Dear friends near and far,
As always, I hope this message finds you well, healthy and happy. On today’s Guru Rinpoche day, I would like to remind you all of the key points of the Dharma as taught in each of the successive vehicles: the Foundational Vehicle, the Great Vehicle (Mahayana), and the Vehicle of Secret Mantra (Vajrayana). Grasping and remembering these key points is essential to progress on the correct path.
First of all, anyone who wishes to practice the Dharma should cultivate contentment and have few desires. This means being happy with what we have, feeling like it is enough, and not constantly thinking that we need this or that. Whoever we are, these qualities are essential to our Dharma practice. When we are content and have few desires, we have fewer worries, and it is therefore easier to cultivate a calm mind and to meditate—in short, to transform.
Contentment and few desires are the methods that lead us on the path, and that particular path is selflessness. When we understand selflessness, we are naturally content and have few desires. And when we are content and have few desires, selflessness is that much easier to realize. These are the methods and path of the Foundational Vehicle.
When we progress in our practice onto the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle path, then the main method becomes great compassion. To have compassion is to understand suffering and its causes, and to wish all beings to be free from it. When we understand the cause of suffering, genuine compassion naturally arises. Genuine compassion then serves as the catalyst for the experience of true bodhichitta.
Compassion and bodhichitta are not only the markers of a good-hearted person, but also one who is cultivating the main part of the path. Yet, whether those methods allow us to progress on the right path depends on our understanding of emptiness. For this, study, reflection, and meditation progressively allow us to move from lack of understanding, to misunderstanding, to partial understanding, to incomplete understanding, and finally to full understanding. Progressing through these stages, we come to realize the true meaning of emptiness: the root of the Mahayana path. However, without compassion and bodhichitta, we cannot realize emptiness: emptiness is always suffused with compassion and bodhichitta.
A person who has all these qualities—contentment, few desires, compassion, bodhichitta, and a genuine understanding of selflessness and emptiness—is then ready to enter the path of Secret Mantra, or the Vajrayana. For such a person, it is easy to have pure perception: the recognition that all appearances, sounds, and thoughts are never waver from emptiness, and that the one recognizing this is devoid of a self. With this realization, pure perception is naturally born. Based on this, devotion towards the teacher from whom one receives the Dharma, towards one’s own consciousness, and towards the nature of one’s mind naturally arises as well, as we recognize these three to be inseparable, united in essence as emptiness. The teacher’s essence is emptiness, my consciousness’s essence is emptiness, and the nature of mind is emptiness—recognizing this, we realize the dharmakaya. To realize the dharmakaya is to recognize the nature of mind.
These are the key points of the three successive vehicles. Contentment and few desires connect to selflessness. Compassion and bodhichitta connect to emptiness. Pure perception and devotion connect to the dharmakaya.
What then is the difference between selflessness, emptiness, and the dharmakaya? To realize selflessness is to realize the absence of a personal self; that is, to eradicate the sense of self, or ego, which is the root of all afflictive emotions.
To realize emptiness is to cut through all clinging to substantial existence—whether of form, sound, smell, taste, tactile objects, or thoughts. It is to realize the empty essence of the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, consciousness, and mental events.
To realize the dharmakaya is to realize that all things are forever unborn. All phenomenal appearances, the world and beings, reside in the mind, whose essence is the dharmakaya.
Thus, selflessness, emptiness, and the dharmakaya are all related to each other. Likewise, contentment and few desires lead to compassion; compassion and bodhichitta lead to pure perception; and pure perception leads to devotion.
Contentment, few desires, compassion, bodhichitta, pure perception, and devotion are called paths of method. They determine whether or not the Dharma will become the path. Selflessness, emptiness, and the dharmakaya, on the other hand, determine whether our paths get to the point or not—just like threading a needle.
These are the key points that I wanted to share with you on this Guru Rinpoche day. It is essential to grasp the main points of the practice, and to always keep those in mind, in order for our practice to follow the path, and the path to get to the true point.
With all my love and prayers,
Sarva Mangalam.
Phakchok Rinpoche
Translations
Català
简体中文
繁體中文
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Bahasa Indonesia
日本語
नेपाली
Polski
Português
Русский
Español
ภาษาไทย
Українська
Tiếng Việt
