We always say that human life is very precious and hard to find, but most of the time we do not really think seriously like that. If we think like that, then we should have achieved a lot since we first opened our eyes until now. Time flies in just a blink of an eye, but not so much has been done or accomplished because we always think that we have a lot of time to do things and so we should first rest and enjoy our life. This kind of mentality eventually becomes our habit and usually habits are difficult to overcome when they develop deeper. So we only talk about the preciousness of the human body and we did not try to contemplate over the matter seriously in our practice.
Human nature is such a mixture of pride, humility, happiness and sadness that I cannot always distinguish which moments one is going through. When you are praised by someone a lot, you tend to say I am not like that and want to be humble but when someone is trying to say something unpleasant then one’s pride starts to function and you try to defend yourself by arguing that I am not that bad, in fact, I am a good person, either directly or indirectly.
There are lots of things to learn and understand about the human mentality. In Buddhist teachings, it is mentioned that there are the defilements of desire, hatred and ignorance which are called the three poisons. This comes from the emotion of self-cherishing. The so-called attachment to the self as “I”. That self or I is developed from confusion and it is the wrong interpretation of emptiness. There is no self or I if we try to find it yet we easily interpret it as existing and point to our figure, saying this is me. However, within that figure of you, if you search thoroughly, we can't find ”I”. So the whole process of our human life, we struggle so much because we treat emotion and feeling as real as well as regard ourselves as real. In that way, we spend so much time and effort in satisfying our emotions which actually never get satisfied but deepen in the involvement of defilement. Desire, ignorance or hatred increase but the nature of that increase is the opposite of satisfaction or fulfillment.
Anyway we should know that self,its related emotions as well as perceptions, have no real existence. We should know them to be illusion-like, appearances interdependently arising. We should maintain this knowledge with mindfulness.
With that we will be free from all kinds of dissatisfaction and subjects of worry.
This website, shangpa.org, started very long ago with the help of Mark Carter and Yih Toong and they have done a very wonderful job all along. When I go overseas on teaching tours, people seem to know me very well, especially my background and who are my teachers etc.. Everyone says they frequently read shangpa.org website and know many things about me. So I really appreciate Mark Carter and Yih Toong’s time and effort to write the introduction about me, my institutions, my programme and travel information. I am very grateful and thank both of them. Now Mark cannot be involved in maintaining the website due to his workload so Amelia and Yih Toong are helping out to update the website. I am really glad that website will continue without interruption and now I feel I should try to write some short articles from time to time so that those who know me will enjoy reading what I am doing and thinking.
I wish everyone Happy Chinese New Year.