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Venerable Khenpo Sodargye, dear alumni and guests
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to attend today﹑s lecture on traditional Chinese culture
It is a great honor to
invite Khenpo Sodargye, the distinguished Dharma master of Tibetan Buddhism,
to give us this lecture.
Since its beginning, the Traditional Chinese Culture Class of the Overseas Education College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has been striving to
offer the best faculty, and the best cultural and spiritual food for its students.
Nowadays, our society is permeated with desires for material things, and is full of competition and change.
People are getting fidgety, anxious and stressed.
Our courses aim at passing along a positive energy
of peace, freedom, and liberation to everyone.
We seek the transcendence of mind in this restless society.
To study classic texts is to learn the transcendental spirit,
see through appearances, find the essence,
and then improve our lives,
enhancing the quality and the happiness index of it.
We have offered a number of high-quality, non-profit lectures and courses
for our students, alumni and friends.
We have invited renowned lecturers in our previous events,
including Mr. Yi Zhongtian, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Qian Wenzhong, and Mr. Zhou Guoping
Many famous scholars have given lectures here.
Today is the thirtieth lecture of the series.
It is our honor that
we have invited a great Khenpo of high reputation.
Next, Mr. Zhang Guangyi, Director of Overseas Education College Project Center will give a welcome speech.
Please.
Venerable Khenpo Sodargye,
students of the Traditional Chinese Culture Class, dear friends, good morning.
I remember last week, the CCTV News
reported a case of four brothers from Guilin, Guangxi, looking for their mother.
Our society was touched by the news, and it is like the ancient saying: ﹒Filial devotion is the foremost in virtue.‧
Why do we need to learn traditional Chinese culture?
Because it shapes our value, let us distinguish between good and evil.
China today
is abundant with materials, and we have no problem in survival.
Yet how to live meaningfully is a question.
So we need to form our values.
It involves what to choose.
We believe that through the education of traditional Chinese culture
incidents such as sewage oil and poisonous capsules will be less and less.
There are many classic teachings in Buddhism such as giving and cause-and-effect.
I remember the year before, I had the honor to attend Lake Tai Grand School.
Mr. Nan Huaijin was offering the course of Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government
Mr. Nan said that the traditional Chinese culture is broad and profound,
among which two subjects are especially hard to learn:
one is The Book of Changes and the other is Buddhism.
Mr. Nan was practicing Tibetan Buddhism in later years of his life.
It is a great honor for us to have invited Khenpo Sodargye today.
I am sure he will give us a lecture of happiness.
I wish Khenpo happiness and good health.
I wish today﹑s lecture a perfect outcome and every friend joy and happiness. Thank you.
Thank you, Director Zhang.
Many students here today may have known our great Khenpo.
Venerable Khenpo was ordained in 1985.
Since then, for all these years,
he has been promoting Dharma in countries in East and West,
including Singapore, India, Nepal, and Bhutan of East Asia,
and the US, Germany, and Britain of the West.
Everywhere he was respectfully welcomed.
Today, dear students and alumni,
let us give our Khenpo the warmest applause.
I﹑ll make my speech short. I remember in a FAQ session,
many Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter) users asked Khenpo online:
What is the goal of life?
Khenpo answered:‧To seek peace, freedom and liberation.‧
I hope students today, through your ears and mind,
can plant the peace and freedom that Khenpo brings us today
deep into your mind.
Let us welcome Khenpo and his lecture on ﹒The key to happiness is the mind‧.
Amitabha
Amitabha
Today we will learn something together
about ﹒The key to happiness is the mind.‧
In fact, I have given a brief introduction to this topic
in other colleges.
I intended to use another topic,
but Jiao Tong University felt that this one is very popular.
So we agreed to stay with this topic.
﹒The key to happiness is the mind‧
So, regarding this topic,
I believe many of you here today long for happiness.
You do not come to this lecture looking for pain.
﹒The key to happiness is the mind.‧ As a Buddhist, my explanation of this topic
may give you some insight, or cause some disagreement.
In the morning, I plan to
give a brief presentation on my idea of happiness.
Then in the afternoon,
I plan to introduce to you a very famous Geshe in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. He lived about eight hundred years ago,
and he left us some very precious secrets: ﹒The key to happiness is the mind‧.
