Gen-la Dekyong: Recent Episodes
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This teaching presents the Kadampa view that suffering has good qualities and is inevitable in impure life. Through Dorje Shugden’s blessings, practitioners learn to courageously accept suffering and transform difficulties into spiritual fuel, developing renunciation, compassion, and wisdom rather than rejecting life’s challenges.
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This teaching explores the practice of relying upon Dorje Shugden as a Dharma protector. It emphasizes using instructions as a “mirror of Dharma” to examine one’s mind and understanding that protecting inner spiritual realizations—compassion, bodhichitta, and wisdom—matters most, not outer conditions.
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In this extract we learn a simple, practical method for going against our self-cherishing mind – just make others happy!
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In this clip Gen-la Dekyong explains the uncommon meaning of this verse from Atisha’s Advice to help us find the inner peace of patience every day…
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Determinations take us in a particular direction in life so they can empower us to change.
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We learn to control our own mind every day. Our mind can give us a happy life or a wretched life. Add any of the eleven virtuous mental factors to our mind and our whole mind becomes virtuous. We can learn to change our own mind from unhappy to happy through the power of Dharma.
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Mental factor effort makes the mind delight in virtue. We have to learn how to make effort appear in our mind. The function of effort is to facilitate virtue so then we will always be enjoying our own mind and be creating happiness for the future. This teaching is based on How to Understand the Mind.
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In this extract from Gen-la Dekyong’s New Years Eve teaching she discusses how prayer can help us to find hope and strength in difficult times. She talks about using prayer to transform feelings of helplessness into compassion and love, especially when faced with the world’s pain and conflicts.
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Mental suppleness removes the inflexibility of the mind, its slowness and heaviness. Mental rigidity that is dispelled by suppleness is the basis of many delusions. We need noticeable mental suppleness.
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What is a virtuous object? That depends on your mind. We need to not forget virtue.
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Wisdom is the only direct method of eradicating our delusions and suffering. To do this we use our experience of pain and suffering every day to improve our understanding of emptiness.
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We use logical reasoning of how anger arises. It is not what we normally think. We need to think carefully about this reasoning.
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Terrible things happen in our world. We wish war would stop. We wish violence would stop. Well, they can stop. That is the most wonderful thing. It won’t happen overnight, but we can train to stop our anger. Anger is the friend of no one.
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By changing the way we see things we have great freedom to change what we see and experience.
Through following our Guru we can understand, our aim is that each and every living being will find the supreme happiness of enlightenment.
Buddha taught that we need to impute I onto a pure body and mind if we wish to be free from suffering.
The beings of this world have a special connection with the Highest Yoga Tantra practices of Heruka and Vajrayogini.
If we train our own uncontrolled mind, all our human problems will cease. Brief recap of last week - what is anger and an example of anger. There is nothing more destructive than anger.
How wonderful it would be if we could train our mind according to these instructions to never get angry. Anger serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Anger pushes us to wish to hurt and to harm others. We are great at watching the minds of others but never think to watch our own. We can ask ourself “What is my mind doing now?
It is not so easy to remember something you hear if you are not familiar with it. The faults of anger generally and what anger is. Learn correct methods that will solve our anger problem.
Imagine how this world would be if everyone learned to stop their own anger. That would be world peace. Anger has no good qualities - none. This is contrary to our normal ideas. We need to know exactly what anger is.
Geshe-la has helped us understand that causing Kadam Dharma to flourish will give protection and happiness to all living beings.
Using our daily appearances to improve our spiritual experience - and not to increase our distractions.
Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong explores how we can move beyond temporary relief from suffering to find true freedom and happiness in this life and future lives. By learning from Buddhist teachings and applying them to our daily lives, we can break the cycle of suffering and achieve lasting peace. This practical advice is accessible to everyone, regardless of their beliefs, and encourages us to make the most of our human life in pursuit of genuine liberation.
Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong discusses the increasing amount of suffering in the world and the need for a correct method to solve human problems. She explains that this method cannot come from an ordinary person, but from an enlightened being such as Buddha Shakyamuni. She emphasizes the importance of understanding Buddha's teachings on the Four Noble Truths, which can lead to the cessation of human problems.
Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong discusses how to change our views, intentions, and actions to lead a happy life. She explains that changing our ordinary intentions, contaminated by selfishness, into a good heart is essential. A good heart brings good results and is the main meaning of being a Kadampa. The main practice of a Kadampa is cherishing all living beings, and a good heart is the best method to solve daily problems. Changing our intentions into a good heart doesn't require formal sitting meditation and can be done anywhere, anytime. Practicing Dharma is the union of daily life and Dharma instruction, and we need to train practically. To find happiness and liberation from suffering, we need to control our mind and identify, reduce, and abandon our delusions. Lastly, we need to change our activities and turn them into the six perfections: giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom.
Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong talks about the importance of wisdom and spiritual teachings as presented in the book "How to Transform Your Life" by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. Gen-la discuss how wisdom is a deep knowledge that understands meaningful objects, and how the pursuit of wisdom is the greatest meaning of our lives. Gen-la also emphasize the importance of practicing spiritual teachings to develop and maintain inner peace, which is the key to achieving pure and everlasting happiness. Gen-la highlights that wisdom is not talked about in society and that we have been looking for happiness in the wrong places.More information on this subject can be found in the books How to Transform Your Life and Modern Buddhism.
Dorje Shugden, our Dharma protector, will arrange conditions most conducive for our Dharma practice, but these will not necessarily be the conditions we ourselves would have chosen. He will bless our minds to help us transform difficult situations into the spiritual path.More information on this subject can be found in the books Heart Jewel.
The most important thing is to improve our faith in Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden. Geshe-la encourages us to practice Heart Jewel everyday. We should care for our faith as if it is a precious jewel. As soon as we make the sun of our faith shine, we receive blessings and our mind becomes peaceful, calm and positive.
Our problems and unhappiness are all created by our uncontrolled desire (wishing ourselves to be happy all the time). If we wish for others to be happy all the time, then we will not experience problems or unhappiness ourselves. To do this we must learn to control our mind; principally our uncontrolled desire.
Pure happiness comes from wisdom, which comes from practicing pure spiritual teachings, known as Dharma. Inner peace is pure happiness because it comes from wisdom, not worldly enjoyment.
If our aspriations are mistaken we will not find happiness.More information on this subject can be found in the bookHow to Transform Your Life
It is most important to cultivate and put effort into appropriate aspirations which are in accordance with our basic wishes to be happy and free from suffering.More information on this subject can be found in the bookHow to Transform Your Life
How can we find meaning in our lives?More information on this subject can be found in the books How to Transform Your Life, and Modern Buddhism.
Normally success is measured by things like our material resources. Worldly success does not bring freedom from suffering and problems. We don’t know how to be happy all the time.
More information on this subject can be found in the books How to Transform Your Life and Modern Buddhism.
Genla Dekyong explains how the mind is the creator of all, and we can stop the hallusination by realizing the true nature of things - Emptiness of all phenomena.
More information on this subject can be found in the books How to Understand the Mind and Modern Buddhism.
Genla Dekyong explains by understanding how the mind moves, we can stop the mind functioning by stopping the wind on which it is mounted.
More information on this subject can be found in the books How to Understand the Mind and Modern Buddhism.
Empowerment is beneficial and beautiful. You have the opportunity to transform your mind.
In this precept 'abandon poisonous food' we are encouraged to engage in every virtue while remembering emptiness. If we don't we are creating contaminated virtues actions that are still causes for samsara.
This precepts encourage us to abandon any hopes for results for ourself alone but engage in every practice with a good motivation. We should be solely concerned about the freedom and happiness of others.
In this precept we are encouraged to work on reducing our greatest delusion first. This is because it very visible and so it's easy to recognise and we will develop great confidence in Dharma once we get some experience and taste of the inner peace that come from abandoning our inner enemy of the delusions.
We should not regard our precepts and commitments as restrictions but rather as guidelines for making our mind healthy, free from the inner disease of delusions. In this way we will make our life happy and meaningful and we will become a good example to others.
The five-pronged vajra at the top of the temple teaches us that we need to accomplish the five omniscient wisdoms of a Buddha.
By progressing in the union of great bliss and emptiness, symbolized by the two deers we will attain the five omniscient wisdoms of a Buddha symbolized by the five-pronged vajra.
We can learn to regard anyone or everything as an emanation of Buddha that functions to lead us on the liberating path. Unless we are an enlightened being ourself, it’s impossible to know who is a Buddha, and who is not.
The 8th auspicious symbol encourages us to benefit others by turning the wheel of Dharma. By attaining all the uncommon qualities of a Buddha such as omniscient wisdom and by abandoning delusions we can benefit others the most by leading them to the liberating path.
The 7th auspicious symbol encourages us to develop the uncommon quality of a Buddha — the abandonment of delusions and mistaken appearence.
The 6th auspicious symbol is an instruction for us to apply great effort into attaining Enlightenment and in particular the uncommon quality of a Buddha — omniscient wisdom.
The fifth auspicious symbol, represented by a conch encourages us to develop inner protection from suffering by gaining the realizations of the stages of the path by listening, contemplating and meditating on Dharma.
All Buddhas's blessings will be bestowed into our heart through the practice of the Guru Yoga of Je Tsongkhapa.
An entirely new presentation of Kadam Dharma is appearing for us, the people of the modern world.
Anyone who see a Buddhist temple receives benefits but if we understand the symbolism and meaning the benefit will be far greater.