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    Heart Advice for Retreat eBook
    Heart Advice for Retreat eBook
    Heart Advice for Retreat eBook
    Ebook243 pages9 hours

    Heart Advice for Retreat eBook

    By FPMT

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    About this ebook

    The great Pabongkha Dechen Nyingpo said, "Knowing Dharma is not enough; you must practice.” This collection, Heart Advice for Retreat, is a must-have for all practitioners, especially those engaging in longer retreats.

    Lama Zopa Rinpoche offers advice on the essential aspects of retreat and how to bring about the result of enlightenment. Additionally, Rinpoche provides compelling commentary to Pabongkha's text, "Like a Female Cannibal Cheating", and on the rituals and necessary motivations required for entering into retreat.

    Advice, commentary and resources include “The Importance of Retreat,” “The Meaning of Retreat,”
    “Special Instructions,” “The Happiness of Dharma,” “Break-time Meditations,” “Dedication Prayers,” “Helpful Resources,” and much more.

    2011 Edition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFPMT
    Release dateJun 28, 2018
    ISBN9780463713358
    Heart Advice for Retreat eBook
    Author

    FPMT

    The FPMT is an organization devoted to preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha and based on that experience spreading the Dharma to sentient beings. We provide integrated education through which people’s minds and hearts can be transformed into their highest potential for the benefit of others, inspired by an attitude of universal responsibility and service. We are committed to creating harmonious environments and helping all beings develop their full potential of infinite wisdom and compassion. Our organization is based on the Buddhist tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa of Tibet as taught to us by our founder, Lama Thubten Yeshe and our spiritual director, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.

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      Book preview

      Heart Advice for Retreat eBook - FPMT

      © FPMT, Inc., 2004, 2007, 2011

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Front view

      Credits:

      Thangka images throughout the book courtesy of Nick Dawson.

      Line drawings by Robert Beer. Used with permission.

      The Importance of Retreat

      Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      What is the importance of doing retreat? Why do people need to do retreat? It is not simply to be quiet, to have a break from one's family. Instead, there are very crucial reasons for doing retreat, very urgent reasons.

      One simple reason is happiness. The peace and happiness of parents, for example, depend upon their children's having affection and compassion towards them. And the children's peace and happiness depend upon their parent's affection and compassion. The same is true for couples or partners: each member's peace, happiness, and success depend upon the compassion and kindness of the other person. For teachers and students as well, their peace and happiness depend upon one another.

      On a larger scale, the relationship between the leader of a country and its population also depends upon their cultivation of a proper attitude, a good heart, and compassion. And if one person is avoiding bringing problems such as violence to a country or even to the whole world, that too depends upon his or her development of compassion, loving kindness, and a good heart.

      For a person to obey a country's rules and regulations, to respect its laws and government, this also depends upon kindheartedness. If all people were to take care of their mind and develop a loving, compassionate attitude towards one another, they would naturally act with loving compassion. People would automatically stop harming each other and there would no longer be any need for rules and regulations to be set down, laid out, and enforced. But as it is now, governments find it difficult to control problems. There are so many criminals these days that there is no place to put them all!

      At this time, the peace and happiness of millions of people - of the whole world - can depend upon one person who has power, and he or she may have no loving kindness or compassion whatsoever. Yet even a stranger in the street may show affection, a warm heart, loving-kindness and respect for another stranger, giving him or her much happiness. With such loving, compassionate thoughts combined with one's own kindness, one's own respectful actions, it is possible to bring happiness and peace to many people every day, even to non-human beings.

      But even if the message were already widespread that compassion and tolerance are greatly needed nowadays, for both individuals and the peace of the world, this alone would not be sufficient. One has to know how to develop such qualities. The solution is found by entering into retreat, into a situation where it is possible to fulfill our basic human potential and develop all the positive qualities within us. Retreat gives one the time and the space to allow for the growth of this basic human quality. This is crucial and most urgent, a true emergency. Why? Because others lives are in danger, and so is our own.

      Thus the first reason for doing retreat is to develop the basic human qualities of affection and loving-kindness; if we do not generate these qualities and express them towards others, we shall not receive the affection upon which our own happiness depends.

      The second reason retreat is important is that it gives us the time for putting the teachings we have received from our guru into practice. And the third reason relates to the busyness of our ordinary life: we are generally so caught up in hallucinations, sense enjoyments, and our various obligations to others that retreat time is the only time we have to relax. In retreat we are free to think and have some quiet, peaceful time for ourselves, without distractions. In such a retreat situation you are forced to come face to face with yourself in depth, to meet yourself.

