15 points
Dear friends,
This was sent to a dharma student of mine. But when I read it through, I thought it might benefit more people. These 15 points I wrote for someone doing Dharma work, but it applies just as easily for secular work. Of course all the points I wrote are generalizations, but see which one might be useful. Remember when you do work well, it shows your respect others and you respect yourself.
Tsem Rinpoche
When you do your assignments well it shows:
1. You respect the person assigning you.
2. You have integrity.
3. You want to be part of the team.
4. You will perform well in the team.
5. You have realized your ‘mistakes’ of the past. Whether you have reformed or not is not the issue, the issue is you just get the work done. Without monitoring or prompting from others.
6. You do not wish to be left behind. You are talented and should not be ‘left’ behind. You can contribute so much. Be with the team.
7. You respect those that are working with you and will be perhaps working with you.
8. Work assigned to you, you will play your part and it will not have to be monitored by others hence not burdening them.
9. You take dharma work of any sorts seriously. You are not selective in dharma work. Dharma work is dharma. All dharma benefits so no point to be selective. Just do it and smile.
10. You are determined to win. To make it. To be different. To not disppoint so many anymore. Not disappoint yourself.
11. To use your talents to benefit others. Do your best in any work. Rise to the top. Make yourself proud. Make the real friends who still in contact with you proud of you. They want you to succeed. They want you to win. The friends you made in the dharma are your real friends. They want you to make it. For sure. That’s why they stay in contact with you. How compassionate of them. How fortunate you are to have them. Treasure them.
12. To develop qualities of reliability so others respect you. You deserve respect. You earn the respect and it will be forthcoming. Get that respect and acceptance you yearn so much for.
13. You will be accepted as a good person that produces good work. And all your likes, ‘strange’ habits, ‘strange’ hobbies (hehe) is fine. It’s part of your part and parcel.
14. You are not perfect (no one is) but you give everyone confidence that you will do the best you can. And you are really a great writer and thinker. I wish to develop that. I want you to be happy and successful in dharma.
15. You keep your promises to others. You keep your samaya to your lama.
All those 15 points seems like very easy to understand but when you want to take action to do, It is not easy. After finished reading the 15 points, I know I need to make a change. To me this is very precious gift which Rinpoche give to me and all of us for Chinese New Year:)Like an alarm clock, always :ling…ling…”when I a bit go off, hehe!
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing these points. It all lies in our hands whether we want to be good or bad. We have to train ourselves to be mindful and alert, this is not easy but once we are mindful, we will be able to do our works well and work as a team to achieve good results.
Thank you for these points this clearly shows the compassionate heart of this student and respect for others, whether in dharma or secular life it is great advice for having harmonious relationships with others.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing all these 15 points. It is easy to read and understand the points but when we want to practice it, we let our laziness and ego win. I saved it on my phone to read it again and again. There are many more teaching Rinpoche had taught before (like the teaching in “Peace” book), reading them back helps me to understand how much I’ve been holding on and let my untamed mind to win. Thank you Rinpoche and please rest well.
This is a good points as short motivation. Ya, keep the good job, mean we are compassion towards people around us, working with us. Thanks Guru for the sharing. I will share to my friends too.
Thank you guru for always remind us especially myself be always alert and handling issues skillfully.
Yes just do with a SMILE, thus definitely will bring PEACE to the surrounding people.
By doing our assignment well these are the 15 points that we gain.
These 15 points show me real dharma practitioners values and qualities.
We deliver our work well show our commitment and care to benefit more people.
That’s is what we want to achieve, to serve all sentient being.
In secular world, if we want to be successful and respectful all the 15 points is applicable too.
Is not about just how you want to do it but is how well you want to deliver it.
Thank you Rinpoche for the teaching.
I Love all the 15 points it is very reasonable and it must be in any work and not Dharma work. I strongly feel that one should be fully committed and determination to stay committed may it be Dharma work is any course of work. We must put our hearts and minds to it. I cant wait to be there. I will come in soon. I find this 15point is extremely useful to me as a reminder. They all come timely for me. Thank you Rinpoche you seemed to touch every topic I have in my heart always at the right time. I believe nothing happens by coincidence but when I tend to worry and then I do my prayers everything seems to fall together. thank you very much I shall print this and have it paste in my dairy and read through it every day say my pledge before I start my work each. This is simple wonderful. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Thank you _/\_
Thank you Rinpoche for your deep concern in sharing these 15 invaluable points with us for doing Dharma work in our center. The most important thing, like all gurus said, is to have a good motivation and a good heart to benefit sentient beings in whatever we do as buddhists. Especially, when doing dharma work, we should not have a self-cherishing thought, anger and attachment. Working for the Dharma center is primarily helping to spread the Dharma, inspire and empower people from all walks of life to work and live on a spiritual and harmonious basis to benefit others. Youe 15 zero-defect points certainly make a wonderful and useful guide to help us towards doing dharma work skilfully with much wisdom to nuture,serve and bring people to Dharma practices. Thank you once again Rinpoche, for your care and compassion.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing these 15 points with us. They are so relevant and true. They have been and still are continue to be my guiding principles in my daily work be it secular or dharmic till to-date. It helps alot!
many times when things gone wrong, we tend to push the blame out to others, but never realize that its our fault, when I read the 15 points, in my mine was keep thinking yes I know, this is commonsense what, etc. But when think deeper, actually how many of the above 15 points that I have fulfill? It is shame to said that, but, seems like there is still a long way for me to go, this 15 points will be a good daily sadhana for me.
