From Gelek Rimpoche’s Teachings
Sunday, June 10 from the weekly Essence of Tibetan Buddhism Series
Buddha said: Avoid negativities, build positivities and tame your mind.
This is bus stop Buddhism in a nutshell. Avoid negative karma and build positive karma. Most importantly, tame your mind. These are activities for living a worthwhile, meaningful life for yourself and for others.
Building positivity doesn’t have to be in the sense of construction of a building. Every action, even thoughts, are building, positive or negative. The difference is the motivation and the action itself. We have recommended ultimate love/compassion, which makes a very rich motivation. Almost everything we do, or even don’t do, builds positive karma – just by this motivation power. That’s why we emphasize motivation.
We build that motivation each morning and then, if we forget or lose its influence during the day, we rebuild, remind, re-engage and re-energize it. Then, even if you are not doing anything, it becomes a little positive. Not doing anything also becomes good karma because you are not engaging in negativity. If you engage more in positivity, it not only becomes good karma, but it becomes strong, powerful, and effective good karma. This is the human advantage. This is the advantage of Buddha’s experience. Otherwise, you talk about karma as huge, bigger than space, while it is the individual’s deeds and habits.
Also our time is limited. Our task, our goal, our destination, is a steep climb. You need powerful efforts. We have to produce these. That is done not only by not creating negative karma, and through building positivity.
