Merit

In this video teaching, Phakchok Rinpoche reminds us that the essence of our mind is already enlightened. Yet, even though our nature is pure, that does not imply that we then can sit back and do nothing. We need to accumulate merit!

Practitioners should take advantage of all opportunities to increase the accumulation of merit easily and swiftly. We need to know how to magnify our virtues. Phakchok Rinpoche reminds us regularly that we need to consistently accumulate merit.

Today’s Guru Rinpoche day is very special, because it falls within the month of Saga Dawa. In the Tibetan tradition, Saga Dawa is the month during which the Buddha was born, attained enlightenment, and passed into nirvana. For this special message, then, I would like to draw from the Sutra of Liberation (Tar Do), which is a well-known sutra in the Tibetan tradition.

Happy Guru Rinpoche Day! I am at present presiding over the Tsekar “White Amitayus” Drupchen here at our Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery in Boudhanath. It is a five family Buddha Amitayus practice with the hundred deities that Guru Rinpoche received at the Maratika cave in Nepal with Lhacham Mandarava.

In this final teaching, Phakchok Rinpoche reminds us that we can do this aspiration prayer as often as we wish.

In the second teaching, Phakchok Rinpoche continues his commentary on the text. He emphasizes that although this aspiration prayer is very ancient, we can see that it is very practical and applicable in our daily life.

Offering water bowls is an easy and pleasurable meritorious activity widely practiced in Tibetan Buddhism. Water’s purity gives it great power.

If our motivation for Buddhist practice is based on excitement, what happens when that excitement goes away? And the excitement does go away — that’s why we call it excitement! Rinpoche has discovered that students may confuse motivation with emotional excitement. We can get excited about “deep” topics, but we may forget our motivation and therefore go astray.

Let the Dharma resonate fully by accumulating merit. This is the best method, Rinpoche advises. But we do this without lots of expectations and thoughts that there is some sort of magical Pandora’s box that will transform us. That is not how it works. The journey of the path needs to bring changes.

Here he reminds us that if we remember the goal of our practice, we should achieve the goal. And genuine compassion and devotion can bring us rapid progress