WHAT IS BUDDHISM?
Venerable
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Sambano, all my brothers and sisters in
Mongolia.
Why is it so important to learn about
Buddhism and to practice it? Because what we are all seeking is
happiness and what none of us want is suffering. Therefore we need
to abandon the real cause of suffering and create the unmistaken
cause of happiness. The actual cause of happiness is not outside.
Even though people commonly believe that suffering is connected to
external situations, actually these are just the conditions for
suffering. Similarly, the actual cause of happiness is not outside,
it is within the mind.
For example, when somebody gets angry with
you, at that time think to yourself that among all the numberless
holy beings, such as the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and all the other
beings this person is the only one in your life with whom you can
learn patience—the healthy, peaceful, happy, pure mind of patience,
which brings so much peace and happiness to your own life, as well
as to your companions, family and country, and to the rest of the
world and all living beings.
If you don’t practice patience and instead
get angry, that habit leaves the negative imprint of anger on the
mental continuum again and again. Anger destroys your own peace and
happiness and brings so much suffering to your life. It harms your
companion, friends and family, as well as the people in your
country, in the rest of the world and all living beings.
So you can see how practicing patience
with this person is the source of all your happiness now and in the
future right up to the peerless happiness, the complete bliss of
full enlightenment. And it is also the source of peace and happiness
for others, starting from your family and going out to all living
beings.
When you think of the benefits of
patience, which are as vast as the sky, you get a very deep feeling
for the kindness of the person who is angry towards you. You see how
precious that person is in your life. By looking at the person who
is angry with you in a positive way, it is so beneficial to develop
your mind in the path to liberation and enlightenment—particularly
patience. The positive thought seeing that person as kind
immediately brings inner peace and happiness, and because you don’t
get angry and harm the person in return it brings peace to others.
The person you previously called an enemy then becomes your most
kind friend. By practicing patience you are able to bring so much
peace and happiness to all sentient beings. This comes from your
positive thought. So you can see how your suffering and happiness as
well as that of others come from your mind.
When you look at the person who is angry with you as being negative
and bad, label it as harm, and then believe that label you create
suffering for yourself and others. This way of thinking causes anger
to rise towards the other person and from the anger comes
unhappiness for yourself, for others and on a larger scale for all
living beings.
When your mind is transformed into the peaceful, happy mind of
patience, that brings happiness to yourself and to all living
beings. This is practicing Buddhism. This is practicing what the
Buddha taught. Without the practice of Buddhism, this paramita of
patience, one person can destroy a whole country—like Mongolia—and
even the whole world. There are many recent examples of this
happening.
If there were loving kindness, compassion, the thought of benefiting
others and contentment in the hearts of everyone in the world, there
would be no need for weapons or guns at all, and no reason to have
armies. How incredible this country and the world would be if
everyone could generate and develop these most precious qualities of
the mind! With these inner qualities, you become a friend to
everyone and everyone becomes your friend. You love everyone and
everyone loves you. How incredibly happy the world would be!
It is the same if you can let go of desire. When there is strong
desire, only seeking the pleasure of this life for yourself it
brings so many problems and so much suffering. You become an
alcoholic, and make life totally useless and meaningless. At this
time we have received a most precious human body that can be used to
achieve every happiness. With this body we can achieve so much peace
and happiness in this life. More importantly, we can achieve
happiness for all our future lives. Even more importantly, we can
achieve ultimate everlasting happiness—total liberation from the
cycle of rebirth and death along old age, sickness and all the rest
of the sufferings and their causes—delusions and their actions. And
even more importantly, we can achieve the peerless happiness of full
enlightenment, which is the total cessation of all the mistakes of
the mind and the achievement of all qualities and realizations. By
achieving enlightenment, we can serve others by causing numberless
beings to gain the happiness of this life, the happiness of future
lives, the total cessation of suffering—liberation, and more
importantly the peerless happiness of full enlightenment.
Alcoholics cannot even do the works for this life. They can’t even
do their job properly and they cause so much suffering to their
families—to the husband, wife, and children—instead of bringing them
happiness and peace. They make the family poor instead of bringing
wealth.
So it is clear how all the problems of this life that harm you and
harm others come from the mind—from the dissatisfied mind of desire.
Therefore, if you can be educated in how to be content and have a
satisfied mind, your whole life can be filled with much inner peace
and happiness, and there will be great success for you, your family
and the world. By doing this, there will be no need for court cases
and no need for prison. You can say goodbye to depression,
loneliness and suicide!
The dissatisfied mind, discontent and desire bring relationship
problems one after another for the whole life. You get swamped in
relationship problems, like a person drowning in mud who finds it
difficult to get out. Due to this, your friend and companion leave
you—and you have to suffer pain in your heart for years as well as
all the other sufferings.
