Excluded from the Center
A student had been asked not to attend a Dharma center, even though they had offered service as a volunteer there. The student felt left out. Rinpoche had previously advised them to just keep rejoicing in all that they had done for the center in the past. Rinpoche typed this letter himself; lightly edited for ease of reading.
We have already cried like the limitless sky from beginningless samsaric lives, because of the shortcomings of samsara. The only way is to be free from samsara and to experience it for sentient beings, in order to bring them to full enlightenment. Ha ha, hi hi, ho ho.
Any action our mind doesn’t like, what we call harm, what we interpret in that way, and any benefit and happiness we receive from others, all came from oneself, it is caused by oneself. Any happiness and benefit that we think came from others has come from oneself, it is caused by oneself, by the virtuous thought, the good heart. Anything, bad or good—everything came from oneself.
Our mind is the creator of samsara, nirvana and enlightenment, and hell. Our everyday happiness and every problem came from ourselves, including depression. There are millions and millions of people in the West who are depressed and it all came from the self.
This is the most important Buddhist philosophy and on that basis, we practice the essence of Buddhism. When we practice the essence of Buddhism—the three principal aspects of the path—we understand that even the happiness we feel without reason is caused by us, and the depression, that we don’t know why it came, also came from us.
The biggest mistake is when we don’t think about karma, cause and effect. We think [harm] comes from another story and the biggest mistake is we don’t go farther than that. Usually we think it is caused by others and we don’t see that it is all caused by us.
The great yogi Marpa said to his disciple Milarepa, “If you want to achieve full enlightenment in one life, look at your mind without distraction from that.”