The Buddha has instructed us to practice patience so that we will be reborn as beautiful people. The indications are obvious. When a person is angry, his red eyes bulge and his face is disgusting, whether or not he usually has a nice face. Nobody wants to be around someone who is angry, whereas when someone smiles, we are attracted, even if it is a stranger.
The fundamentals of the Buddha’s teaching concern observing the law of cause and effect and practicing the Four Noble Truths. Therefore, those who desire happiness, prosperity, and ultimately liberation need to adhere to these fundamentals. If we want positive results, we must attend to their proper causes. This can be simply illustrated as follows. When we want to improve our financial circumstances, it would be stupid to hold onto our capital and hide it under our belts. It will not increase by itself; we have to invest it. This means that initially we have to part with our money. We can, therefore, understand the Buddha’s logic when he says that it is important to practice generosity if we want to become wealthy in future lives. From examples like this, we can infer that we can trust the words of the Buddha. What he taught out of his own experience and knowledge is relevant and useful for each of us.
CHAPTER 2 SOURCE AND QUALITIES OF THE INSTRUCTION
What the Buddha has taught to make our lives meaningful and happy is wonderful. We all share common desires to be happy and not to be miserable. But how people go about fulfilling these aims can be very different. It largely depends on the individual’s mode of thinking. This in turn depends on the kind of instruction he or she has received as well as the person’s cultural background. The Buddha’s teachings discuss many ways of engendering compassion, patience, an understanding of reality, and so forth. The teachings include many impressive arguments that can help us discard negative states like hostility and violence. The Tibetan cultural heritage has been greatly enriched by the Buddha’s teachings. Consequently, our people enjoy great peace of mind. With the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese, many Tibetans have become refugees. Obviously, the life of a refugee is fraught with difficulties. I have met refugees from other parts of the world and found their attitude to be very different from that of the Tibetans. They are beset with anxiety and worries. By contrast, some Tibetans have told me that they were even able to do their spiritual practice while they were in the Chinese prison and that their time there was peaceful and fruitful.
It is essential that we preserve and promote the Buddha’s teaching, which, as a source of peace in the world, is of benefit to all sentient beings. Although every Buddhist should take interest in this, ordained monks and nuns have a special responsibility. Starting with myself, we ordained people must act scrupulously according to the monastic discipline. The vows of ordination should not be taken lightly. Anyone considering them should think very carefully beforehand and should have a strong sense of renunciation. Becoming a monk or nun does not mean entering an easygoing life of indulgence. On the contrary, a candidate for ordination should see the Buddha, who underwent many hardships in his spiritual quest, as a model. Some people may have the impression that merely holding certain ritual implements is all that is required to gain spiritual insight. They are clearly unaware of the sacrifice and effort involved in gaining actual insight.
In Buddhism, quality, not quantity, is what really counts. The Dharma is not preserved or propagated by force. So a greater or lesser number of monks and nuns makes little difference on that score. However, if the ordained people are unruly or misbehave, it harms the Dharma. I therefore insist on quality and have often stated that there is no use in simply having many monks and nuns. Some people object, but I have sound reasons for what I have said. The true value of Dharma can be revealed by ten good practitioners. Even one highly qualified practitioner can make the virtues of Buddhism shine.
There is great merit in taking ordination as a monk or nun if you do so in a proper manner and with the right motivation. Therefore, before deciding to do so, you should examine and confirm your intention. You should be aware of the benefits and purpose of what you are doing. Change should begin with mental transformation. Mere physical change does not achieve the whole purpose. Those who lack a commitment to mental transformation and misbehave set a bad example and cause the people’s faith to decline. So when I talk about quality, I am referring to people gaining a proper understanding of the Dharma and putting those teachings into practice in their daily lives.
These days, there is some religious freedom in Tibet. People are allowed to become monks and nuns and to rebuild some of the monasteries destroyed by the Chinese. Some Tibetans who have lately visited Tibet have told me that the monks and nuns there have not had a proper religious education and only engage in performing ritual. Others have had the impression that the monks and nuns in Tibet are really religious minded and dedicated to the pursuit of spiritual practice. Rebuilding the sacred Buddha Dharma must be done with the utmost care and attention.
The text I am reading from, The Rays of the Sun, opens with the following verses:
Arising from the source of love and compassion
The ship of the awakening mind is well launched.
Above it billow the great sails of the six perfections and the four ways of amassing disciples,
Which are driven by the wind of enthusiastic effort that never slackens.
Perfectly it carries embodied beings across the ocean of the cycle of existence
Landing them on the wish-fulfilling jewel island of omniscience.
I prostrate, placing my head at the feet of the leaders of the spiritual lineage:
The Subduer who is our supreme navigator, the powerful [Buddha];
Maitreya and [his followers] Asanga, Vasubandhu, and Vidyakokila;
Manjushri and [his followers] Nagarjuna and the supreme wise saint Shantideva;
The master of the Golden Isle [of Sumatra] and [his disciple] the noble Atisha;
And [his Tibetan disciple] Drom-tön-pa and his three spiritual brothers [Po-to-wa, Phu-chung-wa, and Chen-nga-wa].
In these lines homage is paid first to the Buddha Shakyamuni as the supreme navigator who expounded the perfect path based on his own experience of the awakening mind and the six perfections (generosity, discipline, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom). The lineage of far-reaching altruistic activities was passed from Maitreya to Asanga to Vasubandhu and down to his followers. The lineage of profound insight was passed via Manjushri to Nagarjuna and then to Shantideva. The great Indian master Atisha became like a confluence of both these traditions, and what is known as the lineage of the blessings of the practice was passed from him to Drom-tön-pa and the subsequent followers of the Kadampa tradition—the twelfth– and thirteenth century Tibetan practitioners following Atisha noted for the purity and the unpretentiousness of their practice. The author pays great respect to them all.
I prostrate at the feet of the great emanation of Manjushri, Tsong-kha-pa, the second conqueror of these degenerate times,
Who propounded the individual spiritual paths
Of these great pioneers with extreme lucidity and coherence.
The author was a direct disciple of the great Tsong-kha-pa and pays special homage to him by recounting some of his preeminent qualities. Tsong-kha-pa is venerated as among the greatest of Tibet’s saintly scholars. He had fathomless knowledge of both sutras and tantras. His collection of writings testifies to his scholarly credentials; he wrote eighteen volumes altogether. In writing his own treatises, he studied numerous classical Indian texts thoroughly and did exhaustive research to
