Inspiring words

Source : Glimpse after Glimpse - Sogyal Rinpoche.

To learn how to die is to learn how to live; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life but in the lives to come. To transform yourself truly and learn how to be reborn as a tranformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all.

Let us dare to imagine now what it would be like to live in a world where a significant number of people took the opportunity, offered by the teachings, to devote part of their lives to serious spiritual practice, to recognise the nature of their minds, and so to use the opportunity of their deaths to move closer to Buddhahood, and to be reborn with one aim, that of serving and benefiting others.

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Evoking the power of compassion in us is not always easy. I find myself that the simplest ways are the best and most direct. Everyday, life gives us innumerable chances to open ur hearts, if we can only take them. An ald women passes you with a sad and lonely face and two heavy plastic bags full of shopping which she can hardly carry. Switch on the television, and there on the news is a mother in beirut kneeling above the body of her murdered son, or an old grandmother in moscow pointing to the thin soup which is her only food.........

Anyone of the sight could open the eyes of your heart to the fact of the vast suffering in the world. Let it. Don't waste the love and grief it arouses. In the moment you feel the compassion welling up in you, don;t brush it aside, don't shrug it off and try quickly return to "normal", don't be afraid of your feelings or be embarrased by it, and don't allow yourself to be distracted from it. Be vulnerable : Use that quick, bright uprush of compassion - focus on it, go deep into your heart and meditate on it, develop it, enhance and deepen it. By doing this you will realize how blind you have been to the suffering of the world.

All beings, everywhere, suffer; let your heart go out to them all in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.