These are the two subjects that
I would like to share with you in the morning and afternoon.
So, in the morning, where shall we start?
Lately you probably have learned that a CCTV program
was interviewing people randomly, asking them ﹒Are you happy?‧
The answers were unusual and diverse.
From a religious, or more precisely, a Buddhist view, some answers showed that
those people indeed have found happiness.
But for some others, their definition of happiness may not be perfect.
Recently you must have heard about
our Nobel Laureate Mo Yan.
When asked ﹒Are you happy?‧,
his answer was ﹒I don﹑t know.‧
He was down to earth.
When reporters kept questioning him,
he said ﹒I don﹑t know.‧
He explained:‧ If I say I am happy,‧
﹒I am in fact under great pressure lately. All kinds of pressure.‧
All he did before was reading and writing books, and his life was easy. But he has much more to face now.
He may appear rich. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature
brings him a fortune of over seven million and five hundred thousand RMB.
Many may believe that the fortune will bring Mo Yan happiness,
but when receiving the huge prize all of a sudden, he may not really feel happy.
On the other hand, in terms of fame, on a global scale,
the Laureate of Nobel Prize in Literature was chosen from a total of 250 nominees.
Five out of two hundred and fifty were finalists, and Mo Yan was the winner.
For over a hundred years, Nobel Prize winners draw the attention of the world.
In our eyes, Mo Yan must be very happy.
Still he said:‧ I don﹑t know.‧ There are probably two reasons.
One is that he really is not happy at all.
He was very worried and under great pressure.
Another is that he was being hypocritical,
saying he was not happy when he was winning such a huge prize.
But Mo Yan was probably speaking his mind.
I reflected on and analyzed this question.
In fact, Buddhism tells us that the key to happiness is the mind.
Here the saying
does not mean that happiness depends 100% on the mind,
but mind has a lot to do with the key to happiness.
I would like to take this opportunity
to discuss it with you today.
People in the world think that wealth is a type of happiness.
But is that true happiness?
Maybe when we are out of money, food and clothing,
we think that
money will solve every problem and make us happy.
But when you are wealthy,
for example, when you have your own house, you may find it not enough and want to have another one,
and after that, you may want a third house.
When you own a house in one country,
you may feel the need to have more houses in other countries such as Canada and the US.
If wealth is really happiness,
you should have felt happy when you are rich. But that is not necessary the case.
Once a very famous actress, Elizabeth Taylor, said:
Everything was handed to me. Looks, fame, wealth, honors, love. I rarely had to fight for anything.
But I﹑ve paid for that luck with disasters.‧
She once commented like that.
I think her words make sense
from the perspective of Buddhism.
If our attitude is not tuned to the right way,
fortune alone may not be the true happiness.
Some of us believe that the more expensive our houses are, the happier we will be.
So we replace our bungalow with a villa.
We may feel comfortable inside, but the upkeep gets bigger.
You change your ordinary car into a fancy one.
You may feel that owning the fancy car is the greatest happiness.
The first day or two, you really enjoy it.
But then,
many fees occur, including its maintenance and gas consumption,
and the pain of owning the car follows in.
So, for wealth, sometimes it is not ﹒the more the merrier.‧
A millionaire in Austria
donated all his villas and other assets to charity.
He worried a lot about his assets when he was the owner.
Buddhism teaches that, the accumulation of wealth is especially painful.
So is the guarding and keeping of wealth when you have it,
because we worry day and night that it will all be spent
or snatched away by the Five Enemies of Wealth(the authority, the thief, fire, flood, and unworthy children).
The Austrian millionaire I mentioned,
when he donated all his fortune to the charity,
he felt very happy and his stress was reduced.
People in the world agree that
80% of pain is related to money, while 80% of happiness has nothing to do with money.
What shall we seek for?
It is very hard to survive without any money.
You need to find a proper way of living in the world.
It is the midway taught in Buddhism.
I have seen many ordinary people, many monastics,
and all kinds of very rich people in our society.
After I see them, I have very strong faith in the teaching of ﹒never go to the extremes‧
that Buddha taught over two thousand and five hundred years ago.
Why?
Because it is very hard to live without any wealth.
But if the wealth is excessive, it is also becomes a source of boredom.
Why it is a kind of boredom?
