Transforming
Depression
by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The best solution to purify the karma of having
depression is to do the purification practice of Vajrasattva. As
long as the karma isn't purified, you'll continue to suffer from
depression again in future lives.
Maybe you wake up in the morning feeling
depressed for no particular reason. If you can't solve this problem
through meditation it might help to just go to sleep, or go
somewhere to rest, or take a nice drive somewhere. Otherwise you'll
get upset, disturbing the people around you as well. When you're
angry, all sorts of bad, uncontrolled thoughts can come into your
mind.
If you're depressed due to a certain situation
then you can apply the meditation techniques that relate to that
particular set of conditions. But if you just feel sad for no
particular reason, it's best to practice bodhicitta.
You can recite the verse from the Guru Puja,
"Please bless me to realize that the disease of the self cherishing
thought is the door to unwanted suffering." Blame the demon, the
self-cherishing thought, for your problem of depression. Then recite
the next verse, 'Bless me to realize that cherishing others,
bodhicitta, the attitude that leads all mother living beings to
happiness, is the door to every excellent quality."
Another quote from Guru Puja is, "Even if all
living beings become my enemy, may I cherish them more than my
life." It's very good if you can recite these verses daily,
especially when you feel depressed. Then you'll be using your
depression to practice the meaning of these two verses; that all
problems and suffering come from cherishing the 'I', therefore the I
is the object to be renounced, to be given up. All your own and
others' happiness, including all the realizations up to
enlightenment- all perfections and happiness come from cherishing
others- bodhicitta.
Because all these good things come from the
attitude of cherishing others, they depend on other living beings.
Therefore living beings are to be cherished forever. You need to
repay the kindness of all these precious beings, to help them
however you can. How best to do this? They've been millionaires
countless times, they've even been universal kings but none of this
power or wealth has freed them from the sufferings of samsara. The
best way to repay their kindness is to practice Lamrim, to transform
the mind from ignorance, attachment and self-cherishing into
wholesome, pure thoughts. By actualizing the path to enlightenment
you can easily liberate other beings. Therefore the best way to
repay their kindness is to meditate on and develop bodhicitta in
your own mind.
Taking
Every living being is the source of all your
past, present, future happiness. Generate compassion by thinking,
"I'll take all their suffering and its causes (afflictive emotions
and negative karmic imprints) including the fires of the hot hells,
the ice of the cold hells and the unpleasant, unhealthy, ugly,
unpeaceful and polluted environments of human beings into my heart."
This eliminates the self-cherishing attitude. Once the
self-cherishing attitude has been destroyed do a short meditate on
emptiness.
Giving
After the self-cherishing has been destroyed,
generate love by giving your own happiness, your merit, all the good
things you have, including your body, wealth and possessions. All
their wishes are fulfilled as if they had a wish-granting jewel. By
giving them all these things you create unbelievable amounts of
merit. You can recite mantra while they're receiving everything they
want and need. Actually they don't know they really need. What they
need is to meet the dharma. But if they don't understand the
benefits of the dharma, they want something other than dharma.
Receiving all these good things causes them to
actualize the spiritual path, to purify the two obscurations (to
liberation and enlightenment). They achieve the rupakaya (the form
bodies of a buddha) and become enlightened. Think, "How wonderful it
is that I can do all this for others! I've died many times in past
lives while working for my own happiness, but it didn't accomplish
anything. I'm still in samsara. I've never died while working for
others. Even if I have to die for the benefit of others, for them to
stop creating negative karma, to not be reborn in the lower realms
and for their minds to become the dharmakaya and rupakaya and
enlightened, it would be immensely worthwhile.
Mediate on the extensive kindness and precious of
all beings. "Every living being is the source of all my past,
present, future hap. My own future buddha, dharma and sangha come
from purifying my negative karma enabling me to attain all the
realizations and to achieve enlightenment. All this happens on the
basis of other beings. Therefore every sentient being is the most
precious thing in my life. Anything other than working for living
beings is totally meaningless." This includes experiencing
depression for them. There's nothing to work for other than sentient
beings. Anything else is totally meaningless. Experience depression
on their behalf by thinking this isn't my depression but the
depression of numberless beings, this is their depression,
their suffering. To give them every happiness; including freedom
all the sufferings of cyclic existence and the bliss of full
enlightenment is fantastic!
Feel the joy of it! This is their
depression, so the most wonderful thing would be to experience it
for them and allow all those suffering from depression to have every
happiness. Then rejoice that you have this opportunity to experience
this problem of depression on their behalf. "How fantastic it is
that I'm experiencing this depression on behalf of all beings!"
Do this practice of tonglen (taking and
giving) in the morning, afternoon and evening.
Think again and again, 'How lucky I am that I can
experience this depression for them. I've made many prayers to take
others' suffering onto myself, so now those prayers are being
actualized. How fantastic this is! It makes my life so rich, so
meaningful! How fortunate I am to experience this depression on
behalf of all living beings."
Think about the meaning of your life, a
psychological method that makes a huge difference because much of
the problem comes from your exaggerated concept of pain. It's
possible to reduce or completely eliminate pain with the mind. "The
purpose of my life isn't just to be healthy, wealthy, to have a good
reputation, to be popular and have lots of friends. Even if I had
all these things, it isn't the actual purpose of my life. Even if I
live for 1,000 years or am perfectly healthy for eons, if I don't
have love and compassion in my heart my life it's meaningless and
useless because my life isn't benefiting others. Leading such a life
would be empty. Therefore it doesn't matter what happens; if in my
life there's health or no health; depression or no depression;
cancer or no cancer, wealth or no wealth. The real purpose of my
life is to make my death beneficial for others. Even if I have
cancer, I'll make that experience beneficial for all beings by using
it to develop compassion and bodhicitta, to achieve realizations and
enlightenment." In this way the cancer becomes the cause of
happiness. Depression can also be used to achieve enlightenment to
benefit all beings in this and future lives, especially all those
who suffer from depression- just like using snake venom to produce
it's own anti-venom.
