Sunday, July 2, 2006 3:30 PM
Traga Rinpoche: The Mind of Love
Notes from Lecture on Bodhicitta
Golden Bridge Yoga, Los Angeles, Ca

Dear Goddess-Queen Readers,
The following are notes from a lecture I attended in Los Angeles in 2006.  The eloquent wisdom of Traga Rinpoche continues to weave throughout my thoughts to this day.  Rinpinoche speaks of “The Mind OF Love” and cultivating such qualities in ones life.  Like all Truth, I found this lecture to be profound in its simplicity.  It is a direct transcription from Rinpinoche's own words – knowing that all Truth is understood by the soul and transcends all language barriers. 

***********

Bodhicitta ~ On achieving Bodhicitta (LOVE) is cultivating the mind of enlightenment in oneself in order to liberate all beings into a state of full awakening. This relative wish to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment is accompanied by the ultimate aspect of Bodhicitta, which is seeing the transparency of everyday life. Traga Rinpoche will talk on the two-fold aspect of Bodhicitta and how one can apply it in everyday life to overcome the limitations of self-centeredness.

*******

Purify the mind.  Pure motivation. Pure attitude.  Pure mind.
Pure motivation and heart = pure mind.  As a result one will achieve
accomplishment.  If not, one will continue to fall.  Stay equally aligned
and pureness will manifest.  One will suffer if they choose an impure life.
"If you eat poison you will suffer."  Therefore, choose thoughts, actions,
etc...that will not poison the mind.

Practice Virtue and Happiness
Develop relative love and compassion.  You cannot develop this without a pure mind.  One must have pure motivation and attitude.  First, you must know why you want to generate love and compassion for all being.  After this, we must put this desire into practice. First wish to benefit, then put the wish into action.  Desire and then actually walk the path.  Cultivate Bodhicitta - love and compassion for sentient beings.  When emotions arise (anger, jealousy) we become very weak and we diminish our capacity for love and compassion.  Decisions have their own power and they only arise when certain conditions arise.  When we practice Bodhicitta those other emotions cannot arise.  They have no strength over us.  Relative Bodhicitta is cultivating the meaning of love and compassion.  Ultimate Bodhicitta (vs. Relative) is the actual practice.  One needs to continually train ones mind against suffering.  Grasp the self - the "I" (I believe he meant ego) - we protect this very strongly - when we do this we become jealous and angry - this only harms ourselves.  As soon as this emotion arises - notice it and try to control over it - see that it is working against you.  If we do not look at it and let it go - our pride becomes hurt, we want to harm that other person.  If we let this happen, we immediately exhaust all our previous accumulated virtues in our minds.

Immediately begin to practice love and compassion for this other being.
when we begin to retrain our minds towards love and compassion we begin to equalize all sentient beings.  Even strangers.  Even when someone who harms us - know that it is not always going to stay like this.  The same applies to our dear ones.  Everything changes and they, too, may become our enemy one day.  In our life if a person is dear to us - perhaps in a previous life they were our enemy.  When one is truly trying to equalize all beings we bring everyone much closer because one is no longer motivated by attachment and virtue.  Because ones mind is open - we are constantly decreasing the negative emotion (improves life condition).

Do not perceive anyone as different and do not become indifferent or stay in seclusion.  One must bring all these qualities and people together (friends and enemies) and deal with them in the same way.  Each Being at some point has been our kind parent (in another lifetime).  Not one being has not fed, cared for us.  Because they have been our kind mothers we must think of them being free from their suffering.  Everything we enjoy is because of the hard work of other sentient beings that have provided this for us (we are all connected). We must wish to make them happy.  Equanimity.  We must wish the same for all.

When we can regenerate our minds for all sentient beings - we must want all to be liberated from their sufferings.  We must generate compassion.  We need to know, what IS suffering.  Cold, hunger, thirst, ignorance, jealousy, human incarnation, birth, old age, sickness,death, change, nothing in the nature of happiness even though it appears to be (happiness), wish for gain (not getting what you want), getting what one does not want.

Meditate on....Joy, Compassion and immeasurable equanimity.

When we have a pure mind and see other sentient beings we can see others happy - when our mind is not pure they become jealous.

When we have happiness in our mind we can rejoice.  There are boundless sentient beings - therefore our compassion and liberation from suffering must be boundless.

Equalize oneself and ultimately put others before oneself.  What ever
oneself desires also makes others happy - what ever we desire we will desire for all (ultimate sacrifice).  If we think we do not have power to benefit all sentient beings - we must realize that we do.  If we think we are the only one - we are not - we are all connected.  It is inappropriate to think that only you want happiness.   All sentient beings want happiness.

We need to train and develop Bodhicitta.  It is important now to generate pure mind, compassion, pure attitude.  One cannot say they cannot do this. It's doable for everybody.   It may be difficult, but it is not impossible. Everyone must have a compassionate heart.  Purify the heart, aspirations and emotions.

From my heart and soul to yours,
Lisa

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lisa Sahakian, Yoga Practitioner teaches Transformation Tantric & Energy Release workshops weekly as well as private sessions.  The Divine Feminine are designed specifically for women, and at her Co-Ed Tantic classes both genders may attend.  It is her intention to facilitate freedom  of expression through the magnificence of the body temple.  Lisa believes that as of us is liberated - we automatically liberate all.  Lisa’s teaching philosophy, “I believe that every moment is a new opportunity to live life in its fullest  expression.  The ability to experience and accept each moment with a balance of spontaneity and stability provides great freedom of expression.  As we learn to move freely from this space we find our authentic self and live in our natural state of grace.  Through breath, yoga, meditation, and mantra we can shift paradigms, free ourselves from thought patterns and remember the joyous state of our being - awake, aligned and alive.”  Contact Lisa at: lisasahakian@earthlink.net or 310-508-3303