Worried About an Exam

Worried About an Exam

Date of Advice:
September 2013
Date Posted:
November 2014

A student was worried about an upcoming exam. Rinpoche sent the following advice.

Dear Jack,
Try to do everything with bodhicitta motivation as much as possible, with yourself as the servant and sentient beings as the master. The purpose of your life, your job, is to free the sentient beings from suffering and the causes of suffering, and to cause happiness, to bring happiness—not just temporal but ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara and especially full enlightenment.

Even if you fail this exam, for example, you collect skies of merit with bodhicitta motivation. Even you fail the exam, it is not at all a loss, in fact you gain merits as vast as the sky.

I have an Italian student whose family in the beginning was very rich, maybe the second richest family in Italy at one time. Later the son started to run the business for his family, but those years were a very bad time for him and he lost many millions of dollars. Even my observation came out incorrect for him one time, but maybe he doesn’t remember it now.

He lost millions of dollars, but he developed guru devotion and saw more the shortcomings of samsara, how it is only in the nature of suffering, so it was not a complete loss. It was a material loss, but his mind was gaining spiritually in the most important thing, guru devotion and second, renunciation.

So actually, that is much more important than material gain. Material loss is nothing compared to spiritual gain.

With much love and prayer to you. Please take care well with bodhicitta.

With much love and prayers, thank you...