Peace: Steps to Achieving Happiness Through Acts of Love, Compassion, Kindness, Tolerance and Forgiveness

by Tsem Rinpoche, Telo Rinpoche (Foreword by)

Overview

Peace begins here, right where we are. Far from being a distant concept, inner and outer peace can be created at every moment, in every conversation, and with our every action.

In this compilation of short teachings, Tsem Rinpoche brings us back to the basics of what it means to create peace and lasting harmony within ourselves and with the people around us. He reveals surprising truths, offers us refreshing new perspectives, and gives us practical solutions for dealing with daily situations.

With this book, you will gain the tools to increase the happiness in your life and overcome the hurdles. You will also learn how to foster strong, joyous relationships with others, fight your demons, and enhance your own positive potential in everything you do. Ultimately, you will discover that, just like the book you are now holding, peace is entirely in your hands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781601633538
Publisher:	Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date:	12/22/2014
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Beloved for his unconventional, contemporary approach to Dharma, His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche brings more than 2,500 years of Buddhist wisdom and teachings to the modern spiritual seeker by connecting ancient worlds with new people, cultures, attitudes, and lifestyles. He is a tulku, a reincarnate lama of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, as confirmed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is also the founder and spiritual guide of the Kechara House Buddhist Association in Malaysia. Rinpoche shares largely progressive teaching methods, which use elements as diverse as Madonna's music, sacred sutras, feeding the homeless, and caring for animals to convey authentic Buddhist teachings. He has very active followings online with more than 180,000 Facebook fans and 2,000,000 views on his YouTube channel. Be inspired by H.E. Tsem Rinpoche's work and life at www.tsemrinpoche.com.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

PEACE BEGINS ...

... With the People You Live With

The real practice right now, for all of us, is to bring incredible harmony to every single person who comes into contact with us.

I want you to be fanatical about yourself: your mind, your relationship with the people you love and with everyone around you. That is what Dharma is about.

Dharma is the love, harmony and the greater understanding that a wife and a husband feel for each other. It is when there are fewer arguments between a wife and a husband, between cousins, between siblings, between children and their parents. It brings people closer together.

Temporarily, Dharma may look like it separates families or takes you away from the people you love but I promise you that in the end Dharma will bring everyone closer together. Nothing in the Buddha's teachings talks about breaking people up. Dharma always encourages us to love other people, to forgive our enemies, to live harmoniously with our partners and to create more peace. It has never, ever taught anything else.

Please do not think that Buddha does not want people to have families and be together with the people we love. Buddha is not trying to turn everyone into monks and nuns! That may have been the predominant method and practice during Buddha's time, about 2,500 years ago, but the situation and times have now changed. Buddha set forth different teachings for different time periods which would better suit the people at that particular moment. The 21st Century is not a time for monasticism and holding vows. To be a monk or a nun, for those who can and want to do so now, is certainly incredible and beautiful, but the main Buddhist teachings at this time are about creating inner and outer peace, because peace is very important to all of us, within and without. Right now, we may not be able to do anything about things happening on the outside, but we can do something about what is within, here and around us.

Today, Dharma is about creating beautiful, harmonious relationships with the people around us, to forgive the wrongs that others have done to us and to forgive ourselves also for the wrongs we have done. Then we move on to becoming happy, light, carefree individuals who can bring this light to other people. We must realize that everything that we have is only for a very, very short time. And the most important thing in our lives are the people who care about us — these are the people who have loyally stayed with us and have been by our side through all our bad habits, bad temper, bad words and anger. It is these people — who have stayed with us over time — who are important. In the end, we might lose everything except these people.

We may have had a lot of bad experiences with some of these people but it does not have to remain this way forever — we can change it. And this change begins with very small steps in whatever you are already doing. It is not something monumental and unachievable! If you have one less argument with your partner, that is Dharma. If you have one less attachment, that is Dharma. If you control your anger once a day, that is Dharma. If you forgive your partner, that is Dharma. That is what Dharma is: it is about bringing people together.

Dharma is about harmony, love, care and forgiveness. The most important thing we must learn to do is to let go. Each one of us has very, very strong attachments that have created some form of disharmony within our families, with our husbands, wives, children, friends or business partners.

