Life Is A Precious Blessing, Gift and Opportunity: Let’s Use It For Truly Important Things
Let’s use our life for the important things while we still have the time, health and ability to make a difference for ourselves and the world.
Photo Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
One of the greatest gifts of understanding that I received from my first teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, concerns how very precious our human life really is.
At the time that I met and became his disciple in 1972, Rinpoche was giving a course on the Foundations of the Dharma principles and meditation practice on his first teaching tour to America
He was one of the first of the great highly realized Tibetan meditation masters to teach in the west. Though he was already 72 years old at the time, and frail physically, he had a dynamic personality and the radiantly loving energy that only one who has dedicated his entire life to serving others has.
His teacher, the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa had asked him to come to the west to teach in order to help fulfill a thousand year old prophecy by Padmasambhava:
“When the iron bird flies,
And iron horses run on wheels,
The Dharma will come to
The land of the red man…”
Karmapa foresaw that though Rinpoche was getting older, he would be highly effective in teaching westerners in Europe, Canada and the USA because he embodied the every essence of an enlightened being with a heart of pure loving compassion.
Kalu Rinpoche Still Mountain Meditation Center
Before he launched his world tours, Rinpoche sent one of his most trusted monks to the west for a year to travel around to meet people who could help and see if there was any real interest in the meditation and learning the principles of the Dharma in their simplest, most essential form.
When the monk returned to report to Rinpoche and the Karmapa what he had found, the monk said that most people in the west were totally focused on the pursuit of material life but that there were many young people called Hippies that he believed would be very interested and had the potential to become serious Dharma practitioners.
This turned out to be the case. Its hard to imagine now, but in the early 1970’s there were very few Dharma teachers or centers anywhere in the west. Rinpoche spent the rest of his life doing world tours, as well as continuing teaching and training all over Asia, founding more than 70 Dharma centers and establishing many retreat centers and translation groups.
I was one of those hippies who immediately recognized Rinpoche as the teacher I had been waiting and looking for for years. How I met him is a miraculous and beautiful story, along with the story of my years of training with him and following his example, which changed and empowered my life. I will tell these stories in future issues, but for now I want to share in brief one of the key principles Rinpoche taught which made and continues to make a huge difference in everything I do and how I view life.
It is this:
Human life is precious because it is the perfect situation for many reasons to pursue your own spiritual path and development.
As a human being in good health and sound mind, you already have everything you need do the powerful spiritual practices which are the heart of the Dharma and which will gradually help you to become free from all suffering and the sources of suffering…and then help others to achieve that same state.
Now here is a key point, which if understood, will imbue you with passionate sustained motivation to not waste this precious opportunity.
Everything you love and hold dear is temporary and will have its end.
This principle is described thus…
Everything is wrapped in “The Four Ends” which are:
“The end of all birth is death,
The end of all accumulation is dispersion,
The end of all building is ruin and
The end of all meeting is parting.”
Though we all live as if we are going to live forever, the truth is that every day that passes is bringing us closer to our last day and last breath.
If you maintain this awareness, and really understand that nothing can prevent your own passing or having to be separated from everything and everyone we hold dear, then we will see how precious life is and choose not to waste any more of it on things that don’t matter and won’t help us in the end.
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
This is my own motivation behind everything I do, especially now that I am getting older and realize that most of my life has already passed.
This is not a morbid thing at all, but maintaining this awareness constantly spurs me to live in the moment, to be as loving and compassionate as I can, and to dedicate myself to serving others and the world in whatever way I can.
Its why I write and publish this newsletter, why I have taught and practiced meditation for the past 50 years, why I am very focused on my own personal spiritual practices…
I do not want to get to my last day and be filled with regrets for missing this precious opportunity that is still in my hands to use, to cherish, to share and make as much difference as I can before my last breath.
Life is one continuous wake up call that we all need to hear and respond to.
Let’s not waste even one more second…If we do wake up and focus on the important things, you will find, as I have, that life is amazingly beautiful…the more I evolve on purpose, the more clarity, bliss and higher consciousness I experience…which is far above and beyond the satisfaction we can get from anything the normal mundane world has to offer.
Photo Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
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