Friday, January 6, 2012

Diligence in action...

Do not wait another second to practice. Do something about it immediately.
Totally abandon worldly activities and devote yourself to the practice of the Dharma right now. Otherwise you will never find the time -- one worldly activity will follow another , endlessly like ripples on the water. They will only stop when you decide once and for all to put an end to them.

As the omniscient Lonchenpa says:
Worldly preoccupations never end until the moment we die
But they end when we drop them -- such is their nature.
Patrul Rinpoche.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

10 Virtuous Activities

There are ten virtuous activities that you should engage in to produce the cause for buddhahood.

The first is writing, specifically the writing down of scriptures, the buddha's teachings and in general anything that has to do with dharma;
The second is offering to the three jewels;
The third is generosity;
The fourth is attentiveness to dharma discourse;
The fifth, recitation of dharma, for example, reading the kangyur;
The sixth is memorization;
The seventh is teaching others;
The eighth , reciting prayers;
The ninth, contemplation upon the meaning;
and the Tenth, meditation upon the meaning.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Karma

As a Buddhist, someone who believes in the law of cause and result, you should know that every time you feel discontent, every time you suffer, it is only because you have accumulated non virtue in the past. You have accumulated the cause and your suffering is the condition and result of what you yourself have done. There is no such thing as a fruit( or result) without a seed; nothing happens without a cause.

Gyatrul Rinpoche.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Impermanence

Whatever is born is impermanent and is bound to die,
Whatever is stored up is impermanent and is bound to run out,
Whatever comes together is impermanent and is bound to come apart.
Whatever is built is impermanent and is bound to collapse.
Whatever rises up is impermanent and is bound to fall down.
So also, friendship and enmity, fortune and sorrow, good and evil, all the thoughts that run through your mind-- everything is always changing.

Monday, July 4, 2011

How to strenghten Dharma Practise

When a seed is sown ,it takes some time to bear flowers and fruits. Just we have to provide favorable conditions( proper water , sunlight etc.) for that seed to grow.
Similar is Dharma practice also. when one starts doing it, immediately nobody(neither the practitioner nor others) can see any change or transformation but we should not get disappointed and should continue our practice with more diligence and gradually we will notice some changes. Now we can understand the situations more clearly; how situations/ people propel us to lose our mindfulness and act in more afflictive way, atleast understanding of this is also a great achievement on the path of Dharma.
Once we understand this , we can reflect more on the Theory of karma and understand that whatever, good or bad , is coming in life is all because of our past actions/ speech/thoughts.
Usually we don't dig ourselves to see our mistakes, but if we can do that we will find that most of the bad situations/people we are facing, similar or almost similar bad things we have done to others in this lifetime only.
We should understand that non virtues can never give us happiness but can give only suffering , so we should pracice to be virtuous all the time.
When we live with this attitude ,we can see that even similar bad situations are no longer causing us suffering , because now we have proper understanding. And we can observe that the seed of Dharma is growing within us.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Autobiography in 5 chapters

Autobiography in five chapters:


1. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost ... I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.


2. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.


3. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in ... it's a habit My eyes are open I know where I am It is my fault. I get out immediately.


4. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I walk around it.


5. I walk down another street.


Reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. We can come to see we are falling again and again into fixed repetitive patterns, and begin to long to get out of them. We may, of course, fall back into them, again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Power of Compassion ...

Compassion is the wish-fulfilling gem whose light of healing spreads in all directions. There is a very beautiful story that illustrates this. Buddha once recounted one of his previous lives, before he became enlightened. A great emperor had three sons, and the Buddha had been the youngest, who was called Mahasattva. Mahasattva was by nature a loving and compassionate little boy, and thought of all living things as his children.
One day the emperor and his court went to picnic in a forest, and the princes went off to play in the woods. After a while they came across a tigress who had given birth, and was so exhausted with hunger that she was on the point of eating her little cubs. Mahasattva asked his brothers:
"What would the tigress need to eat now to revive her?"
"Only fresh meat or blood", they replied.
"Who could give his own flesh and blood to see that she is fed and save the lives of her and her cubs?" he asked.
"Who indeed?" they replied.
Mahasattva was deeply moved by the plight of the tigress and her cubs, and started to think: " For so long I have been wandering uselessly through samsara, life after life, and because of my
desire, anger and ignorance , have done little to help other beings. Here at last is a great opportunity."
The princes were walking back to join their family, when Mahasattva said: "You two go on ahead. I will catch you up later." Quietly he crept back to the tigress, went right up to her, and lay down on the ground in front of her, to offer himself to her as food. The tigress looked at him,
but was so weak that she could not even open her mouth. So the prince found a sharp stick and cut a deep gash in his body; the blood flowed out, the tigress licked it, and she grew strong enough to open her jaws and eat him.
Mahasattva had given his body to the tigress in order to save her cubs, and through the great
merit of his compassion, he was reborn in a higher realm and progressed toward his enlightenment and his rebirth as the Buddha.
What a vision this story gives us of how vast and mysterious the power of compassion truly is !