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the preciousness of other sentient beings and then the need to achieve
enlightenment ourselves in order to accomplish the aims of others, to
fulfill others wishes for happiness. This is the usual process.
The mistake is to think of attaining enlightenment but not taking
care of sentient beings, giving them up. Who gives you enlighten-
ment? Upon whose kindness do you depend in order to achieve it?
And then you don t take care of them, renounce them, pay them no
attention? Instead of treating sentient beings with kindness, compas-
sion and patience, you use them as objects of anger, to give rise to
delusions.
Because parents cherish their children most in their lives, if you harm
the children you also harm their parents. In general, parents cherish the
health, well-being and long lives of their children more than their own.
Therefore, if you cherish sentient beings, you are naturally serving and
pleasing the numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas; your serving and
benefiting sentient beings makes numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas
happy. Perhaps not in every case, but generally speaking, by making
sentient beings happy, you also make the buddhas and bodhisattvas
. . . . . . 31
getting the best from your life
happy. Generally, this can be said, but I wouldn t say that this is true in
every situation. Thinking that it is could lead you to make big mistakes
in your life.
However, offering service to sentient beings is the best offering of
service to the buddhas and bodhisattvas; making offerings to sentient
beings is the best way of making offerings to the buddhas and bodhi-
sattvas; serving sentient beings is the best offering you can make to the
buddhas and bodhisattvas. This doesn t mean that you should stop
making offerings to the buddhas and bodhisattvas: Oh, I m serving
sentient beings, I don t need to do other practices like prostrations,
mandala offerings, other offerings, the seven-limb practice and so
forth practices that are recommended for attaining realizations on
the path to enlightenment. That, too, is mistaken.
Easy merit
Actually, because of the power of the object, the easiest way of creating
good karma, the easiest way of attaining enlightenment, is with holy
objects Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; statues, stupas and scriptures.
Normally we need to generate bodhicitta motivation for our actions
working, walking, sitting, sleeping and so forth to become the cause
of enlightenment. Even for these actions to become the cause of our
own liberation, we need to generate renunciation of samsara. And for
them to become simply the cause of happiness in future lives, samsaric
happiness, even for that we need renunciation of this life; we have to
create pure, Dharma actions with a mind detached from the happiness
of this life. Forget about renunciation of samsara and bodhicitta, even
32 . . . . . .
the joy of compassion
to have the constant thought of renunciation of this life, to maintain a
pure mind, twenty-four hours a day is not easy.
But because of the power of the holy object, such as statues of buddha,
stupas and scriptures, buddha s kindness and compassion for us sen-
tient beings, and the inconceivable qualities that buddha has attained,
just by circumambulating or prostrating or making offerings to these
symbolic holy objects, we can immediately create the causes for enlight-
enment, liberation and better rebirths. Even if our mind is not one of the
three principal paths I don t mean the actual realization, but even if
it s not one of the artificial three principal paths, the motivation gener-
ated through the effort of thinking about the benefits of achieving
enlightenment and wanting to attain it, or of meditating on how the
nature of samsara is suffering and arousing detachment even if our
mind has no Dharma motivation at all and is completely non-virtuous,
even with that attitude, because of buddha s incredible compassion for
us sentient beings and his inconceivable qualities, by doing those actions
we can create the good karma, the merit, for liberation and enlighten-
ment and, by the way, good rebirths in hundreds or thousands of future
lives, and experience all happiness and success in this life too.
However, the purpose of collecting such extensive merit by making
offerings to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, statues, stupas and scriptures
is to be able to dedicate it to the happiness and well-being of other sen-
tient beings. You create this powerful merit, this strong karma, and then
dedicate it, use it, to accomplish the aims of numberless other sentient
beings, to bring happiness to other sentient beings the happiness of
this life, of future lives, of liberation from samsara and the highest, full
enlightenment.
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getting the best from your life
Enlightenment comes from sentient beings
As Shantideva said in his Guide to the Bodhisattva s Way of Life, Since we
achieve the Dharma by depending equally on the buddhas and sentient
beings, why shouldn t we respect sentient beings as much as we respect
the buddhas? 4
Guru Shakyamuni Buddha gave teachings on patience, giving us the
opportunity to practice patience. He taught us how to follow the path
to enlightenment, how to eradicate our defilements, and how to liber-
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