You are trying to fulfil your ego, why you are trying to fulfil your ego? Because you want to look like them, sound like them, behave like them, look more superior, sound more superior. You’re no longer renouncing anything. You are trying to pretend something that you are not.
So trying to be in that kind of position will not make you renounce any further at all. So the meaning of the renunciation has to come from one’s within.
Like Milarepa. Milarepa didn’t cut his hair. Buddha did, he didn’t. They didn’t copy each other. So Milarepa, he had committed, basically he killed some people, his own family, relatives, because they were really bad to him. Because when his father and mother passed away, all the personal inheritance was given to the uncles and aunts. The uncles and aunts, they took all the land for themselves and then they didn’t give anything to Milarepa. Then Milarepa got pissed off, and basically killed the whole family. Black magic, whatever you call it. Basically he did.
After that he really came to the conclusion that he had committed such a wrong action, so therefore he fully confessed and renounced, and desperate for the liberation. And then he met Marpa Lotsawa, and then receiving teachings after a while. And then becoming one of the mahasiddha, one of the first mahasiddha of Tibet.
So things like that. So renunciation, the moment you copy one another, then it’s little bit like following trend. Trend, trend, like “oh, everybody’s doing it, I should do that too”. That doesn’t make you happy. In a basic level of happiness, still doesn’t give you happiness, forget about Buddhism.
So there’s two things. One is understanding your own weakness, understanding your own repetitive error, or mistakes.
Like an example, you may have a lot of anger, you may have a lot of jealousy, you may have a lot of hatred, you may have a lot of other negativities, right? And then you have to analyse what is the essence of that, like an example I was saying yesterday, many people they say “I don’t want my anger, I want my anger to be gone” but the problem is, if you try to dissolve the anger, it doesn’t function. The way to dissolve the anger, you have to understand the aggression. Before the anger, there’s an aggression. And before the aggression, there’s a lack of content in the mind. Due to the lack of content, then there’s an aggression. Due to aggression, there’s an anger.
So when you understand that, then you understand the relative truth of your own weakness. So that’s something important to keep in your mind. When I say “don’t copy the other people’s renunciation”, that’s what it means, that’s what I meant. Basically you have to analyse your own weakness, your own pattern, so that’s one thing.
Second, is renunciation is not something that you think of it in the beginning, when you are Buddhist practitioner, and no longer think afterwards. It’s rather – think about “renunciation, renunciation, renunciation”, throughout your lifetime, as you continue to practice.
In the beginning it’s a different journey, at the end, it’s the same. In the beginning, it’s a different journey for all of us. The final destination is the same. The final destination is overcoming our fixation. That is the so-called, in our capacity of final destination. Overcoming the fixation, the self clinging.
In the beginning, we have to understand our own circumstance, our own weakness, our own pattern of mistakes, or error. And then over the time, carrying on that idea and the philosophy of renunciation throughout your spiritual journey and at the end, overcoming your fixation.
How do you overcome your fixation? You have to recognise the meaning of illusion. And here it comes the teachings of Niguma. In the Niguma’s teachings, she says that “if you practice like an illusion, see everything as an illusion, and then you will be enlightened swiftly than you imagine”.
Teachings of His Eminence the II Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche to Palpung Sampel Chöling, in Cajigar (Huesca)
August 21, 2021.
Comments are closed.