Greetings to all of the students of the Namchak Community. Due to the current situation with COVID-19, everyone is experiencing great difficulties and as a result are facing tremendous fear, stress, and anxiety. I am sharing in your grief, am experiencing this with you, and am keeping you all in my prayers and aspirations. In particular, I am focusing, again and again, upon the practice of taking on others difficulties and giving them my happiness.

I encourage you all to keep your minds open and try to broaden your scope by considering not just how this situation is affecting you, but how it is affecting the whole world. If you turn your focus to the situation of others in this way, it is certain that love and compassion will well up within you.

You can also practice “tonglen,” giving and taking meditation, as Lama Tsomo has instructed you, by thinking of taking on all of the sufferings of everyone in the world and sending them comfort and joy. It is quite possible that by meditating in such a way some new and distinct qualities will arise in your mind. Looking at things with this perspective, we can see how meeting with unfortunate circumstances can be helpful in that they give us opportunities to develop ourselves through facing and overcoming such difficulties. I therefore urge you to put this into practice as much as possible.

Even if you find yourself unable to apply this particular practice, I hope that you will try not to allow outer adverse circumstances to affect your mental state by expanding your consideration outwards to others. If you can do so, it will help you to persevere through this tough time with gentleness and peace that you can share with your friends and families.

Warmest wishes,

Namchak Khenpo Ngawang Gelek

Published on Mar 30 03 : 17 pm