfishness. The path is arduous. To achieve the great result of Buddhahood requires great effort. But truly, there is no end to suffering except the cessation of desire. The only ultimately useful way to spend this precious human life is to attain enlightenment. You must consider from the depth of your heart that the aim of attaining enlightenment is not only to accomplish one’s own purpose, but also the purpose of others. When you have seen that all sentient beings endure needless suffering, when you cannot bear even the thought of their condition and are determined to bring about its end, you are ready for Dharma.