BUsada 2005

29-09-2005
Anak tetangga sakit menangis kasihan atau tdk ppeduli.Anakku sakit menangis miris sampai dihati.Mengapa?Krn milikku.Sdhkah belajar melepas ego dg bermeditasi.

07-10-2005
Sudah 90thn masih giat memperbaiki diri,alangkah bermanfaatnya hidup ini.Sy umurberp?Mati tdk tentu?Sdhkah bermdts agar sehat&tenang unt memperbaiki diri?SSHB

12-10-2005
Kaya tnp usaha adlh keberuntungan.Miskin sdh kerja keras adlh keberuntungan.Mengerti keadaan tsb menjadikan bijak&rendah hati.Bermdts menguatkan pengertian. SSHB

18-10-2005
Perbuatan baik sekarang mentransform pikiran menjadi baik skrg.Latih sesering mungkin maka kesehatan,ketenangan,kebahagiaan akan kita peroleh sekarang.SSHB-MA

26-10-2005
Ada pada saat ini artinya punya perhatian yg kuat dg sesuatu yg dikerjakan,membuat pikiran kuat&tenaga dibadan segar. Sdhkah Anda melatihnya dg bermdts?SSHB

11-11-2005
Dipikirkan semua terjadi saat ini.Perhatikan dgn waspada apa saja yg sedang dikerjakan akan membantu membuat pikiran harmonis makin kuat&tenang seimbang.SSHB

24-11-2005
Kpn kekhawatiran,kegelisahan,keegoisan akan hilang? Kalau pikiran ada pd saat ini disertai kebijaksanaan.Sdhkah bermdts melatih pkrn agar ada pd saat ini?SSHB

30-11-2005
Spt kereta yg terdiri dr roda,kuda,dll,dmkn jg mdts p.harmonis terdiri dr konsentrasi,kesadaran,cintakasih & kebijaksanaan yg berimbang shg berfungsi dg baik.

07-12-2005
Inilah hidup: sedih/gembira,untung/rugi,dipuji/dihina,sehat/sakit,jk hanyut didlmnya kekacauan akan diperoleh,dihadapi dg p.harmonis kedamaian akan dinikmati.

15-12-2005
Lingkungan kotor memudahkan jamur,bakteri,virus..berkembang. pikiran kotor memudahkan gelisah,benci,ego,malas…muncul. Meditasi membuat pikiran jernih.SSHB-MA

22-12-2005
Berbuat baiklah spt kewajiban anak kpd ibu: hormat, penuh pengertian, memberi ketenangan & kebijaksanaan dilandasi cinta kasih. SELAMAT HARI IBU. SSHB-Merta Ada

29-12-2005 / 08:55:29
Sy terlalu muda/tua, masih nganggur/terlalu sibuk ato alas an lain,ciri2 kemalasan utk mentransformasi diri kearah baik. Sdhkah rajin bermdts utk melawannya?SSHB

BUsada 2008

Date/Time: 2nd January 2008 / 12:05:56 pm
Sahabat Meditasi Yth: Kami mengucapkan Selamat Tahun Baru 2008, semoga semakin sehat, tenang, bahagia dan sejahtera. Merta Ada & kel, Assisten & Staf BU. SSHB

