Dalai Lama - Spiritual Teaching: April 18, 2004

"Good Heart - Full Life"

Ordained sangha members will be admitted free of charge but they must register in advance of the event providing a letter indicating current monastery or nunnery, place and date of ordination.

Simultaneous translation into Chinese will be available, with a small fee for translation headsets. We ask that everyone arrive two hours ahead of the Teaching to clear security; there will be no bags, cameras or recording devices allowed into the building. Latecomers will not be admitted.

Parking is available and the War Memorial Gym can also be readily reached by bus. The venue is wheelchair accessible.

In this Spiritual Teaching, His Holiness will elaborate on the nature of compassion, on the many ways of cultivating a good heart in order to help others and on how to live a fulfilled life while serving. Despite life's daily vicissitudes, everyone yearns for a good heart. No matter how or where they live, humans have one thing in common: they desire happiness. Yet, happiness seems illusory and sometimes so does a good or compassion heart. Even more elusive is a fulfilled life.

One of the keys to cultivating a compassionate heart is to understand suffering. It is said that compassion and wisdom are like the two wings of a bird that help one fly to enlightenment. To understand compassion one must first understand suffering. That suffering exists is the first of the 4 Noble Truths that Shakyamuni Buddha taught over 2500 years ago. Once we truly realize and accept our suffering, then we may begin to cultivate compassion for ourselves. If we continue to deny our true state of being, then compassion too seems illusory. Once understanding of suffering - not only of oneself but of others - is attained, then the desire to eradicate the suffering of others and self arises, and this is called compassion.

It is also said that compassion is necessary at the beginning, middle and end. In the beginning compassion is necessary to turn one's mind toward enlightenment and to help other beings alleviate their suffering. Thus it is like the seed of enlightenment. In the middle compassion motivates humans to practice virtue and to help accumulate wisdom and merit in order to attain buddhahood. Compassion is the moisture that nurtures realizations to grow. At the end, the enlightened are empowered by great compassion to continuously help suffering beings of all kinds.

The Sanskrit word for compassion is bodhichitta (bodhi meaning enlightenment and chitta meaning mind). So the root of bodhicitta is the mind of enlightenment. There are two types of compassion or bodhichitta: wishing or aspiring and venturing or engaging. There are also different approaches for the development of compassion and various means of aiding sentient beings.

Ticket price: $25

Tickets are available as of Monday, February 2, 2004, through Ticketmaster or by phone at 604-280-4444.