Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Becoming a spiritual philanthropist

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

The moral discipline of gathering virtuous Dharmas. 

I have a good friend who is a very successful businessman.  No matter where you go with him, whether it is to a restaurant, a golf course, even an amusement park, no matter where he looks he “sees” the business opportunities around him.  He can analyze every dish, or every ride, and calculate roughly the profit margins and how the company could make even more money if only they did XYZ.  In today’s modern economy, the greatest rewards go not to those who make things, but to those who invent new things or discover new or different ways of doing things.  It goes to those who can see and know how to realize opportunities to make money. 

Of course as Buddhists, we tend to look down on such people, thinking they have been seized by samsara, and we scoff, “if only they put as much effort into attaining enlightenment as they do in conducting business, they would be enlightened by now.”  Yet, let’s look at this statement from a personal perspective.  Put another way, “if only we put as much effort into attaining enlightenment as they do in conducting business, we would be enlightened by now.”  In fact, we can say these successful businesspeople are showing us a perfect example of how we should be as we go about our daily life – the only difference is we have a different bottom line.  We do not seek to maximize our outer wealth (though we don’t shun it either), rather we seek to maximize our inner wealth of virtuous karma and Dharma realizations.  Just like my friend, we should constantly be on the lookout for different ways of making inner wealth and maximizing our virtues.  The difference between an entrepreneur and a business school Professor is the entrepreneur acts on what they see, they don’t merely identify the opportunities.  In the same way, the difference between a Dharma practitioner and a Dharma scholar is the practitioner acts on the virtuous opportunities they see. 

We may object, “but isn’t that a selfish way of looking at the spiritual path.  It just seems so crass to put it that way.”  This objection comes from a failure to make two crucial distinctions.  The first is the distinction between a way of doing things and what is being done, the second is between a selfish reason for doing something and a selfless reason for doing the same thing.  The way of doing things by the successful businessperson, politician, or Olympic athlete is perfect.  They are “all in.”  They hold nothing back.  They leave no stone unturned, no task undone.  They push themselves 115% all the time.  They are single-pointed in their quest to accomplish their objectives.  Everything they do, directly or indirectly, acts to move them closer to the accomplishment of their goal.  They never succumb to laziness nor complacency with what they have already accomplished.  This is how we need to be with our Dharma practice.

Likewise, it may seem selfish to be in constant pursuit of inner wealth, but we can do so for selfish reasons or for selfish reasons.  The great philanthropists, like Bill Gates, have worked very hard to accumulate tremendous amounts of outer wealth, but their purpose in doing so is to have more resources with which they can help others.  Bill Gates alone has done more to help the people of this world than virtually all but the biggest countries, and you can even argue that he does so for a more altruistic motivation since most foreign aid has little to do with helping other countries and more to do with bringing those countries within one’s sphere of influence.  Bodhisattvas are spiritual philanthropists.  They work very hard to accumulate tremendous amounts of inner wealth of virtuous karma and Dharma realizations, and their purpose in doing so is to have more inner resources with which they can help others.  The goal of a Bodhisattva is take on the hard tasks so others don’t have to.  They learn how to do things to make it easier for others.  They gain realizations so that their own mind becomes a source of peace and stability for others in this world.  They acquire wisdom to be able to share it with others. 

While there are countless different ways one can accumulate virtues, from one perspective they can all be classified under two categories:  making offerings and doing prostrations.  To make offerings, in the broadest possible terms, means to give away what we have that is valuable.  Whether we are giving to samsaric beings or enlightened ones, the mind of giving away what is valuable is the same.  Quite simple, giving creates the karmic causes to receive what we give.  Giving with a bodhichitta motivation functions to multiply the power of our giving by the number of beings upon whose behalf we give, in this case countless.  The only reason we have something to give now is because we gave in the past.  Giving to enlightened beings is a special form of giving.  We may wonder, “if enlightened beings already lack nothing, what is the sense in giving them things?”  The answer is we give enlightened beings what we have because we know they will use it in the most beneficial way for all living beings – for their enlightenment.  If you had money to invest, does it not make sense to give it to the most successful money manager?  In the same way, if we have virtuous karma to invest, it makes sense to give it to those who know how to make the most of it.  Every day, I offer my body, my mind, my time, all my money, all my family and the U.S. foreign policy establishment (all things I touch in some way) to Dorje Shugden, and I request him, “please fully use these things for the enlightenment of all beings.”  My first teacher, Gen Lekma, said, “Dorje Shugden wastes nothing.”  So while it might not be immediately obvious to me how all these things can be used exclusively for the enlightenment of all beings, I can know with certainty that if my intention in offering them and my faith in Dorje Shugden are sufficient, it is guaranteed that eventually this will come true. 

