I found this really poignant article by Venerable Thubten Chodron.
Born in 1950, Thubten Chodron grew up near Los Angeles. She graduated with a B.A. in History from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1971. After traveling through Europe, North Africa and Asia for one and a half years, she received a teaching credential and went to the University of Southern California to do post-graduate work in Education while working as a teacher in the Los Angeles City School System.
In 1975, she attended a meditation course given by Ven. Lama Yeshe and Ven. Zopa Rinpoche, and subsequently went to Kopan Monastery in Nepal to continue to study and practice Buddha's teachings. In 1977 she was ordained as a Buddhist nun by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan.She studied and practiced Buddhism of the Tibetan tradition for many years in India and Nepal under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsenzhap Serkong Rinpoche, Zopa Rinpoche and other Tibetan masters. She directed the spiritual program at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy for nearly two years, studied three years at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France, and was resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Center in Singapore. For ten years she was resident teacher at Dharma Friendship Founation in Seattle.
Ven. Chodron was a co-organizer of Life as a Western Buddhist Nun, and took part in the conferences of Western Buddhist teachers with H.H. the Dalai Lama in 1993 and 1994. Keen on interfaith dialogue, she was present during the Jewish delegation's visit to Dharamsala, India, in 1990, which was the basis for Rodger Kamenetz' The Jew in the Lotus, and attended the Second Gethsemani Encounter in 2002. She has also been present at several of the Mind-Life Conferences in which H. H. the Dalai Lama dialogues with Western scientists, and regularly attends the annual Western Buddhist Monastic Gatherings. She is active in Dharma outreach to people who are incarcerated in prisons.
Ven. Chodron travels worldwide to teach the Dharma: North America, Latin America, Israel, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and former communist countries.
Seeing the importance and necessity of a monastery for Westerners training in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, she founded Sravasti Abbey, a Buddhist monastic community in Washington State, USA, and is currently the abbess there.Her books include Open Heart, Clear Mind; Taming the Mind; Buddhism for Beginners; Working with Anger; Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path (with CD); Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga Method of Chenrezig; How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator. She has also edited several books for her teachers, including Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage by Geshe Jampa Tegchok; Choosing Simplicity by Bhikshuni Master Wu Yin; A Chat about Heruka and A Chat about Yamantaka, both by Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche. Many of her talks can be found on the web in both written and audio form as well as short daily talks on video, longer video talks, and live Internet teachings.
Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners. She is well-known for her warm, humorous, and lucid teachings.The following is an extract from the article:
Appreciating Our Advantageous CircumstancesWe are extraordinarily fortunate to have the circumstances for Dharma practice that are presently available to us. In both 1993 and 1994 I went to Mainland China on a pilgrimage and visited many temples there.
Seeing the situation of Buddhism there made me appreciate the fortune we have here. However, we often take our freedom, material prosperity, spiritual masters and the Budda's teachings for granted and are blind to the wonderful opportunity that we have to practice. For example, we take for granted our ability to gather together to learn the Dharma. But this is not the case in many places. For example, when I was on a pilgrimage at Jiu Hua Shan, Kshitigarbha's Holy Mountain, the abbess of a nunnery asked me to give a talk to the pilgrims there. But my friends from Shanghai who were traveling with me said, "No, you can't do that. The police will come and all of us will get in trouble." We had to be careful about even an innocent activity like teaching the Dharma. Only when the abbess said that she was a friend of the police did my friends say it was safe for me to teach.
It is important that we reflect on the advantages and good circumstances that we have to practice right now. Otherwise, we will take them for granted and they will go to waste. We tend to select one or two small problems in our life, emphasize them, and blow them out of proportion. Then we think, "I can't be happy. I can't practice the Dharma," and this thought itself prevents us from enjoying our life and making it meaningful. We human beings are very funny: when something bad happens in our lives we say, "Why me? Why is this happening to me?" But when we wake up every morning and are alive and healthy and our family is well, we never say, "Why me? Why am I so fortunate?"Not only should we open our eyes to all the things that are going right in our lives, but also we should recognize that they are results of our own previously-created positive actions or karma.
It is helpful to think, "Whoever I was in a previous life, I did a lot of positive actions which make it possible for me to have so many good circumstances now. So in this life I should also act constructively by being ethical and kind so that in the future such fortune will continue."Appreciating Our ProblemsAppreciating our advantageous circumstances is important as is appreciating our problems. Why appreciate our problems?
Because the difficult situations in our lives are the ones that make us grow the most. Take a minute and think about a difficult time in your life, a time when you had a lot of problems. Didn't you learn something valuable from that experience? You wouldn't be the person you are now without having gone through those difficulties.
We may have gone through a painful time in our life, but we came out the other side with stronger inner resources and a better understanding of life. Seen in this way, even our problems enable us to become better people and aid us on the path to enlightenment.Before we take refuge in the Three Jewels -- the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Sangha -- it is helpful to visualize them in the space in front of us. That is, we imagine the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats in a pure land. We are there too, surrounded by all sentient beings. A pure land is a place where all the circumstances are conducive to practicing the Dharma. When I visualized being in a Pure Land, I used to imagine only the people I liked and left out the people with whom I felt uncomfortable, threatened, insecure, or fearful. It was nice to imagine being in a place where everything was very pleasant and it was easy to practice the Dharma.
But one time when I was visualizing the pure land, all the people who were giving me problems were there too!
I recognized that if a pure land is a place conducive for Dharma practice, then I also need the people who harm me to be there, because they help me to practice. In fact, sometimes those who harm us help us more to practice the Dharma than those who help us. The people who help us, give us gifts, and tell us how wonderful, talented, and intelligent we are often cause us to get puffed up. On the other hand,
the people who harm us show us very clearly how much resentment and jealousy we have and how attached we are to our reputations. They help us to see our attachments and aversions and they point out the things we need to work on in ourselves. Sometimes they help us even more than our teachers do in this respect.For example, our Dharma teachers tell us, "Try to forgive other people, try not to be angry. Jealousy and pride are defilements, so try not to follow them because they will cause you and others difficulties." We say, "Yes, yes, that's true. But I don't have those negative qualities. But the people who harm me are very resentful, jealous, and attached!" Even though our Dharma teachers point out our faults to us, we still don't see them. But
when people with whom we don't get along point out our faults to us, we have to look at them. We can't run away anymore. When we're outrageously angry or burning with jealousy or attachment is eating away at us, we can't deny that we have these negative emotions. Of course, we try to say that it's the other person's fault, that we have these horrible emotions only because they made us have them. But after we've listened to the Buddha's teachings, this rationale doesn't work any more. We know in our hearts that our happiness and suffering come from our own mind. Then, even though we try to blame our difficulties on other people, we know we can't. We are forced to look at them ourselves. And when we do, we also see that they are incredible opportunities to grow and learn.
Venerable Thubten Chodron
