Owning Your Dharma

Mindrolling Monastery, in India, which is where I come from, is also home to the Great Peace Stupa. Inaugurated in 2002, it is the world’s largest stupa. Surrounded by 108 smaller stupas, it is a remarkable example of Buddhist architecture, with wonderful artwork inside. On the other hand, the stupa is very big and flashy, and many of my Buddhist friends were against it from the start. “How much will it cost to build that?” they’d ask, and “Why don’t you build a hospital or school instead?” Another way to look at it is this: The stupa stops your mind. Faced with 108 gleaming white architectural objects that you don’t even have words for, you might stop what you’re doing, with a sense of “What is that?” This is a powerful moment of awareness.

At some point, the human mind just needs to stop and rest in a moment of awareness. This may be the beginning of your journey on the path of practice. Something may simply stop your mind, wake you up, and bring you to a powerful moment of awareness. My wonderful Italian friend Stefania became a Buddhist because a book fell on her head. She was browsing in a bookstore one day, when The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying hit her on the head. That was bonus number one. She put the book back and went on looking around. When she came back to the same spot, the very same book fell on her head again. She took this as some kind of omen or sign—but of what? So she bought the book and took it home. This was Stefi’s introduction to the dharma.

In order to discover something that is subtler and more difficult to articulate, sometimes the human mind just needs to stop. In Tibetan Buddhism, certain objects are said to “liberate upon seeing.” Certain sounds, such as mantras, are said to liberate upon being heard. This is true and very helpful. For that purpose, Buddhist shrines and paintings and statues are good; those bracelets with mantras on them are also wonderful. At a certain level, they do have a purpose. They plant a seed. It has only taken Tibetan Buddhism roughly twelve hundred years to make the brilliant teachings of dharma into something religious, to hang them on the walls and put them on thrones and shelves—but this is good. It has its purpose. Maybe a book will fall on your head and introduce you to what we are all trying to understand.

Each of us must come to the point of simply resting in that moment of awareness, without scratching our heads and asking, “What is she talking about?” What brings you to this moment could be a teacher, a practice, a statue, or a painting. It could be some interesting gift from India, Tibet, or Kathmandu—or a book that falls on your head. Eventually, you will come to the point of being able to empower yourself with this awareness. This is the most remarkable characteristic of the Buddhist tradition. As a human being, you are capable of empowering yourself. You yourself can transcend the doubting mind that does not see its own enormous intelligence and potential to be the cause of happiness and cessation of suffering. The whole Buddhist tradition, no matter which school of thought, is born from this understanding. All streams gather into this single ocean. All the many Buddhist methods and teachings are about empowering yourself to find inner strength and contentment and thus design the field of your own experience.

Until then, you will search for happiness outside of yourself, but you won’t find it. The wealthiest and most powerful people, surrounded by every conceivable material comfort, have not necessarily found happiness. Yet there are people without much food to eat or nice houses to live in who are simply happy and content. For example, I live in India, which is a remarkable place—most remarkable for the small moments of glorious happiness and bursts of the loudest of songs and deepest laughter, which is rare in more proper societies of London or Boston. Of course, we all have ways of finding bits of happiness. But dharma is about finding the cause of happiness and the cessation of suffering within oneself. This will determine how you see and experience things.

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Iremember well from my Catholic convent school days, a Father Cornelius came to lead a class. I later found out he was quite famous, but for us fifth and sixth graders, he simply brought a glass of water to class. We were asked to look at the glass and the amount of water inside. He then made a list of our names and how each of us saw it: half empty or half full. This is the perspective we’re talking about here. What is your perspective on life? When you wake up in the morning, do you see a beautiful day and wonderful people, with the good fortune to be human beings endowed with such positive potential? Are you bursting with enthusiasm to make this the best of days for yourself and everyone around you? This is one perspective.

Or do you wake up to CNN and Fox News? Nothing much good to say there: There are things that could go wrong, things that aren’t right, people who don’t understand each other, craziness and chaos everywhere—and the temperature’s not going to be to your liking. It is up to you which perspective you choose. If you are able to see every glass as half full, this is the basis of goodness. This is where courage, patience, hope, and optimism come from.

Ultimately, the dharma belongs to you. Good or bad, like it or not, it is your dharma. If you give yourself the luxury of abandoning dharma the moment things become inconvenient or difficult, you are missing this quality of ownership. A good example of having no sense of ownership: the rats that are the first to abandon ship when the ship’s about to sink. If the dharma is your truth, ask yourself if you really feel you own the dharma. And if so, what does that actually mean?

Here’s an example of a parallel kind of ownership you already have: You do own samsara. No matter how inconvenient samsara gets, rarely do you say, “I want out.” It’s like being stuck in a bad relationship. On one hand, you think you are stuck in that world because that is your world. On the other hand, you could exchange that world for dharma. Instead of thinking, “This is my world of samsara,” you could think, “This is my world of dharma. This is the truth that I treasure.” And because you treasure what you own, you feel responsible for it.

Without a sense of owning the profound view of dharma, what we value most will be self-absorption, samsaric worldliness, and convenience. Then, any need for commitment, diligence, or embodiment of the teachings will seem like an imposition of rules and regulations. And everything will feel forced: We force ourselves to come to teachings, we force ourselves to practice. And then we begin to barter.

In olden times, there was no currency. You would barter: When you needed oil, you would exchange something for oil. Likewise, some students try to barter with the dharma. They will say to a teacher, “If you don’t come, I won’t practice.” They’ll barter to do three out of the ten things the teacher said to do—and then ask, “Do I have to do it twice a month or is once a month enough?” This is the way some students are. Bartering with the dharma originates from a lack of responsibility for your own mind, your own liberation, and the liberation of all sentient beings.

When you treasure and hold the truth of your mind as most important, a natural sense of responsibility arises. The most natural thing to do then is to fully engage and embody the qualities of dharma. No one has to encourage you to be disciplined or to bind you with commitments. You yourself are naturally responsible for the upkeep and embodiment of the truth that you value.

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From How Not to Miss the Point: The Buddha’s Wisdom for a Life Well Lived by Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche © 2025 by Dharmashri Group. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications.