While I was in Kopan monastery, we received teachings from Ven Thubten Pema. She is an Australian non who spends usually 3 months a year in Kopan, Nepal to teach.
During the Buddhism course they spoke often about us having a precious human rebirth. Meaning we have a life in which we can develop our minds – learn and evolve. Which makes it a precious one. Yes you too – or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post.
It is a privilege to be healthy, to be here, to have this amazing life. So many would wanna swap.
Wake up and practice gratefulness.
To make the most of this human life we should focus on happiness – and eliminate the causes for suffering.
Suffering is caused by unhealthy minds. Like ignorance, attachment and pride. These lead to negative actions and issues such as anxiety.
The dharma is the book of Buddha, it’s what they recommend you to study to move on from the ignorant mind. You use the lam rim which is the path towards enlightenment. They believe every person can become a Buddha.
You can be purified from the actions done under ignorance, anger or emotions. You can start with small actions such as, I will not speak badly about this person until tomorrow morning. Then until tomorrow, until next week, and then never again. Small drops fill a bucket and small actions create result.
Karma is like a seed and it needs the right conditions to sprout. So take care of your surroundings.
Karma is action. Cause and effect. To me karma is a way to make sense of all the “bad” in the world.
Separating actions from the person makes it easier to practice compassion. OC = object of compassion.
She spoke about a concept called suffering of change. So you want to be happy. You go to the sun, it is too hot, you go into the ocean, it gets too cold. It’s a loop. If something truly brings you happiness – it would always bring you happiness. The more you’d get of it, it would be a total bliss.
I recognize myself in this with jobs and moving around – I was chasing happiness and it would bring me temporary happiness.
What can this emotion teach me?
Anger often comes when attachment does not get what it wants. It comes from mental unhappiness. Not a nice energy to have in your body nor for others to be around.
Anger means you can only see the negatives of a person. They are times 100. It overestimates the faults of its object without seeing the qualities.
Rejoicing is a practice of reminder ourselves, how wonderful, how fortunate. Think of all the good circumstances you have (health, wealth, education, family).
Impermanence. Everything is always changing – just like nature. Like our minds. We constantly evolve and look at things with a different perspective.
The course went quite deep and we learned so much in the 10 days. Very thankful to be able to experience this ❁
miracles of the moon ☽ 