Working at the Dharma Center

Freeing them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to the peerless happiness of buddhahood—the total cessation of all obscurations and the completion of all realizations

It all depends on your motivation. If you are motivated by the self-cherishing thought, concern for only your own happiness, your own power, and have no concern for others’ happiness, your motivation is coming from your delusions, such as attachment, anger, ignorance and so forth. Then your actions of body, speech and mind will manifest as ugly, unpeaceful and hurtful to others and, as a result, others will react in an ugly, unpeaceful and hurtful way with their body, speech and mind; for example, by getting angry at you. It is like a circle. How you treat others and how they treat you in return is similar, with such negative thoughts and actions. You have to be fully aware of that in your everyday life.

Generally you have to know that you are responsible to not cause others suffering but to bring them happiness. Even if you don’t think of practicing Dharma, to at least be a good human being you need to know this. You are totally responsible as to whether you bring happiness or suffering to others. It is totally dependent on your motivation and how you treat others; it’s up to you whether your motivation is pure or not. Even just to be a good person, a generous human being, you have to know that. If you have a bad motivation and your actions of body, speech and mind are harmful for others, you make others create negative karma when they retaliate by harming you in return. By harming others you therefore cause them to be reborn in the lower realms; to lose their human rebirth and take a lower rebirth and suffer for eons. Can you imagine yourself being in the lower realms? That’s where you’re causing other sentient beings to go and have unhappiness instead of enjoyment.

In the Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva said,

Smiling at others (showing them a pleasant face)
Causes you to have a beautiful body in future lives.

So you don’t need to have plastic surgery or other expensive procedures. Your positive mind can give you a pleasant, happy, smiling face and a peaceful, not a political, smile. Others will feel this and also become like that, having a good heart and being smiling and happy. Thus you always have to be aware of how others act toward you, positive or negative. It is totally dependent upon your own mind.

The morning motivation, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Englightenment), contains the details for keeping your mind positive. If you do this motivation every morning you will always act positively toward others for the rest of the day.

However, first think that all your past, present and future happiness, including enlightenment, is received from every sentient being. You receive everything through the kindness of every sentient being, which includes even those people you don’t like—those who make you angry merely upon sight or when you hear their voice. It is so important to understand this evolution. Therefore you should hold all sentient beings in your heart and feel that they are most precious, most kind, most dear and wish fulfilling for you. Then there will be no way for your mind to get angry or to generate ignorance, attachment, selfishness or self-cherishing and, therefore, no way for you to harm others. You absolutely dare not harm others, even in the slightest way.

Even Buddha, Dharma and Sangha—in whom you always take refuge to be free from the lower realms and get higher rebirths; to be free from samsara and achieve liberation, lower nirvana; and to be free from the self-cherishing thought and achieve the peerless happiness of total cessation of all mistakes and completion of all realizations—even this Buddha, Dharma, Sangha in whom you take refuge and who give you all this happiness come from sentient beings, including the ones that are angry at or who harm you, who speak to you hurtfully and so forth, sentient beings that you don’t like. Therefore they are all so precious, unbelievably precious to you. On top of that, they have been your kind mother from beginningless rebirths and even now; it’s unbelievable. So you have to think about this and the dependent arising I mentioned before as well. Think about these two things—it makes not harming and only benefiting others very deep. In that way your life will be only of benefit.

The conclusion is that to be free from the suffering of samsara as quickly as possible and to achieve peerless happiness, the total cessation of all mistakes and the completion of all realizations, then with this thought, smile at others, respect them with your body, speech and mind and speak to them in a nice, respectful way.

Treat people the way you’d like them to treat you: with respect, nice speech and smiles that come from a good heart. If you do that, then, as a result of karma, many others will treat you in the same way. Otherwise others will be angry with you, speak to you rudely and hurtfully, and harm you with the actions of their body, speech and mind.

So here I am mentioning how sentient beings are most kind, most precious, most dear and wish fulfilling. Then you can really enjoy life with them, bring them much inner happiness, and in your own mind you will also enjoy much inner happiness, and that will make them happy too.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama respects even ordinary people. He bends down in respect; Lama Yeshe also did this. Even when he heard about someone’s mistakes, some problems with monks and so forth, when he later met them he showed respect. Like that, this is an incredible practice, rather than feeling pride, showing arrogance and putting others down. Most people might do that, but in my experience, Lama Yeshe never did.

