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Showing posts from April 4, 2010

How to Make Yourself Happy!

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If we want to become happy we must develop a happy mind. So we want to change.. It is reasonable to understand, (but only intellectually), that we cannot both change and stay the same. Now the interesting part: we would be crazy to fix what is not damaged. However, for what is damaged, we need to distance ourselves by removing essential identity and awareness from that part. When we have achieved that separation, we will shift to a more simplified view, using the remaining healthy perceptions until the damaged parts languish for lack of nourishment. This is Dharma! ~ Domo Geshe Rinpoche "Wenn wir glücklich sein wollen müssen wir einen glücklichen Geisteszustand entwickeln. Also wollen wir uns verändern.. Wir können uns nicht zur selben Zeit verändern und gleich bleiben. Nun kommt der interessante Teil: Wir reparieren nichts, was nicht kaputt ist Wir distanzieren uns von den beschädigten Teilen, indem wir unsere essentielle Identität und unser Bewusstsein davon entfer

Thought for Friday on Changing Weather (read in Eng,Sp,Fr,Ger,It)

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We experience weather as purely perceptual as well as having our body senses physically dependent on the previous moment. The physical body stabilizes into an expectation that the temperature, barometric pressure, sunlight etc will remain the same or it sends alerting signals. Hot, hot, hot means, take action to cool off. This is not actually dependent on the temperature, only change, because 60 degrees in June feels cold but 60 degrees in January would feel hot! When the weather changes from hot to cold too suddenly, or a rainstorm is coming, we might complain and feel oppressed. This is how weather is perceptual, when we become accustomed to crave to know how we emotionally feel about the signals of our physical world and body. Our habits and nature influence those feelings. For example, if we carry a lot of anger, we will feel annoyed at the weather. However, for someone with a peaceful or happy mind, there is no sense of suffering, even if it is cold, hot, raining or too sunny! Alt

Thought for Thursday on Your Relationship with Rice (read in Eng,Sp,Fr,Ger,It)

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Here we are in central Bali on retreat, we have the opportunity to meditate here, enjoying the tropical breezes, and on two sides of our retreat place, we have beautiful rice paddies. To us, it is very decorative, is it not? We hear ducks quacking and rustling through the rice paddy, and it has an exotic and scenic feel for us. On the other hand, the backbreaking work required for many workers to create rice;…. to put rice in your bowl is an important part of the survival of earlier Asians. Even here, and in this modern time it is still not mechanized; there is a very simple connection with the earth; stooping to pull weeds and to gather the rice using a curved knife to cut the grain. So, we have a unique opportunity here to quietly sit here observing the direct relationship that Balinese people have with rice. They plant the rice, watch over and weed it, and when it is time to harvest, they cut it, dry it and eat it. However, your relationship with rice is more complicated, isn’t it?

Life Saving Vow

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Most Buddhist practitioners go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha at the beginning of their meditation, upon rising and often just before bedtime. The mind is ripe and tidy at that time, nearly holy, and refuge is reasonable and pleasant. Now do it more skillfully; take refuge when you are angry, sad, grasping, hungry, jealous, worried or overstimulated. These are called secondary minds, arising and falling away as moods or stimulated by outside influences. More than the "holy you", these aspects of you need to take refuge and become tamed. This is how we conquer the worst parts of ourselves easily. We bind them to refuge vows! ~ Domo Geshe Rinpoche~~~ ""Die meisten praktizierenden Buddhisten nehmen zu Beginn ihrer Meditation, beim Aufstehen und oft auch kurz vor dem Einschlafen Zuflucht zum Buddha, Dharma und Sangha. Zu diesen Zeiten ist der Geist bereit und aufgeräumt und beinahe heilig und die Zufluchtnahme ist vernünftig und angenehm. Nun sei dabei kun

Old Freight Train of Karma

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Individual karma that we are compelled to carry with us makes us like little old freight trains. We are heavily loaded with shipping containers of maybe Nike tennis shoes wherever we go. Another container might have toxic chemicals going to some far off waste dump, yet another, delicate refrigerated lettuce. This car here holds relationships we shoved back there so we no longer look at them, but still there clakity clacking on the track, not free to leave to explore the world! That one has pickles from Alaska, peaches from Alabama, or just junk we picked up in our travels. Cows in one car, tigers in another. All moving heavily along lifes’ track! ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Thought for Tuesday on Hermit Kings (read in Eng,Sp,Fr,Ger,It)

