Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

"Our challenge is to overcome a natural feeling of seeing all others as secondary to ourselves. For example, if a two year-old playing with other children becomes angry, they might bite their little friend. However, if their little friend bites them back, they are shocked and cry. In the ways that small children learn, it will not take long before they don't bite their friends any more. We learn by behavioral adjustment to be nice to others because we do not want to be bitten our self. This is direct learning. Like that, we apply that learning to adjust our behavior so we do not experience something that we perpetrate on others because we are going to get it back ourselves. Most folks live their whole life in this way. The  reason why they are nice to other people is so that others will be nice to them. This golden rule is an outstanding method to help us remember that if we do not want to experience difficulty from others, we do not give them difficulty. Although this is an ...

"Infected with a strategy of self love, one could become a narcissist by degrees or in leaps and bounds. However, if someone gives us any trouble, self love goes wrong. With disrespect,  we can no longer love them, and in addition, we can no longer trust ourself because we have included them in our inner circle of love, and so we think, 'What is wrong with me that I could have allowed this? What is wrong with me that I could have allowed them to penetrate my wonderful feelings of skillful interaction with myself? How could I have been so foolish?!!' This is so interesting because it is exactly the opposite of how we train in bodhicitta and compassion in the Tibetan Buddhist system, exactly the opposite! What is the other option? The other option is that it is not about me! It is about the needs of others. Why do we love them? Because they are dear. Not because I am dear, but because they are dear. It is exactly the opposite." ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Mit eine...

"If you cannot love yourself, how are you going to find someone who loves you? This is outstanding in theory; however, your own self esteem and ability to love yourself becomes the basis of being capable of loving others. Because you are loving yourself, you can open up and invite one other person to that dynamic. Now, if you are interested in adding more to that special club, you can invite in more people, and more and more until you are capable of loving many others based upon your capacity to love yourself. Now, here is where it goes wrong. What happens if you fall out of love with yourself again? What happens if there is a little kink in your self love because you have made a mistake or failed at something important? What happens to your relationship with others? It is gone, because it was built upon the shifting sands of how you feel about yourself on any given day. If you do not feel good about yourself, there is no way that you can maintain that dynamic, which is filtered t...

"When we begin meditation practice we might feel we are doing useless wishing for the good of everyone by trying to project a fantasy state of mind on top of our problems, but later that feeling changes and matures. However, we should not feel shy while doing early stage compassion practices. We should not feel we are being compared to other practitioners. It is also not right to hold back enthusiasm during wishing for happiness prayer for all living beings out of concern that we will exhaust ourselves and not have enough energy left for ordinary life. If we believe that we should be careful with our happiness going too far because soon we have to get up from meditation and need the strength to make a cup of coffee, this is not the way we should think" ~ Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Cuando empezamos la práctica de meditación, nos puede parecer que estamos haciendo inútil para los que desean el bien de todos, tratando de proyectar un estado de fantasía en la parte superior de...

Two explanations of the innate view: Buddhist version-- The classic Buddhist view describes the innate view as taking the transitory and impermanent state as permanent. All suffering arises from this misknowledge. However, I expand this to include the carefully prepared, full minimum set of perceptions, which allow humans to participate within the boundaries of the human realm. After the breakthrough of enlightenment, aware practitioners will not discard the purified innate view as useless but will mold it skillfully into a correct conventional view containing the realizations of the awakened state. Same view but a non-Buddhist explanation-- There are carefully prepared perceptions that allow humans to participate in human potential development within the human realm. We do not damage our perceptions by pretending the world is not there, or that we are not here, in order to participate in some other realm. The innate view can be viewed either as a kind of prison or as a protection from...

To end the suffering of immature ordinary love, it is good to understand what is the object seen by immature lovers. Each one is only looking at themselves. This dynamic has many indications that it is between two people, when it probably does not. In addition, there is a certain kind of arousal siren in this possible precursor to mature love that enthusiastically compels them to have energetic interaction with another person. For the immature ordinary lover, no material possession could compare to the possibility and anticipation of diving into the energetic field of another person to experience a heightened sense of personal self. In much the same way, in immature Buddhist practice, the main problem with ease in meditation is that we are compelled by an innate unawakened state, the core problem that literally prevents us from looking at anything other than ourselves. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~