Behaving like this is a great, great, great responsibility of the center director, secretary, board members, office manager, treasurer, spiritual program coordinator, bookshop manager and so forth. Especially these people, but in general, this is for everybody. It’s a question of karma, to not create negative karma and to create good karma. This not only makes you happy but also makes other sentient beings happy. So even with your speech you can make so many sentient beings happy.

You have to be aware that there are very powerful mantras given to us by the Buddha to make our speech very powerful and beneficial for sentient beings. If in the morning you recite the Exalted Stainless Beam Totally Pure Light mantra after blessing your speech, then anybody who simply hears your voice that day, animals or people—whether they hear you singing or in any other way (not necessarily reciting mantras)—is purified of the five heavy negative karmas without break.

The Exalted Stainless Beam Totally Pure Light mantra

NAMA NAWA NAWA TII NÄN / TATHAAGATA GANG GAA NAM
DIIWAA LUKAA NÄN / KOTINI YUTA SHATA SAHA SRAA NÄN /
OM BOBORI / TSARI NI* TSARI / MORI GOLI TSALA WAARI SWAAHAA
(recite this a few times) [*indicates a high tone]

Then if you also recite one thousand OM MANI PADME HUM mantras every morning, seven generations of your family will not be reborn in the lower realms. Moreover, when other sentient beings see you, even in places where there are many other people, just by seeing you their negative karma will be purified. Also, when you die and your body is cremated, if the smoke from the fire touches any sentient being, human, insect or whatever, it purifies their negative karma and helps them not be reborn in the lower realms.

From Kyabje Khunu Lama Rinpoche’s Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhichitta:

That which benefits lower sentient beings is bodhicitta.
That which benefits middling sentient beings is bodhicitta.
That which benefits sublime sentient beings is bodhicitta.
Isn’t bodhicitta of benefit to all?

If you want to look, look with bodhicitta.
If you want to eat, eat with bodhicitta.
If you want to speak, speak with bodhicitta.
If you want to examine, examine with bodhicitta.

If you desire happiness for transmigratory beings equaling the sky,
Then cherish bodhicitta.
If you desire to benefit transmigratory beings equaling the sky,
Then cherish bodhicitta.

Bodhicitta eliminates pain.
Bodhicitta destroys harm.
Bodhicitta eliminates unhappiness.
Bodhicitta dispels fear.

Colophon: Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, August 17, 2016, Black Mountains, North Carolina. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. Verses taken from Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhichitta by Khunu Rinpoche, Wisdom Publications, 1999.

Student: I encountered the Dharma six years ago, upon reading a book by Lama Yeshe. In the teachings, I knew I found my home. I began studying and practicing seriously two years ago, after becoming a volunteer at a FPMT Dharma Center. I am writing to request that I may be your disciple. In my mind and in my heart, you are the perfect teacher and guide. You embody the Dharma to perfection. I admire how you skillfully and completely benefit so many sentient beings, countless and of all kinds, through your perfect qualities, actions, teachings and prayers.

Rinpoche's response

My most dear one,
Thank you for your email, I understand what you are expressing and what you want. I am very sorry, I am not perfect as you say. I wish to be perfect, probably that will take eons for me to be perfect. Of course I am not perfect as you mentioned, but yes, I accept to help you.

A billion, zillion thanks from my heart to you for serving at the center. That is, as you know, to benefit sentient beings and the teachings of the Buddha. It is to benefit all sentient beings, not just people in __, but numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, numberless animals, human beings, suras, asura beings and numberless intermediate state beings, and to benefit the teachings of the Buddha. This is our main aim in life.

[The purpose of] the center is not only to free the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. So this contains the suffering of pain, which includes being under the control of karma and delusion, and the suffering of rebirth, old age, sickness and death and so forth. This includes the oceans of samsaric temporary pleasures , which look like pleasure, but in reality are suffering. For ordinary beings with a hallucinated mind it looks like pleasure, but it is only suffering.

That’s why however much you try to increase samsaric pleasure, for hours and days and weeks and years, it never really increases, but Dharma happiness increases up to realizations and you can complete it. Then there is the happiness of future lives;  that means until you are free from samsara’s bondage of delusion and karma. That can be for so many, so many numberless lives, or a billion, zillion eons, we can’t say, or it can be after one life, or it can also be in this life for some people.

