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How to Quit Smoking
A student in the UK asked Rinpoche for advice
on how to stop smoking. She had been cutting down, but was
finding it difficult to quit altogether, as her boyfriend
still smoked.
My very dear Madeline,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am very happy
you have reduced your smoking, as smoking is very harmful
to your body and life. It can cause obstacles to your life,
shorten your life, and cause cancer. Not only in the teachings,
but even in ordinary life, it is said that smoking is harmful.
It is also unbelievably gross.
Doctors understand that smoking is harmful for you. It is
barred in many places, such as restaurants, theaters, and
shops. The teachings say that the material in cigarettes is
impure and that evil beings caused the substances to grow
in order to interfere with people’s practice and degenerate
the mind. With a bad intention, the evil beings made prayers
for tobacco to grow to harm people in their practice of virtue,
to degenerate their mind, to get them to engage in nonvirtue,
and so that their mind is not free from delusion.
I once saw in a morgue the dead body of a woman who died
of lung cancer from smoking, and her lungs were blue. A Tibetan
doctor from Dharamsala put her hand into the body and took
out her lung, which was all black and blue. So, if you want
to die like this, you are most welcome.
It is said in a text composed by Panchen Losang Chökyi
Gyaltsen (who also composed the Guru Puja) that when
someone asked him to do phowa practice, he asked
first if the person who had just died smoked. He said that
if the person smoked he would not be able to do phowa, because
he would not be able to transfer the consciousness through
the person’s crown. Since even high lamas can’t
transfer the consciousness of a person who smokes to the pure
lands, if you want to be free, and especially if you want
to go to the pure land at the time of death, don’t smoke.
You don’t have to follow every single thing your boyfriend
does. Your mind is not his. Your mind is separate and your
body is separate. You are responsible for your own happiness.
Smoking pollutes your whole body, making it impure. It makes
it difficult for virtuous thoughts to arise, and it makes
it very difficult not to have attachment. Smoking just gives
some temporary pleasure, and that’s all. When you die,
you don’t take one single benefit from smoking with
you. Like an empty reputation in the world, it doesn’t
protect you from suffering. It can’t make you achieve
a good rebirth in the next life, and besides that, it can’t
liberate sentient beings from samsara, and can’t actualize
enlightenment.
Here, you are trying to become a champion, to defeat your
delusions, especially your attachment. The main thing here
is you have to be strong yourself. You can see how people
spend their whole life training for the Olympics, practicing
dancing on the ice and trying to be champions and defeat other
people. When they don’t succeed, they experience unbelievable
suffering, because they trained to win for so many years.
But if you can succeed over the enemy, delusion, by avoiding
smoking cigarettes, which desire craves and which is your
object of desire, that is so fantastic! You create less negative
karma, and each time you succeed, it protects you from the
lower realms, the most unbelievable, longest suffering in
samsara. Not following delusion also causes you to achieve
liberation and helps you to reach enlightenment. Each time
you create the cause of realizations on the path to enlightenment.
By defeating delusion, especially attachment, you will be
able to liberate numberless sentient beings from eons of sufferings
in samsara and bring them to enlightenment. What better Olympic
sport is there than this one? What better champion is there?
This way you become the most famous one among all sentient
beings, not just in one country or in one world, but among
all sentient beings—that is, you become a buddha. Every
day you have to have courage. Be brave.
Padmasambhava explained how extremely harmful tobacco smoke
is even to the area where you live, besides to the person
smoking it, because it degenerates the mind and harms your
chakras, winds, and drops. It is very harmful to the development
of virtue. When you smoke, you pollute the environment and
make the whole area impure. Many other beings, such as nagas
and devas, go away, because they cannot bear it. They also
harm people, who get very sick, with arthritis and so on,
because of the smoke polluting and harming the nagas.
Your smoking also makes people who don’t smoke unhappy.
When I am in the same room as someone who is smoking, it’s
very unpleasant for me. It is difficult to breathe, and it
has such a bad smell. I find it hard, because I feel I have
to breathe the smoke, and it goes into my lungs.
