Advice to Three-Year Retreatants

by Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Homage to the guru!

This is addressed to those staying in three-year retreat in France.

Those of you who live in Europe and other modern countries have all the amenities
and luxuries this life affords, but until recently you had never even heard of the
practice of Dharma. In recent times, it so happened that the teachings declined in
Tibet, and many lamas of senior and junior rank from all four schools of Tibetan
Buddhism arrived in India. Now, when their various teachings are being revived and
the allotted time for the Buddhadharma to remain has not yet passed, a number of
great masters went to visit and settle in other countries, with the result that many
people throughout the modern world now have the intention to practise Dharma.

The students of my teacher, Kangyur Rinpoche, in particular have come to regard me

as their own root teacher and have a sincere desire to practise Dharma throughout
their entire lives. Through the inspiration and assistance of Tsetrul Pema Wangyal
Rinpoche, they have established a retreat centre at Chanteloube. The real purpose
behind this centre is that those who remain there in retreat establish themselves
firmly on the path to liberation. If they do so, they will fulfil the enlightened vision of
Kangyur Rinpoche, serve their own teachers, and make the very best use of the many
profound teachings they have received.

With this in mind, all who commit themselves to remain in retreat should ensure
that faith, renunciation, compassion and looking into the nature of mind lie at the
very heart of their practice.

Faith
Faith means complete trust in, and reliance upon, the Three Jewels in general, and
our own teacher in particular, as well as in the Dharma we are practising. If we
practise for a long time, after a while we might think, I still havent gained any
signs of progress! The teacher cant have given me the most profound instructions. It
would be better for me to do the main practice, rather than the preliminaries, because
its more profound! Or if we are doing the main practice we might think, I think it
would be better for me to set aside this simple generation stage practice and do some
dzogrim instead. Or even, Dzogchen would be more profound than these
completion stage practices like tummo.

You might think that once you have received the Dzogchen teachings you will have
all kinds of profound lofty experiences, even after just a few days. If you have such
high expectations, then when things dont work out that way, you will begin to
1
doubt the instructions and relax your diligence. Or, if you do develop the slightest
hint of renunciation or gain some minor experience or realization, you will only
develop pride and think, The Kagy, Sakya and Gelug schools have nothing to
compare with these Nyingma teachings! You must avoid developing wrong views
such as this and arrogantly supposing that you have gained some special experience
or realization. No matter who you are, the ordinary mind is always prone to change
and transformation, so you should try never to get carried away.

Even if you were to practise day and night with unflagging diligence for a full twelve
years and still fail to have even one good dream, you must never lose heart.
Recognizing that this is due simply to the strength of your own obscurations, you
must be confident that neither your teachers nor the teachings will ever let you
down.

On the other hand, even if you were to make such swift progress that in just a single
day you reached the level at which there is nothing further in sasra to be
abandoned nor anything further in nirva to be gained, you should feel no pride,
because to do so would only be to invite the demon of obstacles. That is why Jetsn
Milarepa said:

When you are approaching the end of the Dharma,

Continue ceaselessly, without any highs or lows,
And without hopes for signs of swift attainment,
Ensure your practice endures as long as you do!

This is marvellous advice.

Renunciation
Renunciation means that while in the retreat centre, every single time you recite
the Seven Line Prayer or complete a single ml of mai mantras, you must dedicate
it towards the attainment of buddhahood for yourself and all other sentient beings.
While in retreat, you should not waste even a single moment in idleness or frivolity,
and you must avoid any form of insincerity or duplicity, such as pretendingfor as
long as you are in other peoples viewto practise perfectly.

Do all that you can to bring your own stubborn mind under control and to develop
your faith, diligence and renunciation. Never think that the Dharma you are
practising is for your benefit alone. To recite even a single mai mantra is of
inconceivable benefit, so dedicate it for the sake of all who live.

Again and again, develop compassion for all sentient beings in general, and
particularly for those who dislike you. It might be difficult at first, but you will never
attain enlightenment as long as you continue to feel ill-will towards your enemies.
Those who are now your enemies were in former lives your parents, and there is

2
nothing fixed about the status of an enemy or friend. To feel hostility towards
enemies and affection towards your friends is nothing but a deluded form of
perception. If you train your mind to recognize everything as insubstantial like a
dream, hostility towards enemies will lose its meaning entirely. This is crucially
important, because ordinarily our lives are driven by the yearning to acquire food
and clothing, possessions, partners, status and acclaim. We put a great deal of
thought into devising the cleverest, most efficient ways to obtain them, and we
think, So-and-so has this much money, my friends have this much, so I need more.
Or: In the past, I stayed in this kind of house, in this part of town, but now I shall
move to a better place. We must put a stop to all such thinking.

With ordinary work, the more you do the more suffering you create for the future.
But now that you have found a human existence, met an authentic teacher, and
received the Dharma teachings, your situation is even better and more fortunate
than that of Indra, king of the gods. If you now put the teachings into practice with
steadfast determination, you are sure to find happiness in all your future lives. So be
content with only the most basic food and clothing. Let me put it simply: do all that
you can to renounce and minimize the ordinary affairs and activities of sasra.

