The Buddha taught the Dharma as a path. Although all of us, sentient beings inhabiting the six realms of samsara, have buddha nature and therefore posses within us the perfect cause of awakening that contains the qualities of all buddhas, we have been deluded by the mistaken thought of I. And so, although we are inherently able to achieve the dharmakaya for our own benefit and the  rupakaya for the benefits of others, we continue to wander in samsara for no other reason than the delusion produced by this thought of I. It was in order that we be able to overcome this delusion that the Buddha taught the dharma as a path. Essential to this path is coming to trust ourselves and believe in our own ability.

Many years have passed since His Holiness the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa brought the Dharma to this land and throughout those many years we have all worked hard and have come to know one another well. As he is my root guru, I consider his vision as a command and therefore I have done my best to assist in your accomplishment of the dharmakaya for your own benefit and the rupakaya for the benefit of others. I regard doing this as my responsibility, however for the result to occur, the first thing that is needed is for you to trust yourself enough to overcome despair.

The Buddha said that the Tathagata does not dispel the sufferings of beings by wiping them away with his hand nor can he pass his realization to them. Beings’ sufferings are dispelled by his presentation of the peace of dharmata. To understand the meaning of these words, we need to remember that all buddhas achieve buddhahood motivated by the wish to benefit others. No one ever has or ever will achieve buddhahood with the selfish motivation of wishing to achieve buddhahood for their own benefit. But in spite of the fact that all buddhas become buddhas out of the wish to benefit others, they nevertheless cannot simply wipe away our pain nor can they hand us their awakening.

It is not that they are too weak to wipe away our pain or that they will not hand us their realization because they are too greedy or selfish. They would do these things if they could. The reason why this is impossible is that realization is an interdependent phenomenon and it involves the recognition by a person of the nature of their own mind in connection with the instruction they receive from a buddha or his or her representative.

What does it mean to say that buddhas dispel beings suffering by presenting the peace of dhamata? Dharmata is the way things really are and it is peace because it is utterly unchanging. Absolute truth is beyond change or fluctuation. Our fundamental nature never changes and it is in order to recognize that that we practice. But in spite of this, when we practice, we often adulterate our practice with our kleshas. We may practice in a state of pride, anger, or attachment. Practicing in that way, we may gain the ability to be reborn as a deva, asura, or human repeatedly without being reborn in lower states, but we will not achieve the nirvana of two-fold transcendence. A perfect practitioner needs to seek out and implement the means of achieving nirvana that transcends the extreme of samsara through recognition [of mind's nature] and that transcends nirvana itself through compassion. The most important thing for us to achieve is “the single medicine for one hundred ills”—bodhichitta. Most dharma is concerned with bodhichitta; with how to generate it, how to strengthen it, why to do so, and so forth. Unfortunately, we often practice it with partiality—we feel love and compassion for some and not for others. As long as we restrict our compassion to some and prevent it from being all-encompassing, we will only be able to prevent lower rebirth; we will not achieve the nirvana of two-fold transcendence. It is therefore especially important that we cultivate impartiality.

What we need is love, compassion, and bodhichitta that are impartial, unlimited, and endless. Most of us have some love and compassion, and we have some love and compassion for some beings, but not for others. We have love and compassion sometimes and not at other times. Most of us are fairly loving and compassionate as long as things are going our way. Whenever things stop going our way, our love and compassion seem to disappear. We have compassion for those with whom we identify and as long as our compassion is based upon that, we will not have compassion for those with whom we do not identify—those from a different country, of a different religious tradition, of a different race, or different species. Our compassion may be reactive—when others are nice to us, it is easy for us to be nice to them; when others are mean to us, we are mean to them.

Since we all suffer, regardless of how we treat one another, we must at some point accept a responsibility to help everyone regardless of our relationship to them. Once we really want to help everyone equally, then true and impartial love and compassion will naturally arise within us. When we cultivate love and compassion as the relative aspect of our path, our path becomes very quick and the emergence of ripening of the qualities within us is speeded up greatly. When we cultivate relative bodhichitta, we come to realize absolute bodhichitta, and that realization gives us the power to help all beings until samsara is emptied. That is why bodhichitta is called “the single medicine for one hundred ills” and why it is so essential for the genuine practitioner.

