LPA8: Developing Uncontrived Motivations

Review of Previous Sessions

We have been going through this letter that the great Tibetan master Tsongkhapa wrote (he lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries), and he wrote this letter to his friend the meditator Konchog-tsultrim. In this letter, Tsongkhapa is responding to a request that Konchog-tsultrim made to have some practical advice about sutra and tantra. 

To just review very briefly: Tsongkhapa, after starting with very humble apologies that he really has nothing to say but he’ll try to say something, he says that now we’ve found an excellent working basis of the complete precious human rebirth, and we’ve met with the teachings of the Buddha, and we’ve been cared for by great spiritual masters, and we have the ability to discern and discriminate between what’s to be practiced and what’s to be rejected, and so now with this situation we need to take advantage of it and try to engage ourselves in the teachings of the Buddha. 

You notice that these are the things that Tsongkhapa starts as general lam-rims — with the precious human rebirth and the fact that we’ve met with spiritual teachers. What is always emphasized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is that as human beings we have the intelligence to be able to discern or discriminate between what is going to be beneficial (and therefore to be adopted) and what is detrimental (and therefore to be rejected). 

Tsongkhapa goes on to say that in order to engage ourselves in the teachings, it’s not enough to have kind thoughts. We discussed this quite a lot, that Buddhism is not just another philosophy saying, “Be nice and don’t hurt anybody, and try to help everybody.” There are many religions and philosophies that teach that. But Buddhism is much deeper than that. It includes that of course but goes much deeper beyond that. Tsongkhapa says we have to know how to engage ourselves with the teachings, and if we don’t then we have to rely on guidance from a teacher who does know how to get engaged with it. 

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