So you can see how all your own peace and happiness and that of
others, as well as all the problems in your own life and those of
others come from your own mind. Peace and happiness come from a
content, satisfied mind—from a mind that has let go of the
dissatisfied mind of desire. Peace and happiness come from the pure,
healthy, happy, peaceful virtuous thought, which is Dharma; while
negative thought—the unhealthy, dissatisfied mind—fills life up with
so many problems and causes problems to the family, the country, the
world and all living beings, from life to life.
Therefore, letting go of desire and making yourself free from all
the confusion and problems that cause you to engage in so many
different negative karmas in this life and then to be born in the
lower realms in future lives—as a hell being, hungry ghost or
animal—is giving independence to yourself. This is the way to fill
yourself from deep down in your heart with so much peace,
satisfaction and joy. This is renunciation, the very fundamental
practice of Buddhism.
Also, if your attitude in life is self-cherishing and ego, that
opens the door to so many undesirable things and causes so many
problems to your companion, family, friends and to the world and all
living beings from life to life. The minute you cherish the I, the
self, that itself is a problem because it brings no real joy and
happiness in the heart. The minute you cherish the I, that itself is
an unhappy mind.
A selfish person thinks only of their own needs and happiness and
has no concern for the needs and happiness of others. The stronger
the self-cherishing thought the easier it is to create problems in
life. Wherever a person with strong self-cherishing goes—to the
countryside or to the city, to the east or to the west—they always
find problems. Whoever that person stays with, they will always find
difficulties. Even if the other person starts off as a friend,
sooner or later they will find out how self-centred the other person
is and there will be disharmony and fighting. They will end up
arguing, disliking and hating each other. Wherever that person goes
they will make so many enemies. Instead of so many people becoming
their friends, they will become enemies. Even if they start as
friends sooner or later they will become enemies due to the
self-cherishing mind. Self-cherishing is the greatest obstacle to
achieving happiness in this life, so there is no question that it
prevents us from achieving happiness in future lives, liberation and
enlightenment. Self-cherishing is the greatest obstacle to benefit
others, to bring happiness to the family and to everyone in
Mongolia, as well as to the world and all living beings.
The great Bodhisattva Shantideva said: “If one does not exchange
oneself for others, one cannot achieve enlightenment (peerless
happiness). Leave aside the happiness of future lives, even the
happiness of this life won’t succeed.”
If the attitude is self-cherishing, even if someone is doing a job,
working for others, they will steal and cheat and lie and be
careless and lazy, which will lead to worry, fear, court cases and
debts. Their life will be swamped by debts. Nobody likes a person
whose attitude to life is one of self-cherishing. When that person
has problems nobody wants to help.
A person who has a good heart, always putting others first,
cherishing others and living their life to benefit others has so
much success in their life. That person brings so much happiness to
the family, to the country—like Mongolia—to the world and to all
living beings, from life to life. That person can cause all living
beings to gain all the different levels of happiness up to
enlightenment—besides being able to accomplish all of this happiness
for themselves. That person’s heart is filled with so much joy and
fulfillment. They have no guilt or regret. There is incredible joy
and happiness in their life both now and in the future--like the sun
shining. Even at the end of their life there will be so much peace
and happiness, and when they pass away it will be very inspiring for
others. Even if there is nobody else there to pray for that person,
they will support and guide themselves to a Pure Land of Buddha or
another very good rebirth in the next life where they can develop
the mind more easily and quickly in the path to enlightenment.
So, here again, the happiness and suffering in our life come from
the mind, from our own mind. They are dependent on whether we live
life with the self-cherishing thought or with the thought cherishing
others. Therefore the very heart of all Mahayana Buddhist practice
is letting go of self and cherishing others.
The great Bodhisattva Shantideva said: “As long as you don’t drop
the fire, you cannot stop the burning. Likewise, as long as you
don’t let go of the I, you cannot abandon suffering. Therefore, to
pacify harms to yourself and sufferings to others, give yourself up
for others, cherish others as yourself.”
If your attitude in daily life is ignorance, anger and attachment,
all your actions become non-virtue and the result is only suffering
and obstacles. If your attitude in life is non-ignorance, non-anger,
non-attachment, your actions become virtue and the result is only
happiness. From this you can understand again how suffering and
happiness come from your own mind, by depending on what kind of
attitude you generate—positive or negative. Therefore the happiest,
most fulfilling and best life is one lived with the attitude of
cherishing and benefiting others.
Happiness comes from virtue, suffering comes from non-virtue. Every
single happiness that is experienced in this life—success in
business, good reputation, wealth—comes as a result of past good
karma. There is not one single happiness, including even the comfort
experienced in a dream that does not come from good karma. This
means that all happiness comes from Dharma. So if one wishes
happiness, one needs to practice Dharma, and one must practice all
the time.
