Bengaluru Meditation Retreat

 

 

 

Universal Law

 

•All things are impermanent

•All things are imperfect

•All things are incomplete

•We can not change the past

•We can not control the future

•All meetings end parting

•That which rises must fall

•That which is collected will be disperse

 

BIRTH ENDS WITH DEATH

 

Purpose of Life

 

§Spend time each day in nature

§Create beauty in your life

§Create simplicity, not austerity

§Learn to enjoy the silence

§Get in touch with your creativity

§Latch on to synchronicity

§Learn to receive with gratitude

§Figure out what you don’t want in you life

§Enjoy each moment

 

My Prayer

To "Move On" does not mean to stop caring, it means I can't keep everyone happy.
To "Move On" is not to cut myself off, it's the realization I can't control others.

To "Move On" is not to reject, but to accept every change in life graciously.
To "Move On" is not to feel powerless, but to accept that the outcome is not in my hands.

To "Move On" is not to be protective, but to permit myself to face reality.
To "Move On" is not to escape, but to search my own shortcomings and correct them.

To "Move On" is not to deny anything, but to take each day as it comes, and cherish it fully.
To "Move On" is not to forget the past, but to grow wiser and live for Now.

how I am going to be remembered?

About a hundred years ago, a man looked at the morning newspaper and to his utter surprise and horror, read his name in the obituary column. The news papers had reported the death of the wrong person by mistake.

His first response was shock. Am I here or there? When he regained his composure, his second thought was to find out what people had said about him.

The obituary read, "Dynamite King Dies." And also "He was the merchant of death." This man was the inventor of dynamite and when he read the words "merchant of death," he asked himself a question, "Is this how I am going to be remembered?"

He got in touch with his feelings and decided that this was not the way he wanted to be remembered. From that day onward, he started working towards peace. His name was Alfred Nobel and he is remembered today by the great Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel got in touch with his feelings and redefined his values.

What is my legacy?

How would I like to be remembered?

Will I be spoken well of?

Will I be remembered with love and respect?

Will I be missed?

Chasing Meaningless Goals

A Zen master had a dog who used to sit by the roadside waiting for vehicles to come around. As soon as one came he would run down the road, barking loudly and trying to overtake it restlessly.

One day a neighbour asked the master "Do you think your dog is ever going to catch a car?"

The master replied, "That is not what bothers me. What really bothers me is what he would do or achieve if at all he ever caught one? "  Master smiled and went away conveying subtle and precise message.

Searching For The "I"

The way the I, or the self, exists is merely labeled by the mind, but it appears to us as real, in the sense that it appears to exist from its own side. If it is expressed or introduced according to our experience, the ordinary term is the real I. This I appears to us as real, even when we are not upset, excited or frightened. Even when we don’t have these life situations, there is a real I appearing to us, but when we meet these situations, the I that appears as real becomes clearer and more obvious. When we get angry or when somebody provokes or blames us, or we win a game and we are excited about our success, at those times the I that appears as real becomes very clear and strong. This is called the emotional I and in that sense, the emotional I is always there, because this I appears as real. We always have this appearance and the emotional I is always there, but it is not as obvious, strong and clear as it appears in these particular life situations.

The real I—the emotional I, the truly existent I—doesn’t exist, because if we search for it, it can’t be found. If we search for that emotional I or that real I, it can’t be found anywhere on these aggregates, this association of the body and mind—from the tip of the hair down to the toes. If we search for this emotional I, this real I, this truly existent I, it can’t be found anywhere. When we are unaware of the reality of the I and we do not analyze, it looks as if there is a real I—a truly existent or inherently existent I—that can be found. However, if we look for the I and start to analyze, it suddenly becomes unclear and the experience that comes to us is that the I doesn’t exist.

If the I really exists, when we start to analyze and to search, it should become more and more clear. The existence of that emotional I—the real I or the truly existent I—should become more and more clear if it exists. We don’t feel that the I is in a particular location in the aggregates or the body, and as soon as we start to analyze we can’t find it, so that proves it is not there. This emotional I—the real I or the truly existent I—can’t be found anywhere on this association of body and mind, the aggregates.

The I is nowhere to be found, either on these aggregates or separate from these aggregates, therefore it doesn’t exist. Also this I is merely labeled by the mind, therefore it doesn’t exist from its own side and it doesn’t have true existence. There is no true existence on the I, which means there is no true existence on the merely labeled I. “On the I” means the I that exists, therefore, there is no true existence on the merely labeled I.

The conclusion is that every day, every moment when objects appear to us, they come from our own mind. If our mind does not label, there is no appearance of the objects of the senses, including the subject and object. If we do not label the subject, there is no appearance of the subject, and if we do not label the object, there is no appearance of the object.

By Lama Zopa Rinpoche