The disharmony can arise from only a few things, just as illnesses and diseases arise as a result of only a few causes. Generally, if we know the cause of the illness, we can begin to treat it. In the same way, there are only a few things which can cause disharmony within our families or with the people we love: dishonesty, anger towards our partners and not letting them win an argument, greed or miserliness. It could be because we constantly take advantage of our partners, or make them pay and take care of us, and we don't even know it.

We need to really look back at our lives and ask ourselves what is left for us: just death and perhaps a few people around us who will support us, love us and take care of us. What we need to do now is to start doing what we found difficult to do with our partners and friends before.

For example, if you have been having arguments with your wife, you should stop thinking, "Why is my wife like that?" and start to think instead, "Why do I react to my wife like that?" and let go and change yourself. After all, your wife is not going to be a Buddha overnight.

For now, it would be unhelpful for us to talk about world peace, karma, Enlightenment, future lives, etc. Instead, we should just talk about right now, and how much harmony we can bring into our lives and our families. If we are going to pray for and benefit the world, we should begin with the people we live with. We should treasure the people who we are with — I have given you the example of a wife or husband but you can apply that same teaching to children; children should apply that teaching to their parents and siblings.

Stop sitting there bellyaching and complaining about what you do not have. You may never have it for the rest of your life, so do you want to spend the rest of your life complaining about not having it? Or learn to accept it and make others around you happy? We should stop complaining about our partners, friends, children and life. We should stop sitting there, waiting to cash in on a huge fortune and then move on with life. We might never get what we want for the rest of our lives but we need to keep what we already have now.

Stop looking for money, stop looking for the windfall, stop looking for the other person to change, stop looking for outer transformation — look inside and transform immediately. Change yourself, not them. By accepting who they are, it is transformation. Sometimes we may be surprised by what we get back — when we change, they also change, without us even expecting it.

Gifts do not necessarily have to be material. Sometimes, living peacefully with our partners, friends and family, and not screaming and fighting is a gift in itself. If we can pass one day and one week without fighting and shouting, and without disharmony, that is a big gift. We must not wait for the other person to start. We have to start. And please do not think that it ends once you have bought a bouquet of flowers for your spouse and done your part. Your effort to bring harmony to your family has to be continuous.

You know what you are inside. You know your good points — which are many — and you know your few flaws. Start Dharma practice today by transforming your few flaws. It is to stop being cold, calculative and angry, and to stop holding on to the past. It is to begin to forgive, to let go of envy and expectations, and to stop blaming and pointing fingers at others.

I am not asking you to chant more, or recite more prayers and mantras; I am asking you to practice real life Dharma. The real practice right now, for all of us, is to bring incredible harmony and love into our families and to every single person who comes into contact with us. Start there.

Our ability and motivation to create harmony does not come from some mystical sign, like Buddha appearing to us in a dream. The motivation comes from knowing that life is very short and we have already made a lot of mistakes. It comes from an awareness of our own shortcomings and knowing that if we let them continue, they will only become stronger and bigger. However, when we face and overcome those shortcomings, and when we are nice to people regardless of whether they are nice to us — that is Dharma.

CHAPTER 2

PEACE BEGINS ...

... Even Though Everyone Around You Is a Nightmare

Spiritual practice is about being nice and patient to people who are not nice to you.

I am sure many of you have nightmare husbands or wives, nightmare children, nightmare partners and friends — in fact, everyone around you is a nightmare! I am sure many of you would like to go into a retreat for a while, where you can be alone, far away from everyone else; or send your nightmare friends and partners into retreat!

Let's fantasize for a moment. Start by thinking about someone who really bothers you. Let's say we advise them to go for a retreat for three years, three months and three days and make up a story about how they will become enlightened by this retreat. If they do not believe in Buddha or Enlightenment, we could tell them that the retreat is for luck and that they will attract a great deal of wealth into their lives by this retreat.

All of us then go up to the Himalayas, find an uninhabited mountain and dig out a cave. We fix it up nicely for their "retreat" — make a little built-in toilet, fix up the cave with curtains and heating, install a water supply, pull wiring from Kathmandu up to the Himalayas, install a generator and make sure they stay up there nice and warm. We even put in a CCTV connection there so they can see what we are doing back at home. Then, we lock them in from the outside as they do in Tibetan-style retreats. We are the only ones who have the key and there are no locksmiths in the Himalayas!

