1 h 40 min 1 s
Dharma talk —Turning Suffering & Happiness into Enlightenment
Jan van der Breggen
Lodjong
2022

Dharma talk —Turning Suffering & Happiness into Enlightenment

In this Dharma talk, Jan van der Breggen presented key points from Dodrupchen Jikme Tenpé Nyima's heart advice Kyiduk Lamkhyer, or Turning Suffering and Happiness into Enlightenment.

Turning Suffering and Happiness into Enlightenment is a teaching on lojong, or Mahayana mind-training, aimed at cultivating the altruistic awakened mind, based on Śāntideva’s eighth-century classic, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

Many Tibetan Buddhist masters have commented that Turning Suffering and Happiness into Enlightenment is a teaching that especially addresses the challenges faced by those trying to follow the spiritual path in these difficult times, when the effects of pandemic, war, climate change, political chaos and economic hardship are felt by almost everyone. The challenges of life seem at times so overwhelming, immediate, and real that they can make our minds almost constantly anxious and disturbed.

In Turning Suffering and Happiness into Enlightenment, Dodrupchen Jikme Tenpé Nyima gives us the tools to transform the suffering and happiness that are an inevitable part of our human experience and use them as the path to enlightenment.

The means to this is a process of deep reflection, resulting in an understanding that will help us overcome our habitual attitude of aversion towards suffering and attachment to happiness. Sogyal Rinpoche once remarked that

By following this teaching, every situation becomes a source of awakening, everything becomes useful, and everything teaches us. We can begin to see suffering and happiness as an extraordinary opportunity for becoming wiser and more compassionate.


About  Jan Van Der Breggen

Jan Van Der Breggen has studied the Dharma since the mid-1990s, receiving teachings and empowerment from many masters, but principally from Sogyal Rinpoche and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

From 2006 to 2009, he participated in a three-year retreat in France, under Sogyal Rinpoche's guidance. He is currently participating in Milinda, a 10-year Buddhist teacher training programme, under the guidance of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Jan grew up in the Netherlands and has lived in Brisbane, Australia, since 1998, where he obtained a postgraduate degree in information technology. He makes a living as a data and analytics professional for a large financial service provider. Jan was instrumental in founding Rigpa Brisbane in 1999, where he has served as a Dharma instructor for over 20 years.

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  • marlou - il y a 2 ans
    Thank you Jan and organizers Dharmatalk, on Prajnaonline.nl. To hear these great teaching again, and reading aloud with the booklet, is a skilfulll reminder... and sheds our, my aversion to suffering and attachment to happiness in a completely fresh daylight. My question had to do with freeze fight or flee in case of danger, suffering...now in the booklet I found some more answers on where and how to build up on these practices...how to endure suffering, have more equiposie in every situation. But it need to be said that even the lama's sometimes escape from a difficult situration, by going to a better place, where they feel more happy. Nothing wrong with that, probably more sane and a wise thing to do...to be of more value for students and teach from a save environment...but for us, simple students...we sometimes have not all choices to flee....Sometimes, like in a 3-year retreat, you also cannot run away when things become too...difficult...therefore of course these teachings also are a great support as are Dzogchen instructions I suppose and of course Guru Yoga. Anyway, may we all make the best of it. much love and succes, Marlou van Hoorn