Member of the FPMT

My very dear Joanna,
Thank you very much for your kind letter.

According to my observations, there seem to be some obstacles to you completing college. Not going to college also comes out negative. This means there is an obstacle. Whatever the obstacle is there is an antidote. It comes out best for you to recite the Heart Sutra 200 times.

If you can, recite it every day and, if possible, recite it along with meditation. You can read His Holiness's commentary on the Heart Sutra. You should study that.

When you read the Heart Sutra each day, focus on a different part and try to meditate on that. For instance, one day meditate on “Form is emptiness,” then the next day take another part and meditate on it strongly. Go over the meanings, meditating on the emptiness of different phenomena. One day meditate on the emptiness of the “I,” then the next day on the emptiness of the aggregates, in general or each one specifically.

I have given a few teachings on the Heart Sutra. If you can, try to get those; they may help you in your meditations to get some idea.

Please try to make your life most beneficial with the thought of bodhicitta.
With much love and prayers...

My very dear Karen,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am very sorry it took so long for me to reply.

I understand that you feel it is hard in London. A hard life is very good for learning, it is a teaching, it shows the nature of suffering. Look at it that way, as a teaching, to give you inspiration, liberate you, and free you from samsara. Seeing sentient beings’ sufferings and from that developing compassion leads to bodhicitta and the Mahayana path, which eliminates all the gross and subtle defilements and causes you to achieve enlightenment. Then you can enlighten all sentient beings. These benefits come when you experience hardships or a hard life. So, if you can, think like this.

My suggestion is to try to continue to study for one more year, approximately. You could move to a different house, but it still may be hard.

Please continue with guru devotion and live your life with bodhicitta, by developing your meditation on the perfect human rebirth, renouncing this life, and meditation on emptiness.

With much love and prayers...

Do retreat in Parphing in Nepal if you can find a place. You can become a nun immediately or maybe after five years, in the fifth year. Regarding your partner, maybe his mind will be happier without you. This is one choice.

In any case, pray for your life to become most beneficial for sentient beings, who are so many. That is the way you should pray all the time, and he should do the same. You are just one person. If you are happy, that is nothing compared to the happiness of other sentient beings. Just pray like that. If you are unable to make a decision now, then pray all the time like that. This helps to create the conditions to be able to be most beneficial.

In order for your partner not to get upset, since he needs somebody in his life, you can pray for him to find a companion quickly. Meeting a companion can make his life most meaningful, by making it most beneficial for sentient beings. Pray like that.

You should wish that he finds a partner not just for the comfort and enjoyment of the samsaric mind but to help him to make his life most beneficial. What brings peace, happiness, and fulfillment in a relationship is when couples think of others. The husband thinks of making the wife’s life most beneficial, and the wife of making the husband’s most beneficial. That’s how their attitudes should be. Regarding living together, if you don’t have the attitude of benefiting others, if it’s just for happiness for oneself, just the happiness of this life, many problems can arise: instability, dissatisfaction, depression, and guilt. All those things come from thinking just of this life.

Happy Birthday
Rinpoche offered these suggestions for celebrating one’s birthday.

One way to celebrate a birthday is as if you have just been in a place where there’s great danger. You might not have survived, but you have. That’s a miracle. It’s amazing that since the last birthday, over this past year, you did not die. It is miraculous, a surprise that you have survived since birth, and that is something to celebrate. One can think like that.

Then, you can think that you have done many good things, created the cause of enlightenment, and did not die. You created many causes for liberation from samsara, many causes to achieve a good rebirth in your next life, and have done many things to benefit other sentient beings. These things are worth celebrating. These are the real reasons to celebrate a birthday.

If your life has been spent on meaningless or non-virtuous activities, just to achieve your own happiness for this life, then there’s nothing in which to rejoice. If you are going to live that way, there is no point in celebrating the future. There is nothing to celebrate if your life has been like that in the past, either. But realizing that, and determining that from now on, you will purify past negative actions and change your actions, then you can celebrate. So, on your birthday, you decide to develop compassion and more loving-kindness to other living beings—that means all sentient beings, including enemies, not just having love and compassion toward those you like or those who like you.

Imitate the Buddha’s holy deeds, and the life stories of others—not only Buddhists— who tamed their own minds, subdued their egos, and only thought of cherishing others. Aspire to become like those with compassion and loving-kindness, renunciation, without anger, who practice tolerance and contentment and have brought so much peace and happiness to many sentient beings, and benefit many people.

If you generate that sort of wish, then you can become like those great holy beings, who are the leaders, the givers of peace and happiness to numberless sentient beings. Then a birthday really becomes something to celebrate.

Tired of Working
A young Californian woman had grown tired of working for others, and wrote to Rinpoche saying she wanted to go back to school.

My very dear Janine,
Thank you very much for your kind letter.

Even if you are at university, you still have to work under people or with people. Working under someone is not necessarily a negative thing. The main thing is if you are able to make your life beneficial for sentient beings and therefore for yourself.

Whether or not you are working under someone is not the problem. If you don’t have the aim to benefit sentient beings, then you miss the goal of your whole life. Even though you think you have a goal, the goal is not good. It is very limited or not a good goal, and that’s always a problem. The problem is you have a goal, but it is not a beneficial goal.

I will pray that your life will be beneficial for sentient beings.
With much love and prayers...

Making Life Decisions
A monk who had just disrobed asked for advice on whether to live with a woman he had met, who had two children. He also had his own children and a wife from before he was ordained.

It’s a complicated matter. Your wife may count on being with you again. This other woman might have another partner, even though she wants to be with you, and you may cause great suffering to the other man.

The way to make a decision here is by seeing which course of action brings the least harm to other beings. Make your life decisions on that basis. Otherwise, it’s very complicated. Let go of your self and make your decisions on the basis of cherishing others, by thinking how to bring about the most happiness for others. This way of making decisions is very clear and uncomplicated. It’s very healthy and also pure. No ego is involved when one makes one’s life decisions simply based on the thought of the happiness of others.

First, it’s clear that you should make whatever decision brings the most benefit to others. You can also analyze what would bring happiness to the greatest number of other sentient beings. Then choose that. There can also be cases where decisions should be based on which course of action brings deeper benefit or greater benefits.

These are all ways to bring objectivity into our decision-making process. Otherwise, life is a big confusion, and unskillful decisions can bring many problems and suffering to oneself and to others.

But, in worldly life, one decision will upset one person, another will upset another person. It’s always like that. In samsara, whichever way your decision takes you, there’s always somebody you can upset. If you stay with one person, someone else gets upset and jealous. If you stay with the other person, then the first gets upset and jealous.

In any case, enjoy your life in Dharma. Here, there’s no choice. Whatever your lifestyle, you have to practice Dharma.