Ingredients for a successful relationship
(By Tsem Rinpoche)
Suzan and her husband during the wedding ceremony. Chinese have a unique custom. The bride should wear red during the wedding as red denotes wealth, prosperity, good luck, and growth.
I was requested to perform a Wedding Ceremony. It was for a long time student, Suzan. She was getting married and her family requested and I accepted.
During the ceremony I shared with them my thoughts on how to make any relationship work under normal circumstances. I was told later on that my talk benefited many people. I was very humbled by that so I decided to post it her as perhaps it would help other people.
People are going to get married, get into relationships, have partners and they have been coming to me for decades asking for advice. I am not the best person to give advice, but I try. So please take a listen and perhaps pass it to friends who might need to hear what I am sharing.
With humility,
Tsem Rinpoche
Below is the speech I gave during the Wedding Ceremony. It is about how to stay married. How to have a good relationship with your partner. My speech was for Suzan and her husband, but it can apply to anyone. Do listen.
(There is Chinese translation in the beginning, the majority of the talk is in English)
Part 1/3
Part 2/3
Part 3/3
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I would think before a relationship to start both parties must be honest about their likes and dislikes and any bad points that they have. With most people bad points are always covered up and they pretend and not act out for what they are because of love. It is not only love that can sustain a relationship. A real and successful relationship in a marriage is formed through sacrifice, tolerance, patience, understanding etc. In this rat race world nowadays it is so common that relationships and marriages are broken ending in divorces and the whole family suffers. If Buddha’s teachings can save a lot of people from sufferings so can dharma help you to have a successful relationship. As ingredients for a successful relationship can be found in the Dharma also if you choose to practice it.
Marriage provides the partnership and a wonderful opportunity for both to turn into better people. This can only be workable if both parties are able to commit, and to commit an everlasting continous commitment. From the beginning in marriage(as from books) the love depends more on attachment- that love has been motivated more by personal needs than by geniune care for the individual. True love it seems is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment based on well-founded feelings. A True love attitude does not change even if they behave negatively. Very best wishes to Suzan and her husband on the new journey of their lives.
[…] 上周日，黎国圆在英文文殊班跟我们分享了尊贵的詹杜固仁波切在黄子轩的结婚典礼上，关于爱与婚姻的开示。黄子轩透过双亲认识了克切拉和仁波切，她目前在克切拉天堂服务。 […]
Everyone are looking for relationship as we are feel unsecure and some of us end up with happy and some are unhappy. So how to keep our relationship and make it successful. Rinpoche talk is very useful, if we follow definitely our life will be happy.
As i know people who married want to be single and people who single want to get marry, the funny thing is we always want to be in what we are not as we think it will make us happy. We forgot to think about ourself that the true happiness is come from ourself not from other.
We always expect our husband or wife to act or do like what we like and when it not be like that we upset, then disappointed, argument which actually create from ourself. The choice is in our hand if we really want then change ourself.
Rinpoche mentioned that marriage is a wonderful opportunity to become better people. How true but how many of us actually go into a marriage with this mindset. We trained ourselves with the many relationships before finally getting married. We instead, reinforced our selfishness with our boyfriends and girlfriends so see which one we are MOST COMFORTABLE WITH to comply with our lifestyle..Actually we become worse after marriage!
What I like very much what Rinpoche said …that our partners is our “biggest opportunity for us to improve our personal weak points!” How can we have happiness if we abuse our partners? But with Rinpoche’s recipe, we are sure to be happy..this is only one of the key points in Rinpoche’s talk that day. Do watch all all the videos and I am sure you will take home many wonderful, long lasting goodies for your relationship.
Thank you Rinpoche for giving this teaching to samsaric beings, are are not renounced and driven by attachment, yet we can apply with these principles to become better people.