      Retreat helps draw your consciousness away from hallucination and into reality. It helps you discover your inner self. Only by recognizing the hallucinations that have been catching the mind and learning to distinguish between what is true and what is false is it possible to change our lives for the better. All such development of the mind comes from doing retreat. One becomes a better human being, a better Dharma practitioner, a better meditator. So retreat is the foundation of true development.

      Without retreat, without being alone, the mind is like muddy water. But the mind in retreat, being alone and free of outside distractions, is like a calm, crystal-clear lake. There is the clarity to help see oneself more clearly and to see one's own buddha nature more easily.

      Now we can understand the importance, not merely for oneself but for all other beings, of organizing the facilities for doing a proper retreat. It gives us the opportunity of experiencing the varieties of happiness mentioned before, and this is without even talking about the many benefits of the actual spiritual practice itself. For example, by generating the thought of bodhichitta, infinite merit is accumulated, and by meditating upon emptiness for even one second, the heavy negative karma of the ten non-virtuous actions is purified. As is mentioned in various sutras, even the intention to meditate upon emptiness - or merely having faith in the teachings upon emptiness - can purify heavy karma. Even performing one prostration can accumulate inconceivable meritorious energy. These beneficial results are difficult to comprehend with our ordinary mind.

      There are many other examples of the immense benefit of Dharma practices. Reciting powerful mantras and the names of holy beings even once can purify tremendous amounts of negativity. For example, it is said that reciting the holy name of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha can purify 84,000 eons of negative karma. Through their power of purification these and other practices can help bring the mind further along the three stages of the path leading to enlightenment. Furthermore, meditating on the path to enlightenment also helps rid us of immediate dangers, such as rebirth in the lower realms if death is imminent. At the same time, such meditation practice can purify the causes of this life's problems; from difficult relationships, through unmanageable diseases such as cancer and AIDS, up to the dangers of untimely death. Because one creates a great deal of merit through these practices, they become the cause of success and harmony in this life, bringing good fortune in business, wealth, good health, and long life.

      For all the above reasons, therefore, retreat gives us more hope, strength, and encouragement for this life. And from a strong and healthy mind comes a strong and healthy body.

      In conclusion, retreat is important because it involves retreating from ignorance, from the dissatisfied mind of attachment, and from the self-cherishing thought. These are the fundamental forces from which one must retreat; this is the true meaning of meditation. Transforming the mind into virtue, freeing oneself from suffering and its causes: these are the essential meaning of Dharma practice.

      There will always be problems and dissatisfaction as long as we think that the causes of happiness and the causes of suffering lie outside ourselves. But the experiences of our life - and what the omniscient mind says - tell us that the source of happiness is within one's own mind. You can find satisfaction, peace and happiness only within your own mind. Therefore, retreat and meditation practice become the ultimate solution for any and all of our problems.

      Front view

      Colophon:

      Based on a teaching given to Petra McWilliams of Vajrapani Institute in 1999. Transcribed by Petra and edited by Jon Landaw. Lightly edited by Kendall Magnussen, FPMT Education Services, September 2004.

      The Meaning of Retreat

      Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      The following teachings were given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during a commentary on how to do the preliminary rituals for a Kriya Tantra retreat. While the specific deity referred to here is Mitrugpa, the advice applies to the practice of any deity.

      Why We Need to Practice Tantra

      The meaning of mantra, yi kyob pa (Tib. yid skyob pa) here is protecting the mind. That means protecting the mind on the basis of the three principals of the path: renunciation, bodhichitta, wisdom. Renunciation of samsara protects the mind from attachment to samsara, living in bodhichitta protects the mind from the self-cherishing thought, and meditating on emptiness protects the mind from ignorance. On the basis of these, mantra protects the mind from ordinary appearance and concept by practicing pure appearance. You visualize yourself as the deity that you will achieve in the future; the place is transformed into the result-time mandala that you will actually manifest and experience in the future; and your actions are visualized as the holy actions you will do to benefit sentient beings when you become a buddha. When you become a buddha, each beam from your holy body will purify uncountable numbers of sentient beings and liberate them from suffering in every second. You visualize that happening now. Also, when you become a buddha, you will experience pure enjoyments with your completely pure senses, so you visualize that, too, by stopping the impure appearance of enjoyments.

