Week 13: Having Gained Definite Ascertainment, Advice on Pursuing the Practice
[14] In this way you realize exactly
The vital points of the three principal aspects of the path.
Resort to seeking solitude, generate the power of effort,
And quickly accomplish your final goal, my child.
Lama Tsongkhapa is giving us a small advice on what to do to have this knowledge of three principal aspects of the path. So this is, I think, one of the very important points and I really wish to emphasize or to recommend all of you to take this part very seriously, because when you take this part very seriously, you will know how to put into practice. So this part, we gonna go through sort of the purpose of all the points that Lama Tsonkhapa made, in earlier classes.
Let’s just touch the points based time to time, in the meantime, if you have any question, I would really be happy to go with at the end so that things can be very much clear, and we will have a new topic for the next session. So before, without taking much time, I just wish to go through the points, it says that:
Having Gained Definite ascertainment advice on pursuing the Practice
This one outlines, it says that ‘Having Gained Definite Ascertainment Advice on Pursuing the Practice’, it’s the time in a moment where Lama Tsongkhapa is advising on implementing the points that you have learned before into the practice. So here the verse says that:
‘In this way you realize exactly
The vital points [or the important points] of the three principal aspect of the path’.
Resort to seeking solitude, generate the power of effort,
And quickly accomplish your final goal, my child.
Now, after realizing and understanding this clearly you should ‘resort’ or you should ‘seek a solid solitude’ or you should seek a place where you can practice and ‘generate the power of effort’ and through ‘the power of effort’, it’s not like things will not go smoothly, especially when you are the practitioner.
There will be lots of time where it would be really hard for practice. Many people take and say like “Maybe the Buddha is testing me”. Nobody there to test you, but because of our own negative karma, because of our own negative imprints of the past we encounter with lots of difficult situations where it’s difficult to face. As a consequence, many people they breakdown, many people they can’t continue.
At my monastery we say that ‘the scale of the way is different’ but I will just translate into something that you will all understand. It’s more like to do the contemplation or understanding in order to have one gram of the understanding of Buddha’s knowledge, you have to have 10 kilograms of the merits. So that’s why you have to have lot of merits, otherwise you may be there to practice certain things, you may start to practice certain things, but there would be lots of obstacles because of our imprints of the past negative karma you’ve been engaged. So that’s why things might not be easy, but you really need to put effort, so the right effort is very important.
And the right effort when you’re free from three kinds of laziness which I mention earlier:
1. the laziness of procrastination like “I will do it later,tomorrow and tomorrow”, like delaying,
2. there’s another laziness which is like lack of self confidence that“I cannot/will not be able to do”, “May I have this problem that it should this, it should that”, you get all the reasons to prove that you can’t do, it’s more like you put yourself down, you take the steps back from practicing or drink certain thing, that is one kind of laziness.
3. and the third kind of laziness is to involve in things which are less important, for example when it comes to practicing dharma,we just involve in things and matters of this life. It’s more like majority of the Buddhists, not also the world, it’s more like you can pretty much say a whole world, except some serious practitioners, they spend like their whole life doing things that result in just certain pleasures of this life.
People earn money, people earn wealth and people earn fame, but none of these can carry to the next life, it’s just something of this life. People like literally spend a lot of time for a delicious food, people spend lots of time for little fame, people spend lots of time for some status in the society.
There are a lot of people who have literally worked day and night to earn like certain limits, certain targets that they wish to achieve so they can feel rich. So there are many people who die on the process, it’s more like they have achieved nothing, they spend their whole life to try to achieve and they achieve nothing. So that is also one type of laziness that you have a time, you know how to practice, you understand the way, the importance of practice, yet you just think that “OK, first I will do this, then I will practice, first I will reply to some mails and then I’m going to practice”. You have a time to meditate or practice in the morning , but then you think “Maybe I do that first and then I will do this, or maybe I will sleep for a little bit more time then I will do this”, then there is never a time to do that.
We spend not only days and hours, but we spend month and month, year and year and then eventually people spend their whole life thinking that they will do something, knowing that the importance of practicing but they end their whole life without having really a real time to practice. Even among the monks and nuns, they know that the real practice is transforming the mind, the prayer are just one means. Prayer is important, doing other things are important, but not as important as practicing compassion, bodhicitta, emptiness, renunciation or not as important as literally transforming the mind directly, because whatever you do physically or verbally, whatever practice you do physically or verbally, obviously it doesn’t affect the mind directly.
