Samye Ling 2018: Dharma Practice Is Like Exercise

In response to one of this morning’s questions, Rinpoche reinforced the key point that the purpose of Dharma practice is to help us to become more easy-going and better able to forbear whatever arises. Practising Dharma he likened to exercising, insofar as we need to keep doing it when we are strong enough and able to, if we wish to reap the benefits of greater inner strength and resilience. In contrast, Rinpoche explained, our Dharma practice will not be fruitful if we only engage in it when we are ‘down’.

The morning session concluded with teachings on spiritual friends who are ordinary beings.

This evening, before continuing to teach from the third chapter of the Precious Ornament of Liberation, Drupon Rinpoche cautioned us against seeing the qualities of the spiritual friend as unrelated to us. Instead, he urged us, we need to think of this part of the text as a manual, showing us the attributes that we need to develop if we are to be of benefit to sentient beings.

Shared from the Akong Memorial Foundation.