Working at the Dharma Center

We can see how most fortunate we are, ourselves working for the center, all the members who are working for the center, no question. Then even the people coming to study. Of course we are even more fortunate, because [we are] working, causing sentient beings to meet Dharma: so what you're doing is more fortunate, the most important thing, to benefit sentient beings.

The most important thing is to benefit sentient beings. What they really need, what they want is happiness, what they don't want is suffering. What they do not like is suffering, but due to ignorance they constantly run, constantly keep busy creating suffering, due to ignorance. What they like is happiness, but they constantly destroy the cause of happiness, as the Bodhicaryavatara says. The nature of sentient being is like that, you see. They're afraid to learn the cause of happiness. Do you understand? They're afraid to learn the cause of happiness. They're afraid to learn Dharma. They're afraid to hear Dharma. They're afraid to learn the cause of happiness; that's what the reality is. They're afraid to learn the cause of happiness! They're afraid to come to know the cause of happiness. It's really amazing, wow.

Therefore this is the best offering, this is the best, every day what you're doing, working for sentient beings, thinking to free sentient beings from suffering, to cause them happiness, especially ultimate happiness, liberation and enlightenment. Everyday you're working for that, whatever you're doing, you're working for that. So that is exactly what bodhisattvas wish, what bodhisattvas like, what buddhas wish and like. So this is the best offering to them; this is the best offering. When you cherish sentient beings, this is the best offering to them. When you offer service to sentient beings, it's the best offering to buddhas and bodhisattvas. 

 Be careful, watch your behavior with other people, be kind.

Offering food to students at the center is a way of collecting unbelievable merit, because students are the pores of the guru. Disciples of the same guru collect more merit from offering food to fellow disciples than from offering to the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and numberless statues and stupas. People don't think of this, they think only of offering food in monasteries, but you can collect merit this way, too.

Whenever you meet students with the same guru, if you offer things to them with the recognition that they are the guru's pores, as they have the same guru, then even if you offer chocolate, water, money, anything, that is an unbelievable way to collect merit. If you offer to many Sanghas who have the same Guru, then you are making offerings to that many pores of the guru. This is the easiest way to collect skies of merit through offering. By offering even just one candy, flower, or grain of rice to a statue of Buddha or even a visualized Buddha, you collect skies of merit, but offering to students in this way is much more powerful than offering to the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), as well as all the statues, stupas, and scriptures existing in all directions. These benefits should be understood, so that when you make offerings to the guru's pores, you think correctly. This is the best business.

Sometimes centers don't have much money, but if the director knows Dharma, he or she can very skillfully create merit without needing much money. When you meet people and support people, you also collect merit, which means that you can achieve enlightenment, and support one's own and others’ happiness. If organizers at centers are not skillful and wise, knowing how to take care of people, then even having a geshe teaching Dharma may not be enough. Developing the center doesn't only depend on the teacher, but on how you look after people. People can be made to feel welcome so they are attracted to come to the center, or not. So, we must pay attention to this.

The essential thing is to make people happy, and serve them well. This helps to build up the center, and to get material support very easily, without pushing. The purpose, of course, is to have more facilities, because then the center has more ability to spread the Dharma, and can offer more comfort, so more people can enjoy receiving the Dharma, and you can benefit them more, liberating them from oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to enlightenment.

You need to be aware of so many things. However, the key thing is to know how to take care of people. You must cherish every person who comes to the center, feel that they are so precious, and take care of them. Respect naturally comes from that, then caring, and the person is so delighted.

There are so many opportunities to collect merit for the center if you know the Dharma. Even just offering a bowl of water or cup of tea to a person who is a student or disciple of the same guru collects so much merit.

This is one way to build up the center. Think big. This is a bodhisattva's skillful means to benefit sentient beings.

Hello My Dear Students,
Your life goal is to achieve enlightenment and to liberate all sentient beings from the ocean of samsara and bring them to full enlightenment. Because of that, life becomes most beneficial. “All sentient beings” means also for yourself.