Thank you Rinpoche for this message, yes, this not only suitable for one but it is suitable for many people, especially me.
Sometimes we focus on getting people accept our likes and dislikes or our strange character , does not realize that real acceptance by people comes from your qualities such as integrity and when we have all that, all of a sudden, your weird character become not so overt anymore and sometimes even accepted well by yourself and others.
I love this. I sneakily took this when I first saw it in an email Rinpoche had sent out and forwarded it on to some people that I work with. they are points that make total sense, not just in a Dharma environment, but in any environment, whether in work or even in our social interactions. A lot of it, I think, comes down to having integrity, taking ownership and responsibility for what we do and honoring our words.
Rinpoche said something very simple to us a few days ago which is related to this post: he explained that if we don’t fulfil what we’re supposed to do (no matter what it is, how secular/ easy / difficult/ worldly or Dharmic), and can comfortably just go home to sleep or whatever, it shows clearly just how selfish we are, because it means that someone else will have to give up their sleep and work extra hard to cover what we didn’t do. Any decent person shouldn’t want to create more burden or pain for another person, would they? No, I didn’t think so – so have some balls and do what you’re meant to do already!
This is good advice which can even be applied to the secular world. I was going to pick my favourite point then found that they are all good! If we perform well, people will trust, accept and respect us. Rinpoche has always stressed the importance of keeping our promises. Keeping good samaya with Rinpoche is key to receiving attainments in future.
Thank you Rinpoche for the points. It was well written and explained in manner that everyone can understand easily. I like all the points especially point 15… I will always do my best in whatever is assigned to me…I will not give up nor forsake my Lama…
I think a lot of us just want to “get things done”. But to get it done, is it our best or simply just to get it done. We might put in a lot of effort but it might all turned out wrong. Perhaps it has a lot to do how much we actually value our work. We take such good care of ourselves, making sure we are being treated well simply because that we care. If we apply the same care to our work, and sincere. We will produce better work.
The nature between Dharma work and wordly job outside there is slightly different.
In corporate world, we are forced to compete with the colleagues and working damn hard to reach the KPI. We are forced to perform well and nobody cares what you feel at all.
Im glad that i could work for Dharma now. My 2 months in corporate world made me realised that what i want in my life is to give not take from others. And this is a pretty good guideline for all the Dharma workers. Working for Dharma doesn’t mean that we could work ‘freely’ and layback. We should need work smart,harder and with integrity, not for money sake, but is to serve the Dharma and all sentient beings. I love this guideline, thank you Rinpoche!
Thank you Rinpoche for useful 15 pointers. At first it seems like there is a lot we need to be mindful. However, when I reflected upon them with eyes closed but mind open, my heart feels good with each point because they are all very agreeable and accords with my own experience whenever I get my motivation, efforts and goals right- which is to max my potential and to not compromise on any efforts which benefit others whether acting alone or as a team.
These 15 pointers are excellent to be applied by everyone regardless doing dharma or secular work. This will be one of the blog topics for Kechara Paradise staff to read in preparation for their next blog quiz.
When we do any work with good motivation, the result will be positive. Good begets good. It is only logical.
Once we change our perspective from working just for the sake of getting the job done or to pay our monthly bills and material means, Dharma work becomes a wonderful platform to develop ourselves in terms of qualities we have and don’t have. The care that we put into our work is a spiritual practice to lessen our selfishness. Through Dharma work, we learn to respect, develop integrity & reliability and so on. To me, doing any work done well is compassion by being responsible. There is many more one can gain from doing good work with this in mind.
For example, when we can accept any jobs regardless how humiliating it may seem, we learn to be humble. When we stop being selective with our work, we learn to stop being selective of who we like and don’t like. We learn acceptance. We should keep this in mind daily and that is how you can see a person starts to change over time by doing work for this reason. Work becomes a spiritual practice – it’s called dharma work.
Thank you Rinpoche for these very useful 15 points for us to self check in doing dharma as well as secular work.
If we can be mindful of all the points effortlessly, we would have given some happiness to all those that work with us.
I can’t help thinking how nice it would have been if only I could at least make people that I come across in dharma and secular work lighter and happier.
Thank you Rinpoche, this 15 pointers are very important when working in a team and applicable to any work, not just dharma work. Will forward this to my workmates and boss =)
Thank you Rinpoche for giving us such a great teaching. These 15 points will serve as the guiding lines for me to check my mind everyday. All these points shows that by doing my assignments well is not about ourselves any more. It is about others. It is about the hope and expection others have in me to accomplish the assignment. It is about the kindness I have toward the people I work with (my team) or the people who will be benefited if i ahve done my assignments well. The more excuses or judgements we put up such as I do not like the assignment, I have no time, I do not like the person I work with, I got kids to take care of, I got husband and in laws to serve and the list go on and on. The excuses that i put up are in fact our own responsibilities or i shall call it as our life assignments which needed to be carry out everyday. Hence, these 15 points are valid too. We could gain respect from our in laws, husband even our kids, our colleagues, our staffs and our friends. This is dharma too.
Respect is essential when we are working with many people and in a big organisation and trust and respect comes hand in hand most of the time. So if respect exists so much more work gets done and easier to work with them.
Thank Rinpoche for this Kechara Memo
, I really do find I learn much much more about myself, people and how to do work much better in Kechara and we get feedback and guidance as to how to do better when faced with changing conditions.