Then to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, where the two sufferings—the suffering of change and the suffering of pain—come from. Then there is pervasive compounded suffering. If you don’t become free from that, then you don’t become free from the other two sufferings. This is the main suffering that Buddhists try to be free from and of course, to bring [all sentient beings] to the sorrowless state, to be free forever from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and then to bring them to peerless happiness—the total elimination of obscurations and completion of all the realizations, the state of omniscient mind.

I am attaching the Daily Meditation book. This is what you should do first thing in the morning when you wake up. 

With much love and prayers...

My dearest Robert,
I am extremely happy to receive your kind letter. Thank you very, very much. I enjoyed it so much. I am very happy that you are finally working for FPMT and for me; that you are serving the teachings of the Buddha, in order to free sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause—karma and delusion, the afflictive emotions —and to bring them to full enlightenment. That is so perfect.

You are asking about the center. Without Dharma, not one sentient being can be liberated totally from the root of samsara—the ignorance holding the I and everything as truly existent when it is not, it is totally empty of that. We need Dharma for all the delusions and afflictive emotions, and for action or karma. Dharma is the only way we can achieve ultimate happiness, the cessation of all the suffering and its causes, and especially, bring other sentient beings to full enlightenment.

There is nothing external that can do this—not even wish-granting jewels, which can only give external possessions and comfort. We are working so that sentient beings can meet the Dharma and practice, then achieve full enlightenment.

This is incredible, it gives us a lot of satisfaction and makes the life so meaningful, so beneficial for all sentient beings—for every insect we see outside; for every fly and every worm; for every snake that eats mice, frogs and so forth, and is eaten by eagles or garudas; for every person we meet or see on the road, in the restaurant, the hospital, everywhere; and even for the hell beings, hungry ghosts, suras and asuras, and so forth.

Billion of thanks and prayers...

Please always remember in running the center to keep the happiness of all sentient beings in your heart—especially the wish to bring them to full enlightenment on the basis of correctly devoting to the guru.

The work of the center is to serve sentient beings and the Buddha; this is what is most important for those working in our centers to always keep in their heart.

Most important is the practice of bodhicitta, serving all sentient beings as the master; to serve them. This is the bodhisattva attitude. Of course working at the center, and taking care, your kindness is like the limitless sky.

Sometimes people who are working at centers only think of the problems. Problems, problems, problems. Maybe it makes them feel sick. Their heart becomes very dry, very uninterested. [However,] if you know how to think, it’s really unbelievable. The highest merit is collected and there is the greatest purification by working for the center. Otherwise, you might think, “Oh, maybe I’ll go and work in the hospital, there’s much more merit from doing that.” You see, when you don’t think of Dharma, when you completely forget that the Dharma is the only way to really benefit sentient beings, to liberate them from suffering, then you start thinking things like, “Oh, maybe I’ll go and help in a children’s camp, that’s more beneficial.” People think like that.

This is a recent letter that I wrote that I thought would be helpful for others:

Thank you very, very much for working for the center, arranging facilities and so forth. The Dharma center is to benefit sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering – all the sufferings – and bring them to enlightenment. So you working for the center means that. You are working for every single animal, even the ants you see on the road and the birds that fly in the sky. You are working for every one of them, from the tiniest insect that you can see only through a machine to the largest ones in the oceans like the whales. There are so many animals living in the depths of the oceans. There are big ones that eat so many small ones and many small ones that eat the big ones. You are working for every single cow and sheep, for all the animals, for them to achieve liberation from samsara and full enlightenment, as well as for every single hell being, every single hungry ghost, every single human being – not only in that state, not only in that country, but every single human being in the universe, in all the universes – and every single sura and asura being. You are working for everybody, EVERYBODY, to bring them to full enlightenment.

People come to the center to meditate on bodhicitta and to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. You can’t imagine the benefit to everybody who comes to the center to do this, working to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. So the work can be hard, but can you see the benefit? Can you imagine the benefit? Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! The benefit to every living being! Can you imagine the benefit of working for the center?

For example, you work for the people coming to the center with the motivation of bodhicitta and they practice Dharma to benefit sentient beings. Can you imagine? Even by that? Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

With much love and prayer from crazy Lama Zopa. Getting crazier every second, ha ha!