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BUDDHISM> TEACHINGS: Benefits of a compassionate attitude by LAMA ZOPA RINPOCHE
Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore, 29 January 1995
 If you practise compassion towards others,
then what comes as a result is that first of all you don’t harm
other sentient beings. Starting with the person nearest to you and
going out to all the rest of the sentient beings no one receives harm
from you. This absence of harm is peace and so these beings also
receive peace.
Secondly, by having compassion you not only stop giving harm but also
attempt to benefit others. Therefore, everyone receives benefit and
help from you. Even when you pray, whatever prayers you do and whatever
capacity you have, if you dedicate your merit to others then, through
compassion, as you develop your own mind more and more in method and
wisdom, others receive greater and deeper benefit. So all sentient
beings receive peace, temporary happiness, or ultimate happiness from
you, from your compassion.
So it is completely in your own hands whether you want to cause
everyone to have peace and happiness, or to have harm. It is completely
in your own hands because it is completely up to you whether you
practise compassion or not. Therefore it is very clear that each of us
is fully responsible to obtain happiness for all sentient beings,
starting from the person who is nearest to us in everyday life.
So I think the feeling of universal responsibility is extremely
important. This attitude brings harmony in the family. Not only do you
find great peace in your heart and satisfaction in your life but also
there is much harmony in your day to day life with others. Whether you
are outside in the office or at home, wherever you are there is great
peace in your life. Wherever you go and whether you are alone or with
others, there is much peace, harmony and great joy in your life.
I think it is by having compassion and the thought of universal
responsibility that one finds the happiness of life, the real joy of
life, the real meaning of life: one feels real peace and happiness in
one’s heart.
For example, if when you are walking along the road, doing the shopping
or something else, you have the selfish attitude of “My
happiness, my happiness, my problems. I have this problem, when can I
be free of this problem”, then you are walking along the road
with pain in your heart.
As you look around, you are not happy. You look at the shops and at the
people, but because you are not happy nothing is pleasant. Nothing
gives you peace because inside your heart there is pain ? the pain of
the ego and of the self-cherishing thought. Nothing is happy, nothing
is pleasant. Because of the self-cherishing thought there is
dissatisfaction. Your heart is empty of happiness, empty of
satisfaction. In your heart, there is no happiness and no peace. No
matter how much wealth you have, no matter how well you are educated,
or how many friends you are able to find, still there is
dissatisfaction in your heart. You feel hollow inside. There is
something missing in your heart, there is a kind of pain there.
Wherever you go there is no happiness. Whichever country you go to you
don’t find happiness. Whoever you accompany you don’t find
happiness ? whether you stay alone or with others, you don’t find
happiness or satisfaction. So while you walk along the street it is
like this.
But the minute you change your attitude and think, “My life is
not just for me, my life is for all these people ? for all the people
in the buses and cars, for all those who are buying things in the
shops, for all the dogs, animals and so forth — my life is for
all of these sentient beings, to serve and obtain happiness for them
— to free them from problems” as soon as you switch your
attitude and instead of concern for yourself have concern for other
living beings, cherishing other sentient beings, then immediately the
pain of the ego, of the self-cherishing thought goes away. You are
relieved of the pain of the ego and suddenly there is joy, suddenly you
find happiness in your life.
With this attitude, you immediately find happiness, joy and meaning in
your life. Suddenly there is happiness in your heart and you can smile.
Before you could not smile, but now you can smile at others, you can
make others happy. It is even pleasant for other people to look at you
because of your attitude, because of this loving compassion, this good
heart, the good attitude.
Edited from a talk given by Ven Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Singapore, January 1992.
THE POWER OF COMPASSION
When Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited ABC early this year, he told the
following story of his mother, who lived in Lawudo, Solu Khumbu, nearby
the small village where Rinpoche was born. Situated close to Mountain
Everest in the Himalayan region of Nepal, Lawudo comprises a cave where
Rinpoche is said to have meditated for many years in his previous life,
a temple, retreat huts, and also a small family home. The story was
told to illustrate the benefits of reciting the mantra Om Mani Padme
Hung and the power of compassion....
