Meditate on Lam-rim

Meditate on Lam-rim

Date Posted:
June 2013

A long-time student and center director asked Rinpoche for advice on how to study and practice the Buddhadharma further.

So, the studies have been done—lo-jong [mind training], philosophy and lam-rim, have been done. So I thought the next thing is to actualize this; not to leave it in the book, but to have it here [Rinpoche points to his heart.] To have renunciation, bodhicitta, the realization of emptiness, the generation stage and the completion stage, to have it here. To really experience realization. The next thing is that. So I said like this. Now, no other centers have this; no other organization has a program like this.

Meditate for two or three months on guru devotion following the outlines. Meditate on that. How long you do it for is up to the individual, as some people are very busy, but spend two or three months on guru devotion. Then meditate on the usefulness of the perfect human rebirth for either one month or two months, you can decide. How precious it is maybe for one month, then how it is useful in three ways maybe for one month. The time is not sure, just as an example, one month. Meditate on that for one month.

Then meditate on impermanence and death, renunciation, the lower realms, refuge and karma. Meditate on renunciation of this life, then on renunciation of the future lives, then the path of the higher capable being, bodhicitta. Then meditate on emptiness for one month. So, in a whole year you can do all the lam-rim.

You can also do generation stage and completion stage of your own deity. You can either do that or maybe just leave it now for some years and just do lam-rim, guru devotion and the three principal aspects, then leave tantra for some years. The time for meditation is up to each individual.

That would be very, very, very good. That is really, really, really, really, really [good]. Wow. That will please His Holiness the Dalai Lama; he will appreciate it so much because there is no other organization, no other center doing this. I heard from a Drepung geshe in Taichung, after a scientific meeting in a monastery that His Holiness does every year—I think this time in Drepung—after that His Holiness invited all the abbots and emphasized very much that they must do meditation.

When monks gather for cho-ra, debate, they must do meditation in silence, as much as possible, on lam-rim. Since coming from Tibet there has been no such announcement, but now His Holiness said they must meditate even in the monastery. Those monasteries mainly emphasize the study of philosophy, learning Buddhism in an extensive way. So the geshe said they have to meditate for fifteen minutes when they come for prayer and cho-ra. They meditate for fifteen minutes, and keep silence. Someone must have told His Holiness, I don’t know what the story is.

I will tell you one thing. When the first Masters Program finished, I said do one year retreat after that. What they studied, I said to do one year retreat on those subjects and on lam-rim. The Masters Program didn’t have lam-rim, but I said do one year. Some students, they talked. I think Geshe Jampa Gyatso didn’t have much interest in meditation, because they don’t have such thing in the monastery, to do it in public. I think he didn’t have much interest in that, so I think some students didn’t listen to what I said, but those who followed my advice went to Spain and did nine months’ retreat and found it very beneficial and said must do retreat. They found it so beneficial. You went to Kopan to do retreat, that was very good. So just to let you know like that.

So this is my suggestion here, but it is up to you, it is not for everybody. I give the idea, the suggestion, but to do it or not is up to you. It is up to you. To do it with everybody or not is up to you. That is your choice. It is like that. So, really bring your mind close, even if not to an actual realization but at least close to that, so after a year of meditation you are coming closer and closer to realization. Then also you are subduing the mind. Every single teaching of the Buddha, every word, is to subdue the mind. Then you have no worries about wasting your life. At the end of your life, whenever is the end of life, you are satisfied. You can think, “I spent my life practicing Dharma.” There is satisfaction and happiness.