CULTIVTING UNDERSTANDING
Excerpt from, The Middle Way – Faith Grounded in Reason,
Written by The Dalai Lama, Translated by Thupten Jinpa
Chapter 5 – Practicing the Profound
Pages 145 – 147

If you are serious about Dharma practice, it is important to cultivate a good understanding of the teachings. First of all, it is important to read the texts.

The more texts you read—the more you expand the scope of your learning and reading—the greater the resources you will find for your own understanding and practice.

When, as a result of deep study and contemplation on what you have learned, as related to your personal understanding, you reach a point on each topic when you have developed a deep conviction that this is how it is, that’s an indication you have attained what is called the understanding derived through contemplation or reflection.

Before that, all your understanding will have been intellectual understanding, but at that point it shifts. Then you have to cultivate familiarity, make it into part of your daily habit. The more you cultivate familiarity, the more it will become experiential.

Of course in relation to the path there are two aspects: method and wisdom. Generally speaking, it is easier to understand the method aspect of the path, and easier to develop a deeper conviction about it as well.

It evokes strong, powerful emotions. But even with the wisdom aspect of the path, although the initial stages of cultivating understanding and deep conviction are more difficult, once you gain profound conviction, then you can experience powerful feelings and emotions.

However, you should not have short-term expectations that something like this will necessarily be achieved within a few years.

Regarding the duration of practice it is important to seek inspiration from statements in the scriptures. They explain that it takes three innumerable eons to achieve full enlightenment.

Also Shantideva, in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (Bodhicharyavatara), says that we should pray that as long as space remains and sentient beings remain may I too remain to dispel the sufferings of sentient beings. Reflecting on these kinds of sentiments will give you strength and inspiration.

If you train your mind n such a manner, although your body may remain the same as before, your mind will change and transform. The result is happiness. Whether the outcome will bring benefit to others depends on many factors and external conditions. |But as far as our own experience is concerned, the benefit is definitely there.

PRACTICE THE PROFOUND

Each morning after you wake up, try to shape your thinking in beneficial ways before you begin your day. You can think, for instance, “May my body, my speech, and my mind be used in a more compassionate way so that they become a service to others.”

This is something I usually do. It makes life more meaningful. Likewise, examine your mind in the evening before you go to bed. Review the way you spent your day and check whether it was worthwhile.

Even for nonreligious people, I believe this is a valuable method to create a more meaningful life, so that when you arrive at the end of life, you do not feel remorse or regret. You may be sad because you are now departing from this world, but at the same time, you have some satisfaction from having lived your life in a meaningful way.

One particularly helpful habit to develop is the habit of watching your own thought processes, observing what occurs in your mind so you are not totally immersed in it. Usually when we develop anger, for instance, our whole mind or self seems to become anger.

But that is just an appearance. With some experience you can learn to step back when anger develops. It is enormously helpful to be able to recognize the destructiveness of negative emotion right in the moment it develops.

This is of course very difficult, through training you can do it. Then, when you have some perspective on your own anger, you look at your anger and, immediately, the intensity of it is reduced.

It works the same way for attachment, sadness, pride, and so on. Through training and habituation, cultivating a daily habit, this is possible.

These are also ways to extend human value outward, extending from a single person to family members, and form each family member to their friends.

That is the way to transform family, community, eventually nation, and then humanity. If each person cultivates his or her mind, the effects will spread and lead to a better world.

After I pass away, after forty or fifty years, perhaps a better world will come, but if you want that, you must start working for it from today, from right now.

That is what I want to share with you.