When you live in a five-star or six-star hotel,
at first you will feel very comfortable and nice.
But after that initial period, after a few minutes or maybe just half an hour,
it is not different from living in an adobe house.
Your feeling will be the same. In this regard,
we need to be moderate with our wealth.
People today blindly seek after wealth, thinking the more the better.
But such attitude is very irrational.
We will be at risk of being totally lost.
So, the Buddhist view of wealth
might be different from your usual ideas.
Any one of you usually feels that the more wealth you have, the better it will be,
not that a certain amount of wealth is enough.
(The Traditional Chinese Culture Class encourages moderate wealth) So far, such a philosophy
is uncommon in the region.
So I think it is very praiseworthy
to offer events of traditional Chinese culture and spiritual education on various occasions
such as our lecture today.
If someone can truly change his mind,
his workplace, family, and children
will all develop in a good,
beneficial and healthy way.
Speaking of development, do not limit it to the accumulation of wealth.
If we regard the accumulation of wealth
as the most beneficial breakthrough in human history,
then the human spirit will degrade,
morality will slide,
and compassion will decrease, so forth.
If these ancient cultures
and their valuable knowledge
are not valued in society,
then our society is not really developing.
It is very important for everyone to enhance thier mind and wisdom.
I especially respect college faculties.
They work very hard, and for that we should be grateful.
What is a grateful mind? Maybe in the process of such learning,
you make some physical or monetary efforts,
but what you gain is spiritual wealth.
People nowadays, no matter if they are from countries in the East or West,
are most deficient in spiritual wealth. The difference between ancient and modern people is that,
ancient people lacked materials, but are very wealthy in spirit,
while modern people, like Director Zhang just commented,
have no problem in surviving, and no shortage in food or clothing,
but have no feeling of contentment either. We do not have a true idea on how to live.
We should live in this world
in a meaningful way, not just live for living﹑s sake.
Or else, we will be the same as animals.
Animals in the mountain wake in the morning, feed on grass, look for clear water,
and sleep at night. Likewise, if we, apart from eating and sleeping,
have no feelings of loving kindness or compassion toward
our nation, people, or all the humans in the world,
then how terrible will our morality be.
Please think that over.
We need to analyze our attitude toward wealth.
Then let﹑s think, is our so-called happiness real?
Some believe that high social status is happiness.
Let us take a close look at so-called social status.
Generally speaking, people﹑s social status is impermanent.
Sometimes I read about histories of many emperors, kings, generals, and ministers from the East and West, and of ancient and modern times.
Whether one was a famous figure of politics or economics circle,
when he was truly happy, famous and prestigious,
his relatives and friends visited him frequently and revolved around him.
But when one day he was jobless and fell from power,
his so-called relatives and friends stayed far away from him. This is very pathetic.
It is like a tree.
When it is flourishing and full of leaves, hundreds of birds perch on it.
They sing melodiously and loudly.
But in winter, when leaves and flowers wither,
the flocks do not come. Today, when someone is in power, or truly rich, or in a high position,
he has people surrounding him,
and he has countless friends.
But when, all over night, his position is lost,
no one wants to approach him anymore.
It is very unwise for us to build our happiness on the basis of social status.
You must all know Emperor Shunzhi.
He became a monk.
At that time, he wrote in his In Praise of the Sangha that,
﹒For eighteen years I am not free. I led battles in South and North. When is the end?‧
He also mentioned that in his previous life,
he was a monk in the West.
But later, because of just one wrong thought,
he was reborn in the royal family and became the emperor.
For eighteen years, he fought in south and north, and had no free time.
Till he was ordained, he realized that life has true meaning,
so he did not regard his throne as beneficial to him.
Not to mention ordinary positions in the world. Just look at the very famous
leaders of nations or organizations,
from their state when they retire from the positions, we can see how unreliable social status is.
Some people are busy from dawn till sunset, working with all their might.
What are they seeking? Some are after social status.
But what on earth is social status about? We can see thatit is meaningless.
Long ago, Zhuangzi lived a very simple life, but his wisdom was extraordinary.
Once he went to visit a friend named Huishi.
When Huishi saw his arrival, he thought that Zhuangzi was coming to take over his position in the government,
so he got very worried.
Zhuangzi understood his thoughts and the actions he took.
