So therefore my (advice), if it is possibility for you, to practice little bit together, to inspire, to encourage with each other. Like an example, when we enter 3Y retreat, we say 365 days, right?, that’s one year, second year, third year, we count the days and hours and we say “one day is finished, one week is finished, one month is finished!”
By the middle of 2nd year, as you hold a very grip with your practice, with a sense of joy, there is nothing to look outward, you start to find sense of so much joy about practicing. You read the teachings of the great masters there are tears of joy by itself, you are able to connect sincerely, from the bottom of your heart.
In the 1st year, even the way you read the biography, it is like you just want to finish it, you want to finish it, you want to talk about it. Then by the 2nd year, because you practice, you do not even finish the first page, you really look into it and you reflect, you meditate, you reflect, you think, then you share immense devotion, great compassion simultaneously, then you contemplate on it, you meditate on it. Even how you read it becomes different, how you practice becomes different, how you react, the physical attitude, becomes different.
Then towards the end of the retreat, you don’t want to end it, you don’t want to finish it, you wish it goes on. It is amazing, I was 18 years old, I have not seen life. But that moment I told myself “I don’t want this to finish, this is so beautiful, this is so good, this is so everything, Dharma is there, I don’t have to be slave to my emotions, I see my emotion as it is, I see it before things arise, it gives me so much freedom and bliss and joy because of that.”
Because of the conditions that surrounded give that result, then you know that once you are out, the conditions are not there, you have to meet the people that you do not want to meet, talk the people that you do not want to talk, listen to the things you do not want to listen. Then you will never know how long the quality will last, you tell yourself “I do not want this retreat to be finished, I want this to go on”. When you reach to that stage, you can go anywhere, in order to preserve that quality before it becomes corrupted.
His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche in Riga, Latvia
How to understand and apply the Buddhist wisdom of emptiness in everyday life (Q&A 4)
Ganden Center – September 2024 (1h 00′ 10”)
To be continued…
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