I’m very happy that your hearts are open to looking for a new path, new happiness, Dharma happiness, especially for ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, and full enlightenment.

You must know that the life you have achieved this time is extremely difficult to get again and again. Even to receive it just once is extremely difficult. We make prayers to achieve this perfect human body that is qualified with the eight freedoms and ten richnesses. We have made so many prayers for this. We lived in pure morality in the past and have practiced charity to achieve this perfect rebirth. We created those causes, as well as lived in pure morality, which is very difficult. We have done this, which is miraculous. It does not last forever and can end at any time. Therefore, we must practice Dharma right away, because we don’t want suffering, only happiness, and because our main goal is to enlighten all sentient beings. We have miraculously met Tibetan Buddhism at this time. This Tibetan Buddhism is Mahayana. This has Hinayana teachings to achieve liberation from samsara, and the Mahayana purpose to get enlightened for all sentient beings. Tantra is also included, not Hindu tantra, but Buddhist tantra, to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime. With highest yoga tantra you can achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of these degenerate times.

Tibetan Buddhism is complete; it is what the Buddha taught. You can see now how it is a miracle of miracles that we have met Tibetan Buddhism, which includes all the teachings and the path. All of you are most fortunate beings.

Your teacher, Geshe-la, is a great teacher, who has studied well, so you have all the conditions and a teacher who can explain well.

Deeply from my heart, with my palms together, I sincerely request all of you to please study and meditate as much as you can. Don’t only study for intellectual understanding, but, as much as you possibly can, study to put the Dharma into practice in your daily life.

The heart of the Dharma is bodhicitta, so your attitude should become that. Dedicate whatever you are doing, put effort into whatever you are doing, for all sentient beings. That includes friends, enemies, and strangers. By studying the lamrim you will understand how to do that. That is the most important thing. You can do some meditation on emptiness every day. Read the part of the lamrim on guru devotion. Read, study, and meditate every day on those outlines until you have some stable realizations of seeing the Guru as Buddha.

The very last piece of advice is: Don’t think "I’m going to live for many years," following the concept of permanence. This life is like last night’s dream, very short, or like lightning in the sky—it appears while it is leaving. Therefore, put all your effort into Dharma, as I mentioned before.

You will encounter problems. At that time, use bodhicitta, emptiness and patience. When you encounter problems, apply Dharma to bring peace in your heart and the heart of the other person. Sometimes there is no peace, but your methods can bring ultimate peace to that person, and to your heart and mind.

In “Universal Education, Essential Wisdom” (Essential Education, Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom), I gave very very basic advice that the important practice to apply to bring peace to all sentient beings, even animals, is to practice kindness, not only to human beings, but to animals, day and night; all of the time, practice kindness. From this, your life, your heart, is always in peace, day and night, under any circumstances, during difficult times, or during easy times. The result from one positive action, one kindness to one sentient being, brings happiness in 100,000 lifetimes.

At the study group, you are practicing kindness all of the time. You can imagine how you will have unbelievable peace and happiness all of the time, in this life and future lives, from your compassion and loving kindness. Right away, every day, you make so many people happy, as the days, weeks, and months pass, wherever you travel, wherever you live.

Whenever you see good things happen to others, think how wonderful it is that they have this happiness, this success. If somebody has a beautiful house, car, family, or friend, you rejoice. When somebody makes a great profit in business, you rejoice. Basically, this person has great happiness, and you think how wonderful it is. If the person has a great education, more understanding of the Dharma, practices more, or has a beautiful body, you rejoice.

This doesn't directly use karma, but by practicing kindness to others and rejoicing, you collect merit like limitless skies. Rejoicing is the easiest way to collect merit. You collect all the merits. You are always creating the cause of happiness. You are making your life meaningful all the time. You are making your life beneficial for yourself and all sentient beings. Whenever people see you or remember you, there is always happiness. When they see you their minds are always happy.