But to Zhuangzi, the position was
as unwanted as rotten rats.
So he told Huishi:‧I shall never seek your position.‧
Some people, while in the position of vice section chief,
try all their means to be promoted to section chief, then to the head of bureau.
After that, they are still not satisfied, but try to be promote to the municipal and provincial government.
Even after that, they are still not content and still wish for a higher position. But life is only a few decades long.
So, it is not really reasonable
to build our happiness on the basis of social status.
I believe the pain we feel is real.
Part of the pain is from the body, part from mind.
In Buddhism, there is a great master named Ayadeva,
who authored a very renowned commentary:
Four Hundred Verses on the Middle Way.
In it, there is a verse that reads:
﹒ For superior people, pain comes from mind; for inferior people, pain comes from body.
These two types of pain inflict on our world every day.‧
What does it mean?
It means that, for people who have fame, position and wealth, and who are in higher social classes,
they are not worried about food or clothing.
They do not need to worry about their basic necessities.
Then where does their pain come from? From the mind.
We probably all understand this.
I believe everyone here today may not suffer much from physical pains.
Judging from your appearance and clothing, you have fortune in many aspects.
From a worldly view, you are all very fortunate.
It should not occur to you ﹒What on earth can I have for breakfast tomorrow?‧
Or ﹒My food will run out next month.‧
or ﹒My clothes are in tatters, what can I wear next time?‧
You probably have no such pain. But I am sure
many of you have worries and fear in your heart.
﹒Will my enterprise shut down?‧ or ﹒Will my career work out?‧, etc.
Some people are so stressed that
they cannot fall sleep at night, and have to take sleeping pills.
Like what we just learned from Buddhism, people with fame and prestige
usually do not suffer physical pain, but have great pain in mind,
whereas people without position or money, such as ordinary workers and farmers,
do not worry about their social status,
but instead problems like ﹒How can I survive‧ or ﹒How can I sustain my life.‧
I often go to some remote areas, where
people﹑s food and basic necessities are not secured.
You see, nowadays, over fifty million people are suffering from hunger in the world,
including refugees in Africa and people in surrounding countries.
From the pictures and information on the Internet, it is just like the description of hungry ghosts in Buddhism.
They are so thin that their torsos seem to be the only part left.
Some were so hungry that they eat mud and dung,
and other things considered inedible by the world, such as tree leaves.
They have been feeding on those things.
Sometimes, we do need to think these things over.
A high position in a few decades of time is not necessarily meaningful.
Many very capable people, no matter what circle they are in,
always worry about their social status and are quite vexed.
There is a saying in Buddhism:
﹒Win or lose according to conditions and do not add or subtract on your mind.‧
Few people reach such state.
My fortune and position come and go all because of conditions,
and my mind does not add or subtract anything.
Few people reach such state.
At the end of a year, when elections are running,
many people feel very pained.
In fact, these pains are all created by our mind.
Next, let us talk about relationships. Most young people
place their happiness on relationships and their reliance on the opposite sex,
while they in fact have no mental resilience at all.
It is a foolish action to rely
all your happiness, joy, and hope on the outside, on other people and things.
We should have our own ability to lift our spirits.
﹒Even if I have nothing to rely on in this world,
not any human, nor any animal, even if I have nothing,
I can survive on my own, and I will live on.‧
Such spirit of perseverance is very important.
Without it, many young people are attached to so-called love.
The more they are attached, the more painful it will be for them.
There is a famous sutra in Buddhism: Nirvana Sutra.
It reads:
﹒From the passions arise worry, and from worry arises fear.
Away with the passions, then there is no fear or worry.‧
It means that, you have fear because you love,
and you worry because you love.
If you have no attachment such as love, then in this world,
you will not have fear, worry, sadness, or tears;
nor will you have other problems such as suicidal intentions.
Due to media propaganda, many, many people today
regard the attachment to relationships
as the most important thing in the world.
But when their attachment to relationships yields no result, or when they are dumped,
many young people, including college students,
cannot pull themselves together but commit suicide in the end.
Such situations are getting worse.
I thinks this has something to do with the influence from media.
Be it TV shows or movies, they encourage emotional attachments all day long.
Due to the great amount of such propaganda,
many young people, from the day they were born,
watch these so-called brilliant shows, and so forth.
