Why do I fail?
People who say they wish to do Dharma work full time must show results. You don’t just do Dharma work when you join Dharma work full time. But evenings and weekends can be spent doing Dharma work if you are sincere immediately now. You don’t have to have the perfect circumstances to do dharma work, but you start from wherever you are immediately and CONSISTENTLY without excuses. Perfect circumstances rarely occur. You have to create the causes. Nothing appears without a cause…
Don’t make excuses to prepare others for your games, mistakes, failures and sheer laziness from habit. You are not living at home with mama anymore, so accept that and become independently sufficient and efficient already. How can you help sentient beings if you refuse to help yourself? Helping yourself is just a change of mindset.
After a while, the excuses you give others for failures might just ‘define’ you to others in a wrong way and that would take alot of effort to change in their minds again. Once bitten, twice shy….so get with it. Start and do the work perfectly now. Nice words, debate and justifications are for people who set out to lose. Your teacher and the Three Jewels never set you up to lose. Your ego makes you lose since beginningless time till now. Treasure your teacher and dharma not your ego. Your enemy is really on the inside. Whether you are sick (mentally or physical) or well, rich or poor, smart or not, sincerity and integrity is the key. Sickness, material circumstances or intelligence has nothing to do with integrity.
People’s perception of you is in your own hands. Your perception of the people around you is in your own hands.
Tsem Rinpoche
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After reading this article, I understood that, what we have in mind is not true. We will be able to do Dharma work if we really want to do it. It does not matter where we are. The people who work away quietly and unassumingly are the ones who really create real benefits for themselves and others.
Dharma work is said to be a blessing, a privilege and an honour. Dharma work is all about giving, rooting out our selfish mind that brought us all our problems in the first place.Thank you very much for the amazing article.
The human life is precious, as it is the one realm that enables us to practice the dharma. However, we are constantly staying in our comfort zones. We are always committing endless of samsaric activity, generating more negative karma for ourselves. Instead of doing dharma work and helping ourselves, our mind often wanders off into the thought of samsara.
We often create excuses for not practicing the dharma, when excuses are impermanent. We have to create the cause for ourselves instead of waiting for the dharma to approach us. This shows how ignorant we are, thinking that the dharma will wait for us. Some of us may have the money, but we would rather use it for ourselves than the dharma. Some of us may have the intelligence, but we would rather boast our achievements and financial success than using our skills to understand and help spread the dharma.
Our past is the past. It is useless to bring up the past, as we are not able to change or go back to the past. What matters is the present. We are able to take control of the present and build the future.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this message, for we are in need of realizing how ignorant we are.
Dharma work can be done everywhere as long as it was benefit others. We must take initiative actions in doing dharma work. Let go our egoism , I am sure we can do well in dharma work. Saying is easier than practice but we have to take a step forward to change become better.
Selflessness must be applied in every dharma work. Practice make perfect, so we should practice selflessness more often.
Thanks Rinpoche for sharing .
With folded hands,
Jason
Perfect circumstances rarely occur. A person who waits for the perfect circumstances will watch the world pass by and in the blink of an eye, what’s left to wait for, the perfect circumstances to die?
Why do tomorrow what we can do today. In a way it’s basic simple logic.
How can we help sentient beings if we refuse to help ourselves. If we cannot embrace changes and improve our mind, it is unlikely we will be of benefit to others.
Sincerity and integrity are two big words.
Sincerity – the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy
Integrity – the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness; the state of being whole and undivided
In my own opinion, simplistically it means not making excuses, no avoiding, doing even when no one is watching, completing.
Thank you Rinpoche for this article. This article definitely allows many of us to reflect on our actions. Many times we say that we are not able to do Dharma work because we are not in an environment that does Dharma work. After reading this article, I understood that, what we have in mind is not true. We will be able to do Dharma work if we really want to do it. It does not matter where we are. It is the commitment and passion that we have for Dharma work that truly matters. Thank you Rinpoche for pointing out such an important point for all the readers.
I use the phrase “for the sake of all sentient beings” quite frequently but it is only now, upon my second reading of this year-old post that I am asking myself how can I help others if I haven’t helped myself at all? Wanting to help others is fine but do we also use that excuse to distract our mind away from things about ourselves that we have to face up to and change?