You're using your depression to achieve
enlightenment. In this way it becomes the cause of happiness for all
sentient beings experiencing depression. Think, "The main purpose of
life is to benefit all living beings, to free them from suffering
and bring them happiness in this and future lives. Even if I have
cancer, aids, depression or whatever, the purpose of my life is to
bring happiness to all sentient beings by experiencing these
problems on their behalf. " In this way depression becomes a quick
way to achieve enlightenment. The same with cancer. Use it to
quickly achieve enlightenment. If it's experienced for the benefit
of others it becomes the quick path to enlightenment because
experiencing suffering for others is incredible, unbelievable
purification. This is excellent!
There was one monk in Thailand who was walking
around the country. He came across a big river. On the banks of the
river was a woman with leprosy, with pus oozing out of her sores.
She begged the monk to carry her across the river. He refused, on
the basis that his monk's vows prevented him from touching women.
After some time one of the monk's disciples came along and when he
saw the poor woman, unbelievable compassion arose in his mind.
Without hesitation he picked her up and carried her across the
river, even though her body was covered with open wounds. When he
reached the middle of the river the woman transformed into Vajra
Yogini and took him – not just his consciousness, but also his body,
to Vajra Yogini's pure land. This means that by now this monk has
attained full enlightenment, because anyone who goes to Vajra
Yogini's pure land is enlightened there. Being in a pure land is a
quick way to achieve enlightenment if it hasn't yet happened in your
present life. In this case Vajra Yogini took the aspect of an
ordinary, pitiful woman with leprosy in order to stimulate
compassion in the disciple's mind. This compassion quickly purified
the heavy negative karma blocking him from seeing Vajra Yogini.
In the case of the great Tibetan yogi, Milarepa,
the karmic blocks preventing him to see Vajrayogini were purified by
his pure service to his holy guru, Marpa.
It's the same for you. If on the basis of feeling
strong compassion you experience depression on behalf of all beings,
this meditation of taking and experiencing the suffering for others
is a quick path to enlightenment, just like the example of the monk.
It's a quick way to achieve enlightenment because experiencing
cancer, depression or any suffering for the benefit of living beings
is unbelievably purifying.
Suffering from depression can be a good thing
because it allows you to easily see the pain of other people. By
using your own experience of depression you can clearly feel the
unbearable pain of many, many other people. There are so many people
who are depressed and many others creating karma for future bouts of
depression. Experiencing depression on their behalf might be even
more powerful than practising tantra because if tantra isn't done
correctly, on the basis of the three principal paths, it's not a
quick path to enlightenment.
When feeling depressed you can think, "I'm
exhausting so much of my negative karma to have depression that I've
accumulated throughout countless past lives." Rejoice! You should
feel great joy about finishing the karma instead of seeing the
depression as something bad.
As it's said in Guru Puja, living beings and
their environments are filled with unbelievable problems and
sufferings, coming one after another like rainfall, sufferings that
are the results of negative karma. "Please grant me blessings to see
my depression as exhausting the results of my negative karmic
imprints, and bless me to be able to always transform bad conditions
into the path to enlightenment." You can recite mantra while doing
this meditation.
For example when you wash a dirty piece of cloth,
the water becomes black with dirt. You don't see the black dirt as a
negative thing since it means the cloth is getting clean. In the
same way, when you practice dharma negative karmas can ripen causing
you to get sick because you're purifying so much negative karma by
practising dharma. So you should rejoice when you get depressed!
Depression happens in the first place due to
being under the control of the ego, self-cherishing, attachment,
anger, broken vows and pledges and having disturbed the minds of
holy beings and your spiritual teachers in past lives. This
depression is caused by the ego, the self-cherishing attitude and
the self-existent "I". So rather than accepting the depression, give
it back to the self-cherishing attitude. Use the depression like a
bomb to destroy the wrong conception of the I. Then meditate on the
emptiness of the self-existent I.
These are some ways to use depression to achieve
enlightenment as quickly as possible. By using it to develop
compassion and bodhicitta you collect merit as vast as limitless
space and purify unbelievable amounts of negative karma. It's being
used like a powerful bomb to destroy the wrong conception of the
inherently existent I, the thing that caused the depression in the
first place. It's the demon that has prevented your enlightenment,
your liberation from samsara, all the realizations, and is the door
to all your problems.
You can also do some preliminary practices such
as Vajrasattva to purify the negative karma that causes depression.
Edited by T. Wongmo, Buddhist Nun
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"We
hear religious people talk a lot about morality.
What is morality? Morality is the wisdom that
understands the nature of the mind. The mind that
understands its own nature automatically becomes
moral, or positive; and the actions motivated by
such a mind also become positive. That’s what we
call morality. The basic nature of the narrow mind
is ignorance; therefore the narrow mind is
negative."
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The above quote changes daily
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Lama Zopa
Rinpoche was born in 1946 in Thami, in the Mount
Everest region of Nepal, not far from the Lawudo
cave where his predecessor had meditated for the
last 20 years of his life. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is
now the Spiritual Director of the Foundation and
oversees all of its activities.
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