What is the meaning of life? Some of us are still searching for this answer. My immediate answer to this question is that there is no one meaning to one's life. Life is meaningless if you have no purpose. Truthfully, many will not really know the meaning of life until you die because you will not cherish your life until you are dying. So let's us not focus so much on the meaning of life first because it has no meaning unless you learn to cherish your life. When you begin to cherish your life, the meaning will come.

Tantric Practice in Recreating Yourself
Going back to the fundamentals, the reason why we may have difficulty in our meditation practice is because we are still ourselves. For those who have taken the initiation, your tantric commitment requires you to arise as the deity everyday. The meaning for that is to break the "us" who we believe that we are. The real blessing starts when you start to feel somewhat confused and insecure. If you never feel confused in samsara, that means that you are very firmly rooted in it. So for those who have received initiations you should stop daily, take a break and recognize yourself as your meditational deity. Why? Because although we are not yet the deity, we are cultivating on the generation stage.

Finding the Key in Renunciation
But I will honestly tell you that there is no success until you die. The death I am talking about is not the death of your physical body. This death comes from renunciation. Because we all suffer due to our strong grasping and clinging to the self; to name, fame and honor, the more we have, the safer and more secure we feel in samsara. If we don't practice renunciation everything that we do only becomes even more samsaric. We want enlightenment and awakening but we cannot become enlightened when we are clinging to ourselves and our identities. The real truth is found in renunciation. If we don't renounce, we cannot die. If we don't die, we cannot recreate. Then we cannot cherish our life and therefore we will have no meaning in our life.

Whats is Obscuring Our Mind
The most important way to have meaning in our life is to meditate upon death. This practice is so that we get used to the idea of dying. If you cannot get used to the idea of dying you will only continue to become more and more egoistic and grasping. Once you are able to let go of the grasping and your ego, you will be able to let go of the distractions and attachment. This clears your mind up and instantly you will find the meaning to your life.

This advice along with guidelines about the meditation on death, was shared by Singha Rinpoche on the 5th December 2019, during the 1st weekly Dharma Teaching after Rinpoche's India/Nepal pilgrimage trip.

Share your experiences with your spouse and your family members. Care, communicate and work together for the good of your family and for the common good of everyone. Discuss your experiences with your family members. Don't shut them out. It is a big mistake to allow Dharma to cause a separation between you. Dharma is the seed which you plant to create the conditions for you to follow your path. If your family does not share in your views, it's okay. Be patient and realize that we should not always be living in an instant world. Having patience helps to create balance.

We Are Not Perfect

We all need hope. We all want happiness. We all are searching for the light at the end of the tunnel. We all have our struggles and we all have our past. We all have our family problems and we all have our deep, dark secrets. And, we are all NOT angels!

It's All About Support & Understanding

Good relationships all require support and understanding. When somebody falters, remember to support them rather than to police them. Ordinary beings really need to hear and to feel "I love you" every day. Be willing to experience what you learn and be willing to share your experiences. We will each fall sometimes due to our lack of wisdom and our lack of experience but in time we will learn to improve by recognizing this and realigning ourselves.

It is upon these common grounds that we can all come together to share our lives. It is in sharing our lives and experiences that it all becomes so special and so meaningful!

This advice along with what the Guru not wanting disciples to be fans, was shared by Singha Rinpoche on the 21st October 2015, in Syracuse New York while teaching on Making A Committment to a Daily Practice

Dharma practice isn’t just a single method or form of any one thing. Dharma practice is multidimensional. It’s got many different aspects to it. Its focus is not based just upon chanting, or upon eating a pure vegetarian diet, or doing good deeds or only upon meditation. None of these things are wrong, but if you are asking me for my understanding, I would have to say that focusing upon only one aspect of dharma would be imbalanced.

Overcoming Yourself, Get out Of Your Comfort Zone
A good way to practice dharma is for you to be able to open up your own box. On this journey we are always moving and always changing, you are also moving on from your personal mind-set. Most of us have not moved on from our past, and in many ways our past brings us more suffering than happiness. However, if you choose not to open up and share, then you don’t get to hear what you need to hear. Dharma practice, in the real sense of the word, is all about overcoming yourself. And the best way to overcome yourself is to put yourself outside of your normal zone.

Offering your service, expanding your experience
Volunteering is the most meaningful way to go outside of yourself. Volunteering requires us to sacrifice the attachment we have to our own time and to our own targets. Our lives now are mostly only about ourselves. So we all must be willing to stretch our minds, stretch our time and to expand our consciousness. If we cannot do this then we are just like the fish swimming around in an aquarium. We are limited when there is no room for expansion and when we don’t see ourselves as part of the whole world.

This advice along with explanation on the roles of the Guru, was shared by Singha Rinpoche on the 1st June 2017, during the weekly Dharma Teaching

My hope is for you to realise that the temple is truly in your heart and in your mind. There’s no point in intellectualisation. Knowing how to cook does not equate to the ability to cook a delicious meal.

Love & Compassion

At the human level, humans need love and compassion as an experience to truly grow and evolve. Only with love and compassion can we overcome our past and fears, to believe in ourselves and remember the kindness of others.

