Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

The basic principles and precepts of all true religions are very pure. What you see as impure is simply the inability of those who adhere to them. So as Buddhists, for instance, if you fail to embrace and internalize the basic principles and precepts of the practice, then your mind is always going to be overrun by the five mental afflictions. These negative afflictions are desire, hatred, jealousy, pride, and ignorance. They are the basic obstacles which impede you from making any true progress on the path. It is, in fact, the function of the preliminary training to prepare the field of the mind so that you are actually able to put to rest the gross delusions and give rise to your innermost qualities. This allows you to actualize your true bodhicitta nature, the mind which cares about others more than self.

Leaving aside the idea of the so-called spiritual path, or religion, if you are able to uproot these delusions, the stones and boulders, from the field of your mind, then you will become an honorable person, respected in the world, with an easier, flexible attitude toward yourself and others. If you are able, through your development of wisdom and skillful means, to unite the teachings with your life, then true results will be achieved. (p.96)

–from Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga by Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche, trans. by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro, published by Snow Lion Publications

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