I started this talk with a quotation from Guru Shakyamuni Buddha:

Do not engage in any harmful actions;
Perform only those that are good;
Subdue your own mind—
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

The first is the cause of suffering, the second the cause of happiness. The discussion of the importance and benefits of patience evolved from that. Everything comes from your mind, everything depends upon the way you think, your moment to moment concepts. Do you label things negatively or positively? The heaviest suffering, what we call hell, comes from your own mind; the greatest happiness, what we call enlightenment, comes from your own mind.

Therefore, the Buddha is saying that the way to never have negative thoughts, the cause of suffering, and to have only a positive mind, which results in only happiness, is to subdue, or take care of, your own mind. Watch your mind all the time. Practice mindfulness. Guard your mind, protect it from disturbing thoughts and eradicate your delusions. How is all that done? Through actualizing the five paths. In the case of the Mahayana, by actualizing Bodhicitta and developing the wisdom realizing emptiness. Through the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, you can completely remove the two types of defilement and attain full enlightenment.

Therefore, subduing the mind is the teaching of the Buddha. That’s the key. Your own mind is the door to happiness; your own mind is the door to suffering. It all depends upon how you use it. It’s like the remote control that controls the channels on your TV.

Click it this way, it goes up; click it that way, it goes down. The way you think determines whether you’ll experience happiness or suffering.

What creates the labels?

Before I finish, I’ll make one more point. Like the monks in the story above, our minds are constantly making up labels that affect our lives. Depending upon the label, we experience different feelings—pleasant, unpleasant or neutral—and that’s how our life goes, twenty-four hours a day. So, what is it that causes our mind to create these different labels? People who apply positive labels experience happiness. People who apply negative labels experience suffering. What is it, then, that causes us to label things positive or negative? What’s the force behind all this?

It’s karma. Because of past karma, some people are able to label things positively while others have to label them negatively. The underlying cause is karma. Therefore, you can see how crucial it is to purify past negative karma and not to create any more—in other words, how essential it is to practice Dharma. Only the practice of Dharma can remove or prevent the negative karma that forces us to label things negatively, thereby creating our own suffering. Dharma is the solution to all life’s problems, whatever they are, and, more importantly, the sole means of preventing them from arising in the first place.

By practicing Dharma now, we can avoid creating the causes for the heaviest sufferings of samsara, those of the lower realms - the hell, hungry ghost and animal realms—and the sufferings we go through in the upper realms, even as humans—illnesses such as cancer and AIDS, aging, death, everything—and thus avoid having to experience them.

By practicing Dharma now we can purify the already created karma of such results. Here is where the whole answer to our problems lies - purify the negative karma already created; do not create any more. This is the reason we take precepts such as the refuge vow, the five lay precepts, not to mention the ordination vows taken by monks and nuns. You don’t even have to take all five precepts. You can take one, two, three or four—whatever you can manage. Of course, there are countless negative karma, but at least you can vow not to create certain kinds.

By practicing Dharma today we also create the causes for our own happiness—the happiness of this life, future lives, liberation and enlightenment. This is something we can do right now. Therefore, it is essential to create as much good karma as possible, while we have the chance. We should take every opportunity to create even the tiniest merit. Since we want even smallest comfort, we have to create its cause. Similarly, since we don’t want to experience even the smallest suffering or inconvenience, we have to avoid creating even the tiniest non-virtue. As it says in the Vinaya teaching, Dulwa lung, "Small drops fill a big pot." Therefore, we shouldn’t think that small merits are useless. Try to collect as many as possible. It also says, "A tiny spark can ignite a huge forest." Therefore, don’t think that small negative karma won’t bring results. Avoid them too. Here is where we must direct all our effort. This is the Buddha’s fundamental advice.

The above teaching extracted from VIRTUE & REALITY – A compilation of Rinpoche’s teachings edited by Dr. Nick Ribush and published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archives.