Jan 16

Kalu Rinpoche | Wisdom of emptiness in everyday life – don’t wait until things are disaster already

So therefore, coming back to our topic of the day and that is understanding the meaning of emptiness so that we can utilise that understanding and that clarity and bring into our daily life.

The only way to do that is number 1 is a solitude, number 2 is that don’t wait until things are disaster already.

Many people say “Oh I’m going through grief, I lost somebody, now what can I do?”. Yeah, of course there is a solution but it will be far more challenging. Or something like “my partner betrayed me, I feel so much pain in my heart, how can I overcome that?”. Then we wait until the last moment, we are not aware in the beginning, we don’t practice when it is a little bit quiet, we are completely distracted and we tell ourself “Yeah, everything is fine, why should I practice?, why do I need this?, everything seems to be fine”.

Then at last minute when things go wrong then you ask for a painkiller from the Buddhist teacher. Then you read all sorts of book and then you think that you know a lot but that is all intellectual knowledge. If the intellectual knowledge only solves all the problem then we will have lots of professor not a meditation master anymore.

So therefore you can be an intellectual individual, very smart, very sharp but you could be very terrible in terms of individual who has a deeper realisation. So therefore intellectual understanding is very important, is very necessary, common sense, intellectual understanding and aligning with it solitude, little bit of as a practitioner.

So therefore as a practitioner, you have to practice when you are not challenged. Then whether you are good practitioner or not, it is revealed when you are challenged. Everybody can become a good practitioner when you are not tested to the limit. Everybody is an enlightened being until they are tested. Everybody is a realised yogi in their mountains, in their cabins until they are tested.

So once you are tested with a challenge then you know your limitation, not that you need to, but it is just that you need to practice it when you are not challenged and you will see your limitation at that stage, you see?

 

His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche in Riga, Latvia
How to understand and apply the Buddhist wisdom of emptiness in everyday life
Ganden Center – September 2024 (18′ 02”)

To be continued…