When you rejoice for somebody whose level of mind is lower than yours, you collect double the merit. If they are the same level as you, you get the same merit. If they are at a higher level of mind, you get half the merit. For example, if one who doesn’t have the realization of bodhicitta rejoices in one day of a bodhisattva’s merit, that person collects half the merit of what that bodhisattva collects in one day. I am talking about how much merit you collect. Without rejoicing, it takes 23,000 years. When you rejoice, you collect that merit in one second, so you can see how rejoicing is the easiest way in life to collect extensive merit.

Now you can rejoice in one bodhisattva’s merits. It is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. Bodhisattvas are not just one but numberless, so the amount of merit you collect could make you faint. There are numberless bodhisattvas and sentient beings, so you can just imagine how much merit you collect.

As it says in the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, by renouncing attachment and desire, it becomes very pure Dharma. Each time you practice that, it becomes very pure Dharma. Any time you renounce delusion, it becomes pure Dharma. Any time you go against attachment and desire, it becomes pure Dharma, as attachment and desire only lead to suffering. There are so many people in the world, so much suffering in organizations, countries, etc. through following desire and not practicing contentment. There are so many people engaged in illegal things who end up in prison. They have to suffer a lot and make many people unhappy. They get killed and punished. Renouncing attachment and desire is one method to bring peace and happiness into your life, into your heart, to create inner peace.

When somebody harms you, forgive him or her. Immediately the other person receives so much peace and happiness and you also receive much peace and happiness. Most people get angry and want to get back at the person, and they do the opposite and give harm back to the person. As a result, the person’s family members and friends will harm you. You will be harmed by that person 500 times, not necessarily when you are in a human body. From that negative karma, from harming that person, you experience getting harmed or killed by that person 500 times. It makes you suffer on and on without end. There is the one complete negative karma that has four aspects:

1) The base, 2) thought, 3) action, and 4) goal.

When all of these are complete, you can receive four suffering results:

1) The ripening aspect result— rebirth in the lower realms for many billions of years.

There are three suffering results in the human realm:

1) The result similar to the cause—being killed by others.

2) The possessed result, concerned with the place. Whatever view you hold is bad, the appearances you see are bad, and you live in a very dusty place. Medicines and food become harmful to you and can cause harm, sickness, and death

3) Creating the result similar to the cause—you kill again because of the past imprint of killing, and you engage again and again in that negative karma.

You can see how one negative karma today results in so much suffering. It can make you faint. If you think about it, you have created so much negative karma today with your body, speech, and mind, this week, month, and year. From birth and from beginningless rebirths, you have created karma which has not been purified, not finished by experiencing it. If you really think well, you can’t stand having one negative karma near you. You can see how forgiveness is incredible. It stops you from harming others and others from harming you with their body, speech, and mind. Also, so many people, friends, family, and so forth, who are all connected to you, don’t engage in negative karmas because of you.

The next point is, if you do some harm, make some mistake, immediately apologize so it doesn’t make the person angry with you, make him or her angry or suffer. If you say sorry immediately, the person doesn’t become angry, and it brings a release. If you can practice like this, it’s unbelievable.

Do not get angry. Have peace in your heart. If you practice like this, with patience, you give happiness to all sentient beings, not only your family, but people at work too, not only in this country or this world, but after this life, to all sentient beings. In this world, there are many people who killed many millions of people, like Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, and many others.
If possible, you can recite daily one lamrim prayer, like The Foundation of All Good Qualities, The Three Principal Aspects of the Path, and The Gradual Path to Enlightenment. Each time you recite one of these lamrim prayers it leaves a positive imprint in the mind.

Another prayer you can recite is the lamrim prayer that is contained at the end of your deity’s long sadhana, which contains all the stages of the path, of the common and tantric paths. When you do that, it plants the seed of the quickest path to enlightenment. It makes one closer to liberation and enlightenment.

This is my very brief essential advice to you about how to make your life most beneficial so you have no regrets now or in the future, only bliss and happiness. Your life only goes up, not down, because you understand guru devotion, correctly devoting to the virtuous friend without mistakes, and developing bodhicitta, the ultimate good heart.