      This is how tantric practice protects your mind from ordinary appearance and ordinary concept. From ordinary concept comes ordinary appearance, and this gives rise to the delusions - anger, attachment, pride, jealous mind, and so on - that create the cause for samsara. Therefore, tantra protects the mind from ordinary appearance and concept by looking at everything as pure. This protects the mind from the impure, ordinary appearance that sees oneself as an ordinary person, that sees enjoyments as ordinary, food as ordinary, the place as ordinary, and so on. Tantra is your mind looking at everything as pure. Visualizing everything as pure is the quick path to enlightenment because it collects inconceivable merit in such a short time. There is so much merit, it is like an atomic bomb, such powerful purification. This is just talking about the generation stage, not the completion stage. In this way, tantra becomes the quick path and makes you achieve enlightenment in one lifetime.

      If you only practice the sutra Mahayana path, without practicing tantra, you cannot achieve enlightenment within one lifetime. You have to collect merit for three great countless eons, so it takes a long time, and for that amount of time those sentient beings who have a karmic connection with you, who depend on you to help them, to give them teachings, to develop their path and bring them to enlightenment, have to suffer. They have to wait for you for a long time. That is why we practice tantra - so that other sentient beings do not have to suffer so long.

      Front view

      Here I want to mention something to give you more understanding of why we need to practice tantra. Otherwise, practicing tantra might become just another trip, like in the '60s or around those times when there were drugs like hashish, LSD, and marijuana ... I don't know when marijuana started! But anyway, that was a trip, and there were many other trips after that. Without some understanding, practicing tantra might become like that, just some new thing to try in your life, another trip.

      This story might help you to understand. For many years now the centers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have been liberating animals. One of the students in Singapore is a captain in the army, and he wants to liberate 100 million animals for His Holiness the Dalai Lama's long life, for Ribur Rinpoche's long life, for my long life, and maybe for other things as well. He has already liberated nearly 11 million animals. He is young, maybe in his twenties or thirties, but very dedicated and with a very strong mind to benefit sentient beings. He gets up at four o'clock in the morning and does his practice for four hours before he goes to work. In the daytime he gives military training to the army, and during the training he has to stand, so while he is standing he does his commitments or other practices.

      One time when we were liberating animals, we bought a few snakes to set free as well as many frogs. I asked them to liberate a few snakes because snakes have a very long body, and they are killed by being slit open right down their bodies while they are still alive. You can't imagine the suffering if somebody were to cut open your body while you were alive. But this is what they do to them. The snakes had been bought the night before, and they were kept in a sack overnight, so when we liberated them, they were quite puzzled. They could not move easily, as if they were drugged.

      At that time the thought came into my mind that if we liberated the snakes, they would eat mice, frogs, and many other animals. If we liberated them, it would be dangerous for the rest of the animals, but if we did not liberate them, they would be killed. So what to do? That question came into my mind, How to help? If we helped the snake, it would kill and harm so many other sentient beings, but if we did not liberate the snake, it would suffer so much. What could be done?

      Later the thought came to my mind that the only solution is to practice Dharma. One has to practice Dharma and liberate oneself from samsara so that one can reveal Dharma to others and liberate them. If you teach the Dharma to others, they can practice and actualize the path, freeing themselves from delusion, karma, and samsaric suffering. This is the only solution. Until this happens sentient beings have to suffer continuously. Therefore, we should practice tantra so that sentient beings don't have to suffer for a long time and so that we can liberate them from samsara as quickly as possible. This is one example.

      Another thing to consider is the number of insects that are killed when we walk on the ground. Also, when we drive around, not only many flying insects die on the car but also many ants and insects die on the road. We normally don't think about this, so we don't notice it, but many creatures are killed this way. Nagarjuna was the great propagator of the Buddha's Mahayana teachings, especially the teachings on emptiness. When somebody came and asked him to make charity of his head, no knife could cut it off. Nothing could cut off his head. Then Nagarjuna asked for a blade of grass, and with that one blade of grass they were able to cut his neck. Why? Because a long time ago when he was a farmer and was cutting grass, an ant's head was cut off by the grass. He still had to experience the result of that karmic action, so although no knife could cut his neck, one blade of grass could do so as a result of that past karma.

      It is similar with food. There are so many insects living on the food we eat that are killed. When food comes from the supermarket, we don't see all these insects, but if you have your own garden, you can see that there are many insects living on the vegetables. Many sentient beings die and are killed in order for us to get all our enjoyments and comforts. Many sentient beings die for us just to survive.

      What is the solution to this? How can we stop being harmful to other sentient beings? What can we do so that numberless other beings do not have to suffer, die, and create negative karma for us to receive all our enjoyments - house, clothing, food, and so forth? Do

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