In order to develop compassion we need to rely upon a special Deity of
Compassion and to receive the blessings of the Deity of Compassion, and
that deity is Avalokitesvara. Reciting the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung
and meditating on one’s own mind being one with the Compassionate
Buddha’s holy mind is regarded as very important for developing
compassion.
Even if a person doesn’t have any intellectual wisdom or
knowledge, and hasn’t studied the Dharma, or can’t even
read Dharma books, nothing, still if that person spends their life
reciting the Compassionate Buddha’s mantra, then just from this
practice naturally the mind is transformed into compassion. One is able
to develop more and more compassion towards other sentient beings,
those in the family, those with whom one lives together, and outside
people, other living beings.
Compassion gets developed by reciting the Compassionate Buddha’s
mantra, and from this devotion also gets developed. Because of this, by
developing compassion and devotion to the guru and the Triple Gem, all
the other realizations come very easily. One is able to develop wisdom,
able to realize emptiness, the ultimate nature, and so forth.
For example, in Tibet or Nepal, the Himalayan region (it must be
the same here also in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in many
countries where there are people who strongly practise the
Compassionate Buddha), there are many old men and women who have never
had any education, can’t even read Dharma books and never learned
the alphabet. They spend their lives just reciting Om Mani Padme Hung,
and, naturally, due to the blessings of the Deity of Compassion,
they have so much compassion, so much concern for others, and also much
devotion. They are able to abandon negative karma--killing, stealing,
and so forth--without any difficulty, and their everyday actions of
eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, working, and so on, all become pure
actions, pure Dharma, accumulating infinite merit. These normal actions
become the path to enlightenment because they are done with compassion
for others and with devotion.
My mother, for example, could not recognize even one letter of the
Tibetan alphabet ka kha ga nga. She had no intellectual education at
all. She went to Tibet with my father to receive teachings from a very
high lama, a great yogi, who is the guru of one of my gurus, the
Nyingmapa lama Trulshig Rinpoche, who lives in Solo Khumbu. His
guru’s monastery is behind Mount Everest. When this lama gave
simple advice, such as ’When you recite one Om Mani Padme Hung
mantra one time, you should not pass two beads on the mala,’
then, this kind of thing she could understand very well. But when the
lama started to talk about the path, the philosophy, then she just
started reciting Om Mani Padme Hung. She would start to do retreat `Om
Mani Padme Hung, Om Mani Padme Hung,...’ because she
couldn’t understand!
The year before she passed away, my mother could not recite much mantra
because her capability became less. But for many years, each day she
recited 50,000 Om Mani Padme Hung. That’s what she told me.
It is due to my mother’s kindness that I was sent to a monastery,
so I was able to learn the alphabet from my uncle who was a monk. So
due to my mother’s kindness I can read Dharma texts and say many
words. But as far as the real Dharma is concerned, the most important
Dharma--which is compassion--then even if I do have some compassion, it
is nothing compared to hers.
When my mother saw people in the road, Nepalese people or whatever,
walking without she would feel that it was so unbearable. She had so
much concern for the people who took care of her, our young monks from
Kopan Monastery, or anyone else, and she always put herself very
low. She used to say, “I’m not worthy to be served
because I have nothing. My stomach is empty.” That’s an
expression meaning `I have no realization’. What she was saying
is “I have no realization, I’m not worthy to be served by
others.”
In 1990, my mother went to see His Holiness in] Sarnath, the holy place
where Buddha gave the first teachings. She received blessings from His
Holiness in the afternoon and in the evening she passed away. Now she
is reincarnated very close to the cave [at Lawudo] where I go
sometimes, next to the hermitage where we used to get water. She
reincarnated there, not as a daughter but as a son. There has been so
much clear proof that this boy is my mother’s reincarnation--not
just from the observations of high lamas, but also from the
boy’s own side. There is so much he is able to remember about his
past life, like the names of the cows and other animals that my mother
used to take care of.