At Kopan monastery there was once a caretaker, who helped
to buy the land Kopan is built on. He used to take care of
and milk the buffalo. Each day at sunrise, he would sit down
and smoke. Because my window faced east, the smoke used to
come into my room, and I would feel very uncomfortable when
I breathed.
Smoking harms not just you, but so many other beings. The
teachings say that the smoke from cigarettes destroys whole
cities of nagas, like a tornado blowing everything away. This
is what happens to them when you smoke.
With much love and prayers...
Breaking Drug Addiction
A student wrote to say that her daughter had
turned to drugs following the death of her father many years
before and had become addicted. Although the daughter had
made many attempts to break her addiction, none had any lasting
effect.
As far as the drugs are concerned, I did a divination and
it came out very good for your daughter to come to Nepal and
do a lamrim course. That would be the best thing to do.
In order to benefit her mind, she should look inside herself,
to gain the knowledge to make her life better in quality.
This will inspire her more to give some meaning to her life.
She needs an environment with people who protect her, people
not involved in these things. She should stay away from people
who are involved with drugs and not make friends with them.
She can give compassion and love to them, but not physical
friendship. Physically, she should keep away. That also helps
protect her from AIDS.
She should make a really strong determination, a determination
from her heart, to challenge her attachment to taking drugs,
to seeking that pleasure. She should determine to challenge
and overcome it as if she were going to war, trying to defeat
her enemy. As in a boxing match, you try to defeat your opponent.
Here, you defeat your own thoughts, the desire that brings
your life down, making it meaningless and sick, causing you
to destroy your life by attachment to the pleasure of drugs.
The best friends to protect her in this way are Sangha.
For her to be with nuns is best, though it can also be lay
women. At the very least, they should be people not taking
drugs, preferably people having a strong practice, a strong
discipline, and who are living a pure life. If she is with
those kinds of friends, she will be protected by them.
You can ask them to help protect her, to look after her
while she’s in Nepal, or wherever she goes. Your daughter
should go to stay with other lay women and Sangha, especially
nuns, because this kind of problem takes a long time to resolve.
It will not be resolved in just one month. She needs to stay
for a long time in an environment or place where you cannot
find drugs. That is the best thing, until she has made a very
strong determination from her heart to abandon drugs, feeling
totally disgusted with them, and wants to help herself and
others.
If she decides to live with a man, she should be careful,
since she wants a long and healthy life. She should examine
and check the man well for a long time. The best would be
a man who can protect her, who is good-hearted, with strong
discipline and living a pure life. It would also be best for
him to be practicing Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism.
It would be good if she can get support from him in this way.
Generally, since she is a woman, I emphasize it would be better
to be with nuns or lay women with the qualifications that
I just mentioned.
Maybe it would be good to tell her that her life can give
so much happiness to others—she can give the happiness
of this life to so many other beings, the happiness of future
lives to many other beings, and the highest happiness, enlightenment,
to so many other beings. There are so many unbelievable, wonderful,
beautiful things you can do for others and also, of course,
for yourself.
Instead, you completely destroy this, you make your life
completely meaningless, by following desire and self-cherishing,
thinking of my happiness, my pleasure. By
just being attached to this life, to sensual pleasures, you
stop the development of your mind. You prevent yourself from
realizing the ultimate nature of your own mind: the Buddha
potential, or Buddha nature. This stops you from seeing the
good part of yourself and blocks you from developing your
mind. It blocks your path to enlightenment, your spiritual
path. It is not easy because there are so many habits from
the past.
This problem requires different solutions: the first is
to study Dharma, to meditate and control the attachment through
renunciation. This means giving freedom to yourself, away
from the enemy, the prison of attachment. This is not just
to protect you from the problem of drugs. Most importantly,
it helps bring happiness in future lives.
