Bob Schwartz

“We experience the afflictions of desire and hatred, but their appearance is like the flight of a bird through the sky, leaving no tracks.”
Khenchen Thrangu

Lust and hate arise but leave no trace,
Like birds in flight; don’t cling to passing moods, people of Dingri.
Advice from a Yogi, Padampa Sangye

Commentary:

Even though the mind is the root of everything, our afflicted thoughts of greed, lust, and hatred appear, strong and powerful, and we engage in the greed and hatred. We think of something, and we think of it again and again, and it gets stronger and stronger. How do we get rid of these thoughts?

We experience the afflictions of desire and hatred, but their appearance is like the flight of a bird through the sky, leaving no tracks. They just dissolve into emptiness without leaving any trace. There is no reason to be attached or to fixate on them. They arise, and then they’re the past, and they can’t do anything to us.

Since everything comes down to the mind, we can attain the ultimate result. We are able to give up all of samsara because samsara is just the mind. We are able to achieve nirvana because nirvana is just the mind. The afflictions of desire and hatred sometimes seem like solid things that we can’t get rid of. But if we look at their ultimate nature, how they actually are, we see that we can get rid of them. Since we have the instructions, we should have confidence that we can eliminate the afflictions of desire and hatred.

Khenchen Thrangu

Padampa Sangye was an eleventh-century Indian yogi and spiritual master (also known as Kamalashila) who traveled widely throughout his life and brought Indian Buddhist teachings to China and Tibet. Best known as Machig Labdron’s teacher, he is counted as a lineage guru by all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Khenchen Thrangu is an eminent teacher of the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the personal tutor for His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa and has authored many books, including Pointing Out the Dharmakaya, Everyday Consciousness and Primordial Awareness, and Vivid Awareness.