Re-Creation

On days when you are tempted to just ‘move on’ in life, remember this one word that contains the essence of the three principles of the path – renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness – ‘re-creation’. In tantric practices, we practice everyday to dissolve and re-create our existence and our world. In this sense, every day presents a new chance day for us to realise the Buddha-nature in all beings.

Heart To Heart Connection

I dream of the day when our members from all our centres and people from all over the world can connect at a deeper, more meaningful level heart to heart, so that communication will be unhindered by mundane external appearances.

Thekchen Choling

Our temple name Thekchen Choling conveys the Gurus’ aspirations for us all. Thekchen means Mahayana or Great. Greatness is the accumulation of the small. We need to see beyond being individuals and come together to achieve this greatness through divine communication, motivation, intention setting and action. Choling literally means Dharma temple but it also refers to one’s own awakened mind. Just like the Lion’s Roar that is within each and every single one of us, may we all be fearless, forgiving, loving and compassionate … even to sinners and murderers.

I pray that all of us will embody the spirit of Thekchen Choling that pierces through the samsaric aspects of mankind to be of benefit to all.

Rinpoche sharing on "My Hopes and Dreams for Thekchen Choling", during an interview for a volunteers workshop conducted on 28th - 29th September 2019

It is an unfortunate idea that some people feel that in order to be a spiritual person, these two things cannot co-exist. That one must give up the idea of attaining wealth in order to become a spiritual person. Spirituality, on the Vajrayana path means cultivating an open-ness; a kindness of the heart. The essence of this path is to open up the heart as well as to open the mind. When you do this, you gain a much wider perspective of things. It's not just all black or all white. Going through this experience will be different for each person. Each person's journey is going to be different because each person is unique.

Spiritually Wealthy

A spiritual person must be willing and open to becoming rich. We begin by cultivating an inner richness. By being kind and compassionate to ourselves and to others. Judgements are dropped and are replaced by sincere compassion. We practice honesty and sincerity in business and support one another's efforts which brings about many successes that will benefit everyone, not just our own. We look for opportunities to cultivate a community of successes.

A Good Heart That Connects Hearts

Material wealth is considered an outer wealth. The emphasis must first be placed upon cultivating one's inner wealth, both in the heart and in the mind..... and not to become so attached to the outer. Financial wealth alone is only about finding a wealth on the surface. It is not right or wrong but is not deep enough. To go deeper, and to develop inner wealth, we learn dharma and then we put it into practice through our actions. We cultivate a good heart in order to connect with other people's hearts because a person with a good heart is able to see the goodness in all other beings.

Always Check and Re-Check Your Motivations

Motivation is always very important. It should be to sincerely bring light to the darkness of all hearts. When heart meets heart, there is an openness. When hate meets hate, we are closed.Volunteering is the important action of willingness to give up yourself in order to become useful. Be willing to open yourself up, to give and to allow yourself to be used in a way that you are beneficial to others.

This advice was shared by Singha Rinpoche on the 16th April 2017, during the weekly Dharma Teaching on Wealth & Spirituality

When we give love, we expect to receive love in return, so how can we learn to practice unconditional love?
The answer to practicing unconditional love is found in the very same foundation for having a stable result in one's entire dharma practice.
It's also the same foundation in getting a result in one's refuge, in The Three Principles of the Path and in Tantric practice.

Unconditional love

My answer is from my own practice and experience and is in these three points:
1. Outwardly, do not be attached to things. We can use things but don't become attached to them. Don't let things become your burden. Always prepare to have things that are to be used, to be shared and to be given away without feeling attachment or heartache.
2. Inwardly, do not be attached to your body or anyone else's body. Do exercise and maintain it to keep it healthy and working.
3. Secretly, do not be attached to your mind.After reflecting on and understanding these three points you can now give unconditional love. When you see someone who needs it, you just give it. Love is not a thing to become attached to, so give it freely. That's my straight and to the point answer.

Releasing The Clinging & Craving

We must renounce the clinging, craving attachments we have to external things, to the body and to the mind. If you can't renounce the attachment to the mind then you cannot dissolve your mind into the clarity of the right view of emptiness.With such a strong attachment to the identity of the human mind, we are not able to let ourselves go. Dharma is like the sandpaper or the sharpening stone that wears this identity attachment down. The ego itself is not real. The ego is just your many labels. But when your mind accepts something to be true, then it's your ego that gets affected. All beings that are born are going to die. All of us are going to die. It's really the scariest thing to us. That the identity and the body are going to die.

Turning You Inside Out

If we really digest Buddha's teachings properly we would realize that kindness and compassion are the real qualities of Buddhism. In our practice this eventually leads us to realizations and then that hopefully leads us to wisdom. So when you say you are practicing Buddhism you should watch to be sure that you are not practicing "yourself". When I say practicing "yourself" I mean that is when you are only practicing what you want to practice and only learning what you want to learn. But that is not practicing real dharma. Dharma is not like that. It is not something meant to be practiced only for your comfort. That is because dharma practice is really meant to turn you inside out.

This advice was shared by Singha Rinpoche on the 10th October 2019, during the weekly Dharma Teaching