essential message

the teachings i'm sharing today are from a visit on march 14 by venerable ani pema, who taught in place of bhante (who was visiting cancer patients in canada) that evening. let me start with a short biography before moving into her teachings.

Ven. Ani Pema was born in India and studied in a Catholic school through her childhood, of which she said she received a good education. In 1988, she came to the United States to visit a Benedictine community for five months. Over time, she began to feel that Christianity was overall something of an extensive misinterpretation of the Benedictine tradition and teachings. One day, Ani Pema saw the Dalai Lama and from that moment on wanted to become a Buddhist nun (which she later felt had been her destiny all along as determined by a previous life connection she witnessed). She became a Buddhist nun at fifteen years old and immediately began to acquire responsibilities she had never had before.

Today, Ani Pema works in the community of Mankato, training students in meditation and studying with Native Americans in shamanism. She believes that she has made a beneficial habit of asking for blessings in the holy places of wherever she is, Christian, Buddhist or other.

Gathering the lessons from her multicultural life experiences, Ven. Ani Pema teaches that even among different religions there is an essential message whose tenets they all tend to share: loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom. These tenets are what give us values and eventually bring us to enlightenment. The message they comprise teaches us yet another valuable lesson, the subject of today's teaching: nun, monk, or layman, there will always be emotions and suffering and pain. Against common assumptions, the lives of nuns and monks too have their sufferings. Perhaps the difference we can observe, however, is that they particularly practice and take the opportunity to overcome their sufferings, to gain lessons from their turmoil. This is in fact hardly a selfish endeavor on their end, for the lessons they discover can be used and practiced by all who listen.

As spiritual practitioners, we must realize that suffering is not negative. Sufferings provide us the opportunity to learn and discover enlightenment. It is indeed favorable to have these sufferings to overcome for this purpose.

We are most often burdened by the five poisons,[1] so we must train through awareness to learn of the essential message (loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom). We must learn forgiveness like that which Christ demonstrated. For those who we often think of as ‘evil’ are in fact those worst poisoned, trapped in their own prisons, and thus need our forgiveness more than anyone else. The peaceful demonstrations of the Tibetans in their conflict with China today provides a good example of this. In the same manner that we should be grateful for our sufferings for the opportunity toward enlightenment they provide, so should we recognize our enemies as our best teachers, for it is from their poison-induced mistakes that we learn what not to do.

Acknowledging our sufferings and our enemies as our teachers is the way of discipline for the spiritual practitioner. Among the six realms of existence,[2] humans are the most fortunate (especially with having body, intelligence, and etc.). Through these lessons and capabilities, only we among the beings of the realms have the opportunity to reach enlightenment.

Through our training, however, we must remember that it is not our responsibility to worry on others, for this only causes more confusion for us all. Whether we are on the right path and using our time meaningfully is our business. Where we worry on others, we condone expectations, which become obstacles to our practice. We must instead remain diligent to our own path, which eventually brings insight into the essential message. The way is always a discipline. Remember that Buddha too was like us in understanding life as a never-ending practice.

In our diligence to our path, we may not see the full extent of our work as it affects others around us and far from us. However, once we have committed dutifully to our path, secure in our diligence, then, we can become closer to one another to generate the loving kindness we discover through it. Thus, the value of intimacy is to share the benefit you reap with others through the diligence you alone must sow.

This benefit can come from anywhere, depending on who we are; you do not have to be Buddhist or Christian necessarily so long as the path you follow brings you to what is holy. As not all of life is suffering, we should remember as well our good qualities such as our Buddha nature, our ‘God-in-us’. At the very least, our training brings us personal satisfaction, but through it we also encounter this potential to become like Buddha, to become like God. In becoming Buddha or God, the essential message works through us into those around us in loving kindness, and so we build our pure motivations to help ourselves for the sake of helping others. Like the always smiling Dalai Lama, we too can create positive energy and harmony through our training. This is the power of our discipline and our prayer.

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[1] Confusion (Skt.: moha), pride (mana), envy (irsya), hatred (dvesha), and desire (raga). (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)

[2] Gods (devas), demi-gods (ashuras), humans, ghosts, tormented/‘hell’ beings, and animals. (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)