These programs claim that relationships are the most important part of life.
But that may not be true.
Many spiritual practitioners and people with true purposes of life,
regard relationships as just a part of their life, not the entirety. So I think
people who are attached to relationships need to reconsider their situations.
We should not build all our happiness on the basis of others.
When others change just a bit, your index of happiness will drop correlatively.
I do not think that is worthwhile.
People today feel so much pain because they are especially attached to the outside conditions.
Also in daily life, they do not have any means to adjust their mindset,
therefore, many people are under enormous pressure.
You﹑ve probably heard that, two days ago, around the 17th of this month,
China was rated as the country with the greatest pressure.
For all the countries around the world, the Chinese are the most stressed.
What﹑s the biggest cause? It﹑s our attachment to money.
I heard the news mention that Chinese feel stressed because they are attached to money.
Also, it is reported in an English news program that
one out of ten Chinese has a certain degree of mental problem.
That﹑s to say, 10% of the entire population is mentally ill. Besides, 61 million Chinese are depressed,
and each year, 600 thousand Chinese died of Kar皿***,
or 200 thousand according to some other reports. Some reports show that 200 thousand cases of suicide occur each year.
What are the main cause of all these tragedies? Because we are too attached to our life.
Like what I said, if people learn how to live properly from their education in school
or in other traditional culture classes or religious classes,
they might not have so much pressure.
What is the biggest source of our pressure, and why is the pressure so suffocating?
Because people are not content.
Why don﹑t they feel content? Because they want to compare and compete with the others.
﹒If someone buys a car, so will I.‧
﹒I will keep up with the Joneses.‧
You may not lack anything, you just need to surpass the others.
Whether you can really surpass the others depends on your blessings,
career, and competence.
People naturally feel stressed in the process of comparison and competition.
If most of us know how to live appropriately, and know how capable we really are,
we will probably not be so pained,
even if we live in a shabby house.
Sometimes we feel that people living in big cities
are really pitiful, honestly.
I have lived in the mountains for over twenty years.
Perhaps we value life differently.
Every time I go to cities, (this may be unpleasant to hear),
they are so crowded that remind me of anthills.
I don﹑t know why most of these city dwellers live in that way.
What are their aims? They are all striving for self-interests and self-benefits.
Those who truly intend to help the others, do good to the society, and benefit the public
are becoming fewer and fewer today.
Everyone is thinking how to make himself
the best, the happiest, and the most successful.
We all know that, when working and striving with such a mindset
of self-interest, people will not be really happy.
So what is the biggest source of our pressure?
In my opinion, it is our insatiable desires.
When the desire is present, you will never feel content.
Elvis Presley once said in great pain that
he owned everything, but still he was not satisfied.
Schopenhauer also said once:
Wealth is like sea-water;
the more we drink, the thirstier we become;‧
For anything we own, we want more than one.
It is often taught in sutras that
﹒When the desires are not fulfilled, feverish afflictions occur.‧
When our desires are growing,
yet nothing is obtained in the end,
we will not be happy; we will be in pain.
If nothing in the world can bring you
satisfaction, you are sure to be in pain.
You will always be in pain if you need everything.
Sometimes I chat with some friends,
and my former classmates.
I told them, (I feel happy) wherever I am. Not because I am an experienced Buddhist practitioner,
but because I am a monk, and for myself,
I am not interested in things other than books.
No matter where I go, I long for nothing,
and I am not particularly interested in anything.
This might be a type of mental condition, I﹑m not sure.
I might be among the ten percent that have mental issues.
Indeed I am not desirous of things.
But I see many of my classmates who, even if living in remote areas,
want to have this and have that. They long for so many things.
In such mindset, they do not feel happy or delighted.
They are usually unhappy in life and work.
So, we can see that,
the root to all the pressure and pain is our greed.
It is also taught in sutra that,
we will have more and more pain when our greed grows bigger. So we have to find a way to curb our greed.
We need to find true happiness.
True happiness may not be found if you only talk about it instead of taking actions.
I saw in the news that, when the reporter asked:‧ Are you happy?‧
Some said ﹒No‧ and some said ﹒Yes‧, and some other evaded the topic.
But such a survey may not draw people﹑s attention to true happiness.
The crucial thing is to adjust our attitude.
This is of great importance.
