God morgon! Good morning! We are exactly 10 days away for the Chenrezig Drubchen - prayer for world peace and harmony. Please join us in this occasion to dedicate all our prayers for the general well-being and happiness of all sentient beings in particular for the harmony & peace of the world, and healing ourselves and others from the recent and past catastrophic and traumatic events i.e. the re-emergence of Ebola infection. A number of merit-making opportunities are available. Please refer to the top-post and event page here or email us at dmcdharmaevents{at}yahoo{dot}com. **************Dharma Quote of the Day****************** [The last two posts emphasized on the precious human life possessing the eighteen qualities (Eight Leisures + Ten Endowments). And only loving-kindness and compassion are what we carry forward to our future. So now for us who are extremely fortunate to have obtained this precious human life and some of us have also accumulated enough good merits to even meet some Dharma, how do we go about in practicing Dharma?] Genuine Transformation in Our Dharma Practice - Part 1 We have this precious life now. This is our opportunity. If we let it go, who knows if the opportunity will ever come again? Now is when we have the freedom to practice, we have the teachers, we have the intelligence to understand, and we have a motivation to really, genuinely want to practice. This is so rare. But it’s not enough just to intellectually understand. We have to take the Dharma and use it. We have to take the Dharma and eat it and digest it until it permeates every cell of our bodies. What use is it unless it really takes over our life, unless we and the Dharma merge? Without this, it’s just another -ism amongst all the many other different ways of doing and looking at things. At this moment, our mind is in one place and the Dharma is in another and they’re looking at each other. Occasionally they touch. But that’s not enough. They have to become like one, so that it’s impossible to see which is one’s mind and which is the Dharma. It’s like a dye going into a cloth: the mind has to be completely dyed with the Dharma so that every word, every thought, every action is an expression of our understanding of the way things really are. Beginning is never easy but PERSERVERANCE is the key. In the beginning this is not so easy. We have to work at it, we have to be mindful, and we have to remind ourselves. That is what is meant by perseverance. It means moment to moment to moment, to the very best of our abilities, whatever situation comes up, we must really try to bring our intelligence and our heart into that situation. If we have that attentiveness in the moment then everything that happens to us will have some meaning. It will be an opportunity to make some progress on the path. This gives us tremendous freedom because whatever happens can help us. The Tibetan texts say that we should use all occasions as aids on the path. If we believe this then it doesnt matter what happens to us because whatever occurs we can transform into a help on the path and so there is freedom. A Very OPEN and SPACIOUS MIND But freedom from what? From hope and fear. This refers to having a mind that is very open and spacious. When we talk about effort we don’t mean huffing and puffing as though we’re in a marathon race. What we’re talking about is a very spacious effort, the type of effort that is a constant alertness in the moment . It’s just flowing like a river, from moment to moment to moment. It’s not doing push-ups, although sometimes push-ups and prostrations might be called for! It’s the effort to be here and now and to have a relaxed, open, alert mind which responds appropriately and with clarity to whatever is happening. Usually we are so absorbed in our own desires, our own thoughts and feelings that we don’t see things very clearly. What’s needed is to be able to step back and have this openness to see things as they really are and therefore to respond in an appropriate manner. The ability to do this, to integrate this with our life completely, is what is meant by effort. The Four Right Efforts The other application of this is what the Buddha called, I think, the four right efforts. These are: the effort to prevent the unwholesome from arising, the effort to discard that unwholesomeness which has already arisen, the effort to create the wholesome which has not yet arisen, and the effort to cultivate and maintain that wholesomeness which has arise. Wholesomeness, sometimes also translated as skillfulness, means those states of mind such as understanding, love, generosity and openness of heart which create within us and around us a state of harmony and peace. This is in contrast to the unwholesome, or unskillful, states of mind such as ignorance, greed and aversion, which create within us and without us states of conflict. So, part of maintaining our awareness is to be aware of the states of our mind and where they are coming from. We must have discernment. We have to recognize those thoughts and emotions that are rooted in the negative factors. It’s not a matter of suppression; it’s a matter of recognizing them, accepting them and letting them go. We don’t maintain them, we don’t follow them. As our awareness grows so we become more acutely conscious of our mental states and then we can see, for example, when aversion, when anger is coming into our mind. We can recognize it. We can even name it and say This is anger.’ But we don’t identify with it. We just see that this is an angry state of mind. We accept that’s what it is. But in knowing that it’s not helpful, we can also drop it. On the other hand, sometimes very positive states of mind arise and because we are so busy we don’t recognize them and therefore they fade away. If the mind is clear then when positive states of mind come, again we can recognize them, we can acknowledge them and we can try to help them remain, to grow, to be appreciated. So, it’s not just a matter of blaming ourselves for all our negative thoughts. There’s no blame here. It’s recognizing what is and being able to let go. And when it’s positive, it’s recognizing it and encouraging it. It’s dealing with knowing; knowing what is in the mind, without getting caught in our conflicts. - Excerpt taken from the Effort to Transform teaching given by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo in 1996 in Santa Cruz. *Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is a highly respectable Tibetan Buddhist nun in the Drukpa Lineage. She is an author, teacher and founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India. She is best known for being one of the very few Western yoginis trained in the East, having spent twelve years living in a remote cave in the Himalayas, three of those years in strict meditation retreat.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:31:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015