Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

The suffering human condition and what needs to be resolved are the same today as 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, 50 years ago, yesterday, and even today. That is because each individual needs to be healed and must discover the deep remedies. The answers to perennial problems and deep questions are ancient principles that remain fresh and untainted by time passing. The difficulty of recognizing ancient principles is because there is no musty odor to these advices that could degenerate into sentimental attitudes toward the past. One of the continuing issues humans face is the need to learn how to get along with others. Interestingly, there are only two reasons why you arrived in the human realm. Number one is to learn the true nature of compassion, and number two is to learn how to get along with others. All of the relationship complications that you, I, and others make are subsidiary, permutations and confusions of these two main issues. If we are not working on either one of...

We need to connect to a more natural and organic process of inner development by using good common sense in our spiritual seeking. A very good method is to think about the commonalities of human existence, aside from the specifics of what the Dutch or Indians were doing 300 years ago or what Egyptians were doing 3,000 years ago or what was happening fifty years ago or 10,000 years ago. There are certain hallmarks of common needs over long stretches of human existence and human activities. The ancient principles are not apparent to us, guiding us to deeper knowledge as soon as we get the wake up alarm clock inside that something needs to happen. There seems to be a roller coaster of culture interfering with that by inviting us to ride, directing our attention to certain important activities concerning our individual participation in current culture. In general, however, we all have made the usual choices acceptable to culture in how we dress, hairstyles, probably in the car that we ...

I am struck by the audacity of our discussion here today, which is about ancient principles, as thought I knew everything about ancient principles and was going to reveal them in some sort of bolt of lightning! Therefore, in advance, I apologize. However, these are some of my thoughts on this interesting topic. Many concepts and desires have been indoctrinated into us by our modern world that did not even exist fifty years ago. For example, the Internet has substantially changed the way we communicate and how we gather knowledge. I personally find it delightful and convenient. I am especially happy to be able to stay in close contact with students and answer their many questions. I have even times on the computer late in the evening when an email arrives from a student in the middle of a spiritual experience wanting to tell me about it. I email back, "Why do you not go back and continue meditating for a while longer?" There is immediacy to Internet lifestyle. It has b...

Within a Buddhist context, deciding who you want to be and how to achieve that, is very little discussed and might seem a bit too worldly. It might even seem inappropriate for someone on a transcendent path. I thought about this subject for days, and realized that I had no idea what this meant until I finally realized that perhaps we were asking the wrong question. Then we can proceed with several steps and questions to the discovery of how to be what we want to be or become. My first question is: By what criteria did you decide who you wanted to be? The obvious answer to this question of who you want to be is enlightened, isn't that so? However, before we can even explore that, let's look at some fundamental dynamics already alive in you. Later we will turn to spiritual goals, but in order to understand spiritual goals, it is good to understand strategies used to create the flow of logic that influences your decisions. So, I ask you, by what criteria did you decide w...

Who are the objects of the care of a great compassion bodhisattva? Perfected in wisdom, buddha emanated bodhisattva’s activity is toward sentient beings of different categories. Sentient beings, or living beings, are those who are not yet enlightened or awakened to the illusory nature of ordinary reality. Sentient beings exist in many forms, realms, and locations and even in formless realms. The lost ones, the suffering sentient beings, are not actively being nurtured in development because they are not prepared enough to receive specialized care. As healing by myriad methods reverses damage to inner levels of suffering beings, gradually all of them will become capable of receiving direct care. In a technical sense, a careful practitioner is in a category of beings that are cared for and nurtured in the development stage and is therefore not a sentient being. However, sometimes a practitioner is a sentient being, and sometimes a practitioner is not a sentient being. The one who is stro...