Integrating Our Life: Inspiration & Focus on Our Mothers

Finding Inspiration

We have looked at the framework from which these teachings about integrating our life derive, and there are just a few more points I want to add before I open it up for questions. This is concerning the term “inspiration.” We have the Sanskrit word adhishtana, and we have the Tibetan term chin-gyi-lab (byin-gyi rlabs). In Sanskrit, the word basically refers to something that places us in a higher position. This implies something that lifts us up and gives us the strength and support to develop ourselves to a higher stage. The Tibetan word lab is a wave, and chin-gyi refers to potential, with the connotation that it brightens us. It’s like how waves of light activate a plant’s potential to grow. This is what we can derive from the Sanskrit and Tibetan terms for “inspiration.”

Now, what can uplift us? What can brighten us with strength and sustenance? Well, in the Buddhist description we derive this both upward and downward, in two ways. There’s a source that has more qualities than us that we look up to, and one that we look at in terms of those we can help. It’s not that they’re inferior and so we look down on them. We look at the Buddhas and the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in terms of our refuge and safe direction and we derive inspiration from that. We have many practices that we do in which we visualize waves of inspiration coming to us from Buddha and the refuge tree. We do this also in terms of Buddha-figures – Avalokiteshvara, Tara, and so on. But because the qualities of the Buddha are very, very difficult for us to relate to, we represent all of them with a spiritual teacher, someone that we know, that we have some personal contact with, some personal experience with, because it’s much easier to relate to such a person. The role of the spiritual teacher has always been described as the conduit through which we gain inspiration from the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It’s like a magnifying glass that will bring the brilliance of the sun to a plant on the ground.

Similarly, we can derive inspiration from all limited beings. We hear this term, “sentient beings,” but what it refers to is “limited beings.” A Buddha is not a sentient being. A limited being is limited not in the sense of being handicapped, but limited in the sense that the body, speech and mind are not able to function at their fullest capacity because of various problems: anger, attachment, and so on. A spiritual teacher or anyone else that’s working with other people, when they are with other people who need their help, draw a great deal of inspiration or strength from that situation to rise above it. They’re uplifted to go beyond what they would ordinarily be able to do just sitting in their room. Like here, explaining something sitting in front of the computer by myself is far less productive than explaining in front of a live audience, because I’m gaining strength and inspiration from the beings around me.

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