There are many stories. From a young age, the boy used to talk so much
about Lawudo, the cave, me and so forth, so my sister offered him a
scarf and he liked my sister so much that he put the scarf on his neck
and he never took it off. He wore it constantly day and night for seven
days.
When he was invited to Lawudo, he behaved exactly the same as my mother
used to. Normally my mother would clean the cave [of the Lawudo
Lama], put water bowl offerings on the altar, then make some
prostrations while also praying to me. She prayed to me all her life,
everyday, like six-session yoga practice, in the morning, afternoon,
anytime; praying for whatever was the best she could think of according
to her mind. Then she would go to the temple [near the cave] to clean
it, make water bowl offerings and do prostrations. In the temple, there
is a throne for His Holiness the Dalai Lama carved by one of the
best Sherpa carpenters. The first thing my mother would do when she
entered the temple was to go to His Holiness’s throne to take
blessings. Then there is a small throne where I used to sit, so she
would go there to make some offering, or something like that. The first
day the boy came to Lawudo, he did exactly the same things, then he
went outside to circumambulate the temple, which is what my mother also
used to do when she had finished everything else.
Before she passed away, I had a prayer wheel made for my mother
with many, many thousands of Om Mani Padme Hung, for her to turn to
purify and to accumulate merit. Every time the incarnation comes to
Lawudo, he goes to the kitchen where my mother used to live, and offers
a scarf to this prayer wheel. The first time he came he embraced the
prayer wheel. He put his arms together and embraced it and said he
never wanted to go back home, he wanted to stay there.
He was able to recognize all the brothers, uncles and relatives and,
without feeling shy, immediately said, “How have you been?”
One day my brother, who lives in Kathmandu, decided to go to Lawudo to
meet the incarnation. The incarnation had been waiting for a long time
to meet me and my brother. My brother went with a Sherpa man who lives
in Kathmandu who was a very close friend of my mother. When they
reached my mother’s incarnation’s house, as soon as the
Sherpa man sat down, the incarnation immediately mentioned his name.
The Sherpa man was so moved, so shocked that this little two year old
child was able to remember his name, that he immediately grabbed the
incarnation and cried.
There are so many things the incarnation can remember from his previous
life. There is so much proof from his own side. Then, on top of that my
sister did examination. There is a custom that first the child talks,
saying “I am the reincarnation of such and such a lama.”
Then that lama’s attendant does an analysis using religious
objects: The previous lama’s religious objects are mixed with
other lamas’ or other monastery’s religious objects and the
incarnation is asked to chose which one belongs to them. If the
incarnation picks up all the things that belonged to the previous lama
without mistake, then that is proof. Finally, the attendant asks high
lamas to do observation, divination, to check. So my sister did the
checking by putting my mother’s dress together with many new
dresses. The incarnation picked up all the dresses that belonged to my
mother, the old dresses, and left the very nice new ones, which
didn’t belong to her, behind. Then my sister asked Trulshig
Rinpoche to check. Rinpoche did a divination and said this is my
mother’s incarnation. So besides the boy’s own words, there
are other checks that have to be done.
The conclusion is that why my mother is able to reincarnate as a human
being in a Buddhist family is because she was a nun in her past life.
She was ordained as a nun about 20 years ago by His Holiness the Dalai
Lama’s guru, His Holiness Ling Rinpoche. Because of her practice
of pure morality, she was able to reincarnate in a Buddhist family
where there is the opportunity to practise the Dharma.
Then, why this little boy is able to remember so many things from the
past life, why the mind is so clear, this is because of having recited
so many Om Mani Padme Hung mantra in the past life. This is one of the
benefits of reciting the Compassionate Buddha’s mantra. There are
many benefits, infinite benefits, and one of them is clairvoyance.
This is just one example of how someone without any intellectual study
and who can’t even read Dharma books has been able to develop the
mind so much. My mother being able to reincarnate with a clear mind and
again having the opportunity to practice the Dharma, is the result of
her past life practice, having spent her life reciting the
Compassionate Buddha’s mantra, Om Mani Padme Hung.
MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY!
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