The Supreme Inspiration

So the supreme companions are mindfulness and alertness. The supreme inspiration is enemins and hindrances, disease and suffering. So again this is very much the lojong or mind training emphasis, as I said before, which was especially emphasized by Atisha and his his followers and many many texts written on this theme of how to take obstacles and hindrances as the path. Because normally when we encounter obstacles we think obstacle and if we, I mean genuinely, I remember one time, I don't know anyway, I went to see this very traditional Lama, he was not in any way new age, he was very traditional and I was complaining to him about all the problems on obstacles and he said, if you what he said in Tibetan, if you say obstacle is an obstacle, if you say opportunity is an opportunity. And so this is straight lojong teaching, that all the things which we encounter in our life which displease us, are counter to what our ego wants, can often be the best thing which ever happened to us from a spiritual point of view. And we all know this, I'm sure even in nowadays in all these self-help books they talk about this side of things, that often the things which have challenged us most, which have been the most difficult to go through at the time, later looking back we recognize that as being an enormous opportunity and benefit to grow up. Somebody said that life is the gymnasium of the soul, because you go to a gymnasium not to lie out, you know, you see all these poor people, I don't know why they have windows, you know, out looking out on the street where you see all these poor people struggling away on their bicycle sweat pouring down, is that an inducement? You know, we are willing to suffer for a greater good, right? We go to gymnasiums in order to challenge the body, if it's too easy we turn it up a grade, right? We expect to suffer in order to, as I say, reap a greater benefit, stronger muscles, more toned, and so forth. So likewise that saying about life itself being the gymnasium of the soul, even though Buddhists don't have souls, nonetheless it's a good one. We know what they mean. So therefore when we are faced with difficulties and challenges, as he mentions here, enemies, people who cause problems for us, this means, doesn't mean the Russians, it means anybody who causes us any problems, difficulties, obstructions, you know, in life we are likely to come across people who are difficult. So people who are difficult, who have hurt us in the past, are causing problems for us in the present, are, you know, potential problems in the future, these are categorized as enemy. So it means anyone that we don't like. So the supreme inspiration, that means the thing which really encourages us to practice and gets us moving, right? It's not when everything is going well. In Buddhism, the celestial realms, these heavenly realms, which are the result of extremely positive karma, are regarded as a spiritual dead end. To be born in the heavenly realms, which again are impermanent when the karma which caused being reborn in that realm is exhausted, we come back down again. We're living on our bank account but we're not getting any interest. So eventually that bank account is going to go dry and then we're left with all the debits. So this heavenly rebirth is regarded as karmically not a good deal because why? Because everything is very, very pleasant. Anything we want manifests. We have bodies of light. There is no old age sickness. Everybody is beautiful. Everything is light and love. There's no incentive to practice. There's no inspiration to go beyond that to something deeper, more profound. So therefore everybody is lulled into this false sense of security and when that comes to an end, it's incredible suffering because they recognize they're going to have to leave that realm and whichever realm they go into after that is going to be a downer. And so they said that the suffering of the one who recognizes now that their merit has depleted and they're going to have to leave is worse than the suffering of the beings in the hell realms. So you know it's very important therefore to recognize if everything is too nice for too long, it can also be spiritually a dead end. And so therefore when things do start to go wrong, in other words do not go the way the ego would like them to go. Rather than feeling upset and resentful or blaming ourselves or whatever or feeling self-pity, we say okay let's take this all onto the path. How can I use this on the path? People are difficult, we learn patience and compassion. We have sickness, we can practice giving and taking, you know, these Tomlin practices or we can appreciate that the body is you know fragile and that therefore this is a good time to do some genuine practice and so forth. I mean there's many ways of doing it. We can also, if people get sick, they can think this is clearing up negative karma and so forth. The important thing is to whatever happens to us here, enemies, hindrances, disease and suffering, we lose someone we love, we lose possessions we are attached to, we go through a difficult period. Sometimes everything goes wrong in somebody's life. You name it it goes wrong. You know they lose the one they love, they have problems in their organization, their health breaks down, everything seems to fall apart like a you know stack of cards which suddenly you pull out one card and the whole stack falls down and so it's very easy to end up feeling totally depressed and self pitying and you know just feeling we can't go any further with all this. It's just too awful and this is when we need to appreciate that these very negative things have to become our inspiration to go beyond our grasping and attachment and take them on the path. One thing is for example, I mean many example the whole Lojong literature is about taking misfortune on the path but one of them is that you know if something bad happens to us then either we can intern with self pity feeling so sorry for I mean we have a reason to be sorry for example if we lose someone we love very much you know there is a period of genuine grief and sorrow but then we have a choice. Either we can stay interned scratching on the scab so it bleeds more and more and feeling so sorry for us because we're wounded or we could for example this is just an example think I have lost how many beings in this world