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Advice from Spiritual Friends
Many Buddhist practitioners have encountered feelings of loneliness. According to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book, Rinpoche once heard a monk comment that he felt people didn’t want to be with him and were avoiding him. Rinpoche offered this advice:
That is no problem at all. It is good, because you waste so much of your time if people are interested in meeting you. Then, no meditation, no study, nothing, just blah, blah, blah, blah. That is why Milarepa achieved enlightenment in a brief lifetime during degenerate times. Why did he go to meditate in very high mountains? That is the whole point. He did it in order not to waste his life. … Buddha said that as long as one follows desire, one will never get satisfaction. Satisfaction, here, means peace of mind, but in a broader way it also means to understand that as long as one follows desire, there is no liberation and no enlightenment.
You can read the complete advice Rinpoche offered this monk at “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
After the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 and the beginning of war in the Middle East, Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote an open letter to former U.S. President George W. Bush about the effectiveness of spiritual solutions for the crisis the world was facing.
“War is what ordinary people in the world regard as the solution,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote. “The problem is that war, even if it is won, is like a medicine that has side effects. It may temporarily help the situation but afterwards there will be continual complications. Why? Because the people you defeat generate hatred towards you and in future generations they harm you back. In the natural law of actions, called karma in Sanskrit, the action of harming leaves an imprint on the mental continuum and that imprint is like a seed. When it ripens later, the person experiences the result of receiving harm from others.”
From Mandala March-May 2002.
Photo by Jeff Gould
In Ultimate Healing, published by Wisdom Publications, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) suggests the cure for not only depression, but all forms of illness and disease: unqualified love in the form of compassion for all living beings – including oneself. Written with humility and kindness, Ultimate Healing is rich in wisdom and practical help for those in pain.
“Depression can be the result of a specific situation, in which case you can apply the relevant meditation to deal with those conditions; however, depression and feelings of hopelessness can also arise for no particular reason. When you are experiencing depression, you should prepare yourself each morning by making a strong determination not to allow the situation to upset you. [This] strengthens you and gives you courage. Also make a strong determination to transform your depression into happiness. During the day, when you start to feel depressed or upset, you should immediately remember the determination you made in the morning and not let the situation overwhelm you. No matter how bad the situation seems, and even if it is commonly regarded as a serious problem, you should not allow it to make your life dark and depressed.
“After making this determination, you then mentally prepare yourself for the day by thinking of the methods you will use when you start to feel depressed or upset. There are various special techniques for fighting depression …”
From Mandala March-May 2002
Photo by Robin Bath
Lama Yeshe’s talk in Berkeley, California, in the summer of 1983 was given at a time when the world was in a state of anxiety about the threat of nuclear war. How easily it translates to today when new fears have arisen. As Lama said, “First we create a situation; then we’re scared of it. … However, there’s no need for fear, worry or anxiety because, first of all, nuclear energy is a reality and secondly, our opinion of what’s happening is just that – an opinion. It’s not yet a reality; it’s simply a presumption.” This extract, edited by Nick Ribush of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archives, reflects Lama’s inimitable style.
Read more …
From Mandala March-May 2002
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Ksitigarbha Day at Land of Medicine Buddha, Soquel, California, U.S., September 15, 2012. Photo by Dionne Wilson.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche shares techniques for transforming life’s difficulties into spiritual strength in “Seeing Problems as Positive,” an excerpt from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas.
“For worldly people the confusion caused by suffering only brings more suffering and confusion, but as Dharma practitioners we have the opportunity of making suffering extremely beneficial by using it to cut confusion rather than to create it. In order to achieve enlightenment we have to experience both physical and mental difficulties, but bearing such difficulties is incredibly worthwhile because by doing so we reach a state where all suffering ceases forever. As we progress along the path to enlightenment, problems become fewer and fewer and therefore whatever we experience at this time only helps to bring about the end of the suffering that has no beginning.”
From Mandala January-March 2013
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at the Sixth Kopan Course, March 1974, when he gave his most extensive teachings on the eight worldly dharmas. Photo by Ursula Bernis.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches extensively on “the dissatisfied mind of desire”:
“Whether we are a Dharma practitioner or not, every problem in life comes from our own mind, as does every happiness. The cause of suffering is not external; the cause of happiness is not external. It is within us, in our mind.
“The particular thing that has created all the problems of life is the dissatisfied mind of desire, the mind clinging to this life. We try to obtain the immediate happiness of this life through what we call the eight worldly dharmas: a desire for comfort, material things (such as gifts, friends and so forth), a good reputation and praise, and an aversion to a lack of comfort and material things, a bad reputation and criticism, or blame.”
This teaching is excerpted from How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas, edited by Gordon McDougall.
From Mandala July-September 2011.
Dog warming in sun, January 2012. Photo by Phil Hunt.
Leah Richards, a veterinary nurse, has a deep love, compassion, and respect for all animals and hopes to be a veterinarian one day. While at the 2003 Kopan course, she asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for guidance on what to do when asked to perform euthanasia on sick and suffering animals.
From Mandala October-November 2004.
Ribur Rinpoche
Former FPMT executive director Massimo Corona talks to Ribur Rinpoche about monasticism in the West and how to maintain Buddhist monastic vows for the long-term.
From Mandala September-November 2001.
In the spring of 1978, Jan Willis arranged for Lama Yeshe to teach a course on Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Californias Oakes College on the Santa Cruz campus during the spring trimester, which ran approximately from mid-March through the end of May. Photos by Jon Landa
FPMT founder Lama Yeshe gets to the heart of karma and the ways in which we act based on “hallucinated fantasy.”
“We often talk about how we waste our lives following the eight worldly dharmas – attachment to temporal happiness, receiving material things, being praised, and having a good reputation – and aversion to their opposites – discomfort, not getting things, being criticized, and notoriety. Each time we get involved with those, we create negative karma….”
From Mandala April-May 2004.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Photo by Alison Wright.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama shares his reasons for why war should be relegated to “the dustbins of history.”
From Mandala June-August 2003.
Lama Yeshe teaching, Yucca Valley, United States, 1977. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
A few words from Lama Yeshe, the founder of FPMT, on the difference between the absolute and relative guru.
From Mandala June-August 2002.
From Mandala September-October 1997.
FPMT offers support for support to Rinpoche’s students at the most crucial time of death by giving the names of students who die to His Holiness the Dalai Lama with the request for his prayers.