An Excerpt from a teaching called Our Motivation Is For Those Who Have Hopes of Us by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
One of my teachers told me that he feels he has spent his whole life throwing seed out and that very little of it has landed on soil. Most of it has landed on rocks and hard places. That this teacher, who is so precious to me, could feel like this breaks my heart. But it’s our fault, because we forget. If our motivation to practice is not compassion — is anything other than realizing again and again and again, to the point where we cannot bear it, the suffering of beings — it is useless.
Every morning we should wake up knowing that others around the world are waking up hungry. We can go down to breakfast; they can’t. Every morning we should wake up knowing that we can practice Dharma this day. We can do something about our condition. We have a potency to our lives. Others just continue — unconsciously, mindlessly, having no idea about cause and effect relationships. Others continue with unbelievable suffering.
I remember feeling tremendous sadness watching the bullocks in India pulling huge carts from early in the morning till late at night and being whipped the whole time. It isn’t only human suffering — it’s the suffering of all sentient beings that we should be touched by because they are all essentially the same. They all have the Buddha nature; they have that seed. And these are the ones that have hopes of us, because if we can think of them, there is a connection. They have no method. They have no practice. They have nothing other than whatever pure intention we can muster up. And so we can’t waste a moment. We can’t waste even a second. These are the ones that we are responsible for.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo