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    When the Chocolate Runs Out
    When the Chocolate Runs Out
    When the Chocolate Runs Out
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    When the Chocolate Runs Out

    By Thubten Yeshe, Nicholas Ribush and Josh Bartok

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    About this ebook

    To know Lama Yeshe was to know he loved chocolate; it was his favorite metaphor to describe the nature of our attachments.

    This funny and trenchant little volume answers the question of how we can be happy even after the "chocolate" has run out. By cutting the cords of attachment, we discover the indestructible happiness that has always been--and always will be--available to us.

    Capturing the remarkable personality of Lama, who played an integral role in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the world, When the Chocolate Runs Out will delight both readers who have known Lama Yeshe for decades and those who have never encountered this timelessly inspiring teacher.

    At once lighthearted and profound, this delightful book of wisdom is a perfect companion to How to Be Happy by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWisdom Publications
    Release dateJun 22, 2011
    ISBN9780861718795
    When the Chocolate Runs Out
    Author

    Thubten Yeshe

    Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935-1984) was born in Tibet and educated at the great Sera Monastic University. He fled the Chinese oppression in 1959 and in the late 1960s, with his chief disciple, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, began teaching Buddhism to Westerners at their Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal. In 1975 they founded the international Buddhist organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), which now has more than 160 centers, projects and services worldwide.

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      Lovely, friendly, simple yet supremely profound book. Our daily reminders how we need to see/feel/experience ourselves and the world. Small Book, Magnificent impact.

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    Book preview

    When the Chocolate Runs Out - Thubten Yeshe

    Salvation

    Through Chocolate

    WE LOVE CHOCOLATE. Perhaps so much so that on some level we may believe, As long as I have chocolate, I’ll be happy. This is the power of attachment at work. And based on this attachment, we create a chocolate-based philosophy and order our life prioritizing chocolate. But sometimes, we can’t get our hands on any chocolate. And when the chocolate disappears, we get nervous, upset: Oh no! Now I’m unhappy! But of course it’s not the absence of chocolate that’s making us unhappy; it’s our fixed ideas, and our misunderstanding the nature of chocolate.

    Chocolate, like all our pleasures and all our problems, is impermanent — chocolate comes, chocolate goes, chocolate disappears. And that’s natural. When you understand this, your relationship to chocolate can change, and when you deeply understand this, you will truly have no fear of anything at all.

    Chocolate comes,

    chocolate goes,

    chocolate disappears.

    Ultimately, you can’t rely on chocolate. Chocolate isn’t always with you — when you want it, it’s not there and when you don’t feel like it, there it is in front of you. All such transient pleasures are like this — and if your search for happiness causes you to grasp emotionally at the sense world, you will find so much suffering — because you have no control of the sense world, no control of impermanence.

    But take heart! There is another kind of happiness available to you, a deep abiding joy of silent experience, a joy that comes from your own mind. This kind of happiness is always with you, always available. Whenever you need it, it’s always there. And you can discover this happiness by studying your own mind. Observing and investigating your mind is really very simple, so simple. With practice, wherever you go, at any time, you can experience this happiness.

    And after all, all beings want happiness. The desire for happiness drives so much of the world. From the manufacture of the tiniest piece of candy to the most sophisticated spaceship, the underlying motivation is to find happiness. Beneath the entire course of human history is the constant pursuit of happiness, or, in a sense, the pursuit of more and better chocolate.

    Of course we all know that it’s impossible to find lasting happiness and satisfaction through chocolate. We know where to find chocolate — but what about deep and lasting peace?

    In all the material that follows, I hope to provide the perspectives and tools — the wisdom and method — to help you understand the root of suffering and find a truly indestructible happiness, a happiness available in all times, places, and circumstances — even when the chocolate runs out.

    Sources of Dissatisfaction

    The sense world alone cannot

    satisfy the human mind.

    WHEN WE EXPERIENCE pleasant feelings, emotional attachment ensues, and when that pleasant feeling subsides, craving arises: the desire to experience it again. When we experience unpleasant feelings, aversion arises: we automatically dislike and want to get rid of the unpleasant feelings, again disturbing our mental peace. And when we feel neutral or bored, ignorance arises: we ignore what’s going on and don’t want to see reality.

    The nature of this mind of attachment, aversion, and ignorance is dissatisfaction.

    WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD maybe you loved and craved ice cream, chocolate, and cake and thought, When I grow up, I’ll have all the ice cream, chocolate, and cake I want; then I’ll be happy! Now you have as much ice cream, chocolate, and cake as you want, but you’re still unsatisfied. And so you decide that since this doesn’t make you happy you’ll get a car, a house, television, a husband or wife, you’ll have children and a good job — and then you’ll be happy. Now you have everything, but your car is a problem, your house is a problem, your husband or wife is a problem, your children are a problem. You realize, Oh, this is not satisfaction.

    So you seek a cure for this dissatisfaction.

    But while modern medicine can definitely help alleviate physical ailments, it will never be able to cure the dissatisfied, undisciplined mind. No medicine known can bring satisfaction. What’s more, even if you go to the moon, you can’t escape your problems.

    Wherever you go

    your dissatisfied mind is still there.

    WE’RE DISSATISFIED with ourselves. We’re dissatisfied with others, we’re dissatisfied with the outside world. This dissatisfaction is like an ocean.

    Our problem is that we don’t accept ourselves as we are and we don’t accept others as they are. We want things to be other than they are because we don’t understand the nature of reality. Our superficial view, our fixed ideas, and our wrong conceptions prevent us from seeing the reality of what we are and how we exist.

    WE MUST LEARN to recognize that we create all human problems ourselves. We should not blame them on society; we should not blame our mother and father or our partner or our boss or our friends; we should not blame anyone else.

    JUST AS WE ARE THE CREATOR of all our own problems we are also the creator of our own liberation, our own joy, and everything that is necessary for attaining the blissful liberation that is contained in the body and mind we have right at this very moment.

    Meditation explodes the belief that

    satisfaction depends on circumstances.

    MEDITATION BRINGS SATISFACTION to the dissatisfied mind and explodes the idea, or belief, that happiness depends on

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