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I have heard about an early Christian sect called the Desert Fathers, solitary hermits who spent years in the wilderness, meditating. One hermit spent part of each day gathering twigs and branches building a huge pile only to set it on fire at the end of the year. It is said that the hermit rejoiced at the bonfire because it represented the value of the useless activities in comparison to true values. They were as nothing to him! I can relate this to the Tibetan hermit cave meditators such as Milarepa and the seventh Domo Geshe who cared nothing for worldly life. Milarepa would not leave his meditation even to stitch another clothing from the cloth brought to him. Instead, he tore off a piece and wrapped it around his finger that was becoming blistered from his prayer beads! The tree photographed accompanying this perhaps was done by a descendant of a desert father, knitting a cover for a tree to show us how useless worldly pursuits are. No matter if that was their motivation or not; I

Pure Land

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This world was meant to be a pure land, but it has become contaminated. There are yogic practices to enter that pure land by disconnecting from the contamination. However, to affirm that contamination is actually perfection does not help ~DGR Diese Welt sollte eigentlich ein reiner Bereich sein, aber sie wurde verunreinigt. Es gibt yogische Praktiken, um in diesen reinen Bereich einzutreten indem man sich von der Verunreinigung loslöst. Allerdings hilft es nichts zu behaupten, dass Verunreinigung tatsächlich Vollkommenheit ist. DGR

Thought for Monday on mind expansion (read in Eng,Sp,Fr,Ger,It)

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From the Lama Chopa, “With faith, esteem, and a sea of lyric praise, manifesting with bodies as many as the atoms of the world, we prostrate to you gurus of the three times and ten directions, to the three jewels, and to all who are worthy of homage.” We prostrate to the lineage gurus who have names, who actually lived in this world, in order to awaken to their kindness that is still very much alive due to their undying compassion and commitment to help us. We manifest visualized bodies to have this relationship. If we can demonstrate respect with one body, we can do it with a million visualized bodies. We first establish the correct attitude, and then multiply that by as many bodies as there are atoms of this world. How many is that? Not an infinite number. Can you stretch your mind around that? Let us feel that by encompassing it; let us stretch, stretch, stretch. Once you have the correct state of mind, expand that! Okay. However many atoms there are in the world, that is how many d

Quick Wisdom

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There are many types of wisdom. One is quick wisdom that organizes mental functions so that one can access and remember what they already know. Another aspect of quick wisdom is a liquid thinking process that seems to bypass the mechanical brain. This is not intuition but real thinking. This instantaneous mental capacity is a paradigm shift in mental process to inner based thinking and connection with deity. However, it still depends on the clarity of the outer mind to be reliable. ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~ "Es gibt viele Arten von Weisheit. Eine ist die schnelle Weisheit, die geistige Funktionen organisiert, damit man sich an das was man weiss erinnern kann und Zugang dazu hat. Ein anderer Aspekt der schnellen Weisheit ist ein flüssiger Denkprozess, der das mechanische Gehirn zu umgehen scheint. Dies ist nicht Intuition sondern echtes Denken. Diese unmittelbare geistige Fähigkeit ist ein Paradigmenwechsel im geistigen Prozess hin zu im Inneren fundierten Denken und zur Verbindung

Spiritual Wisdom

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Spiritual wisdom is not about being smart or clever. It is an opening of authentic blessed inner life that absorbs the ordinary being. In a way, it is exalted common sense! ~Domo Geshe Rinpoche~~~ "Bei der spirituellen Weisheit geht es nicht darum, schlau oder gescheit zu sein. Sie ist eine Öffnung des authentischen gesegnt...en Innenlebens, wodurch das gewöhnliche Wesen absorbiert wird. Sie ist gewissermaßen ein Erhöhung des gesunden Menschenverstands!" Domo Geshe Rinpoche