2024 Losar Address, Excerpt

Losar tashi delek to you all! During this Losar, I want to emphasize—not only for myself but also to encourage the sangha—how to grow and manifest more universal love in our hearts. There is a quote from the sutra that says if you have the good mind and heart of universal love for all beings, then your path and all the stages of the path will be positive. This is something we could all work on to reap the benefits, personally and collectively as a sangha. 

Everyone wants to have a good heart, and we believe we do, since the intention to have a good heart comes from a good heart. This intention moves you inside to stretch and extend if need be and to act on it at any given time, whether toward someone in your surroundings who’s close to you or to the stranger at an intersection who’s struggling in life and needs a little money. To be able to offer that—or in any other ways you’re able to act on that instinct or empathetic impulse toward someone in need and struggling—is having a good heart. So many people have profoundly good hearts. 

In the Mahayana teachings, step by step, one can cultivate this as an ongoing practice, an ongoing experience, and as an ongoing quality of mind. The seed of the quality is there from the beginning, but how do we grow that quality within to become more prominent? We hear this from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama almost every day when we see him on social media. He emphasizes this as a heritage of Tibet, the Tibetan culture, and Tibetan Dharma. Since we are part of the Tibetan Dharma and the Tibetan noble lineage of developing sampa zangpo, or a good heart, I thought it could be something that we can really benefit from by trying to embrace it even more. Of course, we all practice ngöndro, and we spend time practicing bodhicitta in that section. But in life in general, we could do this as well and without distraction.

Four conditions are mentioned in the sutra for how one forms a habit, whether positive or negative, which is very profound to me, so I thought I’d share this. The first condition for forming a habit is to do something repeatedly. For example, we can try to make small gestures of goodwill toward one another and strangers, and to anything that we have a connection with and believe is positive. By making such small gestures every day, you form the habit of being connected to all the positivity that you feel inspired by and that moves and touches you. Especially with family members, friends, and sangha brothers and sisters who surround us, we often have a tendency to hesitate. We may feel that we can extend and stretch, and we want to, yet in the next minute, we hesitate because we don’t know how it will evolve. We’re not sure whether it will end up being helpful or not, and a lot of unforeseeable circumstances make us worried or anxious. Instead, if we could reach out without so much hesitation and extend ourselves when we feel that instinctive good heart, that is a great condition for forming a habit. Whatever other impediments there may be to extending and stretching out, express your goodwill and good heart. 

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama tells a story that emphasizes how we shouldn’t be caught up in not acting. In this story, several people are in a swimming pool, and one person is in a deck chair reading a newspaper. Suddenly, someone begins to drown. When the swimmers realize what’s happening, they rush over to save them. Then they look at the person who’s reading the newspaper and ask, “Why didn’t you do anything? Why are you still sitting there reading?” He tells them, “I didn’t have permission”—as if you must have the person’s permission to save them! When we don’t allow ourselves to fully develop our nature and good heart and to express that, that little bit of hesitation or awkwardness always comes up. But you can freely smile—you don’t need permission to smile. Like that, you don’t need permission to be helpful or to have goodwill and extend yourself a little where you could be of help rather than awkwardly staying in your comfort zone and not wanting to do anything about it. 

I make this request to you, and I am also thinking about how I could do that more myself. Of course, this is directed to all the people I love who are here and connected to me but also toward all the others in the world and in the universe. At least have a boundaryless goodwill and expression of that goodwill, or the aspiration for all to be happy and to enjoy the conditions of being happy. And if there is something I can actually do, even if it is just a small prayer, to do that with a full heart is my New Year’s or Losar aspiration. Changing or strengthening this habit is what I want most in my life.

The second condition for forming a habit is to do something intensively for a period of time, like intensively meditating on bodhicitta, particularly for the many billions of people on Earth. With all the animals and insects, there are countless numbers of beings on this very small planet. In comparison to the universe itself, realize how small this planet is. If we could feel that the countless beings, just like us, wish to be happy and long to be free from suffering, then we can try to achieve that every day and night. Dak zhen nyam pé sampa is seeing that you and others are not different but equal. Anyone who wants to have a universal good heart can acknowledge that just as they aspire to be happy and free from pain and suffering, so does every living being. Of course, you may have some strong, unconscious past habits, and the level of intense conditions may be so high that you lose your self-awareness. In general, if that happens, we must have a very strong sense of commitment to the view of not harming any beings. 

