早安 (zao-an)! Good Morning! Its MMT Day today! Its the birthday of DMCs Merit-Making Team (MMT)! As the highlight celebration of MMT Day, Venerable Lama Konchok Sonam will be giving a teaching on merits and Dana offering (Dharma service) at 12 pm today. Lama Sonams teaching will be very beneficial to all of us, who are trying to follow Buddhas teachings - in understanding how we could transform our service to Dharma into Dharma practice, which itself is a skillful mean to accumulate merit. Merit is one of the two essences in obtaining perfect enlightenment. Come celebrate MMT Day with all other merit-making Bodhidsattvas and find out the profound meaning of your service to Dharma that has benefited oneself as well as others. Lunch will be provided. This event is free. Dont miss this opportunity to learn Dharma and mingle with other Boddhisatvas with delicious food, fun and laughter. What else today? Our Rise & Shine session (Guru Yoga group practice) resumes at 8.45 am and Sunday Morning Dharma at 10 am. Tibetan Intermediate level class resumes at 5 pm. མཇལ་ཡོང་(je-yong) See you later! ************Dharma Quote of the Day******************** [Yesterdays Saturday meditation teaching series, H.E. Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen taught about how to meditate on precious human life. Today we share a commentary teaching by H.E. Garchen Rinpoche on precious human life based on the great Patrul Rinpoches The Words of My Perfect Teacher . Often a time, although we know that human birth is precious, we take it for granted and fail to appreciate how precious it is and keep harming/hurting lives of ours and others, which cause so much suffering to every being including ourselves.] Precious Human Life - Part 1 To emphasize once again that this kind of a human life with eight leisures and ten endowments is extremely difficult to get, Patrul Rinpoche goes on to illustrate this with an example. He says that the three lower realms from the six realms of existence is something like a Samsaric ocean so huge and deep and that three higher realms of existence are somewhat like a wooden plank that is floating on the surface of this gigantic Samsaric ocean. We see a countless number of marine life, some huge and other tiny, all of whom have the same kind of Buddha nature and feelings and sensations as we humans do, with the only difference beings all these beings neither understand what to incorporate in their life that is good for them nor do they understand what is bad for them. All these marine life, all sentient beings, are represented by a turtle that is totally blind in this gigantic Samsaric ocean. And this turtle comes to the surface once every hundred years. Now imagine that this wooden plank has just one hole in the middle and how difficult it would be – the chances of this blind turtle who comes to the surface just once every hundred years sticking its neck right through the hole in this single wooden plank which is constantly being swayed here and there by karmic winds in this gigantic Samsara – the chances are very small. The Buddha said that being born as a human being is even more difficult than that. This is just a simple example, but there are also numerical comparisons about how rare this human life really is. It is said that if the number of beings in the preta (hungry ghost) realms are as many as the stars that can be seen in day time, then the number of beings in the hell realms are as many as stars that can be seen in the night sky, and that if the number of beings in the animal realms are as many as the stars that can be seen in day time, then the number of beings in the preta realms are as many as stars that can be seen in the night sky. And there are a countless number of beings in the animal realms, more than the number of grains that are discarded after brewing chang (Tibetan beer). All these examples are just illustrations given to us by the Buddha. We ourselves can verify that there are many, many beings in the animal realm. All we have to do is go out there and look at a small anthill. The number of ants in just one anthill is much more than the people living in the Nangchen district. If you can find a larger anthill, you will count more ants than the number of people in an average city in the United States. All these births come about because of the three poisons. The inhabitants of the hell realm are born there because of aggression. The ones in the preta realms are born there because of stinginess. Beings who taken birth as animals are born there due to ignorance. All living beings, including the ants, want peace and happiness and don’t want aversion, but they don’t know how to go about achieving what they want to achieve. For the benefit of sentient beings, Buddha has given this example of how few the human beings are in comparison to other beings. Imagine a big snowstorm with many countless snowflakes and you stretch out your big thumb into the storm. However many snow flakes that will fall on the nail of your big thumb is the size of the human population in comparison. Among the comparatively very few human beings, if you really think hard, how many are available for Dharma practice with all the eight leisures and the ten endowments? This will give you some proper perspective. When you go through this analysis and finally realize just how fortunate you really are, there will be a surge of rejoicing in oneself. With all the eight leisures and ten endowments, if now you do not turn to Dharma practice, that really would be a big waste of opportunity. It would be like living an empty life, a hollow life, a useless life. - Excerpt taken from Words of My Perfect Teacher - A Brief Commentary by H.E. Garchen Triptrul Rinpoche given on 2001 in Maryland, published by the Drikung Mahayana Center. *Nangchen district is the place where H.E. Garchen Triptrul Rinpoche was born.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:49:07 +0000
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