Much love and prayers to all of you who are coming now and who are coming in the future.

Serving others, taking care of others with a good heart, with love and compassion, is the best life. Especially here, your service in looking after others is very important because the people coming here are trying to meditate, to practice Dharma, and trying to liberate themselves from samsara and to achieve enlightenment. Even though you are not actually teaching Dharma, your contribution is similar, since you are helping them get out of samsara and helping them achieve enlightenment.  

Dear one,
Thank you for your letter. I have heard your thoughts and your situation, and also your background. In essence, what I want to say is that the center has limited finances. It can’t feed the whole world. That is the background of the center. In the world, there are so many people who need help: homeless, hungry people, etc. People think only of this world, but there are numberless worlds. I heard there are volunteers who do their work as agreed and do get pocket money. So, I would like to request humbly of you: it is very important for you to take responsibility and fulfill the offer of service to the center, to sentient beings, and to Buddha's teachings. The center is there to provide what is needed to educate sentient beings in Dharma, liberate them from samsara, and bring them to full enlightenment.

Please think many times during the day: “The purpose of my life is to free others from suffering; I'm here to serve others. All sentient beings are the source of my realizations and enlightenment. They are very kind, most kind.”

There are different ways to meditate on this. An extensive way is to think that all your happiness of the three times come from your good karma. Your good karma is something you have been able to generate due to the teachings of the Buddha. Buddhas comes from bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas come from bodhicitta. Bodhicitta comes from the existence of obscured suffering sentient beings.

With much love and prayer, and please, with this positive mind, please enjoy your life at the center.

I want to say hello to everyone. I pay my homage to Khensur Rinpoche, who is the principal holder of the entire Buddha Dharma and propagator of the Buddha Dharma from where sentient beings receive all their happiness and peace, as well as to the presiding teacher, Geshe Petse [Pema Tsering], Tenzin-la, taking care of Khensur Rinpoche, and to everyone helping out. To all Sangha I pay homage, give thanks, and offer my greetings.

I offer my greetings and thanks equaling the number of atoms of this Earth to the present director of the centre and all other organizers, all previous directors, and I would also like to thank those who have dedicated themselves and offered sincere service to continue to develop the center.

Up until now, spiritually, and with the present facilities, how far the conditions for ourselves and other sentient beings to practice Dharma, to develop the mind in the path to enlightenment, have been developed has depended on the kindness and offerings of all the previous organizers and directors. So, I would like to thank everyone and all those people who benefit, help, and put time and energy into teaching the program at the center, making the center beneficial, and who are able to spread the Buddha Dharma.

So, I’d like to take the opportunity today, this 21st birthday anniversary, to thank everyone and all the students, who due to the most precious opportunity can hear Dharma from Khensur Rinpoche and Geshe Petse, the present teacher.

You understand how such a Dharma center is so important. You can see more and more how much of an emergency it is to have such a center, especially regarding the present situation, because it shows the whole unmistaken path to liberation and happiness, the unmistaken cause of happiness and of the path to liberation, the unmistaken cause to the path to great liberation, full enlightenment, in other words, how to get out of suffering. What is the cause of suffering, how to get rid of that, is never explained and taught in schools, colleges, or universities.

Some universities which have a Buddhist philosopher on their staff may have some intellectual study, but these things are normally missing. Not only are these things missing in the world in these places of education but the most important, practical thing that is missing is the education of a good heart—compassion. That is why there is so much violence in schools. Then, families do not know what to do with their children. They find they have great difficulties with their children. So, this is missing. Parents guiding their children is also missing. Including in the United States, very young children kill many people; you have seen it happen in recent times. There is so much violence happening, in many countries—Columbia and so forth. There is so much violence among young people.

