DHARAMSHALA: His Holiness the Dalai Lama blessed a group of Buddhist devotees from Vietnam with the permission initiation of White Manjushri, Jamyang Karpo on Tuesday.
Concluding his two-day meeting with the group, His Holiness gave an hour-long teaching on how to achieve inner peace and contemplate the positive inner values.
The group of devotees includes 80 business leaders, artists, intellectuals and members of youth delegations from Vietnam at his residence and over 500 from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hai Phong who participated through a live teleconference.
“Positive emotions such as compassion and altruism bring us inner strength. Inner strength reduces fear and anxiety. On the other hand, destructive emotions such as anger and hatred bring fear and that destroys our peace of mind,” His Holiness said.
“When we talk about happiness, we are not talking about experiences on the sensorial level, but achieving happiness on the mental state”, he said, adding that human beings are superior to animals in respect of their mental ability.
“Sensorial happiness are also experienced by animals. As human beings, we should employ our deeper mental ability to discern the causes of happiness and suffering,” the Buddhist icon said.
“Mental peace is the key thing,” he said. “Now it is very important to analyse what are causes of destructive emotions and the causes of calm mind”.
He described one of the causes of disturbing emotions as “human’s self-cherishing attitude”.
“Because of this self-cherishing attitude, we cause ourselves suffering. All the emotions of anger and attachment also arise. The counterforce to this attitude is cherishing others over oneself.
“The more you cherish others—the limitless sentient beings over the expanse of space—greater you will be able to reduce this self-cherishing attitude”.
The second cause he said is “our grasping at independent existence in things”. He spoke in detail of the empty nature of all phenomena.
His Holiness observed that practice of dharma must reflect in all our thoughts and actions.
“In terms of philosophical viewpoint, Buddhist philosophy, particularly Nalanda based Buddhist tradition is the best. This tradition offers a realistic approach and is the only religious tradition that can lend itself to a dialogue with science,” His Holiness said, in his concluding remarks.
After the teaching, His Holiness gave the permission initiation of White Manjushri (Jamyang Karpo) to the devotees. He explained that White Manjushri has special relevance with regard to developing Bodhicitta, and has significance in developing the view of emptiness.
“Since this initiation comes under the category of tantra. In tantra, it is very important to have the pure lineage of these transmissions. With regard to this permission initiation of white Manjushri, I received it from Tadrak Rinpoche”.