Tibet House Teachings With Geshe Dorji Damdul
The core of the teachings focused on emptiness of inherent existence and great emphasis was placed on mental transformation as the foundation of dharma practice and healing ourselves before we can really heal or help others. In order to benefit all sentient beings practitioners must cultivate “perfect love, perfect knowledge, and perfect potential.” We all suffer from ignorance and need to cultivate wisdom where there is "no gap between perception and reality."
Before each session of the five day course we meditated on the four immeasurables (love, compassion, joy and equanimity) and chanted the Heart Sutra. Geshe-la-ji emphasized that the entire gist of the Buddha’s teachings were in the line, TADYATHA (thus it is like this) OM (mantra) GATE (go), GATE (go), PARAGATE, (go beyond) PARASAMGATE (go still beyond) BODHI SVAHA (establish into enlightenment). Geshe-la-ji taught that each word refers to a stage on the path to enlightenment.
So what is enlightenment? Geshe-la-ji shared that in response to this question the Dalai Lama once said that we all live on hope that something good might happen to us, this is what survives us. Without hope we cannot survive, without hope our biological processes shut down. What do we mean by hope? Hoping for something good—this is happiness, happiness is the purpose of our life. Happiness has varying degrees of qualities and intensity and maximum happiness is enlightenment. The journey to seek 100% happiness is a journey of your mind and presently our minds are very corrupt and defiled. The text we focused on during the teachings untangles the dilemma that while achieving the highest happiness for oneself we also achieve maximum altruism and as a result happiness others.
