Do Not Delay

If you wish to learn the dharma, it is better not to delay. This is especially true if you wish to benefit others in the dharma. The younger you start your studies and training, the more chance you have to learn and become knowledgeable, and it is this that will equip you to benefit others.

Our faculties and abilities to learn only decline over time. However old we are at the moment, this is probably the fittest we are going to be in this life to take on the challenge of assimilating the teachings. Our hearing and sight are not going to improve as the years go by. Similarly, our mental faculty to memorise and retain the teachings is not going to improve the older we get. Regardless of what we have done up to this point in our life, now is the best time for us to start.

This is true to what my root lama, Lama Senge, used to say to me often. He would say, “Meditate as much as you can while you are young. The older you get, the more susceptible you become to drowsiness.”

I regularly hear people talk about going forth from the lay life and becoming nuns or monks once they are older. We often feel that we will have time for the dharma later in life, but there are no such guarantees. And even if a window of opportunity for dharma study and practice does present itself later in life, are we going to be able to utilise that opportunity when our faculties are less sharp, as well as we could if we were to give ourselves that opportunity now? No.

However we look at it, the sooner we start, the better, both for ourselves and for those we might go on to help.