Take a patient for example, if he falls ill, it is not enough only to acknowledge his disease.
He has to go and see a good doctor and find the cause of his illness.
Then he has to take the prescribed medicines.
Then he has to follow the instructions when he is taking the medicine.
Likewise, every one of you here needs to make some efforts
if you ever wish to adjust your attitude toward the pursuit of happiness.
Listening to one lecture or merely talking about it is not enough.
One needs to ruminate on some reasoning and teachings,
as well as read some books over and over to absorb some knowledge.
If you delve deep enough, you will see the light.
When you understand the truth from your heart, you will see that,
people are in blind pursuit of happiness,
but the root of happiness is not in the external objects.
If 100% of happiness depends on the external objects,
then why people blessed with wealth are not 100% happy?
Some of them have not found happiness.
So we see,
a sense of contentment
is the way to the greatest happiness.
A while ago, some reporters from CCTV
messaged me on Weibo:‧ Are you happy?‧
I replied:‧Yes.‧
He said:‧ How did you find your happiness?‧
I answered:‧ I have a mind of contentment and satisfaction.‧
I believe the key to happiness is the mind.
The essence of mind is that, at a certain point, it has a sense of contentment.
With such contentment,
even if one is hard-pressed or in a difficult condition,
he will still feel happy.
I often quote Helen Keller, an American deaf-blind author and activist.
She wrote:‧ Oh, the things that I should see if I had the power of sight for just three days!‧
Every one here has not just three days but, more than three hundred and sixty days of light.
But still we are not satisfied.
If you go blind and cannot see anything,
what would your biggest wish be?
In such a circumstance, it would be fine if I do not have anything else, as long as I have eyes to see.
Nelson Mandela, the Nobel Prize Laureate and president of South Africa,
spent twenty-seven years in jail for the cause of his ethnic equality and nation.
He spent day after day in a pitch-black jail cell.
He later said, every day I have half an hour to get out in the sun,
and it is the happiest moment in my life.
We have all day long to bask in the sun, let alone half an hour.
I don﹑t know if Shanghai is usually sunny. It seems so.
When you are in the sun,
you can have the happiness that Mandela felt. Such happiness is available to all of us.
Sometimes we go to the hospital.
Suppose you are diagnosed with a severe case of disease,
you will think: if it can be cured,
even if I have nothing else, I will be happy.
Especially when you are bedridden, you will very much long for recovery.
But back when you were healthy, you didn﹑t feel that way.
Or suppose someone died in your family, and you will only realize then
how happy you were when everyone in your family was together.
But you didn﹑t cherish them when you had the chance.
The so-called happiness is not necessarily something you gain from the outside,
but something you have not lost yet. That is a type of happiness.
Also, a relaxed mind is very important.
I once read a booklet
titled Tasha Tudor's Seasons of Delight.
Tasha Tudor was a famous American illustrator,
and writer of children's books.
She lived in the mountains, close to small animals.
She planted herbs and flowers,
and led a very simple, natural, pure and free life.
She lived surrounded by nature and sun.
Such life is more valuable than
any kind of high-end living in the cities.
There are many Buddhist practitioners in my hometown.
Some of them have not locked their doors for about two decades,
Why? because they do not possess anything valuable at home.
When they go out, they don﹑t need to lock their doors.
There is this very good monk, whom I knew well
before my own ordination.
We were good friends when we were both laities.
He was ordained before I was.
I was very envious of his monastic life, so I became a monk, too.
He was a better monk than I am.
He spent all his life in mountains, in a small shed in the woods.
For months on end, he ate very simple food.
He practiced there every day, and when he went out, he didn﹑t need to shut the door,
because he had nothing valuable at home.
Nothing but a bit of food, which no one wants to steal.
Other than food, he only had one or two pairs of clothing for summer and two pairs of clothing for winter.
He had nothing else. Every day he just practiced and recited sutras.
Once I went to his shed.
I felt from the bottom of my heart: Ah, such happiness.
He lived in a very beautiful place: babbling brooks flowed past his shed;
in the woods there were chirping birds and fragrant flowers; and blue sky and white clouds overhead.
It seemed that, after I arrived there,
my mind was in another state, all seemed excellent.
I thought,
actually many people in this world are closely connected to nature.
