..續本文上一頁y stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off!
In real life, we should shake the sufferings falling down on us off like dirt, step on them instead of getting buried by them. Eventually we can free ourselves from the oceans of samsaric suffering, like the donkey freeing himself from the well.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the Kadampa has many teachings of turning suffering into the path. I have a classmate who is very good at it. He is a leader. During a race for a position, he was indifferent as if it has nothing to do with him. His friends were worried and asked him, “Why did not you run for it
” He said, “It”s OK. If I didn”t get the position, I would have more time to practice dharma. If I got it, I will have more opportunity to benefit more people. Regardless of the outcome, I am happy.”
Unfortunately, many people do not understand this these days. They are always worried about personal gains and losses, and sometimes even turn good situations into bad ones. If you look at a problem from a different angle, unflavored conditions can also be transformed into auspicious ones. As Beethoven had said, “The most excellent people receive joy through sufferings.”
3) The Practice of Taking and Giving
The Tonglen practice of taking and giving is also very powerful in reducing sufferings. When lying sick in bed, or being destitute, you may wish, “As in cyclic existence, there are so many sentient beings suffering in this way, may all their sufferings come onto me.” Then, when you exhale, visualize you give all your happiness to others, like taking off your coat and putting it on them. When you inhale, visualize all the sufferings of others come into your body, and you take on their suffering so that all sentient beings are free from suffering and attain vast happiness.
This is a profound instruction of training mind in Mahayana teaching. If we can keep practicing through sufferings, all our sufferings will have value, and our ego-cling will weaken as well.
4) Using the Wisdom of Emptiness
The best way to eradicate sufferings is to build the wisdom of emptiness in your mind because it can directly cut off the roots of sufferings. How does it work
Because all our sufferings come from our conceptualized minds, emptiness can exactly clear such illusion. As Bodhisattva Aryadeva said in Four Hundred Stanza, “If things exist inherently, what is the good to perceive emptiness
Since you are bound by the conceptions of duality, the wisdom of emptiness is to be refuted here.”
To cultivate the wisdom of emptiness, of course, you do not have to realize the state of the first ground Bodhisattva. But, at lease, you should understand the truth that “all phenomena are empty”. So it”s necessary to study shastras such as Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way and Four Hundred Stanzas. Especially for some young practitioners, who have been Buddhists for many years, they still know nothing about dharma teaching except reading a few books occasionally. If so, they are not worthy of the title of Buddhist.
Buddhists today mainly have two pitfalls. One of them is that, unlike practitioners in Tibetan Monasteries, many Buddhism scholars do not spend much time on dharma through listening, contemplating and meditating, or through teaching, debating and writing, and they are merely satisfied with a Master or Doctoral degree in Buddhism. Thus, their knowledge of Buddhism is rather superficial, their papers also lack greater insights. Nevertheless, their arrogance grows inside them day by day. The other pitfall is some followers have a blind faith. They only seek shortcuts for liberation by going around asking for empowerments and blessings.
In fact, as a Buddhist, in order to truly understand Buddhism, one has to learn and follow dharma practice step by s…
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