Dear friends near and far

I hope this message finds you well, healthy and happy, and that you are all staying safe. On this Guru Rinpoche day, I would like to tell you about the importance of being honest (gyü drangpo), reliable (gyü tenpo), and kind-hearted (sempa zangpo).

Being honest, reliable, and kind-hearted is essential to Dharma practice, but it is also very important from a worldly perspective. Being honest and reliable means you will neither deceive yourself nor others. It means you can trust yourself and you are worthy of other people’s trust. When you are truthful and consistent, you know you can rely on yourself, and others know they can rely on you as well. Such qualities will benefit and facilitate your Dharma practice, and they will support you in your worldly activities too. So how do we cultivate these qualities? We need to remind ourselves at all times: “I need to be honest, I need to be stable and reliable.” We need to reflect and take a good look at ourselves, to see if we actually are consistently being honest, reliable, and trustworthy.

However, being honest and reliable is not enough: we also need to be kind-hearted. Kind-heartedness consists in an altruistic mindset, the desire to be good to others, to help them, to care for them. It means being kind; wishing not to harm, hurt, distress, or bother anyone. This type of kind-heartedness is fundamental to all Dharma practice: based on having a kind heart, one can cultivate compassion, loving-kindness, the view… But kind-heartedness is the starting point of all these other practices—it is the foundation. Someone who has no care or concern for others cannot possibly start cultivating compassion. 

For these reasons, those who are honest and reliable will be loved by gods and humans alike; and those who are kind-hearted will be protected by the gods and helped by humans.

So this is my message to you on this Guru Rinpoche day: reliability and kind-heartedness are essential to both Dharmic and worldly endeavors, and they are the foundation of both spiritual and human values. 

Sarva Mangalam,

Phakchok Rinpoche

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