This is unbelievably important, and is something that should
be done right now, because death can come at any time. This
is also the main thing for achieving everlasting happiness,
total liberation from samsara, and from all suffering. It
is the foundation for achieving enlightenment, for her to
benefit others. The benefit from practicing meditation is
not just that she stops drugs.
Another important factor is the environment. Here, I’m
talking about the kind of people with whom she should associate.
That is very important. Drugs are just one example.
There are many other habits besides drugs that we can get
addicted to, such as the habit of sexual misconduct, which
brings us so many problems in life and blocks the development
of our mind on the spiritual path. This happens if you don’t
develop the mind on the spiritual path. Not only do you then
continuously create problems by creating the cause, you always
get stuck in the problems. It’s like sinking in quicksand
and never being able to get out your whole life. You then
die in that quicksand, while going through these problems
of life. So, your whole life finishes so sadly, not achieving
any satisfaction, happiness, or peace in your heart, not even
for yourself. On top of this, you can’t benefit others
if you cannot develop your mind on the spiritual path.
I should make clear what I mean when I say spiritual path.
When people talk of a “spiritual path” it is not
usually clear what that spiritual path is. There are many
thousands of religions in the world. Here, what I’m
speaking of is developing the mind in renunciation, bodhicitta,
and emptiness; and on top of that, there is the tantric path.
You cannot benefit others if you do not develop your mind.
Besides not being able to offer deep benefit, you cannot offer
even the small benefits that you can offer with your body,
speech, and mind, just simple help in daily life, because
the self-cherishing thought stops that. Ego doesn’t
allow you to do even that.
Here, my emphasis is that because our mind is very weak,
even if we know meditation techniques well or understand the
lamrim teachings well, just knowing them doesn’t mean
you can immediately apply them or that your mind immediately
becomes strong. It takes time, and one might miss many opportunities
to apply what one has learned. That’s why having the
protection of being in the right environment is very important,
as I mentioned before. If you are with those kinds of people,
your life can be protected by the people around you.
Later, when the mind is stabilized and strong, with total
renunciation of these things, it doesn’t matter. Even
if you’re living with people who are taking drugs, you
won’t have the slightest interest. You won’t engage
in those things. Drugs are just one example—there are
many other things.
It’s the same as after one has stable realizations
of renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. Then, even when you
mix and work with other people, they don’t become a
cause of confusion to you or to others. Your service is very
clear. Your direction is very clear, so the work is not stained
by attachment, anger, or ego. If the mind is holy, it becomes
only holy work, holy service. There is no danger for you,
and no danger for others. You’re free from the problems
that many people commonly experience when they live with people
and work for others.
Also, regarding friends, if you live with good friends of
the kind I mentioned—strong Dharma practitioners with
some discipline, who perform a lot of practice, understand
Dharma, and live a pure life—you also become like those
friends. You lead a better life due to these friends.
If you have bad friends, you become like them too. That
is because we ordinary beings, since we do not have control
over our minds or stable realizations, are under the power
of the environment. When we don’t meditate on lamrim
in daily life, we are controlled by the environment, by the
people around us, and so forth. We are controlled by our own
hallucinations, even when we are alone.
When you don’t meditate, impermanent phenomena appear
as permanent, and you believe in that. Dependent things appear
as independent and inherently existent, and you believe in
that. That is how we get overwhelmed by external things, by
our own hallucinations. This is what happens when we don’t
meditate or practice lamrim. Therefore, the right environment
becomes a very important protection for our life.
Good Reasons to Quit Addictions
Rinpoche gave this general advice for people
with cigarette, alcohol, or any other addiction.
One of the best ideas is to think of the many people on earth
who are dying because they have no food to eat. There are
many places, such as Bangladesh, where there are famines,
epidemics, floods, and earthquakes. In so many places, there
are thousands and thousands of people who are homeless or
have various other problems.
Now, one large jug of cheap wine, for example, costs maybe
$10. First of all, leaving aside the $10, consider just $1.
Both in the East and the West, the world is full of projects
that aim to help millions of people solve their problems.
