Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

In Bali, after planting, weeding and waiting, the rice shoots grow longer, and the field owners come more often to check. As the crop ripens and the heads of rice show signs of attainments, who arrives, but rice finches, not there to help the rice crop, but to eat it! The farmers hard work in the field is about to be stolen! Just before the rice is to be harvested, the farmers have to guard the rice crop night and day for finches. With huge white flags on sticks, they run through the fields with the same ferocity and appearance as sports fans. However, these farmers are not shouting, “Yea team” with painted faces, so excited and happy that they do not know what to do except drink more beer! The first time I saw people rushing around a field waving flags, I thought it was a Balinese celebration inviting holy spirits to their rice crop shouting “AHHHHHHHAHHHH” very loudly. As soon as they turned their backs, the rice finches returned, again and again. However, if they did not flush up th

Right now, we are living in the world of the accomplishment of the Buddha’s Bodhicitta. That is why for thousands of years the messages and the guidance that Lord Buddha Shakyamuni gave have come alive in the Dharma, and myriad beings actually have become free. At the very moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment, the wish was actually accomplished. The activities of the wish, the domino effect of the wish, have not yet finished. We are the recipients of the Buddha’s wish to save all sentient beings. Sometimes I think about the historical Buddha, now almost 2600 years ago, and His wish mixed with His breath. I am not thinking about the Buddhas’ spiritual qualities, just His breath. As the awakened Buddha, He moved through this world as an enlightened being, breathing in and out the wish for 40 years. Although He taught in India, now for nearly 2600 years, Buddhas’ breath has mixed with the air and molecules of this world, so much so that even halfway around the world, we are breathing in t

The enlightened state is a culmination and closure of deliberate and intense activity of the development process in a particular form or realm. Before your actual being or the transmigrating mind became a candidate for human realm activities, it existed in other ways. These other forms are so foreign to human mental functions that there is no way that you can bring it to mind, and we do not encourage you to try. There is no further use. In another life form, you required closure in the learning or development process within the specific other realm in order to go on. This is not about pig and cow lives but forms that do not even exist in this realm. Buddhism teaches about being a fly in a previous life or perhaps a pig, but this concept is not that, especially when we view the six realms as associated samsaric realms among myriad associated samsaric realms. There are other realms and other forms that you have existed in before this life and completed the work and necessary transformat

Buddhist optimism means that ALL living beings shall be free, and is based upon the Bodhisattva vow of universal liberation. What could be more optimistic than that? However, what makes it different from get rich quick schemes is that we are not trying to program our subconscious to get more: to get our desires met, manifesting the new car, the boyfriend, or the girlfriend that we want, but in fact, quite the opposite. We no longer are interested in drawing each and every desired object toward ourselves, but instead, self-interest (self-cherishing or the self-important view,) completely turns inside out. We discover for ourselves that we can exponentially increase the desire to benefit others in ways that we could never accomplish for ourselves. What we wish for others will have a more profound effect on the world, and in fact, it has a more profound effect on us than any form of secret or not-so-secret guide to higher self cherishing. The Bodhisattva ideal is not just for this lifetim

The dictionary definition of optimism is the philosophical opposite of pessimism, “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events, or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” Optimists generally believe that people, events, and situations are inherently good and that everything is going to work out fine in the end. I read about Pollyanna, ( the poster girl of optimists,) who was able to infect many with her optimism, whereas others might just feel that she is an idiot. The dictionary states that some optimists have a more internalized view of optimism, believing, (this is where the spirituality of optimism comes in) that regardless of the external world or situation, we should choose to feel good about it. Whatever the circumstances are, we should make the most of it. This kind of optimism does not depend on the quality of the external world; internal optimism adjusts one’s own feelings instead of changing others. Optimism has permeated Western culture f