Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s quote is another from the Kagyu master Ringu Tulku Rinpoche–one of my old Naropa University profs, whom I previously quoted and wrote a little bio for in this post.  This is it:

From a Buddhist point of view, compassion is the most fundamental thing, the most fundamental practice. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says, ‘I have just one simple religion, and that is ‘kind heart’. There’s nothing else but that.’

That’s really a very Buddhist way of thinking. If there is a kind heart, if there is compassion, then it’s OK. If there is no kind heart, no compassion, then it’s not OK. We appear to judge a person by whether he is positive or negative, or whether any practice, any work, any action, is positive or negative. But we are really judging a person by whether he has compassion or not. And this is not only a Buddhist point of view: different paths, different religions, different doctrines, look to see whether there is compassion or not. If something is based on compassion, it’s OK. Even if your view is completely different, even if your philosophy is totally different, it’s still OK. But if there is no compassion, then whatever you say, however high, however profound, that view, philosophy or doctrine maybe it is not OK. That’s the Buddhist way of putting it.

That’s why His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says that his religion is kind-heartedness. This is what we try to develop. Because we know that it is not very easy to generate and to maintain, we usually express this bodhicitta, this compassion, in the form of a prayer.

We pray that those who do not generate this bodhicitta, may generate it, and that it may not degenerate in those in whom it is present. And that it may increase. We make this prayer a kind of practice in itself, to try to generate compassion with good- heartedness. Then we try to maintain that, not let it be overpowered by other ways of thinking or emotions or influences, and we try to increase it.

In order to generate it, it is important to understand what it is and to understand the value of it, the importance of it. That’s why there are lots of teachings.

I have been told that you have been given lots of recommended reading, such as the ‘Bodhicharyavatara’ and the chapter on compassion in ‘Words of my Perfect Teacher’, and so on. Maybe you know much more than I do! I don’t remember any of those books at the moment! The first thing is to understand the importance of compassion.

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[It is] the most important thing for my own welfare, for my own good; for the good of society; for the good of the people of the world; for the good of everybody, all sentient beings. And if we want welfare and happiness and peace and survival in a nice way, there is no other way but to generate compassion and to generate a culture of compassion. That is what we need to understand.