Uncommon Happiness

Whatever you do, whether it’s studying the teachings or offering a single butter lamp, if you do it from pure intention, the wish to be enlightened for the benefit of all beings, it will be quite powerful. Intention is very important. Have pure intention within yourself.

The story of Geshe Ben illustrates this. One day a patron was coming to visit him. Geshe Ben was making nice offerings on the altar, and he noticed he was putting extra effort into making these offerings so that his patron would be impressed. As soon as he realized this, he said to himself, “Old monk, don’t be so foolish.” Instead of continuing, he threw a handful of dust on the altar. Later, the great Indian master Padampa Sangye heard this story and said that Geshe Ben’s handful of dust was a better offering than any other offering. Not that the dust is better or worse, but Geshe Ben was working to make his intention pure.

It is important to make your intention pure. Until your intention is pure, do not act. When the intention is pure, act. This is concerning oneself.

At other times it is very important to make your intention clear to others, so that there is no misunderstanding. People can’t read your mind, so they guess and create projections.

The five paths are the path of accumulation, the path of engagement, the path of seeing, the path of meditation, and the path of no more learning.

If there were no way to find ultimate happiness or freedom, why would that instinct exist in the first place?

From this perspective, we see the three kinds of training needed on the path to enlightenment: training in discipline, meditation, and wisdom.

We progress on the path of loving others as we love ourselves, caring for others as we care for ourselves, being compassionate to others as we are compassionate to ourselves, being concerned for others as we are concerned for ourselves. Progress comes in finding the freedom to do so clearly and cleanly, without confusion or reservations. In this way, freedom becomes abundant in our life. Joy and contentment become abundant in our life.

The experience of threat is due to our own lack of security, our own lack of stability, our own lack of unshakable strength and patience, and this makes us feel overwhelmed by aggression, big or small.

In essence, however, there are the habitual patterns of the five different disturbing self-centered emotions: being attached, angry, proud, jealous, and unaware or stupid.