“Your state of mind makes such a huge difference.” – Geshe Lhakdor

This evening I had the fortune of spending time in conversation with Venerable Geshe Lhakdor, former translator for His Holienss the Dalai Lama. Geshe is in Delhi giving teachings for 4 evenings on The Four Seals of the Dharma: Impermanence, Suffering, Emptiness & Selflessness.

Geshe is not only a brilliant scholar but he is warm, friendly, has a beautiful smile that lights up a room and a contagious laugh that brings joy to my heart. Before this evening's teachings began we spoke about mindfulness in education and Geshe described mindfulness as being "aware and present all the time, aware of what you are doing and all situations and circumstances and your actions." He also spoke about the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, which I've been studying for some time. My notes from Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on this sutra can be found at: http://iamthou.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/notes-on-the-sutra-on-the-four-establ...

His teachings are clear and he stresses that meditation is about habituating ourselves with positive emotions and transforming our minds to make them peaceful. He inspired us during the teachings to move beyond the "feel good" aspect of meditation and develop a genuine practice that can only come when you understand suffering and Samsara.  He reinforced the teaching that the primacy of suffering is impermanence.

Geshe stressed the importance of identifying our negative emotions. In order to identify these emotions we need to cultivate awareness and this comes with mindfulness practice. In June of 2009 I made a pilgrimage to Tibet's Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash. When I met Geshe this evening I presented him with a rock from Lake Mansarovar. My pilgrimage there was when I really began to see and understand the importance of identifying negative emotions in ourselves and others. For details from the epic journey go to: http://www.iamthou.com/mount.html

Geshe spoke about how mental pollution comes from negative emotions and we need to first learn how to remove mental pollution and Buddhist practice can teach us how. Buddhism is not a pessimistic path--the Buddha didn't just say life is suffering! Rather, Buddhism inspires us to get rid of the root cause of our suffering and it provides us with guidelines, a path to do that. We develop positive emotions primarily by helping others but also by training our minds. When the mind is disciplined and trained we develop into a good practitioner. We must learn to watch our minds.  

Below are the handouts from the teachings on the 4 Dharma Seals.