So working on transforming the mind directly is the direct way to practice, so at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much you train your body or your verbal saying, it leaves imprints in our mind, but at the end of the day this verbal or physical doesn’t go over the next life. All the merits that you do through verbal or physical, it is very helpful but not as helpful as transforming the mind directly.
So there are many monks and nuns who understand this, they think that “Oh maybe I will meditate later, maybe I will meditate better, maybe I will do some serious meditation later on, later on”. Many cases that ‘later’ never come or the death comes before that ‘later’ that they are expecting.
So needless to say about the lay practitioners, obviously this happened to many more. The situation is that without really cheating ourselves by saying that later, like in some places, I’m sure when people are asking for their own rights from the government or from anything else or anybody else, there are some cases that some people say that “OK, maybe I’ll give later and later” like they never give.
I saw this in a small article that some people were asking something from a local government, people are asking for their own right there – There was something that there was the right of the people – but they’ve been asking from last 20 years, all the local government always say like “OK maybe we’ll give soon, we will give soon”, that soon is never come. It’s been 20 years, probably many people who asked for that at the first go might die, but that soon never come.
So similarly, even when it comes to us, there are certain practices we might have in our mind thatwe think “Oh, I would practice, I would practice, this and that”. Thing might end up our life before we actually get to practice these things, very much possible. So it doesn’t matter how much of dharma we know, it is very important to put into practice, otherwise, it’s more like we’re cheating to our own selves.
But not every practices go smoothly or easily, that’s why it’s very important to put a little bit of effort. To climb on the mountain you need effort, but to fall down, nobody need any effort. To do wrong things or to say bad words, disrespectful words or to do bad things, it’s lots easier. Even when it comes to habituation, if you start to smoke or do something which is negative, it is quite fast, you can make a habit very easily, you don’t need much effort, it is quite easy. But to make an habit towards something positive, you really need to put an effort, it is because of our habituation. That’s how we have been habituated for many lives, that’s something we have to deal with, and that’s something we have to work out.
Here, the book that you have been through, ‘The Three Principal Aspects of The Path’, it is very powerful because they show the three essences. In order to have the understanding of emptiness or to have the bodhicitta, first you should have a renunciation, a definite emergence or a desire to achieve liberation, desire to be free from whole suffering and to achieve the freedom from suffering. To have that, you have to have the desire to be free from suffering of the lower realms.
When you have the desire to be free from the suffering of the lower realms, then you can slowly generate that a thought that “Even if I born in high realm or some heavenly realm, the suffering is still there, the suffering is not going to end over there, so the suffering continues unless I get out of this samsara”. Slowly in that manner you can generate the thought to be free from samsara into liberation, in this way you will have the genuine love towards yourself.
When you have that genuine love towards yourself to give the ultimate happiness long lasting, everlasting happiness, and you wish to be free from all the suffering for yourself, then you can convert this to all the other sentient beings, like “I’m suffering, others are also suffering”, like “I don’t want any even a smallest suffering, other also don’t want even a smallest suffering”, like “I deserve happiness, others also deserve happiness”. When you have these thoughts, then slowly you can have that love and compassion towards others, because, like you are important,others are obviously more important than you, you are just one, others are numberless, countless.
When we able to practice then it’s such a pity that we only take it for ourselves, we only spend the whole time for ourselves when we can do for all the sentient beings. It’s more like the whole world is starving, you reach to a place where you see a sort of a machine which can feed one person, but the machine is so tiny, so it’s kind sad if you just bring one of that piece of machine when you have ability to bring countless of those tiny machine which each one of them can feed one person while the whole world is starving. Of course, that logic says that we should bring all of them, you will never be happy when the whole world is starving, even if you have food.
We are in a situation we understand that dharma and practice of dharma is that machine, when you achieve Buddhahood, it is more like you achieve of that machine. So just thinking about yourself, when you have capability to think about all sentient beings, it is literally a bit of selfish. Now we have this wonderful opportunity, understanding, time, faith and everything, and also we have such a wonderful human rebirth with all the possible conditions to practice dharma, we have all the favorable condition with which all the other sentient beings are lacking. Extremely lucky!
Many people who’re born as Buddhist, who understand dharma, wish to practice dharma, have faith towards the dharma, know the profits of dharma but still think like “Oh I’m so unlucky because I’m not rich”. I would say like that’s so stupid to think that “Oh I’m so unlucky that I’m not this, I’m so unlikely that I’m not…”. What you need more?
You have something much bigger than everything, everyone in this world, if you practice a bit of dharma, you can have much more peaceful than some Queens of some countries, you can be much happier when you practice little bit of dharma, much more than many billionaires in this world. What else do you need? You have all those conditions, you have all those that with which you can cook happiness, you have all those vegetables and ingredients with which you can cook appiness. Yet complaining that “Oh I don’t have that, I didn’t have this” is literally unfair. So having this wonderful time, without wasting this wonderful time, is very important to realize how fortunate we are and not to waste with precious life and to use all the practices that we know into practice. So we can have the results, otherwise, it’s like you are starving, you have all the food but you don’t cook. So what’s the point of having all those food, all those rice and everything, whatever there are? When you start to the death or do you know how to cook?
That’s why having this wonderful opportunity we should not wast it, we should know how precious this human rebirth that we have is, we should try our best to use in the best way we can. There’s no need to deny the worldly things, you can still enjoy a nice sofa, completely alright, you can still enjoy a nice car, a travel in a car, totally alright, but you should know which to prioritize. All these worldly things are good, because all of these things may save your time to do other necessary responsibilities, but the priority should be on transforming the mind, because that’s what matters that will be with you when nobody is with you, that will be there to give you peace and happiness when you need that the most. Your practice will be the most loyal friend that you can have, could not only help in this life, but that will also help you when you die, that will also help you in next and next lives. So to neglect that is not really a wise decision, wise thing to do.
So Lama Tsongkhapa is explaining to the disciple, says that ‘And quickly accomplish your final goal my child’. Here ‘my child’ is referred to Tsakho Ponpo Ngawang Drakpa, there is a disciple of Lama Tsongkhapa when Lama Tsongkhapa was so far giving the teachings: with his teachings, with his practice, especially the way he understood the Vajrayana, the way he understood the Vinaya, the way he practiced disciplines of monks and nuns, Vinaya, the way he protected and preserved it. The way he understands, realizes, protects and practices the Vajrayana practices, literally attracts the attention of the whole practitioners in the Tibet. Because there was no one which could compare to his practice, and of course, he used to even see the Buddha of Wisdom as we see each other, even may like there were many Buddhas which also appear to him to give him teachings.
Lama Tsongkhapa is highly known and respected of the time, not just by some traditions, some people, some places, but from the whole Tibet at the time. When somebody is looking for Lama Tsongkhapa and come around Lhasa, people know it and pinpoint their finger to the Monastery where Lama Tsongkhapa lives. There was the story that one of another master asked where Lama Tsongkhapa lived, the woman came inside the house, brought the scarf and incense and with the scarf and incense she showed where Lama Tsongkhapa lived.
So such an amount of respect, many monks arrived to see Lama Tsongkhapa with the intention to debate him, to disprove what he said, to prove what he’s saying is wrong. But just from the first few words, many scholars became a student of Lama Tsongkhapa. Not just a scholar, he was a great practitioner, highly realized practitioner. Many masters say that the day Lama Tsongkhapa went to Parinirvana, the day Lama Tsongkhapa passed away, is the day Lama Tsongkhapa became Buddha.
Among the countless, literally countless, countless disciples, there was a disciple called Ngawang Drakpa, generally known as Tsakho Ponbo Ngawang Drakpa, he was the one who requests Lama Tsongkhapa on studies and practices. So then Lama Tsongkhapa wrote this attached with the letter and sent to the disciple, Ngawang Drakpa. So on request of Ngawang Drakpa, this was written, this small book that we have been through has been written what to practice and how to practice.
That disciple or Ngawang Drakpa, was living quite afar from Lama Tsongkhapa, it was not that he can visit Lama Tsongkhapa all the time. But then, to show that gratitude, respect to Lama Tsongkhapa, and also by realizing that the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa can help many countless sentient beings on this earth. He thought of building 108 temples and he did. And when he finished the constructing 108 temples in different places, and all for Lama Tsongkhapa. There is a temple even nowadays, which is called Da Tshang Gonpa which means that ‘Now it’s Complete’. The temple still known as ‘Now It’s Complete Temple’. He gave the name of the temple ‘Now Is Complete’ because there was like 108 that he wanted. So when he finished that temple, he wrote to Lama Tsongkhapa about his advices on how to do, how to practice, “what I suppose to inspire the monks of the different temples to study all these things. So then Lama Tsongkhapa wrote this and send it to him like, “OK, this is what you are supposed to study and practice”.
n this way you realize exactly
The vital points of the three principal aspects of the path.
