When you pray to get what you want, it is not blessing. Please remember this. When you pray to get what you want, it is not blessing. Blessing and inspiration has this very dynamic thing that is going on. It is not fixed. 

So to Guru Rinpoche, we always pray, “please bless me with inspiration”. What does this mean? Let me ask you. Do you pray to Guru Rinpoche?  

Okay? Now this prayer to pray to Guru Rinpoche is for the low level. Number one, does Guru Rinpoche need you to pray to him and all? You understand what I mean? No. Right? So that means Guru Rinpoche is a good aspiration for us to become. How you should see Guru Rinpoche is you should see your favorite pop star. You pray to your pop star? 

My time, I only remember Michael Jackson, but I still pray for him because actually, nobody prays for all these people that used to sing for you. They used to dance for you, used to excite you, but nobody pray for them.  

You'll probably never pray for your pop star. You must understand that when you pray to Guru Rinpoche you are praying to fulfill your wish. Can your pop star fulfill your wish? So, the purpose of Guru Rinpoche is not to fulfill your wish, you know. The purpose of Guru Rinpoche is to bless and inspire you. 

So that's why I need to explain what is blessing and inspiration. Now the first part, since you now understand that as ordinary people, when we pray to Guru Rinpoche, we pray to him like a god, that means this itself is wrong view. Because you first believe you are real. Guru Rinpoche, who is Buddha's disciple, taught you that you are not real.  

Now do you exist? Yeah. You exist.   

Are you real? You think so? How you are is being temporarily real at this moment in time only. 

Okay? But I don't I know you don't understand what I'm talking about because there's a lot of question marks coming out of you. When you were five years old, what did you really want? Was that real? Five-year-old version of you, when you wanted your toy or your sweet, you feel that emotion strongly. 

Was it real? But is it still real to you now? Now do you understand? When it means real, this is the real I'm talking about. It is momentarily changing all the time. 

You understand? One thing that is momentarily changing called the suffering of change. The all-pervasive suffering and the suffering of change, these two combined together that is continuously happening to you now, you are not aware is your hair and nail growing and your food digesting to become to become fertilizer. You're not aware. Right? Are you aware your hair growing this time? 

No. Right? So this is something that is very important for you to for you to be aware of. That's why you exist now, but you're not real. Because the real you is still keep on searching for “who am I”. 

That's why you are here. What? All your life, you are searching for who am I. Right? What am I doing? 

Who am I? What's the purpose or what's the purpose of my life? Isn't it?   

Right? So, when we say now, please bless me. The first blessing and the easiest blessing is the blessing of the body. Second blessing, the blessing of the speech is effort blessing. 

Third blessing, is blessing the mind, is transformational blessing. These three, bless my body, speech, and mind, has a secret undertone to it. You want to know? 

Okay. The secret undertone is called Guru Rinpoche, please purify my outer inner and secret obstacle. Outer obstacle is the obstacle of country, people, government, friends, or whoever we are in interaction with, outer obstacle. 

Please purify so that we may live in a stable country and government. Correct? That's why number one is don't create trouble for people. Nobody wants to live in external fear. Suddenly, somebody doesn’t like you and burn down your house while you're sleeping. Scary or not. In all countries and all places, such external outer obstacles are real. What is the next inner obstacle? 

The next one is the inner obstacle that we ask for blessing to purify. This inner obstacle is sickness, also related very much to our mouth. Your sickness, my sickness, most of the time come from what you put in your mouth and what come out from your mouth. It's called the effort blessing. It takes effort not to put things inside and it takes effort not to throw emotion outside. All of us have this nature and habit. This potato chip, very nice. Eat the whole packet. Isn't it? Right? I bless all of you with awareness. What you put inside and what comes out is the effort blessing. 

Take effort to restrain what goes in, restrain what comes out. That's the inner obstacle.  

Interested in listening to more teachings?  

If you have missed this year’s Connect with Guru Rinpoche and are interested in listening to more Dharma teachings or attend retreats, please look out for our Maha-Cundi Drubchen retreat happening soon, with three special trainings by Singha Rinpoche. Click here to find out more.