Jan 22

Kalu Rinpoche | Wisdom of emptiness in everyday life – a very clear example

I’ll give you one clear example. I am not trying to promote His Holiness Dalai Lama’s image again here and there and so on so forth. But I will give you a very clear example, as an individual who is a Buddhist practitioner, Buddhist leader and the spiritual figure, right?

So throughout the civilization, you are very familiar with the European religion such as Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, having a little bit of differences among each other. In the beginning may not be so extreme or some of them extreme and then we silence each other over the time and so on. Then we know throughout the history and then we try to demonise each other and some leaders they try to unify with different faith and different understanding together and so on so forth. So that has happened throughout the human history.

But our current history example is that in 1959 when China invaded Tibet and then we as Tibetans we lost so many things, not just the temples but the people’s way of life, their religious freedom and their spiritual way of living and their ordinary people way of living, even they are not Buddhist practitioner whatsoever, whatever doesn’t matter.

Then His Holiness Dalai Lama is a spiritual and political leader of Tibet. Since then you never hear one sentence that Chinese are bad, from His Holiness Dalai Lama. He says Chinese are human beings, we have to be compassionate. Temporarily they have their policy and they have the suppressed mental attitude towards the fellow Tibetans. But yet he always overwhelms with the Buddhist message rather than the normal human reaction.

If I was in that position, I will make sure that everybody is religious extremist as much as possible. So then I can throw against them as a meaningless human being with the religious ideology. And I will say “if you do against that country you will born in a Pure Land”. I will do that because I am not , how do you say, a realised being.

So that’s the distinction between a practitioner and a non-practitioner. There are so many religious figures nowadays, they say “everything is love and peace” until they are tested. Then once they are tested, they say “Oh, we have to do everything to destroy each other”.

Then if you listen to His Holiness Dalai Lama, he is 89, going to be 89 and then throughout the lifetime, not a single word, demonizing or with great negativity, always with the logic and the reason and the Buddhist ethic.

I don’t know what more I can show you as an example.

 

His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche in Riga, Latvia
How to understand and apply the Buddhist wisdom of emptiness in everyday life
Ganden Center – September 2024 (20′ 45”)

To be continued…