From the $10, if you make a donation of even $1, this can
help to make up a total of $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, or even
$1 million. But if that $1 is missing from that money needed
to buy medicine or food, to provide homes and so forth, it
doesn’t make a total of $100, $1,000, $100,000, or $1
million. That means $1 million of aid can’t be provided.
Donating even $1 helps the total to reach $10,000, $100,000,
or $1 million. That means through your donation of $1, the
project is able to provide whatever help is needed for all
those people.
Of course, this $1 alone cannot help many thousands of people
much; but when the $1 is added to many others, it has a lot
of power, as $1 million worth of medicine, food, or whatever.
There is no $1 million that exists inherently, from its own
side. The $1 million is made up of each $1, and each $1 is
made up of each cent. So, even the $1 million depends on the
cent. When the $1 you donate goes to make up the large amount,
it has the power to benefit countless millions of people.
All those millions of people who are starving, who are sick,
who are homeless, are exactly the same as you in wanting happiness
and not wanting any discomfort. And just as we think that
we are precious and that what we want is important, it is
exactly the same with them. Each of them is also extremely
precious and the happiness they need is also very important.
Now, you are one person. Which is more important? When you
compare democratically, in terms of numbers, you are just
one person, so your own happiness becomes nothing important,
and any problem you have becomes insignificant, because one
person is very, very insignificant compared to millions of
people. Others are so many, so with a democratic way of thinking,
the need to obtain the happiness of those who are much greater
in number is much more important than obtaining your own happiness.
Freeing this great number of people from all their problems
and obtaining their happiness become the most important things.
Simply in terms of number, others become so precious and important.
For example, let’s say there are two groups of starving
people: one group of 100 and another of one million. If you
cannot afford to help both groups to survive, you help the
major group, the group of one million. You try to save the
lives of the most number of people. This is the logical thing
to do. You would help the million people because they are
much more in number than the 100 people. In terms of number,
100 people are much less important than one million.
Here it’s a question of comparing yourself, one person,
with others, who are so many. The importance of obtaining
happiness for one person is nothing when you compare it to
the happiness of others. For this reason, also, it is very
important to donate money to help those millions of people
who have so many problems.
The second point is that you can survive without drinking
alcohol or smoking cigarettes. Since you can survive just
by eating food, instead of spending money on alcohol or cigarettes,
you can donate the money to help millions of people. For example,
let’s say the cheapest jug of alcohol or a few packs
of cigarettes costs $10. Before we talked about how $1 can
help so much—now there’s $10. Giving that $10
to charity can help all those people so much.
If you drink one jug a day, in one month you would spend $300.
If you count up how much you spend on cigarettes or alcohol,
it’s a lot. If you donated what you spent on them in
one month, it would be incredible. You could bring so much
benefit to so many people with the money you spend on one
bottle or one pack of cigarettes, starting from $1 up to $300.
You could do this for months, for years. By doing this, you
wouldn’t destroy your own life. It wouldn’t interfere
with your job, or the stability and harmony of your life,
and your peace of mind. By having stability in your life and
work, your living conditions would be improved. You could
have more comfort. In this way, you would, first of all, be
mentally healthy and, second, you would be physically healthy.
You could further your education. You would even have the
opportunity to develop materially, to become wealthy, and
then be able to help others even more. You could share your
wealth and benefit the world.
In this way, by sharing with others through making donations
to charity and so forth, you see that your life becomes very
beneficial for others. You are doing something for the world;
you are making some contribution rather than just taking from
the world. Since birth we have been taking from our parents
and the world. Then, thinking about reincarnation, during
beginningless rebirths, we have been taking from other living
beings and from the world.
So far we have been taking from others. We owe others a lot.
Starting from our parents who gave birth to us, then those
people who have helped us with our education and so forth,
starting from there and extending to the whole world, we owe
a lot to all other living beings. What we owe them is infinite.
