Just study is not enough

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says that just study and reading is not enough. If you want Dharma to change your mind and your heart, then you need a tool that can do the job correctly. He said recently…

Students who are not interested in retreat and practice should realize if they want something for their heart, if they love themselves and want to do something to affect their heart, and fill their hearts with great satisfaction, deep joy, and meaning, then this comes from retreat and practice.

Without the right tools it is difficult to change a rough diamond into a piece of jewelry. Similarly it is difficult to shape our mind without meditation, no matter how well you understand the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings.

Sometimes I fear that the word meditation is misunderstand and associated with new age hippies or happy-clappy types, especially when talking with ordinary people. There seems to be the general perception that meditation is a new-age "lets all hold hands, sit in a room and chant OM" but, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, this is so far from the truth that it is almost funny.

Meditation could be described as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool employed by individuals using introspection and refined mental attention to stabilize the mind, in order to alleviate dysfunctional states of mind. For some this may seem to cold and dry…perhaps too clinical…but I am only trying to give an alternative description to meditation. Meditation on Loving-Kindness for example alleviates the dysfunctional minds of anger, malice and so forth, minds that arise from the ignorance not understanding dependant-arising. The wonderful feeling generated from the meditation on loving-kindness is still generated regardless of how you describe meditation.