Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

We want to believe that we are in alignment with the fully enlightened Buddhas during meditation practice while we are in a very high-thinking place. However, we continue to believe in the value of desiring the suffering form of love as the excellent support of our happiness. What compels us to forget the transcendent is our attraction to seductive love that has different unexamined connotations. The deep methods of Tibetan Buddhism train us to examine how feel about the desire for or allure of love, as well as correcting blatant errors that hold us in suffering states. Part of the reason we do not examine what we think is that we might be shocked at our innate beliefs. These may be embedded ideals from confused perceptions gained in previous lives, something half-heard we thought was important, or something we learned in childhood that no longer has value. This discovery is three quarters of the process of our mental dharma work, honestly uncovering how we actually believe; then worki...

One evening I went to a tiny old carnival in the parking lot of a grocery store. You know the kind? They have attractions such as a twenty-foot Ferris wheel with banged up creaky cars, little kiddy cars filled with excited children going round and round on a little track accompanied by the latest Latino music. Everything is in miniature; a small inflatable slide and little booths where you can throw a baseball to try to win a dusty stuffed bunny rabbit. Right at the center of the carnival is their feature, the open sided trailers selling cotton candy and hot dogs. The mind of a meditator thinking about bodhichitta is like this. You are at the carnival, your mind is delighted, and you just want to just squeeze the pink cotton candy because it is so sweet and so fun. You have no responsibilities; you have nothing and no worries. Just gathering and hugging while you are in this marvelous little carnival of your own making for arising the precious mind of enlightenment and delightful altru...

We should not have to mistrust the world if we act in accordance with society’s structure adapted to our own life by personal values. The parameters of personal freedom to do anything we want, when we want is limited because society says we do not have permission to break laws and rules to carry out our own personal desires. That means there are areas of our idea of total freedom that we can't explore. Of course, we can agree that everyone should follow certain rules and there needs to be a balance between personal needs and the needs and freedoms of others. Therefore, we avoid impinging on the freedom of others by voluntarily limiting the full expression of our own freedom. Out of my personal values come my choices, such as who I might vote for to represent me in political office or on a committee. Perhaps I'll vote for someone who thinks like me, someone who has ideas about helping others and who cares about the needs of others. On the other hand, by doing just that, we turn...

T he many benefits we desire to possess that are enlightened qualities of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas such as peace, wisdom, and compassion are not gained gradually! Vast qualities are the results of the entry into the awakened state and not the practice of Buddhism or any other religion. Therefore, we cannot actually practice peace, wisdom, or compassion but we can practice what will cause them to arise!  Enlightened peace is the result of closure to the lower realms such as the human realm is by comparison to higher being. Enlightened wisdom is skillful use of exalted common sense, and enlightened compassion acts without an object that is forced, out of confusion, to appear to the inner mind. However, the preparation for awakening will produce some signs of accomplishment that come and go due to an unstable mind. The challenge is to stabilize realizations without solidifying them into a “really real” because they are elements of a greater awakening. A good sign that peace will...