When in nature,
all our afflictions and pains are forgotten.
Like Master Lian Chi said:
﹒When you understand being content in your life, your afflictions are solved in that instant.‧
That﹑s to say, when you understand how to be content in your life,
all your afflictions are dispelled.
Also it is taught in sutra that,
﹒Without desire and longing, mind and body are fee.‧
I think, when we do not have many desires,
and when we earn our living by our blessings and work, we will feel content.
For career people,
suppose your salary is ▁2,000,
but your peer get a raise and earn ▁3,000.
Even if you can still live with ▁2,000,
when you compare with another﹑s higher salary, you will feel it﹑s unfair:
﹒Why cannot I have the same high salary?
My ▁2,000 is not enough at all. I must top his salary.‧ You will feel that way.
Such feelings of competition and comparison
affect our attitude and thus our life.
Therefore, the contentment we talked about
has something to do with our happiness.
Our feeling of contentment is related to happiness.
Of course, such contentment can be obtained through learning some other knowledge.
But my suggestion is having faith in certain religions,
from which we will feel greater contentment.
Why? For one thing,
faith in religion has close connection
to high index of happiness.
Around February 16 this year, Gallup published a report
about a survey it conducted two years ago.
In about January, 2010,
Gallup made a very detailed survey
in all the fifty states of the US, including Washington DC.
In all they made over 676,000 telephone interviews.
The survey ended around December 2011.
In conclusion, the population with the highest happiness index
were those with religious beliefs. They consist of 69.3% of all the people of high happiness index.
The other 30.7% are people who do not have a definite religion or whose beliefs are not very strong.
Judging from these statistics,
religious beliefs are relevant to our positive mood and happiness.
Recently, I met an intellectual, who said:
﹒Fortunately, I have found Buddhadharma. If not,
I﹑m not sure if I am alive in this world now.
I was in great pain, and under all kinds of pressure.
I really had no way to solve my problems.
I felt that the world is so unfair, and the people in my life are unfair to me, too.
I attempted suicide for a few times,
but for some reason I didn﹑t kill myself. Happily, I found Buddhadharma later.‧
Honestly,
I am not advertising for Tibetan Buddhism here. That is not the case.
But it is a fact that learning Tibetan Buddhism is the key to happiness.
We all know that,
Bhutan now has the highest happiness index in the world.
I once read a book named
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.
The author is a reporter. He wrote about ten countries,
including India, Britain, Bhutan, etc,
He travelled through all these countries.
In the part about Bhutan,
he wrote that, happiness is a policy.
He wrote about his experience there and the way the Bhutanese live.
But of course, by the information from the book alone, it is not very clear
how religious the Bhutanese are.
In fact,
twenty-two years ago, in year 1990, I went to Bhutan.
My guru was His Holiness Dharma-King Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche.
At the invitation of King of Bhutan,
we took an airplane
and flew from south India directly to the capital of Bhutan.
The Bhutan King and the Imperial preceptor Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
sent us the invitation.
We stayed for about half a month there.
What is Bhutan like? All Bhutanese are Mahayana Buddhists,
and they all follow Tibetan Buddhism. It is a Buddhist country.
Their living standard
was not high even twenty years ago.
In fact, they did not have many cars, and all the nation had was just a few airplanes.
But every citizen has a feeling of contentment. Everyone holds prayer beads in their hands,
including the King, Queen, and people in the court.
Their ideas of living, corresponding to Mahayana teachings, is to be content and have few desires.
By living such a life,
I think, their minds are altruistic,
grateful, and happy.
In this way, people are naturally in a happy mood.
I remember at that time, on many occasions including in hotels,
they put up some very good poems,
one of which read:‧ Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
I remember this verse. It was printed in Tibetan.
It concerns the value of life, environment issues,
and all the unreasonable and destructive attitudes that humans hold against nature.
Bhutanese strongly object to
indiscriminate felling of forests and exhaustive exploitation of resources.
Some of you might have been to Bhutan, though the country is not completely open yet.
It takes about two hundred dollars each day to travel there.
So the country is not open to many people yet.
The more a country opens, the more it is connected to the world.
This has its advantages, but problems as well.
Every one here today can consider how, and which direction a country should open up.
I feel that you need to think about this issue.
Some of you are religious, some are not.
