All Sentient Beings Want Happiness and Peace
“In life we face constant change and the influx of happiness and suffering. This cycle is like waves on the ocean, one phenomenon coming after another. This neverending drama of apparent phenomena is exhausting. Without breaking this cycle of vacillating back and forth between hope and fear, stress continues mounting in our minds and bodies resulting in endless suffering, not allowing us to rest in peace and happiness. Spiritual practice is the only means to ease and transform the stress and suffering into happiness and well-being for immediate benefits and beyond.”
~Lopön Jigme Rinpoche
Last week I attended an event at Giffells Auditorium in Old Main at the U of A called “Quintessential of the Spiritual Path in Life.” Lopön Jigme Rinpoche, a prominent Buddhist Nyingma Master, delivered the public talk to an audience of 50 or so people.
He began the presentation with a long period of silence, sitting and staring ahead from behind a table with two simple flower arrangements. He prefaced his lecture by saying that he was not to speak about anything unusual. In fact he wanted to address what he considered to be commonplace concepts.
“All sentient beings want happiness and peace,” he asserted.
He described the statement as a universal truth. Simple, yes. True? I’m a believer. However, each one of us is left to contemplate how to define “happiness” and “peace.” Cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs and individual preferences influence our interpretations of those two ideas, but in essence we are all connected in that we ALL long for these same objectives in life.
He emphasized the importance of meditation—taking in and releasing breath at a normal pace, quietening the mind and orchestrating a spaciousness into which thoughts can flow in and out with freedom. He likened the mind to a pool of water. When the water is not at rest, reflection is impossible because of the constant activity and distorting ripples. But when water is still, it becomes possible to view a reflection of an image, clear as day.
He continued that the spiritual practice of meditation is a very natural way to experience inexpressible joy, the true nature of God. However, he also warned against attempting to grasp this joy. Instead he proffered to simply allow the joy to manifest within the spaciousness of our minds. He summed up the lesson with yet another pithy saying. “Rest,” he uttered. “Then manifest.”
As I was leaving the lecture I recalled a past conversation with my very good friend Amanda about the allegedly elusory quality of “happiness,” no matter how one might define it. We’d often heard others (and one another) say things like, “All I want is to be happy,” “Why can’t I be happy?” or even “If ___ happens, maybe then I could be happy.” Amanda pointed out that the problem did not so much lie in the fact that “happiness” is that evasive; instead, she believed that those who seek “happiness” and come up empty-handed every time have never really taken the time to define what “happiness” and “peace” mean to them.
It makes sense. Hitting a target is hard enough. When the target’s moving, your chances of impact become seriously compromised. Now, just think about aiming for a target that changes form constantly or worse, is completely invisible. The likelihood of a bullseye is little more than a pipe dream at best. How can we expect the universe to deliver exactly what we want to achieve happiness and peace when many of us have never really made up our minds in the first place about what it is that we’re chasing?
I asked yet another friend whether he could make a list of things to add, modify or subtract from his life in a way that at the end of the list, if he were to check everything off as “done,” he would be happy. An exercise in bottom-line happiness, if you will. He said it would take a long time to compile the list, but he definitely thought it was possible to do. It seems like a strange assignment, but why not? Perhaps even just working drafts would bring our respective happiness targets into our line of sight.
Forming this working draft, your own personal interpretation of “happiness” and “peace,” will require meditation. Quietude. Reflection. Spaciousness. But you can begin by taking the simple advice of Lopön Jigme Rinpoche: Rest. Then manifest.
The resulting manifesto will be yours to keep and to revise when necessary, a guide towards the makings of your own happiness and peace.
Copywriter/editor Jeannette Balleza owns Scribe Marketing, Inc. (http://www.scribemarketing.com), which offers content development and refinement. You may contact her for project management, creative concept development, copywriting, editing and research at jeannette@scribemarketing.com.
~Lopön Jigme Rinpoche
Last week I attended an event at Giffells Auditorium in Old Main at the U of A called “Quintessential of the Spiritual Path in Life.” Lopön Jigme Rinpoche, a prominent Buddhist Nyingma Master, delivered the public talk to an audience of 50 or so people.
He began the presentation with a long period of silence, sitting and staring ahead from behind a table with two simple flower arrangements. He prefaced his lecture by saying that he was not to speak about anything unusual. In fact he wanted to address what he considered to be commonplace concepts.
“All sentient beings want happiness and peace,” he asserted.
He described the statement as a universal truth. Simple, yes. True? I’m a believer. However, each one of us is left to contemplate how to define “happiness” and “peace.” Cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs and individual preferences influence our interpretations of those two ideas, but in essence we are all connected in that we ALL long for these same objectives in life.
He emphasized the importance of meditation—taking in and releasing breath at a normal pace, quietening the mind and orchestrating a spaciousness into which thoughts can flow in and out with freedom. He likened the mind to a pool of water. When the water is not at rest, reflection is impossible because of the constant activity and distorting ripples. But when water is still, it becomes possible to view a reflection of an image, clear as day.
He continued that the spiritual practice of meditation is a very natural way to experience inexpressible joy, the true nature of God. However, he also warned against attempting to grasp this joy. Instead he proffered to simply allow the joy to manifest within the spaciousness of our minds. He summed up the lesson with yet another pithy saying. “Rest,” he uttered. “Then manifest.”
As I was leaving the lecture I recalled a past conversation with my very good friend Amanda about the allegedly elusory quality of “happiness,” no matter how one might define it. We’d often heard others (and one another) say things like, “All I want is to be happy,” “Why can’t I be happy?” or even “If ___ happens, maybe then I could be happy.” Amanda pointed out that the problem did not so much lie in the fact that “happiness” is that evasive; instead, she believed that those who seek “happiness” and come up empty-handed every time have never really taken the time to define what “happiness” and “peace” mean to them.
It makes sense. Hitting a target is hard enough. When the target’s moving, your chances of impact become seriously compromised. Now, just think about aiming for a target that changes form constantly or worse, is completely invisible. The likelihood of a bullseye is little more than a pipe dream at best. How can we expect the universe to deliver exactly what we want to achieve happiness and peace when many of us have never really made up our minds in the first place about what it is that we’re chasing?
I asked yet another friend whether he could make a list of things to add, modify or subtract from his life in a way that at the end of the list, if he were to check everything off as “done,” he would be happy. An exercise in bottom-line happiness, if you will. He said it would take a long time to compile the list, but he definitely thought it was possible to do. It seems like a strange assignment, but why not? Perhaps even just working drafts would bring our respective happiness targets into our line of sight.
Forming this working draft, your own personal interpretation of “happiness” and “peace,” will require meditation. Quietude. Reflection. Spaciousness. But you can begin by taking the simple advice of Lopön Jigme Rinpoche: Rest. Then manifest.
The resulting manifesto will be yours to keep and to revise when necessary, a guide towards the makings of your own happiness and peace.
Copywriter/editor Jeannette Balleza owns Scribe Marketing, Inc. (http://www.scribemarketing.com), which offers content development and refinement. You may contact her for project management, creative concept development, copywriting, editing and research at jeannette@scribemarketing.com.
posted by Professional Women's Network at 2/15/2006 09:43:00 PM
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