General Advice for Sangha

While you are shaving your hair, remember how not to waste this most precious human body, which is most rare, and this precious human rebirth, qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses, which is much more precious. In each second, you have every opportunity to achieve happiness: in future lives, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. Having eliminated all the defilements and completed all the qualities, then you are able to do perfect work, causing happiness for all sentient beings, bringing them from the lower realms to higher rebirths, bringing them to happiness, liberation from samsara, and into full enlightenment.

In each second, the perfect human rebirth is more precious than whole skies filled with wish-granting jewels. Even with that many wish-granting jewels, one cannot stop rebirth in the lower realms and samsara, and cannot stop binding oneself to a lower nirvana, the blissful state of peace.

Even if you don't have a single jewel, a single rupee or Euro, if you have a precious human body you can practice Dharma and achieve enlightenment, like Milarepa and many other beings.

If you are an ordained person, shaving your hair is renouncing the marks and signs of worldly life, the adornments of householders, such as long nails, hair, and makeup. It is the opposite to attachment. The hair is the part of the body one relates to the most, the object of much of your attachment, and also a major object of others' attachment. Lay people, especially in the West, spend a lot of time and money on their hair. It is basically a cause of hallucinatory appearances of oneself and others.

An ordained person is shaving his or her hair to renounce attachment, the cause of samsara and of all life's problems, such as relationship problems. In some ways, it can be said to be cutting attachment. Of course, nowadays it is fashionable for the military, singers, and artists to shave their hair, but some years back it was considered frightening. The culture has changed and perhaps now people also shave their hair out of desire.

When you shave your hair you make every minute and hour of your precious human body more meaningful. You also make your most rare, perfect human rebirth more meaningful, every second of which is so precious, offering you an opportunity to achieve happiness in the future, liberation, and enlightenment, as I mentioned above. If one second is wasted, it is a much greater loss than losing a sky full of wish-granting jewels.

So, begin by motivating with bodhicitta: "The purpose of my life is to free every single sentient being from suffering and lead them to liberation and full enlightenment, therefore I am going to practice the vow of shaving my head, renouncing the adornments of the householders' life, and also living in the practice of renouncing the delusion of attachment."

Visualise the person shaving your head as Manjushri and the razor as wisdom realizing the selflessness of the person and of the aggregates. Then, think that the root of samsara is ignorance grasping at the "I" as truly existent and grasping at the aggregates as truly existent, as well as all the other delusions, such as anger, attachment, jealousy, pride, doubt, etc. You can think of the 84,000 delusions that spread from the three poisonous minds.

Use the same visualization when you shave your own hair. This is not only for ordained people. Lay people who shave their hair can think similarly. Then, at least the action becomes a remedy to delusion, and thus it becomes Dharma.

Dear Mum,
Thank you for being a mum to your daughter. I appreciate your views and your kindness in your recent message to me.

Please continue to help others, which is helping yourself to achieve enlightenment. Offer service and teach, as you can, what you can. This is serving all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Your teachings and actions are the best example to others. It is the best way to teach others. This is not the happiness of suffering. It is Dharma happiness.

Maybe later your daughter can meet you and teach where you are living. This could be a change for her, or sightseeing in samsara and sightseeing in nirvana.

Much love...

This kind of temporary help doesn’t really eliminate the root of suffering, samsara. But your teaching Dharma to sentient beings has great benefit. That eliminates the very cause of samsara. Teaching Dharma gets rid of the very root of problems, including the problems of prison and drugs.

You can realize the deep benefit you are giving to sentient beings by teaching Dharma, and not feel totally helpless, because you were unable to do anything about this specific problem.

Your friend can do retreat in prison. She can make her life meaningful in prison. You told me that when she was first arrested and put in prison, she did prostrations to the 35 Buddhas and that probably when she had to go back to prison, she would do that again. Then she would not mind being in prison.