For this reason, we have a responsibility to share with others,
to help them. Even if you have only $1 that you can share
with the millions of other people, you still have that much
opportunity to bring happiness to others, to help them.
Having the opportunity to share even $1 means you have the
responsibility to help them, even though they may not ask
you particularly to help them. For example, let’s say
there is a blind person in danger of falling off a cliff.
Because he cannot see, he thinks he is on the road, but instead
is about to step off a cliff. Nearby, there’s someone
with every opportunity to help; he has normal eyesight and
sound limbs and could run and grab that blind person. The
blind person doesn’t ask this person for help. Not only
does he not call on this person to help, he is not even aware
of him. But that sighted person, seeing that the blind person
is in danger of falling, would run and grab him. Simply having
the capacity and opportunity to help that blind person itself
becomes the reason that the sighted person is responsible
to rescue him from falling off the cliff. I am saying that
even if the other person does not ask for your help, simply
because you have the opportunity to help, you have the responsibility
to rescue him.
It is the same if you have just $1 to share with others. You
can help millions of people by giving them comfort and solving
their problems, and just by having the opportunity, you have
the responsibility to help them. And here we are talking about
$300 a month.
You can survive without drinking or smoking; it won’t
kill you to go without them. In fact, you can be very healthy
mentally and physically by not drinking or smoking. Not drinking
and smoking has infinite benefits for you, and you can then
help others much more. With all this extra money you have
through not drinking or smoking, you have the opportunity
to help others much more, and for that reason, you have the
responsibility to help them, who are so many in number.
Also, by acting in this way, you experience so much happiness
and satisfaction in your life, because you are giving meaning
to your life. You are doing something for the world; you are
giving peace to so many people by rescuing them from starvation,
sickness, and many other problems. You can enjoy the satisfaction
of knowing that you are benefiting others.
The last point is that even if you are not concerned about
others, just in terms of your own benefit, stopping drinking
or smoking lengthens your life. Drinking and smoking shorten
your life and bring many sicknesses. The human body is extremely
precious. If you take all the wealth that exists on this earth,
including that in rich countries such as America, and compare
it with your own precious human body, your body is much more
precious than all that wealth. Why? Because even if you own
all that wealth, if you don’t have a precious human
body, you cannot develop your mind. You cannot develop the
inner good qualities of compassion and wisdom. And if you
don’t develop those qualities, you cannot bring peace
to the world, to all living beings.
There are many limitations even to how much you can help others
physically, and without this precious human body, you could
not help their minds. The cause of problems doesn’t
come from outside; the cause of problems is in the mind. Therefore,
the way to bring happiness to others is to transform their
minds from negative, which is harmful to themselves and to
others, into positive thinking. By transforming their minds
into the positive, they can then perform positive actions
that bring happiness into their lives. In this way, each of
them can benefit themselves, can create happiness for themselves,
and can bring happiness to everyone else.
Because the cause of problems is in the mind, the best way
to help others and bring them peace is to help their minds.
A human body and a mind full of potential give incredible
opportunities. This mind has the potential to attain any happiness
we want, and by developing our positive mind, we can cause
the temporary and ultimate happiness of others. We can free
everyone from all problems and their causes, and bring them
ultimate happiness. We can cause others never to experience
problems again, and we can bring them the highest happiness,
by making their minds completely free of all faults and obscurations.
This human body is unbelievably precious, and it has so much
power. One person, by having a human body and not looking
after his or her mind, can harm many millions of people; one
person can destroy the whole world in one day. There is danger
of this when one has a human body but does not protect the
mind. But if the mind is protected, developed, and transformed
into a positive mind, one person with a human body can do
so many good things in this world. They can cause numberless
other beings infinite happiness. The good things you can do
for others, for the world, are unbelievable.
