Virtue and Reality Method and Wisdom in the Practice of Dharma by Lama Zopa Rinpoche & Nicholas Ribush

Author:Lama Zopa Rinpoche & Nicholas Ribush
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781891868023
Publisher: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Published: 1998-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

So now, going back to what I was saying before, look at the indescribable benefits of seeing in a positive light those who don’t love you, those who are angry at you. Look at the profits you can reap—every happiness all the way up to enlightenment and the ability to bring every happiness to all sentient beings. The more clearly you understand this, the easier it will be to look positively at someone who is angry with you. In this way, your own anger does not arise and you generate a happy, peaceful, patient mind instead.

No matter how angry at you the other person gets, no matter how much the other person whines and complains, your patient mind never sees that person as an enemy, as someone to avoid, as someone to get away from, as irritating. Rather, you see that person as kind, precious. You feel, “She’s purifying my negative karma. All this criticism of me helps purify my negative karma of having criticized and harmed others. How kind she is to help me in this way.”

By transforming your mind into patience like this, you get this immediate peace and happiness—that day, that minute, that second—and the long-term benefits as well. All this is due to the kindness of that angry person. If you do not practice patience, if you interpret what the angry person is doing with her body, speech and mind as negative, as harmful to yourself—your mind applies a negative label to the situation and you believe in that—your own anger will arise. That anger will make you see the angry person as negative, undesirable, someone you want to neither see nor help, someone you want to lash out at and hurt. When your mind is angry you see the other person in a completely different light, opposite to the way in which your patience perceives that person. Your anger makes her look repulsive.

The happiness and difficulties we experience every day come from our minds. Whatever we’re experiencing at any given moment is dependent upon the way we think, our concepts, our attitude. Our attitude determines how we feel.

For example, once in Tibet there were a couple of monks who returned to their monastery after a long and tiring journey. To welcome them back, their teacher offered them cold tea. One of the disciples thought, “How kind our teacher is. He knew we were hot and thirsty so he intentionally gave us tea that was cold.” The other thought, “How mean and lazy. He couldn’t even give us hot tea,” and got upset and angry. So, he destroyed himself. There was no benefit from the way he thought to either himself or his teacher. But, by having a positive view, the first student made himself and his teacher happy, made his mind peaceful and, since the tea had been offered by his guru, created much merit. The action—offering cold tea—was the same. What was different were the students’ interpretations of that action. One labeled it positive and was happy.

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