Resort to seeking solitude, generate the power of effort,
And quickly accomplish your final goal, my child.
So ‘The Three Principal Aspects of The Path’ are the things that you go to learn, understand and practice and here even at the last stanza, the last words it says that: ‘My child, after realizing all these things with a great effort in order to achieve the Buddhahood quickly in a very lifetime, you practice all these things with a great effort”. So even from our end, when we understand this, literally not wasting our time to achieve enlightenment to be free from samsara, to help all entient beings.
We really don’t have a time to delay because we really don’t know when we gonna the end that can come any minute. So it’s very important, in fact, extremely important to put into practice whatever we know, because if we don’t practice now, we might not have tomorrow. Even not practice this year, we might not have next year. So the thought they think that “OK, maybe later, maybe next time”, is a thought that cheat to ourselves, according to Buddhist sutras, this is one of the laziness, and also to think that “OK, first I will do this and then I will practice”, it never happens. Of course, that the general laziness, we think “OK next time”, ‘next time’ that never comes, tomorrow never comes. If you don’t practice now then tomorrow never comes, tomorrow will always be tomorrow.
If you are Buddhist, you know practice and you don’t practice right now by thinking that “Maybe I have to do something else”, then that ‘something else to do’ will always be there, then you never be able to practice. So to get rid of the attachment of this life, we have to think about impermanence of life. If you think that the life is so very delicate that it may end on anytime, then you can detach from the worldly things of this life. To detach from the attachment towards the next life, we can think of law of causality, cause and effect, we can think of karma that we are just there for temporary, you cannot be a God all the time, you cannot be a human all the time. Even if you are born as a God or a human, sooner or later you will suffer, so even as a human or as a God there is nothing, it is all sufferings.
Even the happiness are the nature of suffering. You enjoy the holiday so much, you really enjoythe holiday, you think that that is such a nice, that is such a happiness. No, it’s a nature of suffering, because you enjoy the holiday so very much, so when you get back to the work after the holiday so difficult, nothing is nice, it’s all miserable. Not because of the work, not because of the way you feel out there the work, because you used to enjoy the work before, but because of that holiday, it ruins everything. The holiday you might see that is such a nice time or something nice, but if you think carefully, the holiday has been more destructive than happiness, the holiday harms us more than it helps us. Holiday, there were just seven days, but it ruins the whole rest of the 30 days or a year.
I’m not telling not to enjoy and not to go to the holiday, of course you can go for holiday, you can enjoy the life, the food, the drink, whatever it is, as long as it’s not something negative. But at the same time, make a time for practice, make a time for practice today if yo have time now, because we don’t know if ‘the later’ gonna come, we don’t even this evening gonna come, we don’t know tomorrow gonna come. If you don’t know dharma, it’s a different case, you just ignore it, if you know dharma, and then why not? If we can spend this life very meaningfully in something very positive, why don’t?
That’s why when we grow older, if it is possible, it’s very important to keep even if you are staying with your family, is very important to have a silent time just for the practice, think about the impermanence, emptiness in a daily basis, even when you are with the kids or even when you have to do a lot of other works at the home, think about this in your mind. Your body might be busy doing other things, but your mind can diverge, as I said, transform that into practice. Or in future, if you can have a time, just being the place, you can just be yourself so that you can mutually dedicate the whole time for practice because we really don’t know how long is our life.
When we can, we should make a time for us and practice, such a time that we can totally dedicate for the practice of dharma. So the moment you spend for a genuine practice to understand everybody, I would say it’s a time that you earn for next life. This life is just short, next much more longer, it is not logical if you spend a whole life earning for this life and you earn nothing for next life because you can clearly say that the wealth or whatever you earn in this life through the work or whatever, not even a single penny that you can carry to the next life, not even a single penny of it is your use for the next life.
It’s very important to spend each and every minute into practice if it is possible, as I say that you can transform literally everything into practice. Even if you have to stay with the family, transform whatever you can into the practice. If you’re not staying with the family, I think it’s one of the really favorable conditions for you to practice dharma, because then there are lesser responsibility, lesser worldly responsibility.
If you are a father, a mother or a teacher, then you might have to do like a lot of worldly responsibilities, like if you’re a mother, you gotta cook for the kids. You gonna do this for that and a lot of the time, there are like never ending things that appear for a mother, a father, you are this and that and you have to take care of this and that, even in that manner you should always have busier mind that “I’m helping sentient beings” so that you can transform that, not just to the responsibility of this life, but to a practice of dharma.
