Transforming Anxiety and Depression

Transforming Anxiety and Depression

Date of Advice:
March 2018
Date Posted:
June 2020

A person who was experiencing anxiety and depression asked Rinpoche which buddha was helpful for that. Rinpoche gave this advice on the good heart and cherishing others.  

Lama Zopa Rinpoche in a coffee shop in Tonasket, USA, September 2016. Photo: Lobsang Sherab.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much your kind email. I guess what would help you most is practicing the good heart. Transform your mind into the good heart for others—not only people, but even animals, insects, and so forth—to cherish them and take care of them, to not harm them, to cause their happiness, to love them.

This practice is called bodhicitta. You are totally cherishing others and that is what causes not only happiness right now, but happiness of future lives, then liberation from samsara forever, to achieve the blissful state of peace forever, and to achieve the peerless happiness, buddhahood. Peerless happiness in Sanskrit is called buddhahood; in English it is the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations.

The purpose of that is to be able to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering, and not only that, but to be able to bring everyone to the peerless happiness, buddhahood, the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations. To bring everybody at home and outside [the home], even the animals, the insects, to that state; to not harm, to help them, to try to bring happiness to everyone. Our mind has that responsibility, and that is the ultimate purpose of our life. That is why our life is unbelievably meaningful and precious.

This is how to make your life most happy.

Also, you need to read more books to develop and to understand this practice. It would be very good if you can read these books:

If you can, read the first chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. You can read the other books slowly, but maybe read Bodhisattva Attitude first.

With much love and prayers ...