BUsada 2007

Date/Time: 27th December 2007 / 8:42:58 am
Hidup ini berkondisi & tdk ada yg gratis.Kalau rajin pangkal pandai,hemat pangkal kaya,meditasi pangkal sehat,tenang & bahagia.Sdhkah bermdtasi hari ini? Sshb
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Date/Time: 20th December 2007 / 2:35:38 pm
Jgn buat kebenaran menyesuaikan pada kemauan kita sendiri tapi buatlah kita menyesuaikan diri kepada kebenaran shg kualitet hidup kita bertambah baik. Sshb-MA
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Date/Time: 13th December 2007 / 8:25:42 am
Iklas artinya berbuat dg pikiran bersih tnp ego,benci& gelisah.Brisi rasa syang,cinta&tenang seimbang,dpt dikuatkan mlalui pengertian&mdts.Sdhkah mmilikinya?
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Date/Time: 7th December 2007 / 12:49:31 pm
Kebodohan & ego membuat kita buta melihat kesalahan sendiri sebaliknya menyalahkan org lain.Mdts meningkatkn kewaspadaan & kejujuran kita.Sdhkah Anda bermdts?
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Date/Time: 30th November 2007 / 10:48:55 am
Pujian menyentuh dalam ke batin,dilanjutkan dg niat baik membawa kemajuan,diikuti niat buruk menjerumuskan.Mdts menguatkn kewaspadaan dari niat buruk.Sshb,MA.
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Date/Time: 22nd November 2007 / 4:15:27 pm
Tdk ada waktu bermdts? Sama spt "tdk stop mengisi bensin krn terlalu sibuk menyetir",pikiran kurang keheningan&kejernihan. Sdhkah Anda stop dgn bermdts.NK/MA.
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Date/Time: 17th November 2007 / 9:12:19 am
Tak ada pesta yg tak usai,tak ada liburan yg tak berakhir,tak ada kesenangan atau penderitaan yg tak berakhir,semuanya berproses. Hadapi dg pkrn harmonis.Sshb
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Date/Time: 9th November 2007 / 4:06:08 pm
Susah sedikit mau pingsan,senang sedikit mabuk kepayang.Ini terjd krn pikiran msh lemah,gelisah,serakah &kawatir. Sdhkah bermdts utk menjernihkannya? Sshb-MA.
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Date/Time: 2nd November 2007 / 1:32:22 pm
Melekat dg sesuatu yg kt senangi itu BIASA. Melepas yg kt senangi itu LUAR BIASA. Marilah mengikis KEMELEKATAN kt pelan2 dgn bermeditasi. SSHB- Meimei/pak MA.
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Date/Time: 26th October 2007 / 8:35:17 am
Yg dia katakan & yg kudengar perkataannya sama tapi yg dia maksud & yg kumaksud belum tentu sama.Hidup sulit diduga tp dpt diatasi dg pikiran harmonis.Sshb-MA
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Date/Time: 18th October 2007 / 1:39:22 pm
Pikiran Buruk sgt lihai,dia akan mencari segala alasan agar kita bisa menikmati & melekati kesenangan indria. Sdhkah Anda bermdts utk menaklukkannya? SSHB-MA.
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Date/Time: 3rd October 2007 / 5:44:50 pm
Dulu pemarah,judes&wajahnya spt raksasa,skrg sdh tua lebih lembut,pengertian&wajah spt dewi,alangkah berntungnya dia.Sdhkah mlembutkan hati dg bermdts?SSHB-MA
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Date/Time: 27th September 2007 / 3:09:42 pm
Lao Tzu: Dia yg mengenal orang lain adalah bijak,dia yg mengenal dirinya adalah tercerahkan. Sdhkah bermeditasi utk mengenal diri Anda? SSHB - (Putu Dana/MA).
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Date/Time: 20th September 2007 / 11:43:35 am
Yg tdk enak mjd enak, yg enak mjd tdk enak. Berubah terus menerus shg menimbulkan ketdkpuasan.Dpt mengatasi perubahan menimbulkan kebahagiaan.Sdhkah bermdts?
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Date/Time: 13th September 2007 / 11:23:37 am
Kita sll merasa umur msh pnjang shg yg tdk penting didahulukn,yg penting(brbuat baik&mensucikn diri)ditunda,pdhl kmatian bs dtg tiap saat.Sdhkah Anda bermdts?
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Date/Time: 6th September 2007 / 3:59:57 pm
Kala bencana,byk yg meninggal,muda/tua,kaya/miskin.Muncul pengertian, kita jg bs mengalaminya.Ingin berbuat baik,mendekati Tuhan/kekekalan,kita dijalan benar.
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Date/Time: 31st August 2007 / 1:48:53 pm
BUSC :Sebuah batu besar takkan pecah sekali pukul dgn palu. Sudahkah Anda tekun bermeditasi untuk melenyapkan derita Anda? SSHB - Merta Ada
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Date/Time: 23rd August 2007 / 3:35:38 pm
Badan & pikiran spt hardware & software,bergantungan,hrs seimbang,baru dpt berfungsi sesuai yg diperlukan. Sdhkah berusaha menyeimbangkannya dg mdts? Sshb-MA.
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Date/Time: 20th August 2007 / 9:52:49 am
Makin berani menghadapi: perubahan,ketidakpastian,susah & senang,lalu bisa melepas disebut makin dewasa mental kita.Sdhkah melatihnya hari ini dg mdts?Sshb-MA
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Date/Time: 10th August 2007 / 5:22:46 pm
Kata2 jauh jaraknya dgn perbuatan.Pintar teori tanpa dilaksanakan,manfaatnya kurang. Sudahkah Anda bermeditasi utk mempraktekkan kata2 dan teori Anda? SSHB-MA
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Date/Time: 3rd August 2007 / 3:47:23 pm
Kaya raya, terkenal dan dicintai, jk sakit tak dpt dinikmati. Sehat adalah keuntungan tertinggi. Sdhkah Anda bermeditasi hari ini agar sehat? Sshb - Merta Ada
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14th June 2007 / 8:38:46 am
Lebih baik mncintai drpd dicintai;melayani drpd dilayani;menyapa drpd disapa,akan memperkuat pikiran baik kita.Sdhkah memperkuatnya dg mdts hr ini? Harya/MA.
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21st June 2007 / 4:38:34 pm
Kebaikan adalah pertanda adanya kesehatan,cinta, dan kebahagiaan di hati.Sdhkah kebiasaan baik Anda dilatih dg bermeditasi Bali Usada hari ini? SSHB-Merta Ada
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6th July 2007 / 12:24:29 pm
Hidup kita akan lebih bermakna kalau kita mau memberi (NN).Sudahkah Anda melatih "memberi" hari ini ketika bermeditasi memancarkan cinta kasih? Sshb-Merta Ada
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12th July 2007 / 1:48:41 pm
Hati yg penuh kasih selalu peka dan peduli pd penderitaan sesama.Meditasi bersama akan mengasah kepekaan Kita.Sdhkah Anda bermeditasi hari ini? SSHB-Laksmi/MA
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18th July 2007 / 1:05:33 pm
Spt bulan sabit yg brubah smakin besar mnjadi purnama,dmkn seorg manusia sharusnya mningkatkn sifat baik & mngembangkn diri dr hari ke hari!Be happy.Metta/MA
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27th July 2007 / 9:59:09 am
J Rumi: Bagaimana aku dapat mengetahui masa silam / masa depan, kala kekuatan cahaya sang Kekasih bersinar hanya untuk SEKARANG. SSHB-Ade (disadur,Merta Ada).
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07/06/2007 08:36
Yg disebut nasib buruk,manakala terpaksa
mengerjakn apa yg tdk ingin dikerjakan &
merasa tdk enak,sebab itu hati2lah
membawa diri&bermeditasi.Sshb-Sulasa/MA

BUsada 2006

02-01-2006 / 10:29:01
Badan mengenal thn lalu, saat ini & thn akan dtng. Pikiran hanya mengenal saat ini..Smg saat ini di 2006: kita waspada,lembut,sadarbijaksana. SSHB-Merta Ada&Kel.

Kita bukan orang suci, jangan terlalu kejam menyesali diri, usahakan yang terbaik. Kalau salah perbaiki lagi maka kualitet hidup akan bertambah baik. Hadapi dengan pikiran harmonis.

Pikirankan musuh, badan panas & tegang. Pikirkan kawan, badan tidak terasa nyaman. Kebiasaan buruk lebih kuat dari kebiasaan baik. Yang baik harus dilatih. SSHB-Merta Ada

Bertanding tanpa latihan tak akan memberikan hasil maksimal. Sudahkah melatih pikiran untuk bertanding dalam hidup ini agar menghasilkan yang terbaik? SSHB-Merta Ada.

Sesuatu itu harus dilakukan dengan kesungguhan sehingga memberikan hasil yang terbaik. Sudahkah anda bermeditasi agar konsentrasi/kesungguhan Anda menjadi kuat?SSHB-Merta Ada

Kebiasaan yg baik menghasilkan ketrampilan.Kebiasaan bermdts merasakan badan menghasilkan ketrampilan mengenal diri shg memudahkan menjadi sehat & tenang. SSHB

Kapan waktu yg terbaik? Saat ini.Yg dulu sdh lewat,yg akan dtng belum terjadi.Meditasi melatih & membiasakan lebih byk ada pada saat ini dg pikiran baik.SSHB

Ketika penderitaan/sakit dtg jika dpt menerimanya tanpa syarat,maka pikiran harmonis muncul & menyembuhkan lebih mudah.Kuatkan cintakasih utk menerimanya.SSHB

Kebenaran ada dimana-mana,malahan sering ada ditempat yg tdk kita sukai.Kesadaran baik akan mengenalinya shg kebijaksanaan akan muncul& bertambah kuat.SSHB-MA

Kebanyakkan penderitaan/penyakit datangnya tdk kita ketahui penyebabnya tp muncul salah satu kondisi buruk, sakitlah kita.Pikiran harmonis dpt menghadapinya.

Berani menghadapi ketidakpastian masa depan akan memudahkan pikiran harmonis/kebijaksanaan utk mencari jalan keluar dr kesulitan yg kita hadapi.SSHB-Merta Ada

3-Apr-2006 08:51:40
Sy bahagia kalau sdh: tamat sekolah,dpt kerja,berkeluarga,beli rumah, punya anak,atau..dstnya.Berarti sekarang menderita.Pikiran harmonis bahagia saat ini.SSHB

7-Apr-2006 11:55:59
Hidup hny kontak indria.Kontak baik atau kontak buruk kalau dihadapi dg pikiran harmonis yg terus ditingkatkan maka perbaikan kualitet hidup akan terjadi.SSHB

12-Apr-2006 13:40:35
Pikiran yg pintar & kuat bagaikan pisau tajam.Jk dipergunakan utk kebaikan akan bermanfaat,jk salah mempergunakan akan berbahaya.Mdts BU mengarah pd kebaikan.

