Nov 24

Kalu Rinpoche | The most practical way to study emptiness everyday (Part 1)

Q: What is the most practical way to study emptiness everyday?

A: To study, the practical to study emptiness every day, is to remind yourself that everything is impermanent, everything is impermanent, everything is impermanent. And that is the best way to study the emptiness.

If you study the emptiness based on “I want to be abbot of the monastery, I want to be the highest scholar of our monastery, in our university” and based on that, if you have that kind of intention, which it shows. You cannot hide your intention, when you have that kind of intention, it shows naturally in your behavior, in your attitude, in your expression. Many people they think that “Oh, my intention, nobody knows if I don’t tell anybody, as long as I don’t tell other people, nobody knows”. They think they are the smartest people in the world, and it’s really stupid. People who have a wrong intention, you can see it in their face, in their attitude, in their way of doing things in life. Whether they are abbot, whether they are scholar, whether they are practitioner, it doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to defend myself either. I’m not perfect also.

So the best way to, the most practical way to study the emptiness every day, is to remind ourselves with the meaning of emptiness, again and again. Reminding ourselves with the meaning of impermanence again and again. Everything is impermanence, everything is impermanence, everything is impermanence. And seeing that. Not just believing it. But seeing that and having that sense of acceptance from the heart, and that is very important. And when you have that, and then genuine devotion, inspiration, to the Lord Buddha’s teachings, to the great masters, compassionate to all sentient beings, naturally comes.

The problem of the 21st century Buddhist people is that they say “Ah, I want to be compassionate! Ah, I want to be devoted to my guru and my lineage, and Buddha!” It just doesn’t work like that! It never functions like that. If you don’t have the acceptance of the meaning of impermanence, the beauty of the Dharma cannot be discovered. It’s very simple. There’s no middle way. There’s no right wing, left wing, centre, right, left, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t have all this political agenda. There is no political agenda when it comes to that.

There is many different traditions based on different circumstance, based on different time, and different masters, and so on, so forth. But if you really want to study the emptiness everyday in a very practical way, the most helpful method is to remind yourself everything is impermanence, and then seeing that.

Number one is seeing that. Seeing everything as impermanence, number one.

 

Kalu Rinpoche
FB Livestream 10 August 2020

To be continued…