Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

What are obstacles you presently recognize preventing you from being the one that you could be? Even though we did not examine what caused us to crave a certain way of life, we have already made plans of who and what we want to be. The growth and cultivation of this plan might be like a carefully tended flower garden, or things crawling from a fermenting, stinking muck pit! That reminds me of my first spring thaw here in Wisconsin. The thawing of the ground after the winter came as a big surprise! The basement flooded, coming in from underneath and from the walls. A friend went downstairs and then came upstairs to tell me, "Come downstairs to the basement and take a look.” I replied, "No, I am not going down there because there is dragon poop down there. Just get rid of it, please!” She looked at me strangely…. I do not want to look at dragon poop, and I could see it all over her rubber boots when she came upstairs! She had it halfway up her boots and I certainly d...

Part 2 In truth, being happy does not depend upon having successes or having our needs met in the way we want them to be met. Sometimes people do get the thing they want, but not done in the manner they wanted it to be done, so then it becomes unhappiness. Getting a raise happiness, getting a new car happiness, or getting the final tin soldier in your antique collection set happiness, are not the criteria of happiness. It is so interesting that this is still such an integral part of everyday philosophy because these ideas do not exist in the scriptures or even in the teachings of Christianity as happiness. However, it is like a teeter-totter. Over here, you have reasonable values regarding happiness and suffering by the great minds and philosophers from the Buddha to Socrates to Wittgenstein. Over here, you have a five hundred pound gorilla demanding that you obey society norms by seeking happiness through accepted common values. Our perceptions of what is and what is not happi...