Therefore, this human body is unbelievably precious. Material
wealth means nothing in comparison with the value of this
precious human body. There is no comparison between the value
of a diamond the size of this earth and the value of this
precious human body, and drinking and smoking destroy this
incredibly precious thing. Drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes,
and not eating properly destroy this precious human body,
resulting in a lot of disease. It is also well known that
drinking interferes with your work, so that you are unable
to do your job properly. It also interferes with your family
and other relationships, so that you are unable to have peaceful
relationships with others and you create a lot of enemies.
Other people don’t want to communicate with you. Drinking
isolates you from others, from society, from the world. By
drinking, you isolate yourself from other people. Then, this
makes you more depressed.
Life is very short, and death can happen at any moment. If
this precious life is simply wasted, at the time of your death,
you will feel much regret. Suddenly the thought will come,
“Oh, now my life is ending. I should have done much
better with my life. I should have made my life much more
meaningful. I should have done something for others.”
When you know that you are about to die, you will suddenly
discover that you did nothing worthwhile in your life, that
your life has been kind of empty. At that time, no matter
how upset you are, there is no time to do anything about it.
You have to die with that upset mind.
I asked some of my students who are nurses and have worked
in hospitals what kind of people are most frightened at the
time of death. According to their experience, alcoholics have
more problems and fear at the time of death. Alcoholics are
very afraid of their death. I’m not making this up.
This is the experience of nurses who have worked in hospitals
for a long time.
Therefore, before death happens, while we have all the opportunities,
we should protect our own mind. We should become our own guard,
our own teacher. We should become our own doctor, and protect
our own life. Our mind is like a baby, so we should act like
its parents, or like a teacher, or the police, who protect
us from dangers. You cannot follow what the mind says all
the time.
When you see the mind as a baby or an uncontrolled person,
you act like a parent, a teacher, or a policeman. You always
watch and analyze what it is doing. If the mind wants to do
something beneficial, you listen; if it’s thinking of
something harmful or unreasonable, you don’t listen
and you don’t follow that.
As ordinary people, since our minds are not pure, it is very
dangerous to listen to everything the mind says. Our mind
has many unhealthy, disturbing thoughts because it is controlled
by ignorance, anger, attachment, and so forth. Before we act,
before we sacrifice our life, we have to analyze the way the
mind thinks, whether it has shortcomings or benefits, and
whether the shortcoming or benefit is great or small. The
general conclusion of analyzing like this is that you don’t
do anything that has shortcomings, that brings problems. You
follow the thoughts that benefit you and others.
The mind that causes happiness or benefit to others is also
of most benefit to you. Cherishing others is the best way
to cherish yourself. Renouncing others is like renouncing
yourself. Renouncing others and cherishing only yourself harms
rather then helps other sentient beings, and in reality this
means harming yourself. The more you harm others, the more
you harm yourself, and deprive yourself of happiness. So,
cherishing others is the best way to bring happiness and satisfaction
into your life. Cherishing others is the best way to enjoy
life. Benefiting others with your body, speech, and mind as
much as possible in everyday life is the best and safest way
to cherish yourself. That is the best way to obtain happiness
for yourself, and the best way to obtain happiness for all
sentient beings. Even in terms of your own happiness, cherishing
others is best. In this way, there is so much happiness in
your day-to-day life, now and in the future. There is so much
happiness all the time.
Advice on How to Stop Smoking
My very dear Polly,
How are you? I am very happy to hear from you. In regards
to your problem, this is my advice (below). I hope that this
will help you to get inspiration and courage to stop smoking,
so that you have a long life and healthy life, healthy body
and mind. If your body is polluted, made dirty, then it is
very easy to get sick and to get cancer.
Tobacco is a very impure plant, it came about due to devils,
who made prayers to harm people. Then, from that, tobacco
grew, to harm people. Especially, it blocks spiritual development.
If spiritual development doesn't happen, then one has to continually
die and be reborn, and experience continual suffering and
problems, again and again, without end, as human beings, hell
beings, devas, animals, etc. There is no end to the suffering
in samsara and, also, you can't liberate thousands of others
from samsaric suffering, and bring them to full enlightenment.
With much love and prayers... |
