Discover Your Potential and Be Happy: Everyone is Equal
The Ultimate Source of Happiness is Within You; No One can Alter It
Simply Discover It and Feel Joyous
Kindle self-confidence and fearlessness. Just as fear dissolves through seeing your night-mare as a dream, by not trusting your habitual perceptions, and by discovering the reality of all phenomena as dream-like all your fears of life will dissolve. Have no fear. There is a Buddha within you. Awaken this treasure with an enlightening cheer. This is the greatest of all self-defenses.
With one’s self-defense well established, create a garden of joy by embracing the innumerable flowers of the dear mother sentient beings within the scope of your compassion. This happens only through rejecting the self-referential thinking and by seeing the ills of this thought. Don’t believe in your habitual thoughts of self-reference which incessantly attracts miseries and dis-satisfactions. The most beautiful mind that possibly exists on this earth is the altruistic Bodhicitta which embraces all others with an unconditional love. Just try a dose of compassion today.
Any dose of compassion, must be taken with the nectar of skillfulness. In the absence of the fence of skillfulness, the extraordinary alphonso mango sapling can get eaten up. You are a precious alphonso mango lineage, but only a sapling at the moment. Skillfulness is indispensably required to be reinforced at this stage.
Some tips to nurture the alphonso sapling:
- Learn to master your own mind which at this stage is like a small child. Let the mind listen to you and not you listen to your mind. It should be like the child turning towards the mother whether to accept a gift from a stranger instead of the child rashly accepting a gift from a stranger which can be poisonous.
- Put yourself in the shoes of others. Your reaction towards others will change, and your life will become much easier.
- For your own self, cherish those acts of cherishing others.
- Evolve the thoughts to the extent where you are like a mother and all others particularly those difficult ones are like your own children.
- Think of the interdependent nature of yourself and others including the environment.
- Feel joyous over the success of your doing even the simplest of the goodness and virtue.
- Always be around virtuous companions.
- Start any practice in a small way. This will give you consistency. Consuming a large portion of food at one go can make you feel disgusted and discontinue the practice altogether. Do not fear failures; they are precious lessons. No one became a world number one boxer, without receiving many blows.
- A real successful and happy life consists of taking:
- a dose of seeing the poisons of the mind as poisons by reflecting on “The Four Seals.”
- a dose of unconditional love for all others particularly the weak and destitute.
- a dose of enriching your knowledge of dependent origination.
- a dose of single-pointed concentration.
- a dose of subtlest potential within you everyday.
May no one have pain
May no one have fear
May all be happy
May the precious dhatu evolve in all dear mother sentient beings
May the nectar of the Compassionate Buddha’s teaching on altruistic Bodhicitta and the wisdom of Dependent Origination and Emptiness thrive eternally.
May H.H. the Dalai Lama, the Sun of the world today, live long and that his wishes be fulfilled spontaneously.
Sarva Mangalam !
by Ven. Geshe Dorji Damdul
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