Regards the different levels of happiness: the first level is to not
be reborn in the lower realms and to achieve the body of a happy
migratory being—a deva or human body. This depends upon cultivating
an attitude of detachment to this life. Then, by taking refuge in
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, one abandons non-virtue and practices the
virtue of the ten moralities.
Achieving the second level of happiness—the everlasting happiness
that is the total cessation of all suffering and its causes—delusion
and karma—depends upon renouncing the suffering of samsara, the
aggregates caused by delusion and karma which are in the nature of
suffering, then practicing the three higher trainings and the five
paths to liberation.
Even if one has achieved liberation from samsara for oneself, it is
not sufficient. Not only have all sentient beings been your own
mother and kind, but also every single sentient being is the source
of all your past happiness—from time without beginning—present, and
future happiness. So the very purpose of our lives is to liberate
the numberless sentient beings, who want happiness and do not want
suffering, from all the suffering and its causes and bring them to
full enlightenment. This is the very meaning of our lives and the
purpose of being human. In order to free the numberless sentient
beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full
enlightenment, we need to abandon self-cherishing thought, and to
generate loving-kindness, compassion and bodhicitta and enter the
Mahayana path. Then we practice the bodhisattva’s deeds, the six
paramitas, and actualize the five paths and ten bhumis, which ceases
not only the gross delusions—the disturbing thought obscurations—and
karma, but even the subtle defilements.
In order to bring the numberless sentient beings to enlightenment as
quickly as possible we need to achieve enlightenment as quickly as
possible and for this we need to practice highest tantra. This
depends on receiving a great initiation, which definitely plants the
seed of the four kayas on the mindstream. Then, with an attitude of
bodhicitta based on renunciation of this life and right view,
emptiness, one actualizes the generation stage and completion stage
which cease in the quickest way the disturbing thought obscurations
and subtle defilements including the dualistic view and cause the
attainment of full enlightenment, the unified state of Vajradhara.
Therefore, actualizing full enlightenment quickly depends on the
tantric path and that depends on actualizing bodhicitta and the
right view. In order to actualize bodhicitta one needs to achieve
the preliminary of renunciation of samsara and for that one needs to
actualize renunciation to this life. The success of all of this up
to enlightenement depends on correctly devoting to the virtuous
friend. This is the whole progression of the stages of the path to
enlightenment.
Who is Buddha and How is Buddha Guiding Me?
Generally in a country and in the world, there is somebody amongst
all the others who has the greatest compassion and there is somebody
who has the highest education and somebody who has the greatest
capacity. Buddha is one who has actualized the path of method and
wisdom, has completely ceased all gross and subtle defilements and
has achieved the fully enlightened mind, the omniscient mind
perfected with all understanding. Buddha’s mind has not even the
slightest ignorance and can see directly all present, past and
future phenomena simultaneously. Buddha has also trained in great
compassion towards every single sentient being without
discrimination and has perfect power to reveal all the methods that
fit exactly sentient beings’ karma.
Numberless Buddhas achieved enlightenment by actualizing the path
that ceases the defilements. There are 1,000 Buddhas who very kindly
generated bodhicitta and made the vow to descend in this fortunate
aeon to liberate the sentient beings of this world. The first was
_________, then Serthub, then Osung. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha is the
fourth.
Guru Shakyamuni Buddha very kindly made 500 prayers and vowed to
descend to this world to benefit us in this 100-age quarrelling time
who were left out by other Buddhas. He generated compassion and
bodhicitta for all sentient beings and then practiced charity—giving
up his own body, wealth, family and so forth— practiced morality,
patience and perseverance for three countless great aeons. Buddha
completed the two types of merit, virtue and wisdom, and achieved
enlightenment. He then revealed the teachings of the Four Noble
Truths—that show the path to liberation, the Paramitayana path—that
shows the path to full enlightenment, and the tantric path which
brings enlightenment very quickly—even in one lifetime.
Therefore the path to enlightenment is very scientific. Buddha
himself experienced the path and then revealed it to others. In the
same way, many great pandits analysed the Buddha’s teachings and
many yogis practiced them. So many meditators from different
countries of the world—India, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Nepal—achieved
enlightenment by practising the path correctly just as the Buddha
explained. So practicing Buddhism is not just blind faith. Even now,
there are many meditators attaining the path.
Buddha is also guiding Mongolian people because Buddhism came to
Mongolia many centuries ago. Mongolians are so fortunate that Buddhism
is Mongolia’s old culture and therefore we must preserve and strengthen
and spread it. It is very important for everyone to learn and practice
Buddhism in order not to waste this precious human life. Bayurla.
Transcript of a Speech given by Rinpoche for Mongolian Radio in June
2004, transcribed and edited by Ven Sarah Tenzing Yiwong.
