A Simple Way to Attain Self Confidence

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Buddha gave many thousands of teachings, but the root of all the great realizations of the Buddhist path to enlightenment are the meditations on love, compassion and the supreme good heart of bodhichitta - a mind that spontaneously wishes to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings. Training our mind in these meditations will give us great confidence that is based on our wish and capacity to benefit others. In How to Transform Your Life, available as a free eBook download, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says: 

‘... the more we cherish others and act to benefit them, the greater our self-respect and confidence will become. The Bodhisattva vow, for example, in which the Bodhisattva promises to overcome all faults and limitations, attain all good qualities and work until all living beings are liberated from the sufferings of samsara, is an expression of tremendous self-confidence, far beyond that of any self-centred being.’

The first step in achieving this goal is to reduce our desire for our own happiness, which is our self-cherishing, and to replace this with a mind that wishes others to be happy. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso explains:

'If we sincerely practise every day stopping wishing for ourself to be happy all the time and instead wishing for others to be happy all the time, then we will understand from our own experience that through this practice, which prevents attachment to the fulfilment of our own wishes, we will have no experience of problems or unhappiness at all. Thus, if we really want pure and everlasting happiness and freedom from misery, we must learn to control our mind, principally our desire.'

If in our daily life we put effort into developing and improving our mind that cherishes others, eventually we will become a great being, a Bodhisattva, and our beneficial influence will extend well beyond the limitations of the present level of our imagination.