Why is there so much killing and war, even among religious people? It is because of a lack of this practice, this education of a good heart. The real religion, the real spiritual practice, is missing from education. They never talk about it, use the words, even in conversations. I am very surprised about this, after all the disasters and trouble that have happened in the United States, only this year. I was watching TV recently, and President Bush mentioned “compassion” six or seven times in a lecture. That is the first time I have heard it mentioned. There has been a lot of discussion for a long time over whether people should have guns or not in the United States. There are so many killings, and there has been a lot of discussion about it, but they cannot decide. But there is one solution, which is pacifying the mind, taking care of the mind, and guarding the mind. If you guard the mind then you don’t need guns. You don’t harm others and you don’t receive harm from others—shootings, atomic bombs, whatever, you don’t receive all this harm. So guarding the mind, the root, is never mentioned, and compassion is never talked about, never brought up in this discussion on whether to allow guns in the country or not. That clearly shows that people don’t think about it, because that education is not given in schools and colleges, even though this is the most important thing for world peace.

What can bring peace and happiness in the world generally, to all the different religions? It is compassion—loving kindness. You can only control weapons for a short time. Even if you are able to defeat your enemies it is only for a short time, but sooner or later you will be attacked by them, if not in this life then in the next life because the karma has been created and not purified.

So, compassion is the only answer for world peace, for young and for old, to bring peace and unity among religions. There is one thing—a good heart. The essence of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, and the essence of Buddhism, is do not harm any sentient being. What differentiates Buddhism from other religions is compassion toward not only all kinds of human beings, poor and rich, friend, stranger, and enemy, but compassion to everyone, to every animal, insect, pig, fish, all sentient beings, whose minds are obscured and are suffering—so, compassion for everyone.

On top of that is not harming others and offering benefit. In the Mahayana path, there are the bodhisattva’s deeds, living with bodhicitta, the bodhisattva’s path, how to achieve enlightenment to offer extensive benefit to sentient beings, then teaching tantra, how to do that quickly—to liberate countless beings from the cause of suffering and bring them happiness, especially full enlightenment—as taught by the Buddha.

The essence of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, at the Dharma center, is compassion. The existence of the center becomes a solution, offering this education, lots of practice, and a good heart. This is the real solution for cultivation of world peace and peace and happiness for all sentient beings.

Somebody comes to the center for one or two days for a course and hears about karma—if you harm others there is a consequence, result—due to the nature of the action you receive harm back. However, the other sentient being also wants happiness, and does not want suffering, like you. If you benefit others then the karmic result is that all your holy wishes are fulfilled. The person sees how other sentient beings are so precious and kind, how we receive all our happiness from others. From coming to your center for one or two days’ teaching, even a one-day teaching—with this as the main emphasis— that person stops killing other beings, fishing, and harming others. Then an uncountable number of sentient beings—insects, fish, worms—don’t receive harm from this person. All these countless other beings receive peace and happiness from this person. This comes from the center.

Over the years, so many sentient beings come to the Dharma center. Just from one person coming, so many sentient beings have peace and happiness. If this one person practices compassion, stops giving harm to others, makes a vow and tries to do that, countless sentient beings don’t receive harm from this person. This is the benefit to sentient beings. All the sentient beings receive benefit from this one person due to the center. That is your benefit. It comes from the director, from the secretary, from the teachers and translator, and from the whole community.

The center plays a most important role in world peace. This is our offering service. You are offering service to the center, trying to develop the center, to have teachings and office facilities so that more sentient beings can have contact with the Dharma. This is so important, urgent, an emergency, billions of times more urgent than an emergency at a hospital. You can see the incredible benefit to sentient beings.

There is certainly no question that the center liberates sentient beings from the lower realms and brings them to liberation, free from samsara and all the oceans of samsaric suffering. It also brings them to peerless happiness and enlightenment.

So, those are the general benefits of working for sentient beings and working for the center. You can see how incredible it is. I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for all your great service and dedication. Everyone, thank you so much. This is my way of saying happy birthday to the center. I hope to see you soon and I will pray for everyone, for all of you, to have a meaningful life. Thank you very much.