You want to treat others as you want to be treated, and beyond that, to be happy and to achieve a state of bliss. Make that kind of aspiration and longing if we can—not only for ourselves but for all living beings—because in a way, when it’s one versus a hundred, the hundred will be more important. And if you can help yourself to come out of your own self-attachment, you’ll acknowledge that you could not be more important than a hundred. Of course, when attachment is there, it’s very difficult to see beyond that attachment. By using reasoning and critical intelligence, sherab namjé, how could just one individual be more important than the masses? When everyone around you is happy and in a much better place than you alone, there’s no comparison.

Those who want to establish universal love and goodwill toward all beings believe in a much higher cause and meaning for life. To do whatever we do to serve that purpose, we must feel a deep sense of joy for engaging in the practice of loving-kindness and wishing others to be happy—“others” meaning every living being in the universe being happy and having the conditions of happiness, and that achievement of happiness is more important than your own happiness. Of course, you also want to be happy, but comparing the happiness of all living beings to your happiness, the happiness of all living beings will increasingly become more important. If we can focus intensively on just that and lose our small self in that bigger self, which is seeing all living beings as equal to you, in my mind, this is what really brings all of the great masters, from the Buddha onward, their happiness, peace, joy, and unconditional love for humanity and all living beings. Hence, they are buddhas and bodhisattvas, and we too can be bodhisattvas with that aspiration alone. As that aspiration becomes stronger and stronger inside you, cleaner and cleaner, you can very much aspire to become a bodhisattva in the modern world. So, the second condition to forming a habit is intensively contemplating the reasons and then meditating on those reasons. 

The third condition for forming a habit is having a counteragent. If we want to develop a positive habit, or a positive ongoing and intensive practice, we also must be mindful of the counteragent or the opposite, the obstacle. For example, the opposite mindset to the bigger self is the small self. I’m not suggesting that we can get rid of the small self altogether, but even for the small self, for the individual self, to be able to live well in the world, you need positive thinking. Positive thinking and dak nang, pure perception, are very similar. In the modern world and in the early days of Vajrayana, we sometimes felt that positive thinking was a little hard to explain, especially in the fruitional path. But as time goes by, more and more we hear of research being done by different groups from many parts of the world—psychologists, scientists, physicians—about how positive thinking is beneficial not only for our mental and physical health but for the general wellbeing of society and our relationship with the world and others. 

In whatever small world that you have manifested, to be positive and to think positively is beneficial to being a leader or a member of a harmonious community or society. Positive thinking is focusing on people’s positive qualities—despite our habit of being drawn to focus on their negative qualities, despite the environment, despite our own social circles that habitually focus on the negative. If we cannot change this automatic algorithm of our mind being negatively focused on one person’s negative qualities, then it will move on to another person’s negative qualities, and another person’s, and so on. If in a day, ten or fifteen people come to mind and we’re always thinking of them in a negative light, then even if we want to find one positive thing in them, we’ll have a hard time. This is the root cause of a lot of our suffering and disturbances in our minds. 

Even though pure perception may seem out of reach or a little fabricated, or only wanting to see one side and not the other, with the feeling of controlling your own mindset, perceptions, and emotions to be in a particular way—this is what the Dharma means. Dharma means elevating ourselves, changing our negative habits, our negative trends of mind that preoccupy our states, and transforming them. In this way, chö means trying to change the focus, change the perception, change the emotions, and therefore the realization from disturbed to joyful, to mutual respect, mutual admiration, and mutual friendship. 

This is what I have been working on with my students and with everyone—trying to have goodwill and positive relationships, and emphasizing seeing the positive qualities in students. But I can see how I can do much better, and that is my commitment to myself and to you all. I’m going to try my best to see the sangha, students, and everyone who is related to the Buddhadharma, along with everyone else, in that way. I can see how I can greatly benefit from that to make me able to let go much more deeply because I can feel inspired by others. I would suggest this for students as well—dak nang, positive thinking, seeing positive qualities, and knowing how to transform and change the negative qualities or things that pop up in one’s mind that bring one down. 

