SELF-CHERISHING GETTING IN THE WAY

With the verses covered by Gen-la this morning, we switched focus to the development of great scope motivations, which are mostly hinted at except for the meditation on exchanging self with others, highlighting self-cherishing as the root of suffering.

As Venerable Geshe-la explains in How to Transform Your Life, self-cherishing and self-grasping are close companions, “almost mixed together”. Gen-la pointed out that self-cherishing is relatively easy to spot, and so even if we maybe don’t understand emptiness very well yet we can begin to undermine our samsara close to the actual root (self-grasping).

Gen-la encouraged us to really pay attention and understand that every time something goes wrong in our life, we are experiencing a result of self-cherishing. Even just recognising our true enemy, self-cherishing, in the moment of suffering will already bring great relief because it moves our mind away from fretting about our self and puts the enemy center stage instead, giving us something truly productive to do.

As I was listening to the various faults I couldn’t help but think that self-cherishing even makes our meditation on the emptiness of the self harder because it considers the self too important to forget, as indispensable, and so it sabotages our meditation on emptiness of the self. If we cared less about the self that we normally see in addition to understanding that self-grasping needs to be eliminated, I bet we’d find emptiness meditation on the self wayyyyyy easier, too.

MIRI, GERMANY

QUIETLY IN AWE

I’m writing from KMC Vancouver Canada where a small group of residents and a couple of visitors are following the Spring Festival according to the schedule at Manjushri KMC in our local time in our meditation room.

We are almost the last place to be listening to each of the Spring Festival teachings as the world listens, contemplates and meditates on the sublime meanings of the festival teachings and meditations. For instance, when we engaged in the two meditations to prepare for the empowerment, after I chatted briefly with someone else who was rejoicing in the empowerment they just received!

So amazing to see our NKT Spring Festival cover the entire globe with commentary to the Request to the Lord of all Lineages prayer and have the opportunity to meet some of our Teachers and through them our holy Spiritual Guide, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche, and the blessings of the entire lineage.

Quietly in awe here, rejoicing at how Geshe-la transforms every condition into opportunities to share the meanings of Kadam Dharma with the entire world.

It is like the whole world is listening to, contemplating and meditating on the meaning of the Request to the Lord of All Lineages Prayer!

KELSANG SANDEN, CANADA