But when you are free from that, here it says ‘by relying a remote area, separating yourself to a remote area in practice with diligence to achieve the final achievement, my dear child’. So I think this is a wonderful advice, you don’t have to be a monk, you don’t have to be a nun. Of course, occasionally if you have time, you can take precepts for one day, it’s more like you can become a monk or a nun for one day through the like, for example, Eight Mahayana Precepts, but there is no need to be a monk or a nun in general to practice. And also to achieve Buddhahood, there is no need to be a monk or a nun, you can practice in your daily basis and you can achieve everything that a monk or a nun can achieve. If you are able to utilize the unfavorable conditions into practice, then perhaps being a lay person, you might get more chance to practice.
Questions and Answers.
- Lama, maybe we have no laziness, but the fear and anxiety about ability of Covid infection make us distract from the practice. How about this situation can be practiced?
Yes, this Covid situation can be unfavorable condition for our practice. As a Buddhist practitioner, I would say that, if you are sick, there are many things that you can practice like exchanging other’s difficult time with one’s happiness, virtue and good time because that’s something that you can do it very nicely because you can feel the pain. So you get like exchanging one’s good things with other’s suffering and negativities.
If you’re not having any issue, but you are still having this fear and anxiety that “Maybe I might have or look at the world maybe my community might have this and that.” It also can be a really very much favorable condition because in this manner we know how, like there are many people who are living in some smaller islands around. Let’s take an example of Jakarta, Indonesia, Jakarta has all these facilities, the availability for facilities and all medical equipments and facilities. But there are many places, many islands of Indonesia where they don’t have lots of facilities. I saw in the news once, said by the chief of a smaller island says that “Oh if Covid comes, if this and that happens, we can’t check, we don’t have facilities, I might have to send you to Jakarta”.
There are some people who live like a Queen or a King in some smaller islands. Because Indonesia is one of the countries where there are many islands, so if you own the island, you are pretty much like a Queen or a King over island, you can have a lot of facilities, you can have wealth, you can have a house of the gold, you can have a bed of the gold, whatever it is, you can have many assistants, cooks, mates, everything that somebody who literally cherish these worldly things might expect. You can be a billionaire or maybe you can have much more than a billionaire. But when such things happen, if Covid comes over there, suppose you are the person,
let’s just imagine that we are that person, we have everything, at the same time we have that, if you have that Covid, what do you do? What you gonna do with the golden bed? What you gonna do with the golden house? What you gonna do with like 500 mates, like 50 luxury cars? Yeah you have all the wealth to buy oxygen, from where you get it? You are in the middle of island, you can’t go anywhere.
When that Covid arrives, I saw in the news that some islands, they said that “We don’t have these facilities, if some issues, we will arrange something to send you to the Jakarta”, and I thought like there would be many islands who would be really fear, real fear. It doesn’t matter how rich they are, they have to rely to the rest of the world, they can’t make the car even if they’re rich, they can’t make the aeroplane, they can’t make the jet, they can’t make everything by themselves, they have to rely on others. Because of this lockdown, many rich people might have been through starvation, I don’t know, maybe. You have money and wealth, but, for example, in India they close the shops for quite a bit of time, if you don’t store the food, this and that I don’t know how that fast, well I really have no idea.
So this kind of situation, let us understand, the worldly things are not promising enough, the mundane things are not promising. Forget about others, the human life, you might think that you are so healthy and all these things. Yesterday, maybe day before yesterday, a friend of mine shared a small video in a news about, it looks like a Muslim, maybe a Christian or something I’m not sure. He literally went to perhaps in hospital or somewhere, because he doesn’t believe in Covid, so he literally inhale from someone who is infected and later I’ve heard that the person died, so nothing stops.
Doesn’t matter whether you believe in next life or not, you have to go there, doesn’t matter whether you believe that the transformation of the mind is important or not, it’s a fact, doesn’t matter whether you see the importance of meditation or not, it’s a fact.
At the end of the day, understanding Buddha teachings is not a help, it’s not gonna help at all. One and only thing that helps is practice of these qualities to transform oneself into something better, otherwise there nothing will help. But understanding all these disadvantages, even if we are just by ourselves in our home practice, transform our mind, try to study a bit more dharma so that you can implant into your practice, think about love and compassion again and again so that you can improve it, enhance it, make it more stronger.
- How can we practice compassion and patiencetowards someone who continuously hurt us? Should we stay in relation with them?
