Voici le quatrième et dernier article de cette série reprenant (en anglais) les réponses que donna en 2002 Jigmé Khyentsé Rinpoché à Sandra Scales, pour le livre qu'elle préparait à propos des Maîtres Nyingmapas du  bouddhisme tibétain...  texte reproduit avec l'autorisation de J. Kh. Rinpoché.

Read the first part of this text

     Part 4

WE ARE TOLD THAT THIS FREEDOM OF MIND IS ACTUALLY RIGHT HERE WITH US, and yet it's so difficult to find.  We can't buy it.  We can't secure it with insurance policies.  Power and wealth do not bring it to us.  This freedom is like a hidden gold mine, and we are like beggars who live in a shack directly above it.  We beggars don't know there is a wealth of gold beneath our dwelling, and so we spend all our time in the streets searching for sustenance.  The gold doesn't say, "I am here.  Dig me up.  You'll be rich."  In the same way, enlightenment will not come to us unless we apply discipline and concentration to this discursive mind of ours.  If we just sit here and wish, "May I get enlightened," it's not going to happen.

But Rinpoche, hearing about this freedom, knowing it is there,
or even glimsing it doesn't seem to be enough.

Yes, when we wake up, we need to stay awake.  To do so, we need to meditate.  We sentient beings have been hibernating for a very long time - so long that we don't know how to keep ourselves awake.  Keeping awake requires repetitive rousing.  Imagine you are using an alarm clock with a snooze button, but here the snooze button isn't a permission to go back to sleep ; it's a repeated reminder to meditate and stay awake.

There is one more point I would like to make : we need to maintain perspective on why we are practicing, so that we are not shocked when our emotions arise in response to difficulties on the path.  If our minds were already flawlessly trained, we wouldn't need to let our expectations of perfection obstruct our training.

As long as space endures,
As long as there are beings to be found,
May I continue likewise to remain
To drive away the sorrows of the world.

*  *  *

Here ends this brief teaching Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche gave to Sandra Scales somewhere in Canada, while he was giving explanations, along with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, on the Bodhicaryavatara - sometimes in 2002.
In the coming weeks or months, I will try to find opportunities to ask more questions to Rinpoche and share his answers here with you the reader - on the principle of wich Rinpoche agreed.  But "the right circumstances", as we all noticed, don't always come the way we expected it...