Already numberless sentient beings, not only Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, have become enlightened. They were the same as us; they all had delusions, difficulties, problems, but they continuously put effort into developing their mind in the path from life to life, just as the Buddha had for eons.
We should plan in the same way, instead of thinking that by doing some meditation we will achieve enlightenment within a few years. Or after a one-month meditation course, we will become enlightened! At the end of his teachings to Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama specifically often advises Western students that we shouldn’t be shortsighted, thinking that we will achieve enlightenment after practicing for a very short time. We shouldn’t think like that; we must plan for many hundreds of lifetimes. I don’t remember what he said word-for-word, but it is something like if we plan to practice Dharma for a long time, if we put effort in for a long time, then it is possible to achieve enlightenment in a short time, without taking much time. But if we don’t have a plan like that, if we are shortsighted, thinking it is very easy and quick to have realizations and achieve enlightenment, that becomes an obstacle. When we can’t, we get disappointed and we give up. This is more or less what His Holiness said.
Therefore, as Geshe Sopa explained, if the rock is heavy but we push it up little by little, by continuing every day, after some time we will be able to reach the top of the hill.
Having this precious human life is like having a well-rigged ship on which to sail across the ocean to an island of treasures. As Shantideva says in The Way of the Bodhisattva:
Cross the sea of emotions
On the boat of human existence.
You have not obtained this precious human existence just by chance. It is the result of having heard the Buddha’s name in a past life, having taken refuge in him, accumulated virtuous actions, and of having developed some wisdom. There is no certainty that you will obtain this vessel again.
If you fail to practice the Dharma in this life, it is certain that you will not obtain a human existence in the next life. To neglect such an opportunity would therefore be very foolish. Do not waste it. Practice day and night.
– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book “The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva”
The first prerequisite: Shut up. Be quiet. Stop debating. Stop arguing. Stop trying to prove a point. Even if someone knows something that you don’t, whether they share it with you or not, makes no difference, for you have to come up with your own truth. There’s really no one in this universe that can hand you realization on a silver platter.
Number two: You have to let go. You have to let go so completely that it becomes scary. You have to totally let go mentally. You have to stop depending on a person, place or thing for your self-worth. You have to start depending on the infinite invisible, on what you cannot see, taste, touch, or smell or feel.
Number three: You must look at the world but never react to anything. You must watch your feelings and your emotions, observe them, and as they come into contact with you, you must become the witness, realizing that you are not those emotions. You are not your bad temper. You are not the depression. You are nothing that goes on in this world.
Number four: You must develop a tremendous humility, a stupendous humility. This is more important than anything else. If someone tells you something that you don’t like to hear you do not become upset. You do not hold it in. You let it go through you and it dissipates, for it has no energy except the energy you give it. You are responsible for yourself. If you fool yourself you’re just going to get disgusted in the end and give up all spiritual life, for you’ll say you’ve gotten nowhere, nothing has happened, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t exist. I suppose this is the reason I am with you. To tell you, “Yes, there is an invisible realm of perfection beyond this world, interpenetrating this world, that makes this world look like kindergarten.” Yet you must be able to see it yourself.
Number five: You have to want it so much that you don’t want it. You have to have such a strong desire to be free that all desire stops. When all desire stops there is a quietness, a stillness, that takes place within you. It is only when this stillness, this quietness, comes when you’re able to see clearly, not with your physical eyes, but with your spiritual eye, not with your little I, not with the I-thought, but with the I-am. And you will see in all directions. You will see up, you will see down, you will see sideways, you will see backwards. The only thing you will see is total perfection which is another name for pure awareness. You have to take this thing seriously and you’re not to be serious about this thing at all. You have to reject everything yet you also have to accept everything. You have to surrender and you have to realize that you are the Self.
There is something inside of you that knows how to do all this. You can help by becoming quiet, by becoming still, by not making a lot of noise, not making a big commotion. Let the world do what it will, yet you become silent and peaceful, compassionate, and have humility. Just watch, look, observe, and quiet the mind. Be still and know that I am God.
—Robert Adams, excerpt taken from “T107: The Invisible World (The Five Prerequisites)” of “Just the Satsangs – version 1”
Although the spiritual journey is a kind of homecoming, it is still indispensable to continue on the path in the first place.
We cannot say that, since our authentic state is the enlightened mind of luminous happiness, we do not need to embark on any kind of spiritual journey. We can’t afford to think we’re already there. Although our original state of being is the same as the Buddhas, we are not yet Buddhas. We are deluded sentient beings and our minds are filled with contamination and obscenity.