Visualize: The helicopter pad is upstairs, and we are all getting in. We are now all inside the helicopter with that one person we would like to send for retreat and we are about to take off. It is a 16-hour ride to the Himalayan mountains but we are happy to do it — for Dharma, we will put up with anything.

We land on top of Mount Everest and we climb out of the helicopter. We open the little door and show them their new apartment in the Himalayas. We are so excited we almost faint! We put them inside the apartment and now, we are turning the key to lock them in. We run back to the helicopter, we climb in and we fly back to Kuala Lumpur.

And now, they are gone.

Those monster partners and friends are in retreat. We do not have to hear their voices again, we do not have to listen to them rant and complain, we do not have to put up with their hang-ups, their weird quirks, their likes and dislikes, and their attachments. We come back home, all by ourselves — no more nagging, no more arguments, no more weird conversations or ideas. Nothing. Wouldn't that be great?

Think about it. What would be easier? Creating this whole scenario or transforming ourselves and learning to look differently at the situation around us? The things that bother us about that person are real. But wouldn't it be easier if we just changed ourselves? There are things that bother us about that person, but there will be something else, or something similar, that will bother us about another person. There are only a few things that we can be disturbed by. It would be one thing or another, a combination or a different manifestation of the same thing. It would therefore be easier to transform ourselves first.

When we are trying to engage in spiritual practice, we should actively look for difficult people — they are the best way for us to learn how to transform our minds from negative ways of thinking to open, positive ways of thinking that can embrace difficulties and benefit the other person.

Personally, I want to meet all the people who do not like established religions. I like the people who say they don't want to meditate, who are lazy and greedy. I want to meet the druggies, the prostitutes, the people who are transgendered and the people who have alternative lifestyles. I want to meet all the people who society labels as strange, weird and different. There is a bigger group of those people out there. I do not want to just meet and talk to the holier-than-thou, saintly, good-as-gold people.

The people who I would like to reach out to are people who are just like you and me, who would not normally engage in spiritual practice, who are not interested, who are lazy, who have a lot of weird ideas, who would rather hang out doing nothing or who are preoccupied with other things — those are the people who make up the majority of the planet. Even when we look at people who are already within established religions, how many of them are really practicing what their religions teach? The ones who really practice make up only a very small group.

Many religions cater to these "good" people because it is "easy." It is easy to be nice to someone who is nice to you. They are nice to you, so you are also nice to them. That is not religion; that is not spirituality; that is not Catholicism; that is not Jesus; that is not Buddha; that is not God. It is easy to be nice to someone who is nice to you, but it is not easy to be nice to someone who is not nice to you. Religion and spiritual practice is about being nice and patient to people who are not nice to you. This is how we bring spirituality to others.

CHAPTER 3

PEACE BEGINS ...

... Inside "Boobali" and Respecting Female Energy

All women are dakinis and they hold up half the sky.

All women are dakinis and we should accord them the respect as such. In Buddhism, women are considered the pillars of the family. They provide emotional strength, they are gentle and feminine, yet strong; they are miracle workers. Their energy is wisdom. They produce children and they give their male companions what they want. They give us company and they support us. In Asian societies especially, women are incredible because they are taught to put up with a lot of things from men and they do put up with these things. Women are treasures and we have to respect them as treasures.

Traditionally, what men want is not to come home to a nagging wife who rants and raves, and complains about everything. Men feel that they have worked all day and they just want to come home and have their wives make a nice home for them. Men want their women to be nice little wives, to stay home, to always give them respect and not to cause them any embarrassment. Men like to sit there, be served and be given things. It does not matter if it is wrong or right. In every old culture, tradition has dictated that women serve men.

It is up to you if you wish to follow tradition or if you want to follow logic; that is not really my business. I am not here to change 20,000 years of society and culture. But what I am trying to say is that however we are served by others, we will have to serve others one day. The karma will come back. Everyone wants something from each other. That's natural, isn't it? So why don't we give that to each other? It is something very small.

So take care of your wives — they are dakinis, they gave you your children, they give you a lot of pleasure, they gave you company, they have stayed through thick and thin with you. Give back. Imagine yourself running around for nine months with a huge belly! Buddha recognized the value of female energy and made the female Buddhas Vajrayogini and Tara most supreme in the hierarchy of the practices. It is not because women are better than men but — as even Mao Tse Tung recognized — women hold up half the sky.

