May bodhicitta, precious and sublime, arise where it has not yet come to be. Where it has arisen may it never fail, but grow and flourish more and more.
Unbroken lineages of wisdom traditions are rare in these times, and Kongtrul Rinpoche descends from a pure lineage of the Dzogpa Chenpo Longchen Nyingtik tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
We have two main study and practice centers in America: Phuntsok Choling in Colorado and Pema Osel in Vermont. Rinpoche teaches the core MSB programs at these two centers. In addition, MSB has several city centers or groups around the world where people gather for group meditation and study, and to listen to the LINK teachings together.
Browse to any of the calendars to find out more about the teaching schedules of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Dungse Jampal Norbu, or Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. View the upcoming events at Phuntsok Choling, Pema Osel, or find out who is giving the next LINK talk.
MSB is a part of the Longchen Nyingtik and Khyen-Kong-Chok-Sum lineages. (Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, and Terton Chokgyur Lingpa, collectively known as Khyen-Kong-Chok-Sum, were the heart of the Rimé, or nonsectarian, movement, which did so much to preserve and harmonize all schools of Tibetan Buddhism in the nineteenth century.)
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As human beings we have emotions. Obviously, we can’t live our life without emotions. We enjoy them! We ought to keep emotions in our diet. But if we do not have a way to limit our unhealthy emotions, they can take over our whole mental state.
We can’t just throw away our unhealthy emotions suddenly, any more than we can change our eating habits right away. But we can go on a diet and gradually change our habits.
By gradually changing our eating habits, our food can begin to nourish our body, instead of contributing to our poor health. Similarly, giving up our unhealthy emotions may be a process that will take some time to show results in our mental well-being. And similar to dieting, it is not a one-time attempt, where either you succeed or fail. You will have to try again and again. So do not be too hard or too strict with yourself.
What are the unhealthy emotions? There are traditionally five negative emotions, and of these, passion, aggression and ignorance are supposed to be the most unhealthy.
Let’s start with passion. Passion is a general term, and everybody wants to have some passion in their life. If you suggest that someone live a life without passion, they would most likely turn and walk away. But in the teachings, the Buddha spoke about passions and desires being the cause of a lot of the suffering, pain, and struggles in our life. Maybe he was not speaking about general passion here, but those passions and desires that are not really helpful to us.
If we just sit down and get our mind clear, we can see that we actually have a lot of desires—hundreds and thousands of them—that just come up. And we are constantly reacting to them. We respond to those desires even though, if given the chance to have a second thought, we might see that we do not really care about fulfilling them. In fact, if we had a second chance, we might decide not to fulfill some desires because we would see how they actually create tremendous pain and complications in our lives.
Let’s consider credit card debt. When the time comes to pay the credit card bills at the end of each month, often we end up regretting some of those purchases, thinking, “Why did I buy that? I didn’t need it at all, but I got it anyway!”
All of those things that we bought arose from our desire, and when we impulsively purchased them, we did not allow the chance for a second thought before we let our habit completely take over. And then all of a sudden, we find that we’ve run up debts which we will probably be worrying about for years to come.
So, if we continue in this way, responding to desires without a second thought, we can see how we create so much stress in our life and how we’ll be working for a long time to clear those things up.
So instead of constantly creating all these complications for ourselves, next time we are about to get out the credit card, consider instead walking out of the store, taking a stroll around the block and allow some space in which to have a second thought.
As human beings, habits control our life. In order to have some control over those habits, first we must be able to create some space to restrain ourselves, rather than acting instantly as each desire comes up.
It only takes a few second, but it takes a mind willing to just check and see, “Do I really need this, do I even want this?” It could be as simple as that. But if you never think of doing that, of interrupting the momentum of desire, you just go with the first impulse each time.
Even though going with the first thought may be good in some cases, such as writing poetry, in the case of unhealthy desires, it often produces the effect of not having any control over your life at all.
So if we actually look, we all have a lot of unhealthy desires that arise as habits and occupy our mind much of the time.
The idea of being rich exists in a lot of people’s minds. We think how wonderful it would be if we had a lot of money. And it’s true it may be wonderful if we had a lot of money. But at the same time, if you don’t have it and continue to feel poverty in your mind all the time, then you’ll always miss the richness that is naturally around us.
The sun, the wind, the snow, the mountains, the trees, the lakes, even the clouds and the rain – all of these produce a richness in our lives, whether you have money or not. Everyone has access to that. Also, almost everyone has a place to stay and food to eat. There is a saying in Tibetan: what is wealth for if it is not for clothing and feeding yourself? You can’t wear double or triple clothes, and you can’t feed yourself more than your stomach can take. In that sense we are all equally as rich as millionaires, so we can feel content. Contentment is said to be the greatest wealth of all.
The great scholar Nagarjuna said that the pain caused by wealth comes from “the need to increase it, the need to protect it, and the fear of losing it.” He thought that wealth was actually the most unpleasant thing to have in the world. Some people can actually be much lighter and happier without money and others may work very hard to earn it, but at the same time produce a great deal of unhappiness for others.
So we can always work on a greater level of feeling richness and contentment within ourselves, but in order to do that we have to be ready to let go of some of our desires. We cannot afford to remain stuck.
Let’s say you have the desire to get a new car and that desire is very strong. You have to be able to let go of that desire, otherwise you will never be able to be happy unless you get a new car.
So if you can reflect on your desires in this way, and give yourself a second chance to think before you actually act on them, you will gain more control of your mind. And as you gain control, you also gain more power—in your mind and then in your life.
So the way to work for happiness and joy in one’s life is not to, “go for it” on the outside; it’s more about “going for it” on the inside.
And “going for it” on the inside means reducing or dieting away our unhealthy desires, beginning with all the desire that television has created in our minds with all the imaginary richness and glamour that is displayed.
Today, television seems to be the tutor of people’s desire; it sets a precedent. We should remember that what we see has an effect on us, so we have to be careful.
Our unhealthy desires make us feel a lot of poverty in our life, along with feelings of failure and also jealousy. So reflect on this advice as a way to begin dieting away unhealthy desires.
Give yourself a second chance to consider your desires before acting on them, not for the sake of being “good”, but just as an intelligent living being.
Allow space for your mind and intelligence to reflect upon the desire and what that desire means for you. Then you will actually be relating to your mind, and in many cases you will realize you don’t need to fulfill many of your desires. And when you let go in this way, other desires will likely come up, so examine and then let go of those as well.
There will be many other unhealthy emotions that come up, but start with desire. All the other unhealthy emotions are connected to desire. Jealousy arises out of desire. Anger arises out of desire. Pride and ignorance arise out of desire. Desire is the root of unhealthy emotions in this way. So when we work with desire, we can be assured that we’re working with other emotions as well.
By gradually dieting our unhealthy emotions away, there will come a point when we are content as human beings just living in the present moment and content with however our life is. But this all has to start somewhere, and it has to start from where we are now and how our mind is right now.
Edited and excerpted from Personal Link # 38
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