Bodhicharyavatara Chapter 8, Stanzas 72-79

Ringu Tulku Rinpoche
Teachings on Bodhicharyavatara
Chapter 8: Meditation
Session 20
Stanzas 72-79

We move now into other areas where attachment brings suffering: for example spending your life accumulating wealth for the sake of comfort in old age, when there is no longer the energy, desire or ability to enjoy it. In the meantime, Shantideva says, we can bring shame and harm on ourselves and lose friendships and family in the drive to accumulate riches. We tie ourselves to a system, to masters who have no respect for us and place no value on our work.

Craving can cause us to sell ourselves to the highest bidder, while at the same time we lose our own sense of worth. What is truly valuable passes us by in the race to accumulate wealth, but our days are spent working so hard all we can do in the end is sleep like a corpse.

On the other hand, if we are able to accumulate wealth and not be attached to it, it won’t be a problem if, in the end, it is lost.

Archive members can also view the teaching on the Chapter 8 page along with the other teachings on this chapter. All previous sessions on Chapters 1–8 are available in the Courses section of the Teachings Archive.

New sessions will  be posted twice a week, usually on Tuesday and Friday. Every Friday we will send a mailout with links to all new teachings posted during the week.

Rinpoche has kindly agreed to answer questions regarding these teachings once in every two weeks in a live webinar on Zoom, which will be simultaneously streamed on this website. Next webinar will be on 7th February. You are encouraged to ask your question live in the webinar, but if you are more comfortable with submitting it in writing, you can do so by using the comment area below. Please reflect on your question carefully before you send it, and be concise and only use one short paragraph and less than 80 words. Vous pouvez également envoyer des questions en français. También puede enviar preguntas en español. Sie können Fragen auch auf Deutsch senden. Puoi anche inviare domande in italiano. Presubmitted questions in other languages are also welcome and they will be translated to English.

In any other questions and for technical help, please contact us at Teachings Archive.

These teachings are dedicated for all who are sick and dying of corona virus, and for all who are tirelessly working in order to help them.

Audio-only version, Translations and other supporting materials:

Questions:

Your questions are most welcome. Archive members can log in and leave their questions for Rinpoche as a comment below, so that others can see them too. Please be concise and only use one short paragraph and less than 80 words. Questions longer than that may have to be edited. Questions will be collected from here in the evening day before each Live Q&A.