Not for Happiness Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, a very great Tibetan lama, holder of an unbroken line of masters since Buddha Shakyamuni, immediately puts the reader at ease:
“Too many teachings nowadays that claim to be Buddhist, but tend to be New Age techniques, are aimed at providing a feeling of 'well-being', and if that is your main concern, a full-body massage will would be much more helpful. Because a Buddhist teaching is not made to comfort us. On the contrary, Dharma, which is not therapy, was designed precisely to expose our flaws and make us uncomfortable, to neutralize our habits of cherishing ourselves above all else.

Not for happiness is therefore perfectly aptly titled, for it forces us to consider subjects as demoralizing as death, impermanence, renunciation, uncertainty, the suffering inherent in samsara, this suffering which we so often mistake for happiness. and to which human beings, prisoners of the shells of their body, their speech and their mind, are strangely attached. “The only view a Dharma practitioner can take, writes Dzongsar Rinpoche, is that there is no solution to the evils of samsara, because samsara cannot be fixed. Starting from there, this iconoclastic lama teaches with humor, but also with an enlightened and joyful precision and pragmatism, the Ngeundro, or preliminary practices to the Vajrayana, this diamond vehicle which is the third and highest of Tibetan Buddhism. Above all, he explains what he calls "spiritual warm-ups", or rather the state of mind and the three noble principles that the practitioner must adopt (reflecting on the benefits of following a master, the foundation of the Way, generating bodhicitta, non-dual consciousness and the dedication of merits). Then we move on to the four preliminary practices: taking refuge and prostrations, purification, the offering of the mandala and Guru Yoga. If the teaching delivered by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche is not made for “worldly” happiness, it is an extraordinarily precious guide to achieving the ultimate happiness of enlightenment, because, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: “Buddhism is probably the hardest thing in the world, but once you know it, you know it forever”