Teach the Subject Which Needs to Be Revealed
Rinpoche advises how to teach Dharma for the different levels of students in this excerpt from a letter sent to a center director. The letter was published in the FPMT Annual Review 2019 and posted to Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book here. This additional advice is previously unpublished.
So, now how do you run a center. It should be the same for any FPMT center, from the beginning up to now, from beginning to the end, until sentient beings achieve enlightenment.
It’s opened for the basic lamrim. Its opened for those who want to abandon the causes of suffering and be free from the lower realms and who want to achieve higher happiness. And it is opened for those who want to be free from samsara and achieve the everlasting, ultimate happiness of liberation and for those who want to be free from lower nirvana and achieve great liberation or enlightenment. It is opened for everyone.
Of course, when a particular group comes, you need to introduce Dharma in a skillful way to that group, but that's not for everybody. For example, somebody has generated renunciation, bodhicitta, right view, but teaching is only allowed for secular life. This is an example. There is nothing wrong with the FPMT center being open for everyone. Just teaching those living a secular life and being closed to everything else—where you cannot teach lamrim and all those three capable beings can’t come to listen to lamrim at the center—it is not for that.
I was thinking it’s good to teach for secular life, if you have to go to give a talk in a school or to some group that comes to the center. Then depending on that group, you need to teach the subject which needs to be revealed. You can do that, otherwise the center is kind of closed. His Holiness is not saying, “You can’t teach all other subjects.” He is not saying that.
Thank you very much.
With much love and prayer ...