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Tsem Rinpoche
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Concept: Tsem Rinpoche
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I must thank my dharma blog team who are great assets to me, Kechara and growth of dharma in this wonderful region. I am honoured and thrilled to work with them. I really am. Maybe I don't say it enough to them, but I am saying it now. I APPRECIATE THESE GUYS VERY MUCH!
Tsem Rinpoche
H.H. Kyabje Zong Rinpoche Explains Dorje Shugden Initiation and Benefits (With English Subtitles)
Dear everyone... This is a good condensed talk I gave on Guru Yoga of Tsongkapa. This is the one you should share with others when they are interested in a not too lengthy explanation. It is the perfect practice for everyone who wants simplicity yet effective blessings. You can share this with more people, it will be good.
~ Tsem Rinpoche
Powerful Dorje Shugden's mantras
Tsem Rinpoche on National TV's Wesak Day Documentary
'The Promise' book launch featured on NTV7 Primetime
"If you say you don't have money to help a animal shelter, why then do you have money to buy meat?"
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Eating animals is not our God-given right, but being kind to them is."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"What makes us good humans is not how we abuse animals, but how much we allow them to live and be happy freely."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mythical concept of animals.... We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complex than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
~ Henry Beston, The Outermost House
"Not eating animals is only unnatural when we are not used to it."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"We may encounter defeat, but we must not be defeated."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"What you are today, is the choice you made yesterday."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"You think you can choose your life? What an ego trip!"
~ Lama Yeshe
"If TODAY you are dissatisfied, you must make the changes to create different results for TOMORROW."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
“Meditating on Dorje Shugden while reciting his mantra will open the gateways to higher dimensions, blessings and protection.”
~ Tsem Rinpoche
“If one does the recitation of the Lama Tsongkhapa guru yoga prayer for even one month using one of the visualizations for great or clear or quick wisdom, one will definitely see development of that wisdom. It is proved by experience. There is no doubt that by doing the Lama Tsongkhapa guru yoga practice one can meet Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings from life to life. And furthermore, it gives one the opportunity to be born in the pure realm of Lama Tsongkhapa, Tushita, whenever death happens.”
~ Pabongkha Rinpoche
"I was 18 years old in 1983. That was a very special year as I met His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche and received innumerable precious teachings and empowerments from Him at Thubten Dhargye Ling Centre in Los Angeles, California. It was the best time of my life. A time that seems so magical and surreal to me. Kyabje Zong Rinpoche is Heruka Buddha and I met Heruka."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"If being me offends you, maybe I'm not the problem."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Never abandon your spiritual teacher no matter how many inner obstacles you need to overcome."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Actions to force something to be permanent makes all the karmas arise."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"The dharma is not easy to listen to… because some people take it as criticism. But Dharma should not be just feel good only for the moment but for deeper contemplations."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Whether we do work and suffer but for others or we do work and suffer for ourselves, either way we have to suffer. That is the nature of samsara. So let us suffer for others and then suffering has meaning."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Those who really want the dharma to grow within themselves and to grow for others should never fear hard work, timing, difficulties, struggles, disappointments because it is for a good cause. Working for Dharma is not a prison or work, but it is purely spiritual practice. It is purely collection of merit and purification. Actually not doing dharma work is the real prison."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"His Holiness Zong Rinpoche stressed the need to continue to practice even when we come up against obstacles, and that we should continually review our progress. He stated that a happy, luxurious life was like a good dream, and that obstacles and difficulties were like a bad dream. We should give them no significance, but simply carry on working towards real, everlasting happiness."
~ Ngala ’ö-Dzin Tridral
"Things in samsara always go wrong. That's its nature. Don't be surprised."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Knowledge never quenches the thirst, only application."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end-that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to approach both."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Money amplifies negative characteristics and that can cause problems. To walk away from that was actually very easy. I didn't even consider it."
~ Angeline Francis Khoo
"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud."
~ Carl Jung
"There is a devil there is no doubt, but is he trying to get into us or trying to get out?"
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"If you love someone, show it by being honest, respectful & honorable with them."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
~ Henry David Thoreau
"If I can just be the way I am & you the way you are & we accept each other, world peace is near."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"I am Asian, you are some other beautiful color. Together we make diversity so beautiful."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"It's amazing how some people have never met me or know who I am, but based on a few things they read here & there & rumours, they have formulated a new personality for me & all the things I've never done they passionately speak about....I find it funny and entertaining now. I guess we can't spend our lives fighting rumours...we just have to work hard & then rumours get proven wrong on it's own as a by product. No point explaining repeatedly. Just do our work & show results!!"
