How do I obtain a sense of achievement from listening or discussing in this Lamrim class? At least I know it is insufficient if I only understand the literal meaning of the text! Then what is next? One must look inward and analyze one’s mental stream. One should recognize what is behind its literal meaning – that is, the so-called “seeing”. After “seeing”, one needs to let go of the afflictions or suffering, worries and anxiety, so on and so forth, all sorts of emotions like anger and attachment. And work out a way to convince what is on one’s mind, either by applying reasoning or teaching or whatever it takes to convince the mind, and allow it to go through what? To go through the application of remedy! And then, “let go” is the result after applying the antidote. So, in general, one has to experience this process. - Global Lamrim 2, Lecture 0019
Is practicing the Buddha Dharma difficult? What sense of achievement can we obtain from this discourse?
If we can apply the learning process and habituate this process by continuing to practice listening, and practice the Buddha’s teachings according to the learning process, we will naturally realise what “seeing” means. Then we will be able to let go of things like fighting for fame and profit, letting go of the grudges we hold against someone, letting go of the desire to take revenge. In short, the Buddha Dharma is actually the medicine for all these problems, all these sadness, all these afflictions that we have in our lives. So the Buddha Dharma brings us an extremely positive meaning to life, and gives us an optimistic attitude. When we listen to the Dharma, we should not feel discouraged if we cannot understand or do not achieve the final outcome. The Buddha tells us the final outcome but it doesn’t mean that it is only when we achieve the final outcome, then we can consider we have understood or we have got it. We can actually still obtain happiness because we are accumulating more knowledge and thus we are able to remove at least one more ignorance. So this sentence “You are able to obtain some sort of joy because you are accumulating more “knowledge”, with that you are able to remove [at least] one ignorance” means that with one more knowledge we gain, we have removed away one more ignorance. That means the more we learn by following the learning process, the more ignorance we remove. When we reach a stage where all the ignorance are removed, then that is where we know we have achieved the final outcome. This final outcome will come naturally as long as we follow the process.