Advice for Spiritual Practice

We’re delighted to share Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s illuminating 2011 teaching, “Advice for Spiritual Practice,” now available for free streaming on SoundCloud. 

In this accessible and profound talk from Santa Barbara, Rinpoche reveals how spiritual practice ultimately leads us to discover lasting happiness for ourselves and others by recognizing our inherent Buddha nature. Vajrayana Buddhism, particularly the Great Perfection, offers powerful methods to transform the mental poisons of ignorance, anger, and desire into awakened wisdom.

Rinpoche beautifully illustrates how bodhicitta—compassion for all beings and recognition of our ultimate wisdom nature—forms the heart of genuine spiritual practice. Through engaging stories and analogies, Rinpoche explains the importance of consistent meditation practice, with an emphasis on the role of faith and devotion, in developing the wisdom and compassion that bring lasting happiness and freedom from suffering.

As Rinpoche teaches, though countless lifetimes of dualistic thinking have obscured our true nature, this luminous awareness can fully blossom into Buddhahood through authentic, uncontrived meditation practice and recognition.

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From the teaching:

When asked about why, even though people sometimes have glimpses of the nature of mind, ordinary mind seems to come right back, why it is so sticky and resilient, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche responds:

Yes, even though we have the ultimate bodhicitta nature of mind, we haven’t recognized it. Through that lack of recognition, our dualistic conceptualizing mind appears. This confusion didn’t arise yesterday or the day before. We’ve been confused in this way for eons and eons. For many lifetimes, we’ve been lost in samsara. Therefore, we’re not really familiar with our own [Buddha] nature. As for myself, I don’t have omniscience, and especially as I’m getting older and more forgetful, even when I recognize someone’s face, I can’t remember where or when I know this person from. It’s difficult to recognize them. In the same way, we’re not closely connected with our nature since we’ve been confused for so long in samsara. Recognizing it is harder.

This practice [of meditating on our true nature] will bring us closer and closer to it. The more we rest in that natural state, the easier it is to recognize. It’s like a mother and child who are always together. The child can find its mother very easily. They don’t think, “Is this my mom or somebody else?” They don’t have that doubt. They immediately jump into their mother’s lap!

Similarly, we have been overdoing our dualistic practice. We totally accomplished that practice, and now, it’s so easy for us. We are successful dualistic practitioners, and we got the result! But we haven’t accomplished our fully enlightened Buddha nature because we’re not familiar with that. Through practice, we develop the habit of recognizing our nature, like a child recognizing its own mother. But it’s not that easy [to change that habit]. Vajrayana practice, the result vehicle, however, is much faster than the causal vehicles. According to Sutrayana, if we accumulate merit and wisdom, we can finally attain enlightenment after three eons. But Vajrayana says that we can become a fully enlightened Buddha within this lifetime. That’s because the view is direct. A realized wisdom teacher will point a finger directly to our Buddha nature in a very simple way. As soon as we are introduced to that, meditation becomes very simple. The truth is always simple, but fake is more complicated!

You might have heard of the great Tibetan scholar Gendun Chöphel, who said, “How much closer you get to the truth, the stupider and stupider scholars’ words become.” Scholars compose their words through the intellect, putting them together nicely, decorating them, and making them beautiful. They sound very nice. But the truth is beyond that [intellectual pursuit]. That kind of direct instruction [from realized teachers] is what we need. Through that, meditation becomes very simple. Since our essential nature is enlightened Buddha nature, we don’t have to do anything to it. If we are doing something, fixating, pushing, making an effort, then [our meditation] becomes fake. Our nature got lost.

Meditation is how to relax [in the essential nature]. What do we say? “Don’t worry, be happy!” Just simply relax. But how do we do that? Think of our original Buddha nature like a glass of [pure] water. Our dualistic mind is like tossing a handful of sand into the water. Then the conceptual mind continues stirring and agitating that sand, and the clarity of the water is temporarily obscured. But, don’t worry, be happy! The water is the same [pure] water. The best technique is to simply stop stirring and relax your mind. That gives our intellectual, busy mind a little rest, and its natural clarity appears. If you don’t touch the sand, don’t move it around, it naturally sinks, and the water becomes clear again. [Meditation] is just like that.

And conduct means no matter what, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, all the time, from moment to moment, bring back your mindfulness. Just relax. That “relax” is a good word. By doing that, we make progress much faster than with effort. Effort is the opposite of relaxation, right? When you think about something, you tighten your muscles, your eyes squish and your facial muscles squish. Then you think more and more, and never relax. The more effort you put, the more your nature gets lost and becomes more and more dull. Therefore, relaxing is a good thing.

Thinking about positive qualities, relative bodhicitta, leads us to ultimate bodhicitta. Kyabje Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche’s children are so cute. He taught them questions and answers for each other: What is a Buddha? Fully enlightened mind. What is the Dharma? All of Buddha’s teachings. What is the Sangha? A person who is thinking good things, saying good things, and doing good things. It’s a very simple way to think of it, and an incredibly essential point. In the same way, we can try as much as possible to think the same way. You know, generally, we’ve fully accomplished our samsara practice. We got the result. We truly established serious material phenomena. Our enlightenment is like that hardened state, and our practice is to make it soft. Our Buddha nature is like water. It’s become frozen in samsara with all our intellectual effort. That never gives our nature any break. Practice means relaxing and melting that inner energy so the ice becomes water again. I think it’s just like that. But saying is simpler, and doing is harder, always!

Photo: Lama Tharchin Rinpoche in Santa Barbara, California, 2008 (by Miriam Bressler)