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"There's a difference between patience and laziness. Patience comes from respect while laziness from disrespect of others."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Although outwardly we have so much, we have so many conveniences, inwardly we have become more unhappy, so, acquisition is not the secret to happiness. The more we get, the more we have, the more unhappy we become."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Before we experience any pain, we already had a fixed view of how things should be. When the experience we encounter contradicts our views, then the pain arises. The pain arises due to our fixed views not so much the experience itself. So the secret is changing the views. Re-educating ourselves on our views."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"You know since very young, for better or worse, I always did the things that others told me not to do. I wasn't really good at following the rules. Even now with how I share Dharma and my practice, I just do it the way I think it should be done but I do it sincerely. Not what others tell me what I can and can't do."
~ Tsem Rinpoche
"Love me or hate me, both are in my favor... If you love me, I'll always be in your heart... If you hate me, I'll always be in your mind."
~ William Shakespeare
"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest."
~ Maya Angelou
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Comments I like from
Edvin Stokic Dave Djinpa Tara
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Tsem, your consistency and determination to help people all over the world with Buddhas teaching is something incredible and so rare. Thank you for consistency and motivational drive that comes ... Read More Tsem Rinpoche, always extremely beneficial. My respect for your love n' care! Read More Hi Tsem Tulku, I Just want to say again. You are awesome and I am so glad that you exist. There is so many bad lamas around and you are ... Read More
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Dear Hesed,
Thank you for your question. Asking this question shows you think about things well and have a strong urge to know why things happen. This wanting to know and understand is a sign of being spiritual as you think about life and why things happen. According to Buddhist philosophy, we believe in something known as ‘karma’. This, although taught by the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, was not created by him. Instead he saw the nature of reality, and told others how the world exists.
In today’s world most people have a vague understanding of karma, but as a topic itself, it is very complex. In short, it means that if you do good things, good things will happen to you and if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. But coupled with this, is the notion that we have countless previous lives. The actions we engaged in during these previous lives affect us now in this life, if the causes and conditions for a particular karma to manifest are right.
For example, in this life we may have financial difficulties or a lack of resources to live well. This is the karmic effect of having been miserly in previous lives. This manifests as us not having the funds or resources we need in this life. While this may seem unfair, it is just the way that the world exists.
One of the Four Noble Truths taught by the historical Buddha is that suffering exists, and in fact Buddhists believe that all life is full of suffering. That is why Buddhists strive to better themselves in order to achieve enlightenment. Once you are enlightened, you are no longer subject to this suffering. Rather than just concentrate on the negative side of things, when you study karma, you also study how to counter negative karma. This is done by doing good deeds and helping others to alleviate them of their own suffering.
There is however, another more subtle form of karma, and that is what we term as imprints or habituation. Over the course of countless lifetimes, as we perform the same sorts of actions again and again, this seeps deeper into our mind, and we end up developing certain tendencies. For example, someone is this life may have a lot of unexplainable anger. This comes from countless previous lives, in which the person was angry, acted out of anger or made other people angry. Therefore the karmic result is to be prone to anger in their current life.
So, the various feelings that make us suffer emotionally, such as guilt, sadness, jealousy, etc., are not actually due to external forces, but because we have the karma to feel them, due to actions and thoughts taken in previous lifetimes or even through habituation in this life.
In regards to these emotions that make us suffer being the sins of our ancestors or dark entities, Buddhism places the majority of what happens to us on the individual themselves rather than outside forces. Sometimes a person may indeed be afflicted by a spirit and experience a severe disturbance in their emotional state. This is actually due to the person themselves having the karma to be affected in this manner. For those that do not have such karma, no matter how much the spirit tries to disturb them, they will not feel the effects of this disturbance simply because they do not have the karma to go through that experience.
While outside forces can have an effect on our emotional state, they cannot affect us if we do not have the karma to be affected. This not only applied to emotional suffering, but physical suffering as well. We often here stories of people surviving accidents, when other people in the same accident did not. This is because the individual did not have the karma to be harmed by the accident, whereas the others did have that karma. The accident acted as the conditions for the karma to ripen. But if you do not have the karma than nothing will happen.
All of this that I have mentioned is very brief, as the entire topic cannot be covered here. You can find out more about karma, how it effects your emotions, and how it causes suffering by watching a fantastic teaching by His Eminence the 25th Tsem Rinpoche called You and Your Imprints here: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/you-and-your-imprints-how-to-break-bad-habituations.html
Another very good source to learn more about karma is the book entitled Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, which you can order a copy of here: https://www.vajrasecrets.com/lamrim-liberation-in-the-palm-of-your-hand. This text is part of the Lam Rim literature, of the Stages on the Path to Enlightenment, and forms the core of our education syllabus here in Kechara. This text details the Buddhist path in a step by step manner for the beginner all the way to the most advanced practitioner. Within this text there are sections that explain how karma works, the various types of karma and the results of karma, including both beneficial and harmful karma. It is a must read book for anyone that is interested in learning about Buddhism is really about and even more so for practitioners. I hope this helps.
Thank you