A Commentary to "The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)"
Introduction
The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment) begins with Dorje Chang Losang Jinpa’s short lamrim prayer. The first verse of the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation and a verse from Prayer in Seventy Stanzas by Aryasura then show how to live your life for others. This attitude is then elaborated with some verses taken from A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Shantideva. This practice is followed by Blessing the Speech and several mantras that are beneficial to recite daily, such as the mantra for blessing the mala.
My wish is that all of you do this most important practice for generating a Dharma motivation, and especially a bodhichitta motivation, when you open your eyes in the morning. As soon as you wake up, whether your sleep has been positive or negative, you should begin this practice. If you know it by heart, you can think it. If you don’t know it by heart, you can read it.
This is how to begin your day, every day of your life, if you want to transform your mind into Dharma. It is for anyone who wants to make their life meaningful and useful not only for themselves but also for the numberless sentient beings, including every single animal – those living in water that are the size of mountains and those that can’t be seen with the eyes but only with a microscope, the worms living in the ground, the tiny insects living in the grass that jump when someone walks on it, and those flying in the sky – as well as every human being, asura, and sura. It motivates you to transform your life from now up to enlightenment, especially from now up to death, and especially for your life today to become a cause of enlightenment for sentient beings. It’s a most unbelievable plan.
In short, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment) contains the main motivation and goal for your whole life and for all your lives up to enlightenment. It is to be practiced forever.