Question asked by Rojal Poudel
I am about to leave everything behind. I am tired of this life where I do the same thing everyday. I see everything but dharma as an illusion. I want to attain some sort of realization so that I can benefit other sentient beings. I am very inspired by the story of Milarepa, who gave up everything to learn dharma. Even the Buddha gave up comfort and luxury in search for this supreme truth. I also want to follow the Please tell me what I should do.
Dear Rojal,
We can understand that you feel this way, and seeing the illusion of life should definitely motivate us to want to achieve something more spiritual. In the past when people asked Tsem Rinpoche the same question, he used to tell people a couple of things:
> The first is that there are two methods to deal with our spiritual path. The first is to physically renounce everything and go into the wilderness, like Buddha Shakyamuni and Milarepa did. To cut yourself from everyone and everything and meditate continuously for years until you achieve realisation. But this is very hard to do in our day and age. We still need to have contact with people, there are the necessities of life to think about. Rinpoche said we need to think about things from a practice angle also. It takes a very great level of practitioner with an immense store of merit to be able to do this successfully.
> The second method is to keep living within our a community and use them as a support for the transformation of the mind and spiritual progress. For example, that it why we have monasteries and nunneries, or Dharma centres and organisations to help with spiritual practice. This method is more measured, but you can still gain the same results. This is the more practical method. Especially according to the Mahayana path of practice, Bodhisattvas need to practice certain qualities in our minds and we progress towards enlightenment. Such qualities include the Six Perfections, but if we are not around others, how do we practice them? In order to practice generosity, we need others to be generous towards. In order to practice patience, we need others to be patient towards. In order to practice morality and ethics, we need to be in situations to be able to practice our vows. Enlightened beings like Buddha and Milarepa were able to do all of this in their minds during meditation but as mentioned before they were already high level pracitioners with immense merit. For example, Buddha Shakyamuni had three countless aeons of consistent practice life time after life time until his achieved enlightenment.
> Another thing that Rinpoche shared, that while understanding the drawbacks of life and the benefits of becoming enlightened, a lot of the time what happens these days is that it is mixed up with emotion due to the challenges of life. People are looking for an escape, but not an escape from samsara into enlightenment, but simple an escape from their current problems. The need for escape, known as renunciation in Buddhism, is not to simply escape samsara, but developed in a certain way through contemplation and meditation. When we have such feelings, we should analyse them to see if they are in accord with the teachings and the methods of developing true renunciation. Many people also have a unrealistic way of thinking about physical renunciation and the spiritual path in general. Most people think it is easy, but it is not, is difficult because we need to deal with our minds, our emotions, our traumas, etc, from countless lives. If we don’t have a firm foundation in Dharma practice and transformation before we attempt something like Buddha Shakyamuni or Milarepa, we will give up after a while because we find it too hard. And perhaps give up spiritual practice because the path did not actually match our expectations. So the key is to be as realistic as possible about our spiritual path.
So our advice, rather than give up everything, as you may have family or other responsibilities, is to use your current situation to transform your mind, to practice the teachings right now in life, so that you can start progressing along the spiritual life. The best way to do this is to practice the Lamrim teachings, which give you a firm roadmap of how and what to practice in a sequential manner. Giving up everything is not necessary to make real progress on the spiritual path, as outlined in the Lamrim, but sustained and consistent practice is the key. Then use the situations in your life to actualise that transformation. We hope this helps.