Making one’s life happy and meaningful

The following is an excerpt from the advice by Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche on “Making one’s life happy and meaningful”, given at Sambhota Ancestral Exemplary Day School, Gangchen Kyishong, Dharamshala, on November 5, 2013.

There is no need to say that having completed one’s schooling, one needs to lead a good life. If I outline some of the things, as a summary, for leading a good life, or, to lead a happy life, I think they may become helpful at the time when you later finish your studies, or at the finish of your studies when you enter any career.

Leading a happy life and leading a meaningful life are slightly different. There is not any certainty that all who lead a happy life lead a meaningful life. There are three factors which are indispensable for a happy life. 1) A healthy body, 2) a healthy mind, and 3) right living (Right livelihood, Pure living). All three are in your hands—if one knows them well, these three are not something which cannot be achieved.

A healthy body
If one’s body is not well, all other situations of one’s life become useless. To have a healthy body, one should have a proper growth from childhood. Mainly, it is important to have a sensitive awareness towards one’s bodily health. These days many people either do not have a sensitive awarenesstowards one’s bodily health, or do not know what means should be applied for the body to be healthy. As such, one should have a sensitive awareness towards one’s body, should always stay in harmony with the state of the elements, should protect the body in accordance with the environmental situations; food and drink, surroundings, health through medicine, and physical exercises are the most important factors for a healthy body.

Of those all, it is very important to take interest in the traditional health approaches. The reason for saying this so is that the modern Health is a market, it is a commercial business; the modern physicians do not aim to eradicate diseases and illnesses in the society, diseases are their capital—it is said that if there are no diseases the physicians will starve to death. The traditional physicians keep as their first aim the eradication of diseases and illnesses in the society. Our Tibetan medical texts speak of “to not let become ill, if becomes ill, the means of cure…”, thereby, at first, the means for not letting a person become ill are explained. It is, therefore, important to take interest in the traditional approaches to health, and in particular, to know one’s body through a sensitive awareness of its health, and to take a good care of one’s bodily health.

A healthy mind
It is not right if the mind is not healthy, although the body is well. Healthy mind does not mean not-insane. It refers to freedom of thought, “The nose-rope is tied to one’s head”. For example, Tibetans lead cattle—yaks and zos (female yaks)—with a [rein]-rope through the animals’ nose. The nose-rope is in other’s hands; the animal is not able to go in the direction it wants. If the nose-rope is up on one’s head, one can go as one wishes.

Through reasonings and mental intelligence one should be able to think what is appropriate or inappropriate for self, good or bad—in Dharma way of speaking it is called ‘the wisdom differentiating well the phenomena’, to be able to analyse and differentiate between what are to be practised, and what to discard; what are right to do, and what are not right to do; what are beneficial to oneself, and what are not; what are beneficial to the society, and what are not. Having done analyses, knowing to differentiate them is called independent thinking, thoughts with freedom. The freedom of thought these days of people have been robbed off by Globalization. This has resulted in most of the people following with assumption what others say. Apart from making decisions by following television, radio, other news media, and social networks, there has already arrived strongly in the twenty-first century the habit of not using one’s mental intelligence in making decisions.

In particular, those who have gone under Globalization have totally lost their freedom of thought; not to mention of others, they even do not know how to decide what are their needs; they do not know which food when eaten would be digested by their body, which drinks would not harm their body—they do not know even that much. All decisions as regards these are taken by watching television, listening to radio, or by reading newspaper advertisements. It is a situation where one does not know about oneself, one does not know oneself.

It is, therefore, important to have a qualified freedom of thought. If there are a healthy body and freedom of thought, fifty percent of life’s career, life’s path, becomes alright.

Right livelihood
In addition to them, because every person has to have a means of living, that means of living needs to be a proper one. Of the eight branches of an exalted being’s path (‘The eight noble path’) taught by Buddha, the mention of ‘Right livelihood’ and ‘Right action’ were meant for the purpose of leading one’s life. Right livelihood refers to [a way of life] not related with violence, not harming the environment, and sustainability. In essence, one’s livelihood should be not related with violence, directly, implicitly and indirectly; not harmfulandnot destructive to the environment, directly, implicitly and indirectly; not greatly profitable at some times and of huge loss at other times, rather a sustainable one—if one is able to have such a livelihood it is the best.

Mahatma Gandhi used to say that a livelihood dependent on farming is the best livelihood. But, we as a people living in exile, bereft of one’s country, it is very difficult for everybody to be depending on farming as a means of living. When we just arrived in exile many farming settlements were established, to have a means of living dependent on farming. That being so, now many of those farming settlements are gradually becoming deserted. The means of living may not be dependent on farming, yet whatever other livelihood one seeks, the three [criteria] I mentioned above—not related to violence, not harming to the environment, and sustainability—are certainly needed for deciding a kind of livelihood one would choose.

The modern people think only of becoming a servant, an employee. It has become a talk of all education administrators that where would the students obtain a place to be a servant, an employment, subsequent to the completion of their studies. If there is a choice to be made between becoming a servant, an employee, and becoming an owner, it would be better to be an owner able to feed oneself. In the case of our exile situation, if one does a paid work (job) beneficial to the exile administration, it does not amount to becoming a servant. Unlike that, solely for the purpose of earning a salary for oneself if one becomes a servant doing a totally unrelated work, that means of living does not become a right livelihood. It is, therefore, important to think in the direction of relying on a qualified means of living whereby one is able to feed oneself.