No one should stay in the retreat centre without taking the vows of refuge. Even if
you are a layperson, for the three years that you are in retreat you must avoid sexual
relations, and, while in retreat, it is enormously significant and beneficial to wear the
robes of a monk or nun. The Buddha himself said it is permissible for anyone who
has taken the vows of refuge to wear the monastic robes.

Compassion
Generally speaking, you have been practising the teachings of the Mahayana ever
since you first entered the door of the Dharma, and this is really nothing other than
compassion. Without genuine compassion there is simply no possibility of reaching
buddhahood.

In their delusion, all the beings of sasra cherish only their own selfish interests
and neglect others welfare. At the moment, no matter how well off we may be in
terms of food, clothing or material possessions, and no matter how much happiness
we may experience, we can never be satisfied. At the same time, if we give away
even just a tiny fraction of what we own, it feels as if we are losing something
enormous. We must let go of such attitudes, and, instead of caring for ourselves
alone, learn to cherish others. Previously we neglected others, but now we must
neglect our own selfish goals. Whenever we perform any virtuous deed with body,
speech or mind, we must first remember that we are doing so as a means to bring
about the enlightenment of all.

In Dharma practice, the most important thing is motivation. If it is motivated by the

wish to benefit all beings, then even a single prostration or a single recitation of the

3
hundred-syllable mantra will yield inexhaustible meritmerit that will remain until
we have reached enlightenment and there are no beings left in sasra. Whereas if
we do not have this motivation of universal benevolence, even a hundred thousand
prostrations, or a hundred thousand recitations of the hundred-syllable mantra, will
bear fruit only once before the merit is exhausted, and a single burst of anger will be
enough to destroy our entire stock of virtue. It is crucial to understand this. If we
consider that our practice is for the sake of all others, then because sentient beings
are infinitely vast in number, our own merit will be equally vast.

No one is entirely free from suffering, so consider all the major and minor sufferings
that befall others, and imagine them happening to you instead. How would you feel?
Surely you would do all that you could to find a way to avoid the pain. So reflect
continually on all the sufferings that other beings undergo and develop the
compassionate wish that they may be free from pain. Once you have true
compassion, you will naturally feel the wish to benefit others. Our teacher, the
Buddha, while still a bodhisattva, had such vast and overwhelming compassion that
he made five hundred prayers of aspiration for our benefit, and, as his followers, we
too must make compassion the very core of our practice.

The immeasurable benefits of generating true compassion are described in detail in

The Words of My Perfect Teacher and the Bodhicaryvatra, so please study them.

Looking into the Nature of Mind

To look into the nature of the mind we must understand how all its ordinary
thoughts about anything and everything imaginable are just empty and
insubstantial. Until now, we have been the slave of what we call mind, forced to
wander helplessly through sasric existence. Now we must reverse the situation,
and take control of our own mind. It will be easy to do this if we have some real
understanding of how the mind is empty, but just entertaining some vague notion of
minds emptiness, by thinking, Well, this is what the masters say, or This is what
it says in the texts, will not help us to recognize the insubstantiality of our own
deluded perception.

Turn your attention within then, and allow your mind to relax. You will notice not
just one thought or idea, but many. For example, if you think of your mother, that is
one thought, but then it in turn evokes all kinds of other thoughts, such as memories
of the kindness she showed you. If she is still alive, you might think about going to
visit her, and if not, you might feel sad. These are thoughts of attachment. If you
think about your enemies, reflecting on the ways they have hurt you in the past,
how they are sure to do so again in the future, and how you must find some way to
be rid of them, these are thoughts of aversion. You might wonder where this
attachment and aversion come from. In fact, they come from the deluded belief in
the existence of what we call 'I'.

4
Where is such an 'I' to be found? Is it in the body or the mind? If you really look into
the body, examining each of its partsflesh, blood, bones and skinyou cannot find
anything at all called body, so how could this be the location of the 'I'? The mind, on
the other hand, is insubstantial, so how could the 'I' abide within it? In fact, the 'I' is
merely a concept or a thought. There is no location within a thought, and nothing
could remain there, but still the power of one thought, such as the thought of our
mother, causes us to think another thought, about her kindness to us, and that in
turn inspires the thought of wishing to see her.

If we look into this process in more detail, we can see that while we are thinking
about our mothers kindness, the initial thought of our mother is no longer thereit
has already gone. And the thought that we must visit her has not yet occurredit is
still in the future. As soon as we look into it, the present thought of our mothers
kindness is no longer there; it has already turned into the future thought of wanting
to visit her. This means that the thoughts of the past, present and future cannot exist
at the same time, and we only use these terms for the sake of communication. The
past is gone, like a person who has died, and the future (or that which is yet to
come) does not exist at all. In fact, there is no such thing as a present thought
existing somehow independently of past and future. Before we thought of our
mother that present thought was still in the future. Then, as we thought of her, it
was present. Finally, as we brought to mind her kindness, it was already in the past.

For one thought to pass through these three phases of time is a sign of its
impermanence, and whatever is impermanent is empty. It is because a thing is empty
that it can change over the course of the past, present and future.