In fact, due to the density of our darkenings, we are not even able to get an occasional glimpse of our original state.
There must be no doubt that we categorically need to engage ourselves in some kind of spiritual practice that is genuine and effective and can be systematically used to illuminate the darkness of our ignorance.
The one thing which we take with us everywhere in life and, from a Buddhist perspective, we also take with us after death, is our mind. Now we make tremendous efforts with our bodies: we exercise, we eat all the right foods, we take the right kind of supplements, and we are very body-conscious nowadays. And we are also very house-proud: we take care of where we live, we keep it nicely cleaned, we keep it furnished and we spend a lot of time on the decoration. But how much time and effort do we take into cleaning and purifying and decorating the one thing which we have with us the whole time, which is our mind?
Aggression is an obstacle to visual dharma, to hearing and the other sense perceptions, and to understanding reality in its fullest sense. To overcome aggression, some kind of fundamental discipline seems to be absolutely important and necessary. Without any actual practice of sitting meditation to enable us to make friends with ourselves, nothing can be heard or seen to its fullest extent; nothing can be perceived as we would like to perceive it. But slowly and naturally, through our discipline, we gradually begin to branch out into the real world.
We tend to seek an easy and painless answer. But this kind of solution does not apply to the spiritual path, which many of us should not have begun at all. Once we commit ourselves to the spiritual path, it is very painful and we are in for it. We have committed ourselves to the pain of exposing ourselves, of taking off our clothes, our skin, nerves, heart, and brains, until we are exposed to the universe. Nothing will be left. It will be terrible, excruciating, but that is the way it is.
Someone asked me recently if I am afraid to die. Truthfully, I am more afraid of not living my life fully — of living a life dedicated to cherishing and protecting myself. This fear-driven approach to life is like covering your couch in plastic so it won’t get worn. It robs you of the ability to enjoy and appreciate your life. It takes courage to accept life fully, to say yes to our life, yes to our karma, yes to our mind, emotions, and whatever else unfolds. This is the beginning of courage. Courage is the fundamental openness to face even the hardest truths. It makes room for all the pain, joy, irony, and mystery that life provides.
– Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
from the book “It’s Up to You: The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path”
A story is told about Ananda, the Buddha’s personal attendant, who had the desire to engage in a long period of fasting. He began to grow feeble and weak; he couldn’t sit and meditate, so finally the Buddha told him, “Ananda, if there is no food, there is no body. If there is no body, there is no dharma. If there is no dharma, there is no enlightenment. Therefore go back and eat.” That is the basic logic of the Buddhist teachings and of Buddhist psychology. We can actually be decent and sane on the spot, not through extreme measures but by managing our life properly, and thereby cultivating Maitri, gentleness, and friendliness to yourself.
There is no one to feel small, no one to be made small, no one to feel superior, no one toward whom you could feel superior. Who are you to feel vain and proud when your very source is All Being?
I cannot stress enough to you the absolute importance of sticking to your practice no matter what. No adjustment is required; no calculation is needed.
I went through the same thing that you are going through now, so I can tell you from personal experience what you must do:
You must give your life to this, and refuse to let anything — any thoughts, ideas, attitudes — get in your way. Your ‘yes’ must be open. Your resolve must be like steel. Even though some people seem to be blessed and joyous, that doesn’t mean that they have true peace of mind, or that you would have true peace of mind in those circumstances, not deeply, not really. So ask yourself: Are you really going to be all right, no matter what?
Your time of awakening will come. No one is hopeless. Life is not mean. No one is left out. There is no one who is more or less Buddha than any other. True nature is never lost, never hidden from you. It only seems that you have to go looking for it.
Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.
You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts. Embracing the totality of your experience is one definition of having loving-kindness for yourself. Loving-kindness does not mean making sure you’re feeling good all the time – trying to set up your life so that you’re comfortable every moment. Rather, it means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty. In this way, you become more attuned to seeing when you’re biting the hook, when you’re getting caught in the undertow of emotions, when you’re grasping and when you’re letting go. This is the way you become a true friend to yourself just as you are, with both your laziness and your bravery. There is no step more important than this.
– Pema Chödron
from the book “Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change”
All the teachings of the victorious ones, all the different kinds of teachings given by the Buddha – if we condense them into one point, it is that they are the methods to tame your own mind. They bring peace to a mind that is not peaceful. They clear away the confusion, or bewilderment, in your own mind.
– Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche
from the book “Creation and Completion: Essential Points of Tantric Meditation”
“Whether our action is wholesome or unwholesome depends on whether that action or deed arises from a disciplined or undisciplined state of mind. It is felt that a disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact it is said that bringing about discipline within one’s mind is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.”
