Garchen Rinpoche
When cultivating Bodhichitta, you think that “May I benefit all sentient beings.” That actually is your own greatest benefit. It is very important to understand this instruction. Because if you understand this point, you see that if I have an altruistic wish to benefit others, then that itself actually becomes your own benefit.
How does it become my own benefit? It is because when I want to benefit others, then my self-grasping diminishes and when there is no self-grasping in my mind, my mind is Buddha. Right now, my mind is like an ice-block due to self-grasping. When you do something for others out of an altruistic wish, actually it is you who attain enlightenment as a result of that.
This is also what makes the Buddha’s path so precious because it is a path that presents a method that both benefits self and others.
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In essence, what I encourage my students to do is to act for the purpose of other sentient beings. Because no matter what we do, as long as we think that “I am most important,” or “my purpose is most important,” that is what holds us back. That is the thing we need to purify. We need to purify this sense of “me”, that “self”.
When you want to benefit all sentient beings, when you give rise to immeasurable love for sentient beings, you will essentially not think of yourself, you will think that whatever happens to me doesn’t matter as long as I can benefit beings. When you are truly able to think in this way, you have truly found liberation from samsaric existence…
Self grasping is the only cause of suffering. So that is what I have understood despite not having much learning. I have understood the fault of self-grasping and the quality of the Dharma… it is very simple and it all comes down to these two lines in the 37 practices of Bodhisattvas, “All suffering without exception comes from wishing for one’s own happiness. The perfect Buddhas arise from the altruistic mind.”
Just think about these two lines and ask yourself whether this is true or not, and discuss it with others. From such discussion and analysis, a true trust, a trusting faith arises. When you fully believe, and there’s trust, from that trust comes a longing faith. That is my greatest hope for you. That is what I wish to impart to you, my disciples.
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I make it a point to point out the essence of Dharma to others. They need to understand that karma is unfailing and that the body is impermanent. Later, after death, the consciousness goes on in the bardo. If we are then controlled by our afflictive emotions, then we are born in the three lower realms.
That is why it is so important to understand karma, cause-and-effect, and that the causes are precise. Essentially, there is just one cause of suffering and rebirth in the lower realms, and that is self-grasping. If you practice Bodhichitta, then you are born in the three higher realms and may even be able to bring great benefit to sentient beings.