29-Apr-2006 12:12:37
Perlu tetap menjaga kesehatab badan & menyembuhkan penyakit,tapi jgn terpengaruh dg keadaan badan.Bisa sehat/sakit,tapi pikiran harmonis tak tergoyahkan.SSHB

19-May-2006 14:45:32
Mudah tersinggung menunjukkan kuatnya ego msh menguasai pikiran dg merasa aku paling hebat,paling baik,paling berjasa.Mdts & mengenal diri akn melemahkan ego.

25-May-2006 14:08:52
Berkata tajam menyakiti hati tanpa disengaja adalah kebodohan yg tdk disadari menguasai pikiran.Kewaspadaan yg diperkuat dgn berlatih mdts akan melemahkannya.

1-Jun-2006 14:23:56
Mengadudomba menunjukkan keserakahan & kekejaman pikiran si pelaku krn mementingkan diri & ingin org lain celaka. Mdts mengurangi kebiasaan buruk tsb.SSHB-MA
8-Jun-2006 17:01:00
Dia tdk rajin,tdk pintar,tdk bertanggungjawab.Pikiran buruk yg terus-menerus muncul utk org yg dekat dg kita merusak diri sendiri & hubungan baik dg dia. SSHB

16-Jun-2006 21:51:21
Kalau cangkir hampir penuh sulit diisi lagi.Org yg merasa mempny ilmu yg cukup,sulit meresapi nasehat&pendapat org lain.Mdtsi benar dpt menyadarkannya. SSHB

18-Jun-2006 18:13:00
makanan yg berbumbu, pedas& daging merah. Mnk juga marah wkt muda. Sshb

21-Jun-2006
Pembenaran menambah kekuatan ego,kebenaran melemahkan kekuatan ego.Mdts benar menguatkan pikiran benar utk menjalankan kebenaran.Sdhkah Anda mdts hr ini? SSHB

1-Jul-2006 10:03:28
Ketidaktahuan sumber penderitaan dibadan & pikiran. Mengenali diri melalui mdts adalah jln utk menghilangkan ketidaktahuan shg kesehatan& ketenangan diperoleh.

7-Jul-2006
Utk yg besar diperlukan memperhatikan yg kecil,mengerti partikel terkecil ditubuh dpt mengerti persoalan dunia. Tajamkan pikiran utk menembus partikel ini.SSHB

13-Jul-2006 11:22:28
Semua usaha,berprestasi,nama baik,keahlian & pengalaman hidup bukan jaminan dpt selalu mawas diri, selama reaksi buruk msh ada & pkrn harmonis belum sempurna.

20-Jul-2006 14:43:03
Bencana/cobaan/nasib buruk/kondisi buruk dpt muncul setiap saat. Bantu mrk yg memerlukan tanpa pamrih, gunakan utk melatih pikiran agar lebih harmonis.SSHB-MA

27-Jul-2006 15:06:10
Jgn mudah percaya pd isu2 yg logikanya tdk ada krn lebih byk memberi kerugian drpd kebaikan. Gunakan pikiran jernih & harmonis utk menghadapi kehidupan. SSHB

22-Sep-2006 14:53:22
Pengalaman hidup sgt bervariasi jika disederhanakan hanya tempat pikiran beraktifitas menjadi tambah baik atau buruk.Mdtasi benar mengarahkan ke baik. SSHB-MA

06/12/2006 15:10
Pikiran kosong artinya bersih dari group:
Gelisah,marah,&serakah.Penuh dg sadar
Bijaksana & cintakasih.Apakah Anda sdh
Membersihkannya dg bermeditasi? SSHB-MA

Rigpa January

January 1
According to the wisdom of Buddha, we can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us to look at our lives. Nor are we condemned to go out empty-handed at death to meet the unknown. We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make of every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare—wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind—for death and eternity.


January 2
Learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well.
Meditation is the road to enlightenment.


January 3
When I teach meditation, I often begin by saying: “Bring your mind home. And release. And relax.”
To bring your mind home means to bring the mind into the state of Calm Abiding through the practice of mindfulness. In its deepest sense, to bring your mind home is to turn your mind inward and rest in the nature of mind. This itself is the highest meditation.
To release means to release the mind from its prison of grasping, since you recognize that all pain and fear and distress arise from the craving of the grasping mind. On a deeper level, the realization and confidence that arise from your growing understanding of the nature of mind inspire the profound and natural generosity that enables you to release all grasping from your heart, letting it free itself to melt away in the inspiration of meditation.
To relax means to be spacious and to relax the mind of its tensions. More deeply, you relax into the true nature of your mind, the state of Rigpa. It is like pouring a handful of sand onto a hot surface, and each grain settles of its own accord. This is how you relax into your true nature, letting all thoughts and emotions naturally subside and dissolve into the state of the nature of mind.


January 4
How many of us are swept away by what I have come to call an “active laziness”? Naturally there are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea and gossiping with friends.
Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time left to confront the real issues.
If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called “responsibilities” accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to “housekeeping in a dream.” We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time.
Helpless, we watch our days fill up with telephone calls and petty projects, with so many responsibilities—or should we call them “irresponsibilities”?


January 5
Loss and bereavement can remind you sharply of what can happen when in life you do not show your love and appreciation, or ask for forgiveness, and so make you far more sensitive to your loved ones.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said: ‘What I try to teach people is to live in such a way that you say those things while the other person can still hear it.” And Raymond Moody, after his life’s work in near-death research, wrote: “I have begun to realize how near to death we all are in our daily lives. More than ever now I am very careful to let each person I love know how I feel.”


January 6
One powerful way to evoke compassion is to think of others as exactly the same as you. “After all,” the Dalai Lama explains, “all human beings are the same—made of human flesh, bones, and blood. We all want happiness and want to avoid suffering. Further, we have an equal right to be happy. In other words, it is important to realize our sameness as human beings.”


January 7
Despite all our chatter about being practical, to be practical in the West means to be ignorantly, and often selfishly, short-sighted. Our myopic focus on this life, and this life only, is the great deception, the source of the modern world’s bleak and destructive materialism. No one talks about death and no one talks about the afterlife, because people are made to believe that such talk will only thwart our so-called progress in the world.
If our deepest desire is truly to live and go on living, why do we blindly insist that death is the end? Why not at least try to explore the possibility that there may be a life after? Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie? After all, very few of us live longer than a hundred years. And after that there stretches the whole of eternity, unaccounted for. . . .


