Ven. Geshe Yeshe Tobten

2 – Praise of dependent origination. Teaching by Ven. Geshe Yeshe Tobten in Bodh Gaya, 13-17 December 1996.

Part 2 – How to find a spiritual practice

We all want things to go well. Nobody wants to face any problems in the future. And therefore we have to find a way to make things go well and to stop problems coming. When we say ‘want to go ‘going well’. Then there is another meaning too, ‘going well after you are dead’. Then there is ‘going well’ in the sense of lasting freedom, and even further than that is ‘going well’ in the sense of an Enlightened Being.

So one should have a real hope for oneself. Not just be satisfied with thinking that I hope it goes well until I die, but rather think I hope it will go well forever. If it went on with happiness like the happiness I sometimes now feel, or even a celestial kind of happiness, it would be happiness caught within change. Freedom or Nirvana is not caught within change. It’s a solid, undegenerating, lasting well being.

It’s true, you know, if we were free, if our experience was of an undegenerating, stable peace or well being, it would never change, it would never degenerate. Continue reading »