As H.H Dalai Lama pointed out …Everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to suffer, but very few people understand the real causes of happiness and suffering.
We tend to look for happiness outside ourselves, thinking that if we had the right house, the right car, the right job, and the right friends we would be truely happy. We spend almost all our time adjusting the external world, trying to make it conform to our wishes. All our life we have tried to surround ourselves with people and things that make us feel comfortable, secure, or stimulated, yet still we have not found pure and lasting happiness.
It is time we sought happiness from a different source. Happiness is a state of mind, so the real source of happiness must lie within the mind, not in external conditions. If our mind is pure and peaceful we shall be happy, regardless of our external circumstances, but if it is impure and unpeaceful we can never be truly happy, no matter how hard we try to change our external conditions. We could change our Home or our partner countless times, but until we change our restless, discontented mind we shall never find true happiness.
Therefore Buddha and boddhisatvas have given us this valuable Buddhadharma.
Buddhism, or Buddhadharma, is Buddha’s teachings and the inner experiences or realizations of these teachings. Buddha gave eighty-four thousand teachings. All these teachings and the inner realizations of them constitute Buddhadharma.
Buddhadharma does not stay in one place but moves from one country to another. Just as gold is precious and rare, so Buddhadharma is precious and very hard to find. Buddha taught how to examine our mind and see which states produce misery and confusion and which states produce health and happiness. He taught how to overcome the compulsively non-virtuous minds that confine us to states of discontent and misery, and how to cultivate the virtuous minds that liberate us from pain and lead us to the bliss of full enlightenment. By learning Buddhadharma, we will have the opportunity to gain the happiness we seek and to fulfill all our temporary and ultimate wishes.
By practicing Buddha's teachings we protect ourselves from suffering and problems. All the problems we experience during daily life originate in ignorance, and the method for eliminating ignorance is to practice Dharma.
Practicing Dharma is the supreme method for improving the quality of our human life. The quality of life depends not upon external development or material progress, but upon the inner development of peace and happiness. For example, many Buddhists lived in poor and underdeveloped countries, but they were able to find pure, lasting happiness by practicing what Buddha had taught.
If we integrate Buddha's teachings into our daily life, we will be able to solve all our inner problems and attain a truly peaceful mind. Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. If we first establish peace within our minds by training in spiritual paths, outer peace will come naturally.
15TH TALUNG RINPOCHE |