To practice compassion and patience towards someone who constantly hurt us, if it is in a sort of a friend or any sort of relation or maybe it can be a friend, it can be even family members, it can be among the classmates or anybody else.
Generally patience and compassion in Buddhism, these topics or practices have been taught in a way that it is universal, for example the compassion, it’s very easy to practice compassion towards family members or the one that you care about, it’s always harder to practice towards the enemy. But still when our family members hurt, when a friend hurts or do something, then it can be even more difficult.
You have that compassion, but you’re not happy with what the other person has, say or do or whatever it is, that’s even more hurting in that case you don’t have too. The compassion is there, certain amount of patience, the practice of patience will always be there, what you need to focus is that try to find mutual ground and understanding if it is important. Generally, in Indian society they have lots of beliefs, based on caste like “Oh your house belongs to a higher, my house belongs to a lower caste, this and that”.
So when they get married and also they all ask “Oh when you get married your father didn’t give thi dowry or your father gave so small or what did you bring? You bring nothing with your father, this and that”. I’m not sure how it goes with the rest of the countries, but in India this is quite, I’m not sure if it is very open, but everybody knows that this happens. When a woman get married to a man, then the woman brings like a lot of things that woman house has to give a lot of things to the husband house during the marriage.
The husband house literally verbally asks or in often at the last minute they asks double or triple, so that’s why the Indians which live around, if they give birth to a child from a very young age, so difficult, they literally save money so that they can give to the husband house when this small kid will marry in future. So Indians through farming they might earn quite a bit of amount, but the way they live, the way they eat is really sad.
When you look at their plates, you can see or think that “This guy might not have more than $50 in his bank”. But if you really check the bank, you gonna find like few thousands at least. But the way they eat very less is also like few reasons, one to save some money so that they can give to the husband house, another is if they live a kind of luxury life, a kind of average life then when the daughter marries, the husband family will ask more because they think “Oh you live quite nice, so you must have a lot of money”. So they are kind of force to live as a poverty life, although they have money in a bank, but they can’t eat, they can’t wear.
If they eat well, if they wear well, they have to pay well, because they’re gonna ask well. I usually tease a friend of mine, he’s an Indian. I know that he can earn quite a bit of amount from selling vegetables. He has a farm and sometimes I help him with some advices, because sometimes he is not really smart with calculation and these things, so I help him sometimes with some general advice, so I know pretty much his wealth status. But the way he lives is really difficult because like I understand that this is not just an individual mistake, it is society mistake, the culture mistake.
So that’s why in every relation, this might happen in the couples as well that “Your father seems to be very rich right now, when you marry, your father give you this much of money and this and that”, some woman said then they might have been asked more. The reason why the husband and family didn’t ask more is because the father seems to be quite poor, after one girl married, the father lives a good life, so when they live a good life, the husband house like they are like literally pressuring the girl to get some money from the wife house, parental house, that is whole some samsara. So in every relationship, there is no need for individual mistake, that can be a wife mistake, it can be a husband mistake possibly, but it is not necessarily has to be such a way, it is very much possible that it is not a mistake of a husband nor a mistake of the wife.
To continue such a relationship, I would say like this is very difficult to see in general, but we have to measure not just relationship, but if you drink orange juice, you are making a relationship with the orange juice, if you eat pizza, you’re making a relationship with pizza, if you study this book or that book, you’re making a relationship with this book or that book. Not just a relation with human, but we make this relationship with many other things that we contact in our life.
Wearing this particular cloth or wearing this particular color or wearing a nylon cloth or a woolen cloth or any cloth, eating this food, that food, drinking this, that, whether you continue that relation or not, you can measure it by whether it’s helpful for you in growth. If having a relationship with the orange juice help you to grow in your physical hygiene, even is helpful for you in terms of your high physical hygiene, yes, continue.
If it’s too much of that or too much of interaction, I don’t know, having too much of any food, it is not good for your body, then you avoid. So similar any certain, any sort of relationship, if it is helping you in your growth, then I would definitely agree to continue. If any relation just diminish you, make you weaker mentally, physically or any relationship that make you fit or stronger physically, mentally, then I would say that we can make, I know like in life there are lots of complicated things, but in general I would say something like this.
Noted down from the Dharma Talk by Lama Nawang Kunphel on July 20th 2021, organized by Aura of Wisdom.
Source.
https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZyNV0Z0plbfkU6ouuQpGEmfhiP3RvTzf47