January 8
From the Tibetan Buddhist point of view, we can divide our entire existence into four continuously interlinked realities:
1. life; 2. dying and death; 3. after death; and 4. rebirth.
These are known as the four bardos:
1. the natural bardo of this life,
2. the painful bardo of dying,
3. the luminous bardo of dharmata, and
4. the karmic bardo of becoming.
The bardos are particularly powerful opportunities for liberation because there are, the teachings show us, certain moments that are much more powerful than others and much more charged with potential, when whatever you do has a crucial and far-reaching effect.
I think of a bardo as being like a moment when you step toward the edge of a precipice; such a moment, for example, is when a master introduces a disciple to the essential, original, and innermost nature of his or her mind. The greatest and most charged of these moments, however, is the moment of death.


January 9
Nothing has any inherent existence of its own when you really look at it, and this absence of independent existence is what we call “emptiness.” Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object; and on a certain level it is. But when you look more closely at the tree, you will see that ultimately it has no independent existence.
When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretches across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it, all the seasons and the weather, moonlight and starlight and sunlight—all form part of this tree.
As you begin to think more and more about the tree, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is; that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else; and that at every moment its nature is subtly changing. This is what we mean when we say things are empty, that they have no independent existence.


January 10
When a much larger number of people know the nature of their minds, they’ll know also the glorious nature of the world they are in, and will struggle urgently and bravely to preserve it. It’s interesting that the Tibetan word for “Buddhist” is nangpa . It means “insider”: someone who seeks the truth not outside but within the nature of his or her mind. All the teachings and training in Buddhism are aimed at that one single point: to look into the nature of mind, and so free us from the fear of death and help us realize the truth of life.


January 11
The Buddhist meditation masters know how flexible and workable the mind is. If we train it, anything is possible. In fact, we are already perfectly trained by and for samsara, trained to get jealous, trained to grasp, trained to be anxious and sad and desperate and greedy, trained to react angrily to whatever provokes us. In fact, we are trained to such an extent that these negative emotions rise spontaneously, without our even trying to generate them.
So everything is a question of training and the power of habit. Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we’re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, the mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.


January 12
One of the chief reasons we have so much anguish and difficulty in facing death is that we ignore the truth of impermanence.
In our minds, changes always equal loss and suffering. And if they come, we try to anesthetize ourselves as far as possible. We assume, stubbornly and unquestioningly, that permanence provides security and impermanence does not. But in fact impermanence is like some of the people we meet in life—difficult and disturbing at first, but on deeper acquaintance far friendlier and less unnerving than we could have imagined.


January 13
Human beings spend all their lives preparing, preparing, preparing. . . . Only to meet the next life unprepared.


January 14
What is the nature of mind like? Imagine a sky, empty, spacious, and pure from the beginning; its essence is like this. Imagine a sun, luminous, clear, unobstructed, and spontaneously present; its nature is like this. Imagine that sun shining out impartially on us and all things, penetrating all directions; its energy, which is the manifestation of compassion, is like this: Nothing can obstruct it, and it pervades everywhere.


January 15
An effortless compassion can arise for all beings who have not realized their true nature. So limitless is it that if tears could express it, you would cry without end. Not only compassion, but tremendous skillful means can be born when you realize the nature of mind. Also you are naturally liberated from all suffering and fear, such as the fear of birth, death and the intermediate state. Then if you were to speak of the joy and bliss that arise from this realization, it is said by the buddhas that if you were to gather all the glory, enjoyment, pleasure and happiness of the world and put it all together, it would not approach one tiny fraction of the bliss that you experience upon realizing the nature of mind.
NYOSHUL KHEN RINPOCHE


January 16
How hard it can be to turn our attention within! How easily we allow our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! Even though they bring us suffering, we accept them with almost fatalistic resignation, for we are so used to giving in to them. We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
still, reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. We may, of course, fall back into fixed repetitive patterns again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change.


January 17
In Tibetan, the word for “body” is lü, which means “something you leave behind,” like baggage. Each time we say lü, it reminds us that we are only travelers, taking temporary refuge in this life and this body. In Tibet, people did not distract themselves by spending all their time trying to make their external circumstances more comfortable. They were satisfied if they had enough to eat, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads.
Going on, as we do, obsessively trying to improve our conditions, can become an end in itself, and a pointless distraction. Would people in their right mind think of fastidiously redecorating their hotel room every time they checked in to one?


January 18 2007
Karma is not fatalistic or predetermined. Karma means our ability to create and to change. It is creative because we can determine how and why we act. We can change. The future is in our hands, and in the hands of our heart.
Buddha said:

Karma creates all, like an artist,
Karma composes, like a dancer.


January 19
In Tibetan we call the essential nature of mind Rigpa—primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. This nature of mind, its innermost essence, is absolutely and always untouched by change or death. At present it is hidden within our own mind, our sem, enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions. Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so, under certain circumstances, some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light of understanding, meaning and freedom.
This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding.


January 20
Our minds can be wonderful, but at the same time they can be our very worst enemy. They give us so much trouble. Sometimes I wish the mind were like a set of dentures, which we could take out and leave on our bedside table overnight. At least we would get a break from its tiring and tiresome escapades.
We are so at the mercy of our minds that even when we find that the spiritual teachings strike a chord inside us, and move us more than anything we have ever experienced, still we hold back, because of some deep-seated and inexplicable suspicion.
Somewhere along the line, though, we have to stop mistrusting. We have to let go of the suspicion and doubt, which are supposed to protect us but never work, and only end up hurting us even more than what they are supposed to defend us from.


January 21
One method of meditation that many people find useful is to rest the mind lightly on an object. You can use an object of natural beauty that invokes a special feeling of inspiration for you, such as a flower or a crystal. But something that embodies the truth, such as an image of Buddha, or Christ, or particularly your master, is even more powerful.
Your master is your living link with the truth, and because of your personal connection to your master, just seeing his or her face connects you to the inspiration and truth of your own nature.


January 23
It cannot be stressed too often that it is the truth of the teaching that is all-important, and never the personality of the teacher. This is why Buddha reminded us in the Four Reliances:
Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality;
Rely on the meaning, not just on the words;
Rely on the real meaning, not on the provisional one;
Rely on your wisdom mind, not on your ordinary, judgmental mind.
It is important to remember that the true teacher is the spokesman of the truth: its compassionate “wisdom display.” All the buddhas, masters, and prophets are the emanations of this truth, appearing in countless skillful, compassionate guises in order to guide us, through their teachings, back to our true nature.
At first, more important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching, for it is through making a connection with the truth of the teaching that you will discover your living connection with a master.


January 24
In my tradition we revere the masters for being even kinder than the buddhas themselves. Although the compassion and power of the buddhas are always present, our obscurations prevent us from meeting the buddhas face to face. But we can meet the masters; they are here, living, breathing, speaking, and acting before us to show us, in all the ways possible, the path of the buddhas: the way to liberation.
For me, my masters have been the embodiment of living truth, undeniable signs that enlightenment is possible in a body, in this life, in this world, even here and even now, the supreme inspirations in my practice, in my work, in my life, and in my journey toward liberation. My masters are for me the embodiments of my sacred commitment to keep enlightenment foremost in my mind until I actually achieve it. I know enough to know that only when I reach enlightenment will I have a complete understanding of who they really are and of their infinite generosity, love, and wisdom.