Someone like me who has been exposed to a good Guru and the perfect Dharma for a couple of years can no longer feign ignorance and say I don’t know what it is about myself that I have to change. And if I have not confronted myself and undergone that transformation which I know Dharma requires of me in order for me to call myself a true practitioner, how can I talk the talk when I have not walked the walk? If I truly want to help others, then I must be the living evidence of what Dharma can do. Seeing is believing, or rather seeing real results in myself is the cause for others to believe in the cure.
Selling a medicine to others that we ourselves have refused is disingenuous and that is probably why we fail.
I always hear people said:
“Let me enjoy my life first, earn enough money, when I retired, I will go into charity or dharma work” I realized CERTAINLY ITS TOO LATE!
Just bear in mind, what Rinpoche mentioned
“Perfect circumstances rarely occur. You have to create the causes. Nothing appears without a cause…”
Dearest Rinpoche, thank you the post above. When I 1st joined Kechara full time, it was more of a job than Dharma work. As I continued, I realized how selfish it was to think of it that way. Being able to help and see the joy on people’s face was so worth it. I started to think less of working for stipend into benefitting other people. The best part is that we are PAID to do Dharma! How wonderful!
I will not let my ego, laziness and pride overcome my mind in doing more for Dharma. Thank you Rinpoche for all the departments created for more people to do Dharma work. I will always believe in my Guru and the 3 Jewels.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing your thought on failure. How many times we conveniently blame others for our failures when we are the cause of the failure. Enemy is within and only we can combat our enemy, this statement is so true.
Like Rinpoche mentioned we have to help ourselves to change our mindset, to transform ourselves positively in order not to be a failure again and to be beneficial to all sentient beings. This is not easy to do but always keep this in mind and it will be the motivation to keep us going.
thank u. i have a lot to think about
Thank you for sharing Rinpoche. It’s a very pleasant reminder for me to keep practicing the Dharma on a daily basis.
Doing dharma work seriously with a good motivation is a very powerful, self-empowering experience. One can really acknowledge and appreciate one’s own qualities, strength oneself to feel more confident through the active energy shifts as one performs dharma work with sincerity and good enthusiasm. Dharma work is said to be a blessing, a priviledge and an honour. Dharma work is all about giving, rooting out our selfish mind that brought us all our problems in the first place. By our doing dharma work is meant to transform ourself and others for better – and not for worse. Whatever problems we have, we must face them squarely and apply true dharmic solutions/remedies to solve them to get results, so to be able to learn where our mistakes lie. Thank you once again Rinpoche, for this amazing teaching to be used as reminder to guide us through in our daily dharma work at our Kechara Centre!
Dear Rinpoche, thank you so much for this enlightening post on how to pursue and actualize my dream. I will rip apart all my obstacles to joining Dharma fulltime to bits as working in my day job feels very fake as if i am an actor everyday playing a role and that i can only be at peace with myself and that it does not feel like a lie/elaborate play if i do Dharma work fulltime.
Thank you Rinpoche for those precious reminders
-CONSISTENTLY
-How can you help sentient beings if you refuse to help yourself? Helping yourself is just a change of mindset.
-Your enemy is really on the inside
-sincerity and integrity is the key
Dear Guru,
Thanks for reminding. A lot of the wording is true. I will learn to let go more of my ego. And learn where my mistaken view arise. May i recognize the mistaken view which stop me from doing Dharma.
Thank you Rinpoche. It is a sobering reminder that the skills that we are so proud of, and those by which we advance ourselves with in the material world are actually of little benefit to the Dharma. Often, just by thinking that we are skilled, intelligent or having anything to offer at all are impediments enough. Every time we “work” for Dharma, it is not Dharma that benefits but ourselves. I have noticed that it is the people who work away quietly and unassumingly are the ones who really create real benefits for themselves and others. It is a shame that some people such as myself find the basic principle of Sincerity so counter-intuitive to our sense of self preservation. The hunger for Dharma can only be filled by eating humble pies. To be defined by our wrong actions is certainly not easy but it is also good because it helps to “ring-fence” our wild and dangerous egos. Some people need that. It is also much better to be “disparaged by scholars” especially if we have behave churlishly. Thank you once again.