..續本文上一頁selfishness.

　　Now if, when you began practicing tonglen, you already had one hundred per cent concern with the welfare of others and no concern for your own welfare, then you wouldn”t need to practice tonglen in the first place. So, it is designed to work for a practitioner who”s starting from a place of selfishness and to lead them into this place of concern for others. And, gradually, by using the practice, you will actually cultivate the sincere desire to take suffering away from others and experience it yourself; you will cultivate real love and compassion for others. But on the other hand, you don”t really do the practice in order to be able to, at that moment, take on the suffering of others and experience it yourself; you”re really doing it in order to train the mind. And by training your mind and developing the motivation and the actual wish to free others from suffering, then the long-term result is that you have the ability to directly dispel the suffering of others.

　　Question: Rinpoche, you said that we may not be able to - one person may not be able to directly affect or remove short-term unhappiness or suffering of another person, but that we can learn to generate the basis of another”s happiness, ultimate happiness. So could you say more, please, about how one person can generate the basis of ultimate happiness for another person

　　Rinpoche: Well, the direct basis of establishing another being in a state of freedom or happiness, long-term or ultimate happiness, is being able to show them how to get rid of their mental afflictions and to teach them how to recognize and therefore abandon causes of suffering. And, through doing so in that way, then you can establish them gradually in ultimate happiness. But even in cases where you can”t, for whatever reason, do that, by having the intention to benefit that being, then when you yourself become fully free, then you will be able to actually help them and gradually free and protect them as well.

　　Question: Rinpoche, can you say a little more about the practice of letting go when the mind is agitated, as you described, as used in mahamudra and dzogchen

　　 I experience my mind when I sit as being agitated. And there”s the practice of letting go. And I”m wondering if you can just say more about that in a practical way

　　Rinpoche: In general, the main approach that is taken in the mahamudra and dzogchen traditions is applied when you are looking at the nature of your mind. Now, kleshas or mental afflictions are thoughts, and thoughts are the natural display of the mind. Thoughts may be pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant, they may be positive or negative, but in any case, whatever type of thought arises, you deal with it in exactly the same way. You simply look directly at it.

　　Now, looking at the thought, or looking into the thought, or looking at the nature of the thought, is quite different from analyzing it. You don”t attempt to analyze the contents of the thought, nor do you attempt to think about the thought. You just simply look directly at it. And when you look directly at a thought, you don”t find anything. Now, you may think that you don”t find anything because you don”t know how to look or you don”t know where to look, but in fact, that”s not the reason. The reason, according to Buddha, is that thoughts are empty. And this is the basic meaning of all the various teachings on emptiness he gave, such as the sixteen emptinesses and so on.

　　Now, to use anger as an example of this, if you become angry, and then you look directly at the anger - which doesn”t mean analyze the contents of the thoughts of anger, but you look directly at that specific thought of anger - then you won”t find anything. And, in that moment of not finding anything, the poisonous quality of the anger will somehow vanish or dissolve. Your mind will relax, and you will, at least to some extent, be free of anger.

　　Now, you may or may not, at this point, understand this, but in any case, you”ll have opportunity to work with this approach tomorrow and the next day, and over the next couple of days you may come to have some experience of this.

　　So, we”re going to conclude now with a brief dedication. But I would also like to thank you for demonstrating your great interest in dharma, and listening and asking questions.

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