I was in Bhutan, probably like one month ago, few weeks ago I was in Bhutan and I was giving a teaching and then I said to them about the sincerity, you know. Because they call themselves Buddhist, in a Buddhist country, and then us, ourselves, we call ourselves a Buddhist practitioner.
And the first step of being a Buddhist comes from the sincerity to oneself. If you don’t have a sincerity to oneself and let alone compassion or bodhisattva vow, you cannot uphold anything, whatsoever. That’s why it’s so difficult. You just try to take everything at once with your desire and not necessarily understanding your own capacity of your own mind, you know. So therefore being sincere to oneself is very important, you know. And if you are very sincere to oneself, with your own spiritual progress, with your own intention, you know, you don’t have to be honest to everybody. If you’re honest to everybody, you will lose everything, you know. You will lose your job, you will lose your family, you will lose your reputation, you will lose everything, you know. You don’t have to go to that far. But you need to have a sincerity to oneself, you should stop lying to oneself, you need to have a sincerity to oneself.
And if you have a sincerity in your heart and then a sense of kindness and, you know, willingness to see the truth, you know, the courage to see the truth will grow by itself. And then gradually as you have a courage to see the truth, not just accept with a sense of sincerity but also to see the truth. And then as you progress further with that sense of attitude, then you see the reality of the suffering as it is, the cause of suffering as it is. As you see the cause and the reality of the suffering as it is and then you will see the need of spirituality, the teachings of the Buddha, the importance of the Buddha, not just “healing” your body or your mind temporarily but seeing as a ultimate solution, eventually, you know.
So therefore, not having any sort of a principle and saying: “I need to uphold the Bodhisattva vow, I need to be Buddhist” in the sake of your image for other people to say that “I am Buddhist”, you know. And that “I’m a good person, I’m Buddhist, therefore I’m a good person”. If you have a headband like that, doesn’t work like that. Everybody is Buddhist, you know. Because the Buddhism doesn’t need a certificate, you know. As long as you see the truth and have a sincerity and have a compassion and see the relative truth and willingness to recognize the nature of the mind, you’re Buddhist. Whether you have a Buddha statue in your shrine or not, that doesn’t define you Buddhist or non-Buddhist, you know? So that’s why it’s very important.
Sincerity gives you courage to see the truth; as you have the courage to see the truth and then you see the reality of the suffering, the cause of the suffering, origin of the suffering basically. And then you will see the importance of the Dharma. Without acceptance of the reality of the suffering, you will never see the importance of the Dharma, you know. So that’s that.
Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche – Paldenshangpa La Boulaye France
Saturday 12 November 2022 (10′)
To be continued …
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