You will have great difficulty practicing Zen if you regret leaving behind worldly study and pride or if you are attached to some special talent. So, you should return to being a blank page.
If you can pay the price of a very restrictive practice, you will get great freedom.
In the old days there used to be people who would suddenly forget about life and death with just one word from a Zen teacher. Also, there were many people who got enlightenment after three or seven days of practice. However, people these days have very little patience and practice Zen as a sideline. Because of this, people who have practiced for even twenty or thirty years still have not attained Buddhism’s great meaning.
When you eat rice yourself, you feel full. If you don’t practice Zen yourself, even the Buddha and eminent teachers cannot help you.
If you want to practice Zen, first win the battle of the six senses.
The quintessence of the path is to have the wisdom that realizes egolessness. Until we have this wisdom, we have not understood the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.
In order to achieve this wisdom, first we have to make our mind malleable, workable—in the sense of being in control of our own mind. As Shantideva said, if you want to walk comfortably, there are two possible solutions. Either you can try to cover the whole ground with leather—but that would be very difficult—or you can achieve the same effect by simply wearing a pair of shoes. In the same way, it would be difficult to train and tame every single emotion that we have, or to change the world according to our desires. In fact the basis of all experience is the mind, and that’s why Buddhists stress the importance of training the mind in order to make it workable and flexible.
Yet a flexible mind is not enough. We have to understand the nature of the mind. This is very difficult to do, precisely because it involves the wisdom of realizing egolessness. We have been in samsara from beginningless time. Our habitual patterns are very strong. We are completely deluded. For this reason, it is very, very difficult for this wisdom to appear.
So what is to be done? There is only one way to obtain this wisdom—by accumulating merit. How should we accumulate this merit? According to the general vehicle of Buddhism, the method of accumulating merit is by having renunciation mind, by contemplating impermanence, by refraining from all the causes and conditions that will strengthen the ego, by engaging in all the causes and conditions that will strengthen our wisdom, by refraining from harming other beings, and so on. In the mahayana school, the merit is accumulated by having compassion for sentient beings.
To cut a long story short, if you want enlightenment you need wisdom. If you want wisdom, you must have merit. And to have merit, according to mahayana, you must have compassion and bodhichitta, the wish to establish beings in the state of freedom.
If you meditate earnestly, pure in mind and kind in deeds, leading a disciplined life in harmony with the dharma, you will grow in glory. If you meditate earnestly, through spiritual disciplines you can make an island that no flood can overcome.
– Dhammapada vs.24, 25
Just as a storm throws down a weak tree, so does temptation overpower those who live for pleasure, are uncontrolled in their senses, immoderate in eating, indolent, and dissipated.
Just as a storm cannot prevail against a rocky mountain, so temptation can never overpower those who contemplate impurity, are controlled in their senses, moderate in eating, and filled with certainty and earnest effort.
“I didn’t want to think it.” “I didn’t mean to say it.” “I didn’t intend to do it.” How many times have we said these or similar words to ourselves or others?
When we entertain unwelcome thoughts, utter words that should remain unspoken, or do what should be left undone, we have allowed our wrong views and afflicted emotions to drag us into committing unskillful acts.
When we act (in thought, word, or deed) impelled by attachment, aversion, or indifference, we are living by karma. We are slaves to physical, emotional, and mental tendencies that are, in turn, the product of our previous acts. We are indentured to the past. We are not actors, but re-actors, constantly forced by external circumstances to conduct ourselves in ways we may come to regret.
Some are of the opinion that making Vows restricts or negates freedom. However, the ‘freedom’ to be bound by desire, to be led here and there by the dictates of body and mind, is not freedom at all. It is abject submission to mere mood, habit, and circumstance.
The Bodhisattvas, on the way to enlightenment, refuse to succumb to the winds of karma. Bodhisattvas are guided by Vows: the intentional adoption of guidelines that align us with the Dharma and advance our spiritual cultivation.
To live by Vow —to decide for ourselves what thoughts we will entertain, what words we will speak, and what deeds we will perform— that is true freedom.
Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.
Just as a storm throws down a weak tree, so does temptation overpower those who live for pleasure, are uncontrolled in their senses, immoderate in eating, indolent, and dissipated.
When a practitioner thoroughly trains and fully develops
“I didn’t want to think it.” “I didn’t mean to say it.” “I didn’t intend to do it.” How many times have we said these or similar words to ourselves or others?
Zen Flash 
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