Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Dharma Quote of the Week

Developing a sense of good cheer in the face of adversity, you can specifically use adversity as the support for refuge and true spiritual development. I am discussing how you relate to your suffering, how you relate to your adversity, as it affects you in life and on the path.

Now, as you know, whenever you are suffering by way of the body, speech, and mind, be it physical illness or a mental affliction, this is a very big deal to you. Usually it appears as something major. Even if it’s minor, you make it into some great distress. If you lose a little money or if someone speaks nastily to you, it invokes a strong reaction. This is called “appearances arising as the enemy.” When your habituation to adversity reaches such a point that you actually fall prey to appearances arising as the enemy, it means that you no longer have patience for suffering.

…If you can’t bear the minor aspects of adversity in this, the best rebirth in cyclic existence, the precious human rebirth, what will you do when you’re reborn in the three lower realms? Samsara is so vast, so deep and limitless, and the number of sentient beings within samsara are equal to that. All of them want to be free; all of them desire liberation. You should consider then how unnecessary or pointless it is to think that your small problems in this fortunate life are so great, when in fact they really are not.

Any rebirth in this ocean of cyclic existence will by nature bring this type of discontent or suffering. Since you’ve been in this cycle of rebirths from beginningless time until now and you are still not free, it points out the fact that help is needed. Refuge is necessary. Adversity then becomes the support for training in refuge, which demonstrates that adversity is used to your advantage.(p.44)

–from Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga by Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche, trans. by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro, published by Snow Lion Publications

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