Someone who has genuine love and compassion will never restrict their compassion to those who practice the same religion that they do. They will definitely feel as much compassion for followers of no religion and for followers of other religious traditions, and they will work to benefit those others in a way that fits with the others’ belief system. For example, the Buddha once blessed Mara so that Mara entered the state in which he taught several profound sutras. Those sutras taught by Mara were so profound that many beings came to recognize the nature of their mind through hearing and studying them. This did not arise because of any inherent ability or desire within Mara.  It was through the blessing and power of the Buddha. By working through Mara in that way, the Buddha was able to help many others in accordance with their own belief system. In more recent terms, when His Holiness the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa went to Calgary in Western Canada, he was approached by a young member of the First Nation (in this country you would say a Native American), who said to His Holiness, “I like you and I find you inspiring. I am Indian and you are Tibetan. I don’t know your ways and you sure don’t know my ways. If I pray to you in my way, can you bless me in your way?” And His Holiness said, “Definitely. Don’t worry.” So mere difference in religious tradition is obviously irrelevant. We cannot say that there is an inherent difference between Buddhist faith and non-Buddhist faith. Faith is simply a state of mind and is therefore empty. It is merely the play of that mind, which is empty lucidity, so it is definitely beyond sectarian differences.

A genuine practitioner needs to be able to trust him or herself. Our minds are really hidden from others; others can at best infer from our behavior what is really going on within us. Except for buddhas who directly know the minds of others, no one else really knows what is going on with us. But we are never hidden from ourselves. We know whether we are doing well or poorly. A genuine practitioner needs to be able to say, “I have meditated on love and compassion to this degree in this life. As much as I could, I have done this or that practice and so on it will be ok if I die today or tomorrow.” It may take us quite a while to get through all of the stages of the path; it might be very difficult for us to achieve the state of Vajradhara in this life, but at least we can make some progress along the way. If we consider the path to be like a staircase with one hundred steps, and we can make it up ten of those steps in one life, then in ten life-times, we will have completed the path and that is quite good. The alternative is less beneficial; we may look like great practitioners, we may rise early and go to sleep late, and we may never let go of our malas with our hands, but if we have not gotten to the point where we have confidence when we face adversity, if we quiver in terror at death, then our practice has not been satisfactory; we have not gained confidence in ourselves. There is a saying “Dharma is revealed by adversity”; the quality of one’s practice, the degree of one’s confidence is evident when things are not going well. When things have gone poorly and someone is quivering in terror as they approach death, it is very very sad for them and for the people around them. So we, as practitioners, need to take responsibility for and take hold of our own lives and our own practice, and by doing so, we will become the best type of practitioner. I think this is what self-confidence really is.

It is very hard to look at somebody and really see what is going on inside them to really know. Machik Lapdron in Praise to Guru Padmapa Sangye says, “Father, you sleep throughout the day and night continuously. This is a sign of your unbroken natural meditation.” In most cases, if we saw somebody sleeping all day and night, realization would not be our first thought. But Machik Lapdron knew, because she was an extraordinary being. If we were looking at Padampa Sangye today, we would not know what is going on with him. We would see this reportedly rather ugly guy sleeping all the time. We would not know. In The Words of My Prefect Teacher there is a story about Jetsun Milarepa who slept in the same dwelling as a lama who was diligent in his practice. The lama would stay up very late chanting, then he would sleep a little bit in the middle of the night, and then he would got up very early and begin his recitations and chanting again. Meanwhile, Jetsun Milarepa slept peacefully. Eventually, when Milarepa woke up, the lama said to him, “You know, you look like a great yogin, but why are you so lazy? Why do you sleep so much?” But Milarepa knew that when this lama had been doing his good-looking chanting, he had actually been thinking about how much money he was going to get after selling a yak that he was going to have slaughtered. So Milarepa answered him, “Well, you know, you are right. I usually do get up earlier but last night I could not sleep. I spent the whole damn night thinking about how much money I am going to make.” So holy beings like Milarepa can actually see what is going on inside somebody’s mind but we cannot. The best we can do is to take ourselves as witnesses; the utmost kindness that we can do to ourselves is to let go, as much as we can, of negativity, to do our best to cultivate goodness at least to the point where we have no quilt about how we are living our lives. We do not need to become renunciate monastics or do anything fancy; we just need to be able to trust ourselves. That is a very important thing to understand.

We cannot judge others; we do not know what is really going on within them. But we can and do know what is going on within us. If we can be non-judgmental toward others, if we can rejoice in their virtue whatever it is, regardless of their religious tradition or affiliation, then by being free of jealousy, we will accrue the same merit as they do. This will protect us from sectarian hatred and enable us to accumulate an ocean of merit, day by day, drop by drop. By cultivating relative bodhichitta, we will eventually discover absolute bodhichitta. So we need to do our best at least to move in that direction and if we do that, then I guarantee you that we will discover genuine self-confidence.

