Kathok Rigzin Chenpo Rinpoche
To us practitioners, a steadfast faith is like a wish-fulfilling jewel — very
precious and very important. But cultivating this type of faith is not easy and
takes time. Don’t be too impatient to
cultivate faith, it takes time.
In Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo (Great Treatise on the Systematic Path),
three analogies are used to explain this in the style of oral instructions… the
first analogy is climbing a high mountain.
To climb a mountain, you cannot break into a run, you have to hike upwards slowly.
Similarly, one has to progress through
the five paths and ten bhumis in a gradual way.
The qualities have to be slowly accomplished. The gathering of the stock of merits takes
time. Purification of karma and obscurations also takes time. You need time to
cut through self-grasping too.
It is useless to be impatient or hurried about it. In fact, the more you hurry,
the easier it is for your faith to backslide.
Therefore, to climb a high mountain, one cannot rush but must go
gradually.
The second analogy is that when dealing with any important or major matter, one
has to learn to bide one’s time. One has to take the time to plan and put in the
necessary efforts or fork out the necessary price, whether it is through one’s
body, life or knowledge and so on, to accomplish that project. These two
analogies are similar, but the explanations differ a little.
The third analogy is of eating a fish.
If you swallow the entire fish at one go, the bones will stick in your
throat and choke you. When you eat a fish,
you must look carefully for bones. This means that you must be attentive to
the details of each stage of the path, without missing anything out.
For instance, cultivating renunciation requires certain conditions, methods and
goals. The same goes for generating
Bodhichitta and the view of emptiness. You need to look into the fine details
of all the requirements for each level of practice.
The problem is when you miss something out or dismiss it as unimportant. Then the
final outcome would be failure. It’s
like eating the fish unmindfully while talking, then you would swallow some
bones.
In summary, we must be slow when climbing the mountain, take our time or have
the patience to wait when we are dealing with a matter of great importance, and
be meticulous about details when eating a fish. With these three analogies, the entire oral instructions
of the Lamrim Chenmo can be explained.
Not the entire contents of Lamrim Chenmo, but just the oral instructions…
Why am I explaining this? When we practitioners do practice and don’t get any
responses or results, we often get discouraged or feel impatient, but you should not
feel this way. Sometimes, you transgress some vows or precepts, you may feel
discouraged or your mind may regress on the path, but that is not necessary.
This is a very normal situation, and what you need to do is continue to forge
ahead bravely.
Many people have stopped their Ngondros halfway. Some people have broken their
continuity of practice when they reach up to the section on mandala offering
etc. Many of our disciples have broken
their continuity once, twice… up to five times.
In our lineage, the moment you break your continuity, you have start from zero
again. Some people have practiced Ngondro for more than a decade because they
have broke the continuity. Breaking means
that your faith and determination in the Dharma path is not stable. You do not value
Dharma practice highly enough. This is
my teacher Chatral Rinpoche’s rule. I
heard that Paltrul Rinpoche had this rule too. I have not seen it written in
any of his works. But Paltrul Rinpoche’s lineage is like that.
If Chatral Rinpoche heard that someone had broken the continuity of Ngondro, he would give that person a good scolding. He
would say that this person did not value the Dharma and the determination to
accomplish Dharma is very weak. Then, he would tell the disciple to start over
from scratch. Most of his disciples
finished the Ngondro at one go. Only a small number of them broke in the
middle.
But among my disciples, a huge number of people have broken the continuity of their
Ngondro (Rinpoche and everyone laughs). Many people here broke the flow of
practice because of their busy jobs.
When they reached home, they just fell asleep; by the time they remembered the next morning, the time has already passed.
Hence, what we are saying here is that you should not be discouraged, sad or
disappointed even if you have broken the continuity of your practice. Some people even think, “Maybe I am not suitable
for Dharma practice?” and so on. As long
as you are reluctant to break your practice, as long as you are not doing it on
purpose, it means that your mind is still on the path, only that the determination
is not stable and enduring enough.
It is like the signal on the handphone which is choppy and breaking up every now
and then, but at least the sound is still coming through in general. Your determination is like the signal, it is
not strong or clear enough, so it is harder to connect with the Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas. If your signal or determination
is strong enough, the connection to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is definite and
you will receive responses.