January 25
The compassionate wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all others is called Bodhicitta in Sanskrit: bodhi refers to ourenlightened essence, and citta means “heart.” So we could translate it as “the heart of our enlightened mind.” To awaken and develop the heart of the enlightened mind is to ripen steadily the seed of our buddha nature, that seed that, in the end, when our practice of compassion has become perfect and all-embracing, will flower majestically into buddhahood. Bodhicitta, then, is the spring and source and root of the entire spiritual path. This is why in our tradition we pray with such urgency:
Those who haven’t yet given birth to precious Bodhicitta,
May they give birth,
Those who have given birth,
May their Bodhicitta not lessen
but increase further and further.


January 26
The purpose of reflection on death is to make a real change in the depths of our hearts. Often this will require a period of retreat and deep contemplation, because only that can truly open our eyes to what we are doing with our lives.
Contemplation on death will bring you a deepening sense of what we call “renunciation,” in Tibetan ngé jung. Ngé means “actually” or “definitely,” and jung to “come out,” “emerge” or “be born.” The fruit of frequent and deep reflection on death will be that you will find yourself emerging, often with a sense of disgust, from your habitual patterns. You will find yourself increasingly ready to let go of them, and in the end you will be able to free yourself from them as smoothly, the masters say, “as drawing a hair from a slab of butter.”


January 27
The Dzogchen Tantras, the ancient teachings from which the bardo instructions come, speak of a mythical bird, the garuda, which is born fully grown. This image symbolizes our primordial nature, which is already completely perfect. The garuda chick has all its wing feathers fully developed inside the egg, but it cannot fly before it hatches. Only at the moment when the shell cracks open can it burst out and soar up into the sky. Similarly, the masters tell us, the qualities of buddhahood are veiled by the body, and as soon as the body is discarded, they will be radiantly displayed.


January 28
The still revolutionary insight of Buddhism is that life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. Mind is revealed as the universal basis of experience—the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of what we call life and what we call death.


January 29
Dudjom Rinpoche was driving through France with his wife, admiring the countryside as they went along. They passed along cemetery that had been freshly painted and decorated with flowers. Dudjom Rinpoche’s wife said: “Rinpoche, look how everything in the West is so neat and clean. Even the places where they keep corpses are spotless. In the East not even the houses that people live in are anything like as clean as this.”
“Ah, yes,” he replied, “that’s true; this is such a civilized country. They have such marvelous houses for dead corpses. But haven’t you noticed? They have such wonderful houses for the living corpses too.”


January 30
If you are sitting, and your mind is not wholly in tune with your body—if you are, for instance, anxious or preoccupied with something—your body will experience physical discomfort, and difficulties will arise more easily. Whereas if your mind is in a calm, inspired state, it will influence your whole posture, and you can sit much more naturally and effortlessly. So it is very important to unite the posture of your body and the confidence that arises from your realization of the nature of your mind.


January 31
What is the View? It is nothing less than seeing the actual state of things as they are; it is knowing that the true nature of mind is the true nature of everything; and it is realizing that the true nature of mind is the absolute truth.
Dudjom Rinpoche says: “The View is the comprehension of the naked awareness, within which everything is contained: sensory perception and phenomenal existence, samsara and nirvana. This awareness has two aspects: ‘emptiness’ as the absolute, and ‘appearances’ or ‘perception’ as the relative.”

Rigpa February

Feb 1
More than twenty-five hundred years ago, a man who had been searching for the truth for many, many lifetimes came to a quiet place in northern India and sat down under a tree. He continued to sit under the tree, with immense resolve, and vowed not to get up until he had found the truth.
At dusk, it is said, he conquered all the dark forces of delusion; and early the next morning, as the planet Venus broke in the dawn sky, the man was rewarded for his age-long patience, discipline, and flawless concentration by achieving the final goal of human existence: enlightenment.
At that sacred moment, the earth itself shuddered, as if “drunk with bliss,” and, as the scriptures tell us: “No one anywhere was angry, ill or sad; no one did evil, none was proud; the world became quite quiet, as though it had reached full perfection.” This man became known as Buddha.


Feb 2
Grasping is the source of all our problems. Since impermanence to us spells anguish, we grasp on to things desperately, even though all things change. We are terrified of letting go, terrified, in fact, of living at all, since learning to live is learning to let go. And this is the tragedy and the irony of our struggle to hold on: Not only is it impossible, but it brings us the very pain we are seeking to avoid.
The intention behind grasping may not in itself be bad; there’s nothing wrong with the desire to be happy, but what we try to grasp on to is by nature ungraspable.
The Tibetans say that you cannot wash the same dirty hand twice in the same running river, and “no matter how much you squeeze a handful of sand, you will never get oil out of it.”

Feb 3
A wave in the sea, seen in one way, seems to have a distinct identity, an end and a beginning, a birth anda death. Seen in another way, the wave itself doesn’t really exist but is just the behavior of water, “empty” of any separate identity but “full” of water. So when you really think about the wave, you come to realize that it is something that has been made temporarily possible by wind and water, and is dependent on a set of constantly changing circumstances. You also realize that every wave is related to every other wave.


Feb 4 2007
Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.


Feb 5
What is meditation in Dzogchen? It is simply resting undistracted, in the View, once introduced.
Dudjom Rinpoche describes it: “Meditation consists of being attentive to such a state of Rigpa, free from all mental constructions, whilst remaining fully relaxed, without any distraction or grasping. For it is said that ‘meditation is not striving, but naturally becoming assimilated into it.


Feb 6
The cells of our body are dying, the neurons in our brain are decaying, even the expressions on our face are always changing, depending on our mood. What we call our basic character is only a “mindstream,” nothing more. Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go?
What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: Do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? The mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.
The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.


Feb 7
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MIND

No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.

DUDJOM RINPOCHE


Feb 8
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
ALBERT EINSTEIN


Feb 9
Doubts demand from us a real skillfulness in dealing with them, and I notice how few people have any idea how to pursue doubts or to use them. It seems ironic that in a civilization that so worships the power of deflation and doubt, hardly anyone has the courage to deflate the claims of doubt itself—to do as one Hindu master said: turn the dogs of doubt on doubt itself, to unmask cynicism, and to uncover what fear, despair, hopelessness, and tired conditioning it springs from. Then doubt would no longer be an obstacle, but a door to realization, and whenever doubt appeared in the mind, a seeker would welcome it as a means of going deeper into the truth.


Feb 10
Ego is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing, and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence.
In Tibetan, ego is called dakdzin , which means “grasping to a self.” Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activities that will sustain that false construction.
Such grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no basis or truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable. The fact that we need to grasp at all and to go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self doesn’t inherently exist. From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fears.