Our basic nature—our basic being—is absolutely perfect. It is identical to the basic being or basic nature of buddhas. No distinction whatsoever can be made between the Buddha nature of a sentient being and the buddha nature of a buddha. It is not the case that the buddha nature of buddhas is greater or more than the buddha nature of sentient beings, nor that the buddha nature of buddhas is somehow better or purer that the buddha nature of beings. The only distinction between buddhas and sentient beings is that in the case of a buddha this nature is unconcealed or unveiled, and in the case of sentient beings like ourselves it is temporarily veiled or obscured. Therefore it is said that although all beings possess buddha nature, it is however veiled by temporary obscurations. These obscurations are called temporary because they are not intrinsic to the nature itself, they can therefore be removed, but they will only be removed under the conditions that remove them. What do these obscurations fundamentally consist of? They consist of our persistent belief in a self. There is no such thing, has never been such a thing, and could never be such a thing as a self. It is actually impossible, yet we continue to believe in a self.

In the Uttaratantra Shastra Maitreya said, “Because the buddhakaya is all-pervasive, because there is no difference within that, and because all beings demonstrate the potential, it is said that all beings possess buddha nature.” Here Matireya sets forth three arguments for the existence of buddha nature. The first argument is that the buddhakaya is all-pervasive. Kaya means body, in this case buddhakaya or buddha body refers to the dharmakaya, the actual state of buddhahood itself. His argument is that since the actual nature of buddhahood is the dharmakaya, and since the dharmakaya is emptiness, and since emptiness is the nature of each and every being, it is therefore certain that each and every being possesses buddha nature.

If it were possible for a being to exist and have a mind that did not have the nature of the dharmakaya, then it would be possible that that being could not achieve buddhahood, but this is not the case. Emptiness is the nature of all of samsara and all of nirvana. There is nothing outside or beyond this nature. Therefore the dharmakaya is the nature of the mind of any being, and therefore all beings are naturally capable of awakening.

His second argument is that there is no difference or distinction within that. By “that” he means the nature of all things, the dharmakaya itself. There is no difference within buddha nature in the sense that the buddha nature of anyone being or buddha is in all ways equal to the buddha nature of any other being or buddha. Buddhas’ buddha nature is not greater than or better than the buddha nature of sentient beings. So his second argument is that the basic nature of each and every being is equally the dharmakaya. Not only is the dharmakaya the nature of every being but it is equally the nature of every being.

His third argument is that beings demonstrate potential. All beings demonstrate, in one way or another, the potential for awakening. Because of the specific karmic history and varied obscurations that beings have picked up, we demonstrate various potentials. Matireya speaks of five. He calls them the shravaka potential, the pratyeka potential, the mahayana or bodhisattva potential, the uncertain potential, and the isolated potential. But each and every being, even the worst of us, has one of these. The shravaka potential is possessed by a being who is naturally disposed to the shravakayana path, the pratyekayana buddha potential is that which is exhibited by a being who is naturally disposed toward that path, the mahayana or bodhisattva potential is exhibited by a being who is naturally disposed to that path, the uncertain potential is what is exhibited by a being who is easily influenced and will adopt the type of spirituality that they are primarily exposed to, and the isolated potential is what is exhibited by those beings we normally think of as irreparably bad. We can all think of people who, when we say everyone has buddha nature, we think might be exceptions to it; famous people such as Adolph HItler or Mao Tse Tung, or the various devils or demons who are set up as embodiments of pure evil in the various world religions. But according to the Buddha, even the worst of us possesses full buddha nature. In the case of the worst of us, what has happened is that because of our lack of merit, which is temporary, we are engaged in extensive wrongdoing and we have isolated ourselves from our own buddha nature. But even when someone is isolated from their own buddha nature, this is temporary. It simply means that you are very obscured, but this isolation is not permanent because it is not intrinsic to buddha nature itself. Even while one is in the worst possible state, one still possesses buddha nature, one always does, and this means therefore that as soon as one changes one’s course of action, one will move in a different direction, and definitely become capable of achieving buddhahood. So the only difference between these five potentials, or within them, is how close or far the individual is to access their own buddha nature. But the buddha nature within them is equally present. Therefore Maitreya’s third argument is that because all beings exhibit one or another of these potentials, they are all capable of buddhahood.

We inhabit bodies that include the ten resources and eight types of freedoms, and especially because of our previous accumulations of merit, not only do we have these types of bodies, these types of lives, but we have the special type which includes access to dharma. Now, one aspect of this access is access to great masters who bestow liberation simply through being seen, or simply through being heard. For example, many of you have met His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa,, but even those of you who have not actually met either the Sixteenth or the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa have at least either seen a photograph of him or have at least heard his name. Whether you have actually met him or not, you have in some way been touched by his activity. This means that the seed of your future liberation has been definitely planted.

Now, this is very important, very significant, because although samsara, cyclic existence, will never end by itself, for you it’s end at some point in the future is certain. The seed of your eventual liberation has been planted within you, and this means that you possess a degree and a type of merit or goodness within you that is unlike that of most others. Especially since we are involved in the practice of the mahayana and the vajrayana, the seed of liberation that has been planted within you, is not merely the seed of your own liberation, although that is certain, but also the seed of your future ability to bring about the liberation of others. In part this is because in our practice of the mahayana tradition we aspire to emulate the benefiting and liberation of beings performed by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Because of this aspiration embedded within our practice, this is certain to occur. This is something that is extraordinarily delightful and you should recognize the power of what has already occurred for you.