Anyway, I think
you need to judge your beliefs with your wisdom.
To be sure, in Tibetan Buddhism, there are many ways to adjust the mind.
I believe that, plenty of regions in Qinghai Province, and around Lhasa,
are the same as Bhutan.
If we check these regions out,
their happiness index should not be lower than that of Bhutan.
Why? People in these regions have a very peaceful mind.
When in mountains and remote areas, we often see people there,
no matter if they are elders, youngsters, or kids,
they all smile brightly.
Unlike dwellers in big cities, they truly feel content in their mind.
People in our society have so many anxieties,
which they feel confused about.
These anxieties bring us many troubles in many aspects.
So, I hope people
can learn Buddhism
or traditional cultures in their leisure time
to adjust their minds.
At the same time, they need to visit temples from time to time,
to find out how the monastics live.
In fact, sometimes it is very meaningful to see life in anothers﹑ eyes.
Or else, you live a life that consists of going to and coming back from work every day.
At some point, you might be tired out and full of pain.
Then, it is very important for you to adjust your mind.
The best way to adjust the mind
is to meditate.
We do not have enough time today.
When you get up in the morning,
take at least twenty minutes
to quiet yourself down.
Think of nothing and abide in such state.
Do the same in the evening before sleep. Meditate for about ten minutes to half an hour.
This will make a difference in your longevity, health, mind.
and your discretion.
A book about meditation was published in America.
It says that hundreds of thousands of people
have ameliorated their life and fate with the help of meditation.
Colleges in the US and many European countries
offer meditation sessions.
We can adjust our body and mind through meditation.
There is an abundance of knowledge on meditation taught in Buddhism.
I hope you can buffer your life with meditation.
I am afraid you will beget many illnesses if your daily life is too tiresome.
It is inevitable to be over-worked in cities.
But each day you can adjust your life.
For example, today we have shut off our cellphones for over an hour now.
Many of you might worry ﹒I probably have a lot of messages.
I will read them through later.‧ All of you will check your phones after the lecture.
There are a lot of similar examples. This is different from the life of ancient people,
who waste little energy on outside distractions.
When they ate, they just ate. When they rested, they just rested.
It is all different now.
An hour after you shut off your cellphone, your mind is still on it.
When you turn it on later, all sorts of information floods in,
which may not be useful to your life, and thus dispensable.
When we open our eyes in the morning,
cellphones are also turned on. Then humans and the cellphones both work hectically.
When we tire out in the afternoon, the cellphones are also out of power.
Then both humans and cellphones rest. The next day, it starts all over again. Sometimes we call it Samsara.
What is Samsara? It is like the ever-turning wheel of fire.
What we did yesterday, we repeat it today. What we do today, we will repeat it tomorrow;
up until the day we die. Will you be happy by then?
Some of you may believe
that there is nothing beyond death. In fact that is not true.
Undoubtedly there are future lives after death.
This is a point I would like to emphasize.
Humans have to see this truth. If not,
we are not different from a lifeless stone.
A stone even last longer than humans.
Humans live for over a hundred years at most.
Life is so short, it is too unreasonable to ignore truths.
Due to the education they receive, and their childhood environment,
a lot of people are not even aware of the existence of previous and future lives.
Sometimes you are proud that
you are from Jiao Tong University:﹒I graduated from Jiao Tong University.‧
You print name cards and feel superior.
Yet you are not sure if your future lives exist.
Really, sometimes humans are so blind.
In the future, I hope
to discuss this issue with you via refined wisdom.
Humans do have extensive future lives.
We keep changing our bodies, but the karma created in the past will always follow along.
This is a very reasonable truth.
I often prove it with many scientific cases
and Buddhist doctrines.
But the topic today is ﹒The key to happiness is the mind‧.
So we will not explore the issue of previous and future lives.
But only after we see this truth,
will we be responsible for the happiness throughout our lives.
Or else, the so-called happiness is temporary.
You may not care about the things that happened a couple of decades ago;
you might not care when you were a kid, nor will you when you grow old.
If we only care about the so-called happiness in a few decades of our youth,
then we are too short-sighted.
So, humans should learn some very valuable ancient knowledge
Then we may see that our lives are meaningful.
In our lives, we should share our loving kindness
with people around us, as well as with animals
I think that﹑s all for today.