have also lost they're ones that they loved how many beings in this world have suffered for example early childhood sexual abuse how many people in this world have suffered the loss of something which was treasured for them or all sorts of things how many people in this world right now are suffering from the disease which I am suffering from and then thinking of how universal our suffering is it opens the heart to compassion instead of closing in on ourselves and and feeling so pity we open our heart to realize the universality of this suffering for example when I was in Australia one time I was listening to this talk by this woman she had suffered really horrific abuse when she was a child really awful and when she grew up having gone through you know a lot of trauma then she recognized that she was in a wonderful position to help all those others who likewise have been through these kind of traumas because she knew she understood what they were going through she could speak to them on their level and help them in the way she herself had been helped so she started this whole organization for dealing with you know childhood abuse and domestic abuse and so forth and so forth and she was very successful at it but she was also extraordinarily inspirational a lovely woman radiant because she had taken what could have ended up as being an enormous obstacle for her life and transformed it into the opportunity of spiritual growth benefiting not just herself but benefiting so many others so like that whatever is the problem it's up to us what we do with that problem whether it just enhances our sense of ego injured ego or whether we use it for genuinely expanding beyond ourselves it should be really always remembered that our ego is very happy to be miserable because if we are miserable and sorry for ourselves we are thinking me me me me me me poor me oh look when I went through oh oh me me me you know I mean with all due respect this is why everybody has a therapist right you go to your your therapist your psychotherapist and you tell them all your problems and your horrible childhood now it's wonderful to your parents and they then you know he sits and listens and in the day you pay over your fee and he listens to the next person talking about themselves right me me me me me and especially a miserable me the ego really I'm not joking so we have to heal ourselves we have the choice we can say obstacle and it's an obstacle we can say opportunity it's an opportunity it's up to us I mean truly it's this is a very important point for all of us you know the the ego in itself is ambivalent doesn't care as long as it exists it thinks it exists so what gives it fuel is our sense of clinging especially to our misfortunes when we are really genuinely happy we're not thinking much about ourselves because we our hearts can open but when we are trapped in our own suffering then we have no room for anyone else I mean as you know someone who is really in a lot of suffering or psychological pain they're not interested in other people's psychological pains they're only interested in theirs that's what they want to talk about they want to talk about anybody else me me me me when we're psychologically healthy then other people are so much more fascinating and I think a sign of healthiness a healthy ego is still ego but it's a healthy ego is this genuine interest to reach out and benefit others rather than just being trapped inside ourselves and on our own worries and problems then we are really suffocating so these low-tone teachings are very helpful for giving various techniques and methods for helping us to take the sufferings after all the Buddha said samsara this life of birth and death by its very nature is Duca Luca is often translated as suffering but then people say I'm not suffering I'm perfectly happy that's not what it means so one could one could Duca is the opposite of sukha and sukha doesn't just mean happiness it means a sense of ease and so Duca therefore is dis ease right it's this underlying dis ease in our daily life which is circling around our ego obsession me me me me because whereas me me me me there's you know everybody else is other so we suffer anyway the point is that the greatest help on the spiritual path sometimes its problems many people come to spiritual well because they've been suffering and so they're looking for some help and that's why they get interested in spiritual paths often if people are very happy and I've never had any problems they're not so interested in spiritual they're more interested in material as the source of happiness but people who have been disappointed or hurt or harmed or troubled in any way they are attracted to finding a solution which it does not depend on external circumstances but depends on inner transformation so therefore also in that way the difficulties of life could actually act as an inspiration they inspire people to change their their whole mental concepts and their ideas and their lifestyle in order to to deal skillfully with the difficulties of their lives how to find a way to deal with that and often that is when they get interested in in the spiritual life not always I mean a Buddha himself was you know a prince and he was you know he was doing pretty okay now because of past causes and effects nonetheless he renounced but many of the people who came to him it was because they had experienced great suffering in their lives and and therefore they looked to this as being a refuge you know the Buddha Dhamma Sangha are called the Buddha his teachings and the community of the followers are called the three refuges and so in that way anybody who becomes a Buddhist is a refugee right what we are refugee from we are escaping from the terrors of an unenlightened lifestyle we are escaping from all the endless round of birth and death and rebirth redeath of samsara and trying to find some meaning in life beyond merely satisfying our animal nature and so then this way the Buddha Dhamma and Sangha become a refuge such a relief and so our suffering is what is the incentive if you don't want the word inspiration you can think incentive to get us to practice when things are not going right that's when we wake up and think there must be some better way of dealing with things and how we're going at the moment and so many many people come to the spiritual life through suffering