We need to stop sitting there expecting women to do things for us, we need to reward them. Tomorrow or the day after, immediately, go and buy some flowers for your wife. Yes, it is a little embarrassing and you feel a little stupid but it does not matter. The stupidity and the embarrassment are over really quickly. You have money for your drinks and friends but you do not have money for your wives? That isn't good.

Don't be embarrassed. I know that for some of you, after being married for twenty years, you've never even given one petal to your wife. So now that you give her flowers, she might wonder what your motive is! It's definitely not boobali Some of you haven't had boobali with your wives in over fifteen years! I asked some of you when was the last time you had boobali, and you couldn't remember!

But it's not really about boobali; it's about inside boobali. It is the feeling you get from boobali — the warmth, the forgiveness and the care — because time is short. So take care of your wives, bring them flowers once every two or three months. Take them out, with no motive. Don't just take them out to the market or to a cheap café and say, "I took you out, so keep quiet now!" Isn't your wife worth a few hundred dollars for a night out?

What are you saving your money for? What are you keeping it for? Even Tutankhamun couldn't take any of the pyramids and all the wealth inside them with him. It's in the British museum now. What do you think you're going to take with you to your next life when you die? Your 100,000 or 200,000 dollars? Remember, you came into this life naked, just holding on to the placenta.

And women, what can you do for men? You know what they want. Men only want one thing. Just one thing — to stop being nagged! So just shut up! Don't nag them. You know how men are not expressive, they don't like to talk about things, they don't want to tell you things. So stop nagging your husbands, ranting, complaining and making noise.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Peace"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Tsem Rinpoche.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Foreword from Moscow: His Eminence Telo Rinpoche 11

Foreword from Kuala Lumpur: Datuk Dr. Victor Wee 15

Acknowledgments 19

His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche: A Short Biography 21

Editor's Introduction 25

Publisher's Note 31

Part I Peace Begins…

1 …With the People You Live With 35

2 …Even Though Everyone Around You Is a Nightmare 41

3 …Inside "Boobali" and Respecting Female Energy 45

4 …When We Live for Others 53

5 …Before Your Husband Dies 61

Part II Peace Comes…

6 …With Real Giving 67

7 …By Looking Beyond the Altar of Ourselves 75

8 …If We Create Change 83

9 …As a Happy State of Mind 91

10 …When You Take a Break from Yourself 99

Part III Peace Entails…

11 …The Right Program 107

12 …Attacking Our Afflictions 111

13 …Not Blaming Others 115

14 …Not Complaining 123

15 …Cutting the Cycle of Catch 22 131

Part IV Peace is Transforming…

16 …Experiences 143

17 …Misunderstandings 147

18 …Your Fate (Or What You Do When Your Luck Runs Out) 157

Part V Peace Is Not About…

19 …Love and Hatred 165

20 …Monsters and Angels 171

21 …Extreme Fear or Extreme Happiness 177

22 …Living in Paradise 185

23 …Clinging on to Attachments 189

Part VI Peace Gives Us…

24 …Freedom to Let Go 201

25 …Strength to Grow Up 205

26 …Tenacity to Face Ourselves 213

27 …Wisdom to Overcome Our Mistakes 217

Part VII Peace and the Ultimate Reward

28 Divinity: Developing the Spiritual Heart 225

Glossary 235

Chapter Notes 241

Kechara 249

Editorial Reviews

"Tsem Rinpoche communicates what peace means in a way that is immediate, earthy, and full of the wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhism tradition—one of the most profound and in-depth paths of awakening on the planet." —Purna Steinitz, founder of The Event Training, New Line Consulting, and Heart Stream Education

Reviews

"Tsem Rinpoche communicates what peace means in a way that is immediate, earthy, and full of the wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhism tradition—one of the most profound and in-depth paths of awakening on the planet." —Purna Steinitz, founder of The Event Training, New Line Consulting, and Heart Stream Education

"Tsem Rinpoche speaks from a place of true heart-wisdom. In Peace, he shows us how to cultivate this heart-wisdom for ourselves, which results in greater peace and happiness. This book is a valuable friend to have on the path." —Chris Grosso, best-selling author of Indie Spiritualist

From the Publisher