We have lived innumerable times. In each of those lives we’ve had some kind of body. As it is said in the Confessions to Avalokiteshvara, “if the flesh and bone of all our past bodies were accumulated they would create a mass larger than all the mountains in the world, and if all of the blood and lymph and fluids of our past bodies were gathered into one huge basin, it would be larger than all the oceans in the world.” Nevertheless, in spite of all that we have gone through and how long this has been going on, we now at least inhabit bodies in which the seeds of our own liberations and our future ability to liberate others have been definitely planted.

To understand the significance of what has already occurred for you and the type of life, the type of body that you have, and to rejoice in this is extremely important. It is important because our minds need to grow, need to develop, and the healthy growth and development of your mind requires this type of joy. Without joy, without enthusiasm, without clarity, without an understanding of the direction you want to grow in, it is very unlikely that your minds will continue to grow or develop.

There are billions of people living in this world, and most of these people have no connection with dharma. That means that for many people they think that their lives, their human bodies, are finally unimportant and valueless, that they just happened to have been born at such-and-such a time, with such-and-such a body, and that really what happens to them and what they do, in the long run, makes no difference. They think of themselves and their lives as fundamentally devoid of any value and they therefore think that their deaths are of no more significance than the snuffing out of a candle flame. This means that people who have no understanding of the way things work, have no idea whatsoever of what is going to happen to them after death, and therefore generally consider it unknowable and don’t think about it.  Lacking any kind of understanding of the reason why things happen, they necessarily accumulate the causes of further samsara, or cyclic existence, because they’ve failed to recognize these causes as what they are. In contrast to that, even having a simple understanding of dharma gives you tremendous resources. Through that understanding you know that your human body is something extremely rare, extremely precious, and that the type of resources that you enjoy—the freedom that you enjoy—is only caused by your having engaged in good deeds in past lives. Whether these deeds were ordinary or extraordinary, in any case you must have done some wonderful things in order to have the opportunity you have now.

By understanding the way things work, by understanding causality, by understanding that if you engage in misdeeds you will suffer and if you engage in good deeds you will be happy, you are already no longer fooled by the appearances of samsara, and with that understanding you can use the opportunity of this body and this life to make appropriate choices both in the mundane sense and in the spiritual sense about actions to cultivate good deeds and avoid wrongdoing.

Human life and the human body are the best environment and support for the practice of dharma and making use of your human life and your human body in this way, your human body becomes an extraordinary type of human body, what we call the precious human body. In general there are three paths (vehicles or approaches) within the Buddhist tradition. These are called the shravakayana or vehicle of the listeners; the pratyekabuddhayana, the vehicle of the solitary realized ones; and the bodhisattvayana or mahayana, the vehicle of the bodhisattvas or greater vehicle.

Human life and human body is the best support for any of these three approaches. In particular, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition emphasizes the third of these, the bodhisattva vehicle. The way that this has been practiced in Tibetan Buddhism all along is an all-inclusive way which incorporates all aspects of the Buddhist tradition. It includes the the outer discipline of individual liberation, the inner disciple of the bodhisattva, and the secret discipline of the samaya vow or vajrayana. Therefore in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition monastics, for example, are called threefold vajra holders. They have the outer monastic vow of pratimoksha or individual liberation, the inner bodhisattva vow, and the secret vow of samaya.

But even for ordinary persons with families and responsibilities, who need to function in the world, who are concerned first and foremost with daily survival, who live in this society and this country which is after all based entirely on competition, where the wealthy compete with other wealthy people, the middle class compete with everyone else in the middle class, and even poor people have to compete with other poor people for their survival; in a country like this where everyone is constantly engaged in strategizing in one way or another simply in order to survive, where we are so busy and so filled with responsibility that in fact we don’t have a huge amount of time for dharma practice, even in this society, even in this country and even as busy as we are, you should never think your life and your human body are not fit supports for the practice of dharma. Don’t think, “Well, in this life, given how many responsibilities I have and how much I have to work, I can’t practice dharma, and even if I try I won’t achieve a definitive result. This is untrue. The teachings that we practice, the vajrayana teachings, include many methods that are free of difficulty. This means that even in our lives as they are, we can walk this path, and we can traverse the path in this life and move toward the achievement of the two fold wisdom of buddhahood, the direct knowledge of the nature of things, and the variety of things. We can practice dharma in a definitive and effective way especially by making use of the samaya vow or samaya principle of the vajrayana.