If one has those factors, one will be able to lead one’s life happily.

Spiritual thought
If one wants a meaningful life one needs, in addition to the three factors listed earlier, a spiritual thinking, the knowledge of the inner meanings, which is called “spirituality” in the language of Westerners. I don’t know if that translates exactly the knowledge of the inner meanings. It is a term being used these days. In Sanskrit language it is called Adhyatmik. It is, anyway, not to let one’s mind to be ever extrovert, rather to direct inwards, and analyse: Who is it that is called “I” (“me”)? Normally when suddenly someone asks, “Who are you?”, one would reply, “I am Losang”, “I am Tenzin”, “I am Sonam”—one would know to respond by saying one’s name. But that name has been labelled subsequently, [subsequent to one’s birth], it is not a specific person. Who is it that takes birth, seeks a living in this life, who dies later, who again takes rebirth? One may not think of rebirth subsequent to death, yet to analyse who is it, the person who goes on from birth till death, what are its needs, what are its responsibilities?—to direct one’s mind inwards in the quest of these meanings, and thus to try to know oneself, is called “the knowledge of the inner meanings”. To call it even ‘religion’ (Dharma, spirituality) is alright.

Even for an Atheist, or someone who does not believe in religion, it is possible to be trying to know oneself, or be introvert and look inwards. As such, through one’s mental intelligence, by following any religion—or not following any religion—and by applying mindfulness and introspection, if one is able to seek out one’s future career, by coming to know of oneself by oneself, that would be described as [way of thinking] complete with the elements of the knowledge of the inner meanings. If one has such [attributes in one’s thinking] one’s life as a human has become with-meaning, meaningful, the life will not become wasted.

After you graduate from college and university you will need to look for a career, you will need to lead a life. To lead a life, you will need to, from now when you are young and attending school, train on those four factors. In particular, from the time when one is young, if one does not set a good foundation for a healthy body, it will be extremely difficult to make the body healthy again when one is aged and physically weak.

Freedom of thought needs to be started from pre-school. The essential content of the reformed Education Policy is that the students who graduate under this Education Policy would have freedom of thought, not swayed by others, not as “a fool is swayed like a water-flow is diverted to one’s wish”, following this way if others say “This way!”, and that way if others say “That way!”. It is the aim of [the Exile Adminnistration’s reformed] Education Policy to make the students’ thoughts not to be swayed willy-nilly by watching television, etc. This too needs to be developed from a young age. The habit of not assuming anything until one has understood it needs to be instilled.

One should know that one knows if one knows something, and should know that one does not know if one does not know. Of those attending schools these days there are so many who think they know even if they do not know. They assume as facts what are in the books and what are taught in the class, and think they know them. Knowing is knowing; those one does not know one needs to try to know them.

By not considering(assuming) as facts merely by what are in the books and what are explained by the respected teachers, if one discards the way of thinking that one knows although one does not know, later when one graduates from school one will have a thought that has freedom, and a thought which is of good standards. Otherwise instead of one’s thoughts developing into a qualified standard, they will become like computers. The inputs from teachers in class and from books will stay inside it, and when one needs to download them one can download them, but apart from that, the computer cannot think by itself and do any of these: make improvements, do analyses, and make changes. It is limited to downloading what was inputted. If it becomes like that there is almost no difference between a human and a machine.

It is important, therefore, that one must identify what one knows and also identify as not-knowing what one does not know. If that happens, there will not be obstacles for the progress of thoughts. These days under the modern system of learning when someone reaches a certain level of education, one tends to think “Now I know it all”. There occur and continue to occur cases of many whose progress of thoughts ceases due to bearing such attitude. For such to not occur, it is important to be able to certainly differentiate between knowing and assuming (considered as so).In knowing something it is important to know all facts in entirety: from beginning to end, “preliminaries, the actual and conclusion”. If such happens, the person can be described as graduated in high education. Lacking such, by considering as facts many of what are in books and what are taught by teachers, however high the certificates of having passed examinations one may have, one cannot be regarded as a person of high education.

What I have here just presented specifically to the students—the three factors for a happy life, and the fourth factor for a meaningful life—are mere outlines. If you do meticulous analyses on them, each of the points can be studied for many days. So many facts are summarized in them. It is important that you all think on those factors.

That I mentioned the need for the knowledge of the inner meaning (spirituality) in order to lead a meaningful life is similar to the topics to start hereafter: Racial Identity and Personal Identity. If a race is able to stay without losing its racial identity, that race exists. If the racial identity declines, that race becomes extinct. As such, Swaraj (Self Rule) spoken by Gandhi is to know one’s situation by oneself, and through that to have in one’s hands one’s career (life’s path)—that is called freedom. It is important to think in detail and to do analyses on that.

What I have said here to you all are for you to do analyses, not for taking as assuming [them as facts]. Buddha has clearly advised that what Buddha had said was not for assuming:

Bhikṣus and the learned ones,
Like a gold burnt, cut and rubbed,
Analyse well my words,
Adopt then, not for reverence!

If one takes Buddha’s words by assuming [them to be factual], merely because of one’s reverence and faith in Buddha, that is an assumption, one does not know. If Buddha’s words need to be tested, whatever anybody says one should analyse with freedom of thought and with a rational mind, applying the four reasonings, and try to make oneself know. For such purpose I have said [the things above].