MAKING SPIRITUAL CHOICES

 Until we die, we shall suffer pain and pleasure. In our daily aspiration to make living meaningful, comfortable and fulfilling, we will have to suffer pain and pleasure. While the pursuit of materialistic life, to own a house and car, to have a job and a title appears to be fulfilling to our hopes, it is in fact a superficial fulfillment. Spiritual fulfillment comes from praying, making offering, pilgrimages, rituals, and any religious activities.

This life is limited by unpredictability and impermanence, and this is ever evident when we see lives of men and animals passing away one after another, without choices of time, place or age. while this life lasts, we must use it to transcend suffering for this life and life hereafter. This is the precious choice many fail to make early in life. When we are struck with cancer, when paralysed after a stroke, when kidneys fail and muscles and bones begin to deteriorate, it is too late to make the precious choice.

Someone once told me that, we should either live mundane life absolutely or live life of a renunciate monk, and that by practising spiritual ways while young and working, living a married life, we are dishonouring Buddhist virtues . I contradicted this statement, realising that life I live is transitory like a dewdrop on a grass. We have no time to wait until children are married to begin spiritual pursuits. If we think we can wait for disciplined practices in religious activities, we tends to give assurance of life as we wish. In fact, if we begin some religious practices, ngondro and recitations while living the mundane life of work, social life and family, the moral virtues begin to exude in our daily lives, bringing deeper happiness and fulfillment. We cannot wait until we leave work, until be become crippled, to begin life of prayer, practice and spiritual seeking.

You may wait until old age, to pick a rosary, to adorn a maroon, to find a teacher, to seek the Path, I had no time to wait to live this life more meaningfully. Neither a pay raise nor a promotion is as fulfilling and meaningful to me as is the spiritual practice I have undertaken. The pilgrimage and prayers are spices to the actual task of preliminary practices of Ngondro, and the holidays are retreats to seek deeper spiritual awakening.