I have read some comments in Rinpoche’s Facebook when Rinpoche first posted this link, challenging Rinpoche – asking what a monk would know about relationship, and how can a mmonk give advice about relationship. This is what I really want to share – a monk would know how to give advice on relationship based on the fact that all good relationships would arise from good moral conduct from which a monk has dedicated all their lives to studying. I dare say a monk or nun is more apt and trained to holding vows more than any of us. Some of us can’t even hold down our marriage vows or normal promises to our loved ones, let’s not even talk about holding the 18 Bodhisattva Vows and the 46 Auxilliary Vows to state a few. So, I seriously doubt that any monk or nun would have a problem holding our secular laymen vows at all. It is us who have a problem with holding any form of vows! In this teaching, I am more convinced that good human values and attributes are universal. They are applicable everywhere, regardless of the labels. Hence, this particular Rinpoche is more than qualified to give us advice from his heart. Above all, this Rinpoche has lived a similar life to ours, only he had to endure muc more suffering than us, but Rinpoche took all his pain and turned them into positive fuel to benefit others. Every relationship is based on all the things that we should do in order to treat one another much better. And to come into marriage, it means we will devote ourselves to treating this particular person so much better and we will grow together with this person. I truly relate to how Rinpoche stressed that it is all a growing experience, because we were all so used to being by ourselves before marriage. Although I also no longer have a marriage, but I still have friends and relationship with families, relatives, colleagues and etc. The same principles apply to all levels of relationships and friendships in our lives. Kindness never hurt, Love and respect never hurt. Appreciation and caring never hurt. Forgiveness and patience never hurt. ALL THE OPPOSITES OF THESE HURT MOST OF ALL. Everything listed here are the very things Buddha and Jesus have expounded on. So, it is very much the crux of life and human relations.
Marriage is a choice and keeping it going is the natural consequential responsibility that comes with marriage. Relationships especially marriage is NOT some convenient thing to have so that we feel “normal” (based on society standards), so that we are not alone, so that we feel important, so that we have someone bound to us for eternity. Simply put, marriage is not a relationship that we have to feed our selfish minds.
Coming out of a failed marriage, I relate and completely agree with the teaching Rinpoche is clearly communicating. The word that struck out is partnership: we are in this together. So, it is together that we make the relationship work. Additionally, from Rinpoche’s other teaching (Nothing changes, Everything changes), I learn that it is OK to make the first move and not wait for our partner, on the basis that they should, because it is “I” who want to be happy.
My marriage did not work and it was an “expensive” lesson. I hope that this posting and video will save people from learning the hard way. I may not have a marriage now, but Dharma salvaged me mind from this perceived failure.
I wish Suzan and Simon all the best in their journey together as they welcome a new member to their unit this summer. May you grow old and happy together like Aunt Hani and Uncle Naddan (sorry for the wrong spelling).
I saw through this whole teaching spellbound because it hit something that I think every girly girly romantic girl thinks about her whole life: how to find that perfect man and KEEP HIM grrrr!
Jokes aside, it was such a beautiful teaching about what it really means to love someone. Rinpoche had tailored the talk to suit everyone in the audience, half of which were Christian (the groom, Simon, and his whole family is Christian), and the teaching became one of pure, great universal life, no matter what background, religion or culture you’re from. Actually, it is about basic human decency and qualities that we should ultimately be practising with everyone eventually.
I think most of us go wrong because we think that the other person should do this or what for us, or we think “why should I do that for him/her? he should do it too.” Rinpoche shares that it’s not about winning, or about who’s right or wrong. It’s about love, isn’t it? Isn’t that what brought us together in the first place? In the beginning, we did EVERYTHING for this person – adjust our schedules, wear ridiculous outfits, fulfil whatever they ask us to do. And now, we’re sitting there bitching and complaining because he’s not doing what we expect him to? What changed and why?
I loved the points in this teaching that we should always remember what it was that first made us fall in love with the person; and that we should make a commitment to change for the benefit of the other person. I love that the points are not about sitting around waiting for the other person to change, meet our expectations and do what we think a wife/ husband should do for us. It is about the commitment *I* can make to make this relationship a continuously successful, lasting and beautiful one.
And with that, I’m going to live happily ever after with The Prayer my boyfriend. Yes I am. *kiss*
The End.
thanks.. I surely will share the video with my hubby~~ awesome!!
I showed part 2 to my girlfriend a few months ago, she loved it, and it is very hard to convince her to listen to a dharma talk : )
Key to sucess is never carry anger into tomorrows.
Rinpoche,
Thanks for the talk and (hope) many more future talks on relationships. From relationships, comes children and from the children our future society is formed.
People say the children are our future. But children comes from relationships. Isn’t it wonderfull if we can tackle the problem before the children comes out ? Responsible, loving, wise parents don’t always guarantee wonderful children, but wouldn’t that be a great start ?
Nice.