Feb 11
Your compassion can have perhaps three essential benefits for a dying person: First, because it is opening your heart, you will find it easier to show the dying person the unconditional love he or she needs so much.
On a deeper, spiritual level, I have seen again and again how, if you can embody compassion and act out of the heart of compassion, you will create an atmosphere in which the other person can be inspired to imagine the spiritual dimension or even take up spiritual practice.
On the deepest level of all, if you constantly practice compassion for the dying person, and in turn inspire him or her to do the same, you might heal the person not only spiritually but perhaps even physically. And you will discover for yourself, with wonder, what all the spiritual masters know: that the power of compassion has no bounds.


February 12
A Zen master had a faithful but very naive student who regarded him as a living buddha. One day the master accidentally sat down on a needle. He screamed “Ouch!” and jumped into the air. The student instantly lost all his faith and left, saying how disappointed he was to find that his master was not fully enlightened. Otherwise, he thought, how could he jump up and scream out loud like that? The master was sad when he realized his student had left, and said: “Alas, poor man! If only he had known that in reality neither I, nor the needle, nor the ‘ouch’ really existed.”


February 13
Remember the example of an old cow:
She’s content to sleep in a barn.
You have to eat, sleep and shit—
That’s unavoidable—anything
Beyond that is none of your business.
Do what you have to do
And keep yourself to yourself.
PATRUL RINPOCHE
(MUDRA,
Chogyam Trungpa,
Shambhala, Berkeley
and London, 1972.)


February 14
Of all the practices I know, the practice of Tonglen, Tibetan for “giving and receiving,” is one of the most useful and powerful. When you feel yourself locked in upon yourself, Tonglen opens you to the truth of the suffering of others; when your heart is blocked, it destroys those forces that are obstructing it; and when you feel estranged from the person who is in pain before you, or bitter or despairing, it helps you to find within yourself and then to reveal the loving, expansive radiance of your own true nature. No other practice I know is as effective in destroying the self-grasping, self-cherishing, self-absorption of the ego, which is the root of all our suffering and all hard-heartedness.
Put very simply, the Tonglen practice of giving and receiving is to take on the suffering and pain of others and give to them your happiness, well-being, and peace of mind.


February 15
I know very well from my own experience how hard it is to imagine taking on the sufferings of others, and especially those of sick and dying people, without first building in yourself a strength and confidence of compassion. It is this strength and this confidence that will give your practice the power to transmute the suffering of others.
This is why I always recommend that you begin the Tonglen practice for others by first practicing it on yourself. Before you can send out love and compassion to others, you must uncover, deepen, create, and strengthen them in yourself, and heal yourself of any reticence or distress or anger or fear that might create an obstacle to practicing Tonglen wholeheartedly.


February 16
To integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation. The violence and stress and the challenges and distractions of this modern life make this integration urgently necessary.
How do we achieve this integration, this permeation of everyday life with the calm humor and spacious detachment of meditation? There is no substitute for regular practice, for only through real practice will we begin to taste unbrokenly the calm of our nature of mind and so be able to sustain the experience of it in our everyday lives.
If you really wish to achieve this, what you need to do is practice not just as occasional medicine or therapy but as if it were your daily sustenance or food.


February 17
As we follow the teachings and as we practice, we will inevitably discover certain truths about ourselves that stand out prominently: There are places where we always get stuck; there are habitual patterns and strategies that are the legacy of negative karma, which we continuously repeat and reinforce; there are particular ways of seeing things—those tired old explanations of ourselves and the world around us—that are quite mistaken yet which we hold onto as authentic, and so distort our whole view of reality.
When we persevere on the spiritual path, and examine ourselves honestly, it begins to dawn on us more and more that our perceptions are nothing more than a web of illusions. Simply to acknowledge our confusion, even though we cannot accept it completely, can bring some light of understanding and spark off in us a new process, a process of healing.


Feb 18
We all have the karma to take one spiritual path or another, and I would encourage you, from the bottom of my heart, to follow with complete sincerity the path that inspires you most.
If you go on searching all the time, the searching itself becomes an obsession and takes you over. You become a spiritual tourist, bustling about and never getting anywhere. As Patrul Rinpoche says: “You leave your elephant at home and look for its footprints in the forest.” Following one teaching is not a way of confining you or jealously monopolizing you. It’s a compassionate and practical way of keeping you centered and always on your path, despite all the obstacles that you, and the world, will inevitably present.


Feb 19
At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment. Even if we have accumulated a lot of negative karma, if we are able to make a real change of heart at the moment of death, it can decisively influence our future, and transform our karma, for the moment of death is an exceptionally powerful opportunity to purify karma.


Feb 20
A meditation technique used a great deal in Tibetan Buddhism is uniting the mind with the sound of a mantra. The definition of mantra is “that which protects the mind.” That which protects the mind from negativity, or which protects you from your own mind, is mantra.
When you are nervous, disoriented, or emotionally fragile, inspired chanting or reciting of a mantra can change the state of your mind completely, by transforming its energy and atmosphere. How is this possible? Mantra is the essence of sound, the embodiment of the truth in the form of sound. Each syllable is impregnated with spiritual power, condenses a deep spiritual truth, and vibrates with the blessing of the speech of the buddhas. It is also said that the mind rides on the subtle energy of the breath, the prana, which moves through and purifies the subtle channels of the body. So when you chant a mantra, you are charging your breath and energy with the energy of the mantra, and so working directly on your mind and your subtle body.


Feb 21
The mantra I recommend to my students is:
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM
Tibetans say: “Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Péma Siddhi Hung,” which is the mantra of Padmasambhava, the mantra of all the buddhas, masters, and realized beings, and is uniquely powerful for peace, for healing, for transformation, and for protection in this violent, chaotic age.
Recite the mantra quietly, with deep attention, and let your breath, the mantra, and your awareness slowly become one. Or chant it in an inspiring way, then rest in the profound silence that sometimes follows.



Feb 25 2007
As a Buddhist, I view death as a normal process, a reality that I accept will occur as long as I remain in this earthly existence. Knowing that I cannot escape it, I see no point in worrying about it. I tend to think of death as being like changing your clothes when they are old and worn out, rather than as some final end. Yet death is unpredictable: We do not know when or how it will take place. So it is only sensible to take certain precautions before it actually happens.
THE DALAI LAMA


February 26
In the Dzogchen teachings it is said that your View and your posture should be like a mountain.
Your View is the summation of your whole understanding and insight into the nature of mind, which you bring to your meditation. So your View translates into and inspires your posture, expressing the core of your being in the way you sit.
Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all its unshakable, steadfast majesty. A mountain is completely relaxed and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that batter it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak.
Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar.


February 27
Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer “yes” to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.


February 28
The whole point of Dzogchen meditation practice is to strengthen and stabilize Rigpa and allow it to grow to full maturity. The ordinary, habitual mind with its projections is extremely powerful. It keeps returning, and takes hold of us easily when we are inattentive or distracted.
As Dudjom Rinpoche used to say: “At present our Rigpa is like a little baby, stranded on the battlefield of strong arising thoughts.” I like to say that we have to begin by babysitting our Rigpa, in the secure environment of meditation.


February 29
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts
With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with an impure mind
And sorrow will follow you As the wheel
follows the ox that draws the cart.

Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you As your
shadow, unshakeable.

THE BUDDHA

Rigpa March

March 1
The practice of mindfulness unveils and reveals your essential Good Heart, because it dissolves and removes the unkindness or the harm in you. Only when you have removed the harm in yourself do you become truly useful to others. Through the practice, by slowly removing the unkindness and harm from yourself, you allow your true Good Heart, the fundamental goodness and kindness that are your real nature, to shine out and become the warm climate in which your true being flowers.
This is why I call meditation the true practice of peace, the true practice of nonaggression and nonviolence, and the real and greatest disarmament.


March 2
Whatever thoughts and emotions arise in meditation, allow them to rise and settle, like the waves in the ocean. Whatever you find yourself thinking, let that thought rise and settle, without any constraint. Don’t grasp at it, feed it, or indulge it, don’t cling to it, and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor invite them; be like the ocean looking at its own waves, or the sky gazing down on the clouds that pass across it.
You will soon find that thoughts are like the wind; they come and go. The secret is not to “think” about the thoughts but to allow them to flow through your mind, while keeping your mind free of afterthoughts.


March 3
I am now seventy-eight years old, and have seen so many, many things during my lifetime.
So many young people have died, so many people of my own age have died, so many old people have died. So many people that were high up have become low. So many people that were low have risen to be high up. So many countries have changed. There has been so much turmoil and tragedy, so many wars, and plagues, so much terrible destruction all over the world.
And yet all these changes are no more real than a dream. When you look deeply, you realize there is nothing that is permanent and constant, nothing, not even the tiniest hair on your body. And this is not a theory, but something you can actually come to know and realize and see, even, with your very own eyes.
DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE


March 4
Buddha sat in serene and humble dignity on the ground, with the sky above him and around him, as if to show us that in meditation you sit with open, skylike attitude of mind, yet remain present, earthed, and grounded. The sky is our absolute nature, which has no barriers and is boundless, and the ground is our reality, our relative, ordinary condition.
The posture we take when we meditate signifies that we are linking absolute and relative, sky and ground, heaven and earth, like two wings of a bird, integrating the skylike deathless nature of mind and the ground of our transient, mortal nature.


March 5
Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity. Our minds are perpetually shifting in and out of confusion and clarity. If we could be confused all the time, that would at least make for some kind of clarity. What is really baffling about life is that sometimes, despite all our confusion, we can also be really wise!
This constant uncertainty may make everything seem bleak and almost hopeless; but if you look more deeply at it, you will see that its very nature creates “gaps,” spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering—if, that is, they can be seen and seized.


March 6
The nature of mind is the background to the whole of life and death like the sky, which enfolds the whole universe in its embrace.


March 7
When we die we leave everything behind, especially this body we have cherished so much and relied upon so blindly and tried so hard to keep alive. But our minds are no more dependable than our bodies. Just look at your mind for a few minutes.
You will see that it is like a flea, constantly hopping to and fro. You will see that thoughts arise without any reason, without any connection. Swept along by the chaos of every moment, we are the victims of the fickleness of our minds. If this is the only state of consciousness we are familiar with, then to rely on our minds at the moment of death is an absurd gamble.


March 8
In his very first teaching, Buddha explained that the root cause of suffering is ignorance. But where exactly is this ignorance? And how does it display itself? Let’s take an everyday example. Think about those people—we all know some—who are gifted with a remarkably powerful and sophisticated intelligence. Isn’t it puzzling how, instead of helping them, as you might expect, it seems only to make them suffer more? It is almost as if their brilliance is directly responsible for their pain.
What is happening is quite clear: This intelligence of ours is captured and held hostage by ignorance, which then makes use of it freely for its own ends. This is how we can be extraordinarily intelligent and yet absolutely wrong, at one and the same time.


March 10
Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.
BUDDHA


March 11
Compassion is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing. Suppose you have a disease such as cancer or AIDS. By taking on the sickness of those suffering like you, in addition to your own pain, with a mind full of compassion, you will—beyond any doubt—purify the past negative karma that is the cause, now and in the future, of the continuation of your suffering.
In Tibet there have been many extraordinary cases of people who, when they heard they were dying of a terminal illness, gave away everything they had and went to the cemetery to die. There they practiced taking on the suffering of others; and what is amazing is that instead of dying, they returned home, fully healed.


March 12
Although the results of our actions may not have matured yet, they will inevitably ripen, given the right conditions. Usually we forget what we do, and it is only long afterward that the results catch up with us. By then we are unable to connect them with their causes. “Imagine an eagle,” says Jikmé Lingpa.” It is flying, high in the sky. It casts no shadow. Nothing shows that it is there. Then suddenly it spies its prey, dives, and swoops to the ground. And as it drops, its menacing shadow appears.”


March 13
The preliminary training of meditation practice and purification ripens and opens the student’s heart and mind to the direct understanding of the truth.
Then, in the powerful moment of introduction, the master can direct his realization of the nature of mind—what we call the master’s “wisdom mind”—into the mind of the now authentically receptive student.
The master is doing nothing less than introducing the student to what the Buddha actually is, awakening the student to the living presence of enlightenment within. In that experience, the Buddha, the nature of mind, and the master’s wisdom mind are all fused into, and revealed as, one. The student then recognizes, in a blaze of gratitude, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there is not, has never been, and could not ever be any separation: between student and master, between the master’s wisdom mind and the nature of the student’s mind.


March 14
The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral,
Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness,
Like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge.
How pitiful are they who cling strongly to concrete reality:
Turn your attention within, my heart friends.

NYOSHUL KHEN RINPOCHE


March 15
On that momentous night when Buddha attained enlightenment, it is said that he went through several different stages of awakening. In the first, with his mind “collected and purified, without blemish, free of defilements, grown soft, workable, fixed and immovable,” he turned his attention to the recollection of his previous lives. This is what he tells us of that experience:
I remembered many, many former existences I had passed through: one, two births, three, four, five . . . fifty, one hundred . . . a hundred thousand, in various world-periods. I knew everything about these various births: where they had taken place, what my name had been, which family I had been born into, and what I had done. I lived through again the good and bad fortune of each life and my death in each life, and came to life again and again. In this way I recalled innumerable previous existences with their exact characteristic features and circumstances. This knowledge I gained in the first watch of the night.


March 16
Lifetimes of ignorance have brought us to identify the whole of our being with ego. Its greatest triumph is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering.
Yet, ego is so terribly convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us. To be egoless, ego whispers to us, is to lose all the rich romance of being human, to be reduced to a colorless robot or a brain-dead vegetable.


March 17
The extraordinary qualities of great beings who hide their nature escapes ordinary people like us, despite our best efforts in examining them. On the other hand, even ordinary charlatans are expert at deceiving others by behaving like saints.

