A Magnet for Bad Situations

A Magnet for Bad Situations

Date Posted:
June 2012

A student felt he was a magnet for bad situations, people and environments. He asked Rinpoche for advice.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Taos, New Mexico, 1999. Photo by Lenny Foster.

Your deities: Kalachakra, Secret Vajrapani, Gyalwa Gyatso, Secret Hayagriva. Generally it’s good to receive initiation for all of these deities, then you can choose whichever one you feel closer to.

I’m going to tell you what Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa said in regards to attracting bad situations like a magnet: “Even this present small suffering finishes past negative karma and there will be happiness in the future, therefore meditate on rejoicing in the suffering.”

That is thought transformation; looking at suffering as happiness. You transform the suffering into happiness, instead of worrying. If your mind is trained in thought transformation, then the more you suffer, the greater the happiness you can experience.

For example, Geshe Lama Konchog was a great teacher and meditator at Kopan Monastery. In the summer time, the rainy season, he fell down and as he fell it made a huge sound. Immediately he thought he received all his obstacles and his mind was so happy, even though he fell down so heavily on the stone step.

Kadampa Geshe Chengawa prayed all the time to be born in the hells, as a practice against the self-cherishing thought. That’s what he did instead of being a friend of the self-cherishing thought, instead of working for that. When he was dying he said, “Oh, I didn’t fulfill my wishes!” As he was dying he saw a vision of the pure lands, so he left the suffering world and was born in Buddha’s pure land. This is the result of the good heart wishing to experience suffering for the benefit of sentient beings.

When we don’t practice, especially when we follow the self-cherishing thought, we wish happiness for self and suffering for others. When we follow bodhicitta, we wish to suffer for others and for others to have all our happiness. So it’s very, very important to understand Dharma and particularly thought transformation, then we are able to transform suffering into happiness. That means even when we face suffering, we can transform it into happiness.

Read my book, Transforming Problems into Happiness, it can give you good ideas. If you cannot find a copy, ask Ven. Holly to send you one.

Lama Chöpa (verse 96) says:

Even if the whole environment is filled with undesirable things,
And everyone becomes negative including myself,
And (countless numbers of) problems come like rainfall
Please bless me to continually accept this
By understanding that I am finishing past negative karma.

Here it is saying that when we are suffering, we should think that we are finishing past negative karma and feel happiness. For example, if we have a heavy disease, then when we get an injection or treatment we might have some pain, but we feel very positive because through that we won’t have to experience the heavy suffering any more or even die. For example, if a poisonous snake bites us and we have to cut the skin to take out the poison, even though it will cause pain, by doing that the poison won’t spread through the body and we won’t die, so it is regarded as incredible happiness.

Especially in Mahayana practice, suffering is used in the path to enlightenment, the highest, peerless happiness, not just to achieve temporary happiness, liberation from samsara—but for peerless happiness, the cessation of not only gross defilements but also subtle defilements and completion of all the qualities. So it’s just amazing. Complete understanding. So we use suffering, by experiencing it with bodhicitta for the benefit of sentient beings—for them to be free and to achieve peerless happiness, the dharmakaya.

Lama Chöpa (verse 97) says:

In short, whatever appears, bad or good,
Please bless me to use it in the path to develop the two bodhicittas
By practicing the five powers—the very essence of the Dharma—
And to meditate only on a happy mind.

So you should get the commentary to those verses in His Holiness’ book, The Union of Bliss and Emptiness, (pp. 159-161).

Also, Panchen Shakya Shri Bhadra said:

If you are suffering, take all the sentient beings' suffering;
May the ocean of sentient beings' suffering be dried up!
If you are happy, dedicate the happiness for others to collect merits;
May skies of happiness be received by others!

That means all the temporary and ultimate happiness.

When you do tong-len, tong is giving our merits and happiness to others; len is taking others' suffering and negative karma on yourself, right onto the self-cherishing thought and destroying it.

When you do this meditation, it is the most excellent thought transformation, the best psychology, the best treatment for the mind and through that for the body. Taking on the suffering of others and giving your happiness to others is the quickest way to generate bodhicitta, the quickest way to abandon the oceans of samsaric suffering and the quickest way to achieve full enlightenment—having finished all the mistakes, the gross and subtle defilements and having generated all the realizations. And this is the quickest way to be able to free the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings from the oceans of suffering and bring them to full enlightenment.

People who met the Mahayana teachings can practice this. Whenever you encounter problems the mind is so happy. The more you understand thought transformation, the more you experience it, and you are so happy when you meet suffering. You can take other sentient beings’ suffering; you can experience it for others. Also you can give your happiness to others and you are so happy to be able to do that.

Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa Dorje Senge was a great meditator and practitioner. He was criticized by one monastery; the monks said he wasn’t keeping his vows. Instead of getting angry, with compassion and patience he made tea offering to all the monks. They gathered in the gompa and he offered tea and thanked them for criticizing him. He thanked them from the heart, sincerely, not in a political way. So, he had so much happiness.

If you know how to practice Dharma, then being a magnet to attract bad people and a bad environment, you can recognize, “Wow, this is great happiness!” The worse it gets, that much more you rejoice with even greater happiness.

One thing, as I mentioned in Transforming Problems into Happiness, is that in the morning you should generate a strong mind, strong determination. Think, “I’m not going to let sufferings agitate or worry my mind and make me unhappy. Instead of that, I’m going to keep my mind happy.” In that book there are so many ways problems can be transformed into happiness. But here, in short, you think about the benefits of problems. Every problem has benefits, so when you think about the benefits of the problems, you transform the problems. You think you have a great need of the problems.

For ordinary people, problems are something to cast away, but for practitioners of thought transformation, problems are something they need. For the practitioner of thought transformation, there is a great need to have suffering and a great need to have people complaining and a great need to have people criticizing and a great need to have people who are angry at you. There is a great need to have these things in order to transform the mind. So, the main thing to transform our problems into happiness is by thinking of that need.

Ordinary people get caught up in worries and fears instead of thinking of the benefits of the problems.

So that’s it. Thank you very much.