Consider the surface of a mirror: because it is empty [and not fixed in a particular
way], reflections can appear within it. When a persons likeness appears in a mirror,
the reflection resembles the real person, but the persons face has neither entered the
mirror nor been transferred to its surface. The image of the face appears because of
certain causes and conditions, including the clarity of the mirror and the presence of
the persons face before it. The reflection of the face and the face itself are not the
same. The reflection is inanimate, and when the reflection disappears the real face
does not. A face can be burned if it is touched by fire, but you cannot burn a
reflection. Nevertheless, the reflection and the face are not completely different
either, because the reflection can not appear in the absence of the persons face, and
if the person adopts a particular expression, such as a smile or a look of anger, the
reflection also appears that way.

For these reasons, thoughts and reflections appear to be real only when we fail to
examine them or look into them in any detail. If we do pause to consider them, we
find that although they appear, they do not really exist. And this is true not just of
these phenomena. It applies to all the appearances of our deluded sasric
experience: they seem real enough as long as we do not examine them too deeply,

5
but when we do, we find that they are not real. This is why we refer to them as
unexamined, seeming reality.

If the understanding of this point develops and takes hold, so that it becomes self-
sustaining, that is what we call experience. When we become more and more
familiar with this, so that the mind is no longer swayed by thoughts of aversion or
attachment, that is what we call realization.

When we examine thoughts again and again in this way, we come to see that
although they have no real existence, still they appear, and although they appear,
they are insubstantial. At the same time, we understand how the thoughts of the
past, present and future exist only as mere names or labels, and have no more reality
than that.

If we have this understanding, then whenever we think of our mother and

remember all the kindness she showed us, we need not succumb to thoughts of
attachment. We will think, Even if I were to go and see my mother, what good
would that do? She has managed to provide food and clothing for herself, and even
to provide for my material needs as well. If I were to take on this role, I would need
to find work in some trade or business, and that would provoke all kinds of
attachment and aversion and produce lots of distractions, which would only come in
the way of my Dharma practice. Instead, I should put my energy into practising the
Dharma, straightaway as much as I can, then dedicate all my sources of merit to my
mother, to help relieve her sufferings of birth, death and the bardo states. It would be
better for me to forget about ordinary worldly feelings of attachment to my mother.
She has other children who can take care of her material needs, but there is no one
but me to offer her spiritual assistance. If we think this way, it will prevent us
getting caught in the ordinary patterns of thought which can come up whenever we
recall our mother.

This also gives us some clues as to how we can give up our thoughts of aversion
towards our enemies. At first it might be a little difficult to overcome our attachment
and aversion, but by practising again and again, it will become easier.

If you can overcome attachment and aversion, you will no longer accumulate karma.
Moreover, if you look into the unaltered state of mind that follows whenever
feelings of attachment or aversion have subsided, you will find the nature of mind.
As long as there are not too many thoughts arising, look undistractedly into the
mind itself. Whenever there are lots of thoughts, examine them in the way I just
described. If you become really familiar with this by training in it again and again,
recognition of the nature of mind will occur naturally and spontaneously. The mind
will no longer be caught up in thoughts, and even if thoughts do arise, they will not
have any real strength and there will be no need to analyze or examine them. It will
be sufficient simply to maintain an unaltered state of mind.

6
If ever you can not counteract a thought of attachment or aversion, repeat the
process of investigation. When you have thoughts, dont react with anxiety,
thinking, I shouldnt have thoughts during meditation! Now lots of thoughts are
going to come. Simply look straight into the nature of any thoughtbe it positive or
negativeand it will lose its strength and disappear. Without letting go of the state
which follows, look gently into the nature of mind, and thoughts will vanish by
themselves. When thoughts no longer occur one after another in swift succession
you will gradually be able to liberate them.

When looking into the nature of mind, dont expect to gain some exceptionally high
or profound realization, or to see anything new. Nor should you hesitate or doubt
your ability to meditate. Just trust that the nature of mind is simply the mind itself
left in an unaltered state, and do all that you can to sustain this, without distraction,
at all times, during and between the meditation sessions. Dont expect to gain
realization in just a few months, or even years. Whether you develop any of the
qualities that come from the practice or not, remain steadfastly determined and
resolve to continue the practice with diligence, day and night, throughout this life,
future lives and the bardo state.

Understand this: it is more important to take to heart the key instructions than to
receive a great many teachings.

In general, you should look at the instruction manual Words of My Perfect Teacher,
and check whether or not your practice accords with what it says there. If you notice
something that does not correspond, change it; and if there is something that is only
partially in agreement, see whether or not it can be improved.

Aspire to practise the Dharma authentically, and never do anything that might upset
your Dharma brothers and sisters.

In short, devote yourself to the Dharma as much as you possibly can, with body,
speech and mind.

I will certainly come and visit you, and I will always remember to pray and practise
for your protection, so that all your wishes in accordance with the Dharma will be
accomplished.

| Translated by Adam Pearcey, 2007.

7
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

PDF document automatically generated on Mon Nov 27 09:34:07 2017 GMT from
http://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/dilgo-khyentse/advice-three-year-retreatants