PATRUL RINPOCHE


March 18
As you continue to meditate on compassion, when you see someone suffer, your first response becomes not mere pity but deep compassion. You feel for that person respect and even gratitude, because you now know that whoever prompts you to develop compassion by his or her suffering is in fact giving you one of the greatest gifts of all, as you are being helped to develop that very quality you need most in your progress toward enlightenment.
That is why we say in Tibet that the beggar who is asking you for money, or the sick, old woman wringing your heart, may be the buddhas in disguise, manifesting on your path to help you grow in compassion and so move toward buddahood.


March 19
I always tell my students not to come out of meditation too quickly. Allow a period of some minutes for the peace of the practice of meditation to infiltrate your life. As my master, Dudjom Rinpoche, said: “Don’t jump up and rush off, but mingle your mindfulness with everyday life. Be like a man who’s fractured his skull, always careful in case someone will touch him.”


March 20
At the moment of death, our state of mind is all-important. If we die in a positive frame of mind, we can improve our next birth, despite our negative karma. And if we are upset and distressed, it may have a detrimental effect, even though we may have used our lives well. This means that the last thought and emotion that we have before we die has an extremely powerful determining effect on our immediate future.
This is why the masters stress that the quality of the atmosphere around us when we die is crucial. With our friends and relatives, we should do all we can to inspire positive emotions and sacred feelings, like love, compassion, and devotion, and all we can to help them to “let go of grasping, yearning, and attachment.”


March 21
The most important thing is not to get trapped in what I see everywhere in the West, a “shopping mentality”: shopping around from master to master, teaching to teaching, without any continuity or real, sustained dedication to any one discipline. Nearly all the great spiritual masters of all traditions agree that the essential thing is to master one way, one path to the truth, by following one tradition with all your heart and mind to the end of the spiritual journey, while, of course, remaining open and respectful toward the insights of all others. In Tibet we used to say: “knowing one, you accomplish all.” The modem faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our culture, and one of ego’s most effective ways of sabotaging our spiritual search.


March 22
The practice of mindfulness defuses our negativity, aggression, and turbulent emotions, which may have been gathering power over many lifetimes. Rather than suppressing emotions or indulging in them, here it is important to view them—your thoughts and whatever arises—with an acceptance and generosity that are as open and spacious as possible. Tibetan masters say that this wise generosity has the flavor of boundless space, so warm and cozy that you feel enveloped and protected by it, as if by a blanket of sunlight.


March 23
The master is like a great ship for beings to cross the perilous ocean of existence, an unerring captain who guides them to the dry land of liberation, a rain that extinguishes the fire of the passions, a bright sun and moon that dispel the darkness of ignorance, a firm ground that can bear the weight of both good and bad, a wish-fulfilling tree that bestows temporal happiness and ultimate bliss, a treasury of vast and deep instructions, a wish-fulfilling jewel granting all the qualities of realization, a father and a mother giving their love equally to all sentient beings, a great river of compassion, a mountain rising above worldly concerns unshaken by the winds of emotions, and a great cloud filled with rain to soothe the torments of the passions.
“In brief, he is the equal of all the buddhas. To make any connection with him, whether through seeing him, hearing his voice, remembering him, or being touched by his hand, will lead us toward liberation. To have full confidence in him is the sure way to progress toward enlightenment. The warmth of his wisdom and compassion will melt the core of our being and release the gold of the buddha-nature within.”

DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE


March 24
For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future.
This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death. This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life.


March 25
Enlightenment for Gautama [the Buddha] felt as though a prison which had confined him for thousands of lifetimes had broken open. Ignorance had been the jailkeeper. Because of ignorance, his mind had been obscured, just like the moon and stars hidden by the storm clouds. Clouded by endless waves of deluded thoughts, the mind had falsely divided reality into subject and object, self and others, existence and non-existence, birth and death, and from these discriminations arose wrong views—the prisons of feelings, craving, grasping, and becoming. The suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death only made the prison walls thicker. The only thing to do was to seize the jailkeeper and see his true face. The jailkeeper was ignorance. . . . Once the jailkeeper was gone, the jail would disappear and never be rebuilt again.
THICH NHAT HANH

THE BUDDHA’S ENLlGHTENMENT


March 26
It is extremely hard to rest undistracted in the nature of mind, even for a moment, let alone to self-liberate a single thought or emotion as it rises. We often assume that simply because we understand something intellectually, or think we do, we have actually realized it. This is a great delusion. It requires the maturity that only years of listening, contemplation, reflection, meditation, and sustained practice can ripen.


March 27
There is no swifter, more moving, or more powerful practice for invoking the help of the enlightened beings, for arousing devotion and realizing the nature of mind, than the practice of Guru Yoga. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote: “The words Guru Yoga mean ‘union with the nature of the guru,’” and in this practice we are given methods by which we can blend our own minds with the enlightened mind of the master.
The master—the guru—embodies the crystallization of the blessings of all buddhas, masters, and enlightened beings. So to invoke him or her is to invoke them all; and to merge your mind and heart with your master’s wisdom mind is to merge your mind with the truth and very embodiment of enlightenment.


March 28
As Buddha himself was passing away, he prophesied that Padmasambhava would be born not long after his death in order to spread the teaching of the Tantras. It was Padmasambhava who established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century. For us Tibetans, Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, embodies a cosmic, timeless principle; he is the universal master.
I have always turned to Padmasambhava in times of difficulty and crisis, and his blessing and power have never failed me. When I think of him, all my masters are embodied in him. To me he is completely alive at all moments, and the whole universe, at each moment, shines with his beauty, strength, and presence.


March 29
Taking impermanence truly to heart is to be slowly freed from the idea of grasping, from our flawed and destructive view of permanence, from the false passion for security on which we have built everything. Slowly it dawns on us that all the heartache we have been through from grasping at the ungraspable was, in the deepest sense, unnecessary.
At the beginning this too may be painful to accept, because it seems so unfamiliar. But as we reflect, slowly our hearts and minds go through a gradual transformation. Letting go begins to feel more natural, and becomes easier and easier.
It may take a long time for the extent of our foolishness to sink in, but the more we reflect, the more we develop the view of letting go. It is then that a complete shift takes place in our way of looking at everything.


March 30
We cannot hope to die peacefully if our lives have been full of violence, or if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment, or fear. So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life.
THE DALAI LAMA


March 31
The most essential point of the meditation posture is to keep the back straight, like “an arrow” or “a pile of golden coins.” The “inner energy,” or prana , will then flow easily through the subtle channels of the body, and your mind will find its true state of rest. Don’t force anything. The lower part of the spine has a natural curve; it should be relaxed but upright. Your head should be balanced comfortably on your neck. It is your shoulders and the upper part of your torso that carry the strength and grace of the posture, and they should be held in strong poise, but without any tension.
Sit with your legs crossed. You do not have to sit in the “full-lotus” posture, which is emphasized more in advanced yoga practice. The crossed legs express the unity of life and death, good and bad, skillful means and wisdom, masculine and feminine principles, samsara and nirvana, and the humor of nonduality. Rest your hands comfortably covering your knees. This is called the “mind in comfort and ease” posture. If you prefer to sit on a chair, keep your legs relaxed, and be sure always to keep your back straight.