If we want to do this, and I think we all do, we should be able to do so. But whether one wants to or not is another question. It takes a long time to get to a point where you really feel sure about something. And until then, you could always delay the process, even though you know it’s the right thing, because you have not come to the point where you really feel a hundred percent that this is what you want, and this is what can benefit you. 

However, I hope that after so many years of practice and studies, we have in common that we want to improve our dak nang. Since I’m the teacher, perhaps I don’t have any right to say that students should have dak nang with me, but I certainly would like to increase my dak nang with you all and would like to make a commitment to do so. You all have immense positive qualities. Also, with the world and all of the good people in the world, instead of choosing to focus on the positive, I don’t want to fall into negative thinking, judgments, and feelings that this world is about to collapse or that everything is “going south.” That kind of thinking helps no one. Even if you think it’s critical intelligence, it helps no one. It keeps no one safe; it keeps no one from the disturbance that it stirs up inside. It keeps no one from losing the brightness in their eyes or their lighthearted, positive outlook on the world. It dims it, so why get caught up in that? I acknowledge that there is so much of a pull with all the changes in the world—geopolitical changes, wars, and so much instability. Everyone knows what’s happening in every corner of the world because of social media and technology, and they feel like they should feel negative and pessimistic rather than hopeful and cheerful, and projecting into the future a more joyful perspective of life. These are effects of the media, technology, and modernization. The very purpose of modernization and technology—the enhancement of people’s lives with better circumstances and more chances for everyone to do well—gets defeated. 

I see that we as Dharma practitioners, hopefully, can be examples in the world. Despite samsara being how samsara is, we still maintain the lotus-like attitude, not being tainted by the muddy water but floating above with wisdom and compassion. The wisdom here is dak nang, having pure perception and positive thinking, with compassion and empathy for people who are struggling in the world, and trying to uplift them rather than joining them. 

This brings me to the fourth condition for forming a habit, which is the availability of the field. If you are with someone who is irritating, you will get irritated all the time. Unless you do something from inside yourself, you will suffer. So, availability of the field means that the conditions around you provoke reactions inside you—how they make you think and feel, and how your mind deteriorates or how it becomes uplifted. The availability of the field in the modern world to go toward positive thinking and in a positive direction with universal love, kindness, and compassion as core values and having goodwill toward all is not there so much; we must create it among ourselves. If we fail to create or manifest such positive energy in our lives—and expect this changing world and changing conditions, with all the instability and power plays, all the ups and downs of the economy, and everything that happens in the world that’s constantly in our faces and that we are always being made aware of—we will suffer and lose a lot of time in confusion. 

However, despite the unsuitable outside conditions, we could create the conditions inside with our own view and our own will, with our own practice, and with our own determination—particularly with determination. If you spend one day being negative, be determined that by night, no matter how much you suffered for that day, tomorrow you will do that differently. You will change your mind, change your view, change your heart, and change your experience for the better. Being determined in that way, lo tak chöpa, means “being very decisive.” Then we can always have in the present that kind of strength of the practitioner’s mind that has been tested in the past. 

Overall, four conditions can change habits: doing something consistently; doing something intensively for a period of time; being aware of the counteragent, or if we want to develop a positive habit, knowing the opposite aspect of that and trying to minimize obstacles; and being aware of the field. Somebody recently said, “Yes it’s very important to think positively, but more importantly than that is not to think negatively first.” In that way, we have an independent field and don’t rely on an external field to feed us. We remain in this world like the lotus, not tainted by the muddy water but floating on it. Like that, we are beacons shining in samsara, bodhisattvas who have taken the bodhisattva vow to serve humanity while also having a deeply meaningful life and successfully understanding the nature of things, particularly the nature of one’s own self. 

This is what I feel inspired to work on, to make a commitment to, and to make progress in. I think there’s already been progress in all of us; it’s not new, not unfamiliar. But perhaps in this new year of the dragon, it will be in more abundance and more as a fruition. This is what I hope for myself, as well as for all of the sangha. With good health, ease, and relaxation in life, I hope that we all enjoy the Wood Dragon Year and that it may be a great year for all of us. Thank you very much.