Dalai Lama: 6 Hard Pills To Swallow in Life That Will Make You Stronger.
The sooner you know, the sooner you can solve it.
I have a confession:
Witches, vampires, and immortality excited me. Don’t get me wrong, but Vampire Diaries remodeled me.
Fables were my new favorite.
When I was 8, I asked a librarian: “I wish we all had a choice to live as an immortal.”
To which she gauzed my height and pushed back her greasy glasses. She answered:
“Umm, you know, you can. Start gulping hard pills earlier in life so you can concentrate on good pills.”
Hard pills and good pills, is that a thing?
(Nothing an Amoxicillin cannot solve. Evil laugh HEHE)
Reading Dalai Lama, I realized our lives provide us with a shared portion of hard and good pills.
- Hard pills: Death, financial strains, health problems, relationship problems, depression, bad habits, etc.
- Good pills: Assets, family, friends, house, income, good habits, success, knowledge, etc.
Align your hard pills to get the most out of good pills. In other words, stay prepared to swallow the hard pills first. This way, you can get it done sooner.
For that, below are 6 lessons by Dalai Lama that will help you fight tough situations.
Let’s get started.
1. Nothing stays
A moment of truth:
Our grandparents never had to leave their hometown to study in a strange place.
It’s us who have to decide between:
- Studying at a local college
- Or leave home to study at a new location
Meaning: we were never used to making these kinds of decisions. That’s one of the reasons many teenagers make the wrong career decisions for their life.
But why do you have to make a decision earlier?
Dalai Lama says:
“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.”
We are young when we leave our homes, parents, and family. Most people make wrong decisions.
But on the bright side, this hard pill reminds us that life never stays the same.
Life is not your comfy sofa. When you take a break from people, you analyze their worth.
Lesson: The things that cannot fly cannot guarantee their return.
2. It takes time to make a difference
Let me accept:
- Some people dissected our history to the core.
Marcus Aurelius, Napolean Hill, and Seneca are the most famous philosophers.
You might think they came from heaven.
Remember that these people were ordinary human beings. Though they learned something: it was to realize that they could make a difference. They trusted themselves.
As Dalai Lama puts it:
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
A mosquito can suck your blood and cause you the torment of itches. Let me ask you, are you afraid of tiny insects?
Or perhaps you never thought an insect could make a difference?
Animals are faithful caregivers of this earth. However, we humans are not. We can focus on doing remarkable things as soon as we understand our worth and mind.
But for that, never underestimate yourself.
Lesson: Things take time, But that doesn’t mean they’re not happening. Instead, enjoy the process.
3. You won’t get everything you wish for
I wish Jeanie or Alladin were true.
In an article I submitted to my Schools’ fall fest 2015, I wrote:
“I wish jeanie or Alladin were true. I mean man, can you believe God accepts all our wishes without telling us if this is the first or final slot we’re using? This is insane.”
- Nobody knows how many wishes we have used.
- No one knows how many wishes we have left.
The best part? Nobody knows if wishes are even a thing.
As far as it concerns my mother, prayers and fortune are everything. This reminds me of a Dalai Lama’s quote:
“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
Life is like a roller coaster ride. So let it be like that.
Who says you must be a warrior, a wanderer, and a buzzkill? Enjoy each moment of life.
There’s joy in starving for things you cannot achieve. Maybe that’s the reason you have trust in faith.
Always stay thankful for what you have.
Lesson: Life is like a cinema, and with every act, it pulls up a curtain. The curtain comes bearing good and bad news.
4. Share, or you will get mad
Do you know something?
- The empires that were illiterate never had the true potential to pass down knowledge. (E.g., Early Sumerian kings)
- On the contrary, the literate empires passed down their knowledge in the form of books. (E.g., Roman)
They might look identical to you, but they’re not.
The illiterate empire died. The literate empires still live today.
How? We read about them.
Think of those literate clans who would never teach their young ones, share their knowledge, and learn — they’d be dead as good. We’d never know they existed.
That’s it.
Dalai Lama says:
“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.”
There is a price that comes with immortality — and it is to share knowledge.
Share your learning, even if it’s with your enemies or friends. It’s the only fine way to remember it. The more time you spend keeping knowledge to yourself, you’ll go mad. Our hearts cannot hold the information we are learning.
Lesson: Maybe that’s why our generation has gone mad — keeping inside of our hearts that was never meant to keep.
Instead, share.
5. Happiness requires creative sacrifice
Even when you buy ready-made clothes, they don’t fit you.
How can you expect to stay ignorant of your:
- Happiness
- Health
- Peace
- Family
- Relationships
- Actions (of course)
All the above virtues should be handled with care. Or, in other words, handcrafted and kept in close hindsight.
Our actions directly result from purifying our virtues.
As Dalai Lama says:
“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”
Meaning that if you’re not happy, you are doing something wrong.
Unhappiness, as most people say, isn’t cursed.
The first step is to accept that your actions might be leaking. Only then can you move ahead and strive for solutions.
If you’re unhappy, your actions may fall into the following categories.
You (Might):
- Overthink
- Fight with everyone
- Don’t do anything productive
- Don’t meditate
- Don’t indulge in art
Instead, opt for creative things to find pleasure in life. Creative things like painting, drawing, dancing, singing, etc., can help you always find what you truly like.
Lesson: Happiness is not directly achieved; it’s a product of your results.
6. Life lessons are like raisins’ stems
What you will not learn will keep coming back.
Lessons are like raisins in oatmeal.
Some people are pretty okay eating the stem on top of raisins. Some people do not.
Once you pluck out the raisin’s stem, you’re free to enjoy the oatmeal. But if you don’t, you must be cautious of every spoonful.
It’s like you have two choices:
- Pluck the stem altogether before eating
- Or pluck out the raisins’ stems if they get in your spoon
Here’s a detailed analysis:
- Option one takes hardly 5 minutes.
- Option two takes 20 minutes+ frustration (free of cost)
Comin’ back to the point, lessons act the same. The sooner you learn, the sooner you can forget them.
But you have to learn, or they’ll keep coming back.
Dalai Lama says:
“It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.”
When an enemy teaches us lessons, learn them. These lessons are the only thing that can help us memorize the importance of compassion, tolerance, and unity.
In short, the best lessons come from enemies.
Lesson: The enemies’ lessons are important. Once you learn them, you can focus on improving yourself.
Final thoughts:
Buddhists always focused on the following:
- Living a morally good life
- Achieving enlightenment
Finding a way to be prepared for these hard pills can allow humans to live in a higher mental dimension.
Just because you are prepared, there’s nothing in the world that can make you sad.
Good pills are like a glass of clean water. As soon as you can extract the germs (the hard pills) and make the water purify, your life becomes content.
So, which hard pill are you going to deal with now?
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