Buddhism: An Unmistaken Object of Refuge

Buddhism: An Unmistaken Object of Refuge

Date Posted:
January 2012

Rinpoche sent the following letter to a student in December 2011.

My dear Paul and family,
How are you? I am well. At Dharamsala, Khadro-la is my main doctor and I have been going to a hot spring. It is not very well-known and it takes more than an hour to drive to.  Khadro-la says it is a Heruka holy place; the water is not too hot and it is very good water. Even though it is not so well-known, people do go there. Also, I have been doing lum, which is a Tibetan herbal bath treatment; you buy a bag of the herbs and put them in the bathtub. I do this as much as possible.

At the moment I am doing retreat and I will soon be going to Bodhgaya for the Kalachakra initiation. Soon His Holiness the Dalai Lama is giving Heruka initiation in Dharamsala.

I heard that the Kopan Sherpa monk Geshe Chonyi, who studied in Sera Je with 3,000 monks, has completed his study on the extensive, major five scriptures of Buddhism and also he has studied tantra for many years—he has been teaching in Singapore and now he is enthroned as Kopan abbot. I heard that many Sherpa organizations and the heads of these organizations joined Kopan for the enthronement. I think it is very, very good, very good that they saw Kopan, where there is extensive learning of Buddhism—not just learning the essence and doing retreat in the mountains—not just that, but deep learning similar to Sera, Ganden and Drepung, for many years, so many years. This gives many Sherpas the opportunity to learn and from that many expert geshes come out and then they help in Nepal, in their own country. Hopefully this has opened their eyes to understand that Buddhism is so extensive and deep, that it is not just a custom that people believe in. It is not just a custom; not just a reciting mantra or something like that.

By having some understanding of what Buddha has taught— the hundred of volumes of the Kangyur and the great pandits, holy beings who gave commentaries of 200 volumes, the  Tengyur, and then the many commentaries from the Indian and Tibetan great lamas, enlightened beings of the four sects. Wow! Wow! Wow! Amazing! Amazing!

Buddhism is not just some practice of blind faith. Of course, some people just have faith in Buddha, which is an unmistaken object of refuge, but in the rest of the world there are so many thousands of religions which have the wrong object of refuge. People have faith in an object that can’t help, because ordinary beings are themselves suffering in samsara, so they are not free from samsara and they don’t have complete power to help others. So many people have faith in the wrong objects of refuge that can’t help, not even with a good rebirth, leave aside liberation from samsara, nirvana and then full enlightenment

Maybe there are some things in Christianity, like living in the precepts, living in morality, not giving harm to others and also in some Hindu religions— that one can achieve form and formless realms. Hinduism is a little bit deeper, but the Hindu gods are all in samsara.

According to Buddhism, those realms are still in samara, even in the highest one, the formless realm, where there are four levels—infinite sky, infinite consciousness, nothingness and the tip of samsara. All these levels are in suffering nature, except the last one, where the gods can’t realize that it is in suffering nature, because there is nothing to compare it to. They don’t have renunciation of the whole entire samsara, so then they get reborn again in samsara. When they get to the highest level, they believe they have achieved liberation, then when they realize they have to be reborn in samsara again, at that time they generate strong heresy and then get reborn in hell

So in Buddhism, even if we have no understanding and just have blind faith, the object that we have faith in is the unmistaken, most worthwhile Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the Buddhadharma—even without understanding the details, what they are, how they exist, etc, it is  most unbelievable, fortunate.

With much love and prayers...