Into the Heart of Life by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

sometimes I really wonder. I don’t know if society is improving. It would be nice to think so. I’m usually surrounded by lovely people and so I get a rather rosy view of what’s happening in the world. But when you look at so many countries in the world and the sheer brutality, and not just in Asia or in Africa, but in Europe and the United States, then you wonder, Are we learning anything? And so many of the young people are coming up and making exactly the same mistakes all over again—even more so sometimes.
    There are wonderful people in this world, but there always were wonderful people in the world. We don’t have a present-day monopoly on having saints. We don’t have the monopoly on beautiful selfless people; we don’t have the monopoly on having people who are looking for a genuine spiritual path. All throughout the ages, there have been people like that along with the others, and those others are still with us—our whole consumer society is based on pouring oil onto the fires of our delusion and our greed and our violence. Look at the movies.
    I’m not trying to be pessimistic here. I also would like to be optimistic, and there is something in me that is optimistic, because we all have buddha nature and hopefully that will triumph. Light eventually has to triumph over darkness. Even if the darkness lasts for a million years—we switch on the light, and the light is there. The light is always there. It can never ever be destroyed. The light is the ultimate reality. But in the meantime, we are very dominated by these emotional poisons, and our society encourages that. It encourages ambition and success at the expense of others. People are becoming far more stressed-out than they ever were before. They have no time for their families; their children are neglected. The bonding which took place between people is disappearing.
    Q: I was just thinking that we all have the potential to give birth to wisdom, which may compensate for the fact that yes, there are these terrible things occurring.
    JTP: Yes, as I say, we all innately have the seed of buddhahood within us. That is our true nature. Our true nature is good—totally good. And in the end, that has to triumph. But it is taking a long time. Of course, in terms of eternity, this is nothing. Historical time is just a finger snap.
    But that’s why, from our side, we have to make the effort, because if we don’t make the effort, we tend to slide downwards—at the very least into complacency—and we just try to be comfortable and to have a nice time. But that’s not what this life is about. This life is really about developing spiritual muscles and doing something meaningful, not just outwardly, but inwardly. And that takes effort, because the pull of gravity is very strong. It pulls us downwards if we are not very careful. We have to be vigilant; we have to be alert. We cannot become complacent.
     
    Q: Sometimes karma is used as a reason for not intervening in difficult situations, for example when one witnesses adults abusing children.
    JTP: Well, that’s the same as saying, if you’ve got a toothache, “Oh well, it’s my karma to have a toothache so I won’t go to a dentist.” That’s nonsense, isn’t it? Maybe it’s also your karma to go find a good dentist. Likewise, if someone is abusing children, then maybe it’s that child’s karma to find someone to help them. If you’re putting karma as a reason for everything which happens then we don’t do anything, do we? But nobody does that. If you’re sick, you go to a doctor. You don’t just sit there and say, “It’s my karma.”
    Q: But you hear very often, “Okay, it’s your karma; it’s their karma.”
    JTP: Well maybe it is, because we’ve had endless lifetimes in which we’ve planted a million, billion seeds, both negative and positive, and you don’t know when they’re going to come up. But it’s not what comes up which is the important thing. It’s how we respond to what