Home When we see each other
again on Christmas Eve for the celebration of Holy Jesus' birth, let us do so
in peace and with a good vibration and a happy mind. I think it would be wonderful.
To attend the celebration with an angry disposition would be so sad. Come instead
with a beautiful motivation and much love. Have no discrimination, but see everything
as a golden flower, even your worst enemy. Then Christmas, which so often produces
an agitated mind, will become so beautiful.
When you change your mental attitude,
the external vision also changes. This is a true turning of the mind. There is
no doubt about this. I am not special, but I have had experience of doing this,
and it works. You people are so intelligent, so you can understand how the mind
has this ability to change itself and its environment. There is no reason why
this change cannot be for the better.
Some of you might think, "Oh,
I want to have nothing to do with Jesus, nothing to do with the Bible." This
is a very angry, emotional attitude to have towards Christianity. If you really
understood, you would recognize that what Jesus taught was, "Love!"
It is as simple and as profound as that. If you had true love within you, I am
sure you would feel much more peaceful than you do now.
How do you normally
think of love? Be honest. It is always involved with discriminations, isn't it?
Just look around this room and see if anyone here is an object of your love. Why
do you discriminate so sharply between friend and enemy? Why do you see such a
big difference between yourself and others?
In the Buddhist teaching, this
falsely discriminating attitude is called dualism. Jesus said that such an attitude
is the opposite of true love. Therefore, is there any one of us who has the pure
love that Jesus was talking about? If we do not, we should not criticize his teachings
or feel they are irrelevent to us. We are the ones who have misunderstood, perhaps
knowing the words of his teachings, but never acting upon them.
There are
so many beautiful sentences in the Bible, but I do not recall reading that Jesus
ever said that without your doing anything whatsoever -- without preparing yourself
in some way -- the Holy Spirit would descend upon you, whoosh! If you do not act
the way He said you should act, there is no Holy Spirit existent anywhere for
you.
What I have read in the Bible has the same connotation as the Buddhist
teachings on equilibrium, compassion and changing one's ego-attachment into love
for others. It may not be immediately obvious how to train your mind to develop
these attitudes, but it is certainly possible to do so. Only our selfishness and
closed-mindedness prevent us.
With true realizations, the mind is no longer
egotistically concerned with its own salvation. With true love, one no longer
behaves dualistically; feeling very attached to some people, distant from others
and totally indifferent to the rest. It is so simple. In the ordinary personality,
the mind is always divided against itself, always fighting and disturbing its
own peace.
The teachings on love are very practical. Do not put religion
somewhere up in the sky and feel you are stuck down here on Earth. If the actions
of body, speech and mind are in accordance with loving kindness, you automatically
become a truly religious person. To be religious does not mean that you attend
certain teachings. If you listen to teachings and misinterpret them, you are in
fact, the opposite of religious. And it is only because you do not understand
a certain teaching that you abuse religion.
Lack of deep understanding leads
to partisanship. The ego feels, "I am a Buddhist, therefore Christianity
must be all wrong." This is very harmful to true religious feeling. You do
not destroy a religion with bombs, but with hatred. More importantly, you destroy
the peacefulness of your own mind. It does not matter if you express your hatred
with words or not. The mere thoughts of hatred automatically destroys your peace.
Similarly, true love does not depend on physical expression. You should realize
this. True love is a feeling deep within you. It is not just a matter of wearing
a smile on your face and looking happy. Rather, it arises from a heartfelt understanding
of every other being's suffering and radiates out to them indiscriminately. It
does not favor a chosen few to the exclusion of everyone else.
Furthermore,
if someone hits you and you react with anger or great alarm, crying, "What
has happened to me?" this also has nothing to do with a mind knowing the
meaning of true love. It is just the ignorant preoccupation of the ego within
its own welfare. How much wiser it is to realize, "Being hit does not really
harm me. My delusion of hatred is an enemy that harms me much more than this."
Reflecting like this allows true love to grow.
These teachings came from
a wonderful book we once had at our center called Silent Mind, Holy Mind, a collection
of talks given by Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery at the end one of the early month-long
Kopan Meditation Courses. Western students had gathered on Christmas Eve, feeling
a little out-of-place and unsure of what to do with their feelings of "missing
out on Christmas," most of their early spiritual practice in this life.
Lama, sensing their confusing feelings, had them go to the meditation hall where
he gave these talks about Christmas and Buddhist practice. These were recorded
and later became the book published by Wisdom Publications. Our copy at the center
has long-ago disappeared and the book is no longer in print, but this excerpt
remains and we share it here with our Net-Friends.
Merry Christmas!