Prostrations, here, does not simply mean folding our hands together and putting our forehead on the ground in front of some Buddha.  The physical act of prostration, while in and of itself virtuous, is not the real act of prostration.  The mental act of prostration is “applying effort to cultivate within ourself the good qualities we prostrate to.”  We are normally completely blind to the good qualities of others, and instead only see their faults.  But those who see to gather virtuous Dharmas have the opposite mental habit.  Venerable Tharchin explains that rejoicing in the good qualities of others creates the causes for ourselves to acquire those same qualities; and that criticizing the faults of others creates the causes for ourselves to acquire those same faults.  This is worth contemplating deeply and checking against our own habits of mind.  Normally, driven by our insecurity, we try knock down in some way those we perceive to be better than us and we generate disdain for those we see as less than us.  Such is the pathway to servitude.  Instead, we need to make a point of identifying, appreciating ,and then striving to emulate the good qualities we see in others.  If we do, we will make rapid progress towards enlightenment.  This is the essential meaning of prostration.

Putting the two together, we “prostrate” to the good qualities we see in others, acquire such good qualities ourselves, and then we give them away in the form of offerings to others.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  The freedom of restraint

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To refrain from non-virtue. 

This commitment advises us to avoid all negative actions, especially transgressions of our refuge, pratimoksha, bodhisattva, and tantric vows. 

The reason for this is simple:  all non-virtuous actions are harmful in some way, either to ourself or to others; and all a Buddha’s actions are beneficial in some way, either to ourself or to others.  So non-virtuous actions and a Buddha’s actions are completely opposite of one another.  When we train in Tantra, we are in effect bringing the future result of being a Buddha into the path right now.  Basically, by applying effort to act like a Buddha now we will more quickly actually become one in the future.  Christians sometimes wear these bracelets which say, “what would Jesus do?” and they use this as a constant reminder of how they should act in their daily life.  Tantric practice is essentially the same.

It was explained earlier that a Buddha’s form body is the karmic result of the Commitments of Buddha Vairochana (the ones discussed over the last several posts).  A Buddha’s form body is like a machine in this world that only engages in virtue and which functions to ripen and liberate all around us.  Abandoning all non-virtue is the method by which we bring ourselves into alignment with this liberating power.  We sometimes think becoming a Buddha means we take everything on ourselves.  But in reality, it is more an issue of putting ourselves into alignment with the Buddhas already doing this work in this world.  Their enlightened actions flow through our karmic relationships to eventually liberate all living beings. 

There are more than 240 different Kadampa vows and commitments, so it is sometimes very hard to know how to practice them all.  That is why Geshe-la provides us with the “essential meanings” of the vows.  The essential meaning of our pratimoksha vows is “do no harm.”  The essential meaning of our refuge vows is “rely upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to change your mind.”  The essential meaning of our bodhisattva vows is, “put others first.”  And the essential meaning of our Tantric vows is, “maintain pure view out of compassion.”  If we just do these things, then we are practicing the essential meaning of all our vows, everything else is just more specific applications/implications of these general principles.  To avoid non-virtue, then, is to do our best to live our life consistent with these basic moral precepts.

Many people mistakenly view moral discipline as a constraint or a limitation on their freedom.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  We are currently completely unfree because we are controlled by our delusions, but it is by restricting the freedom of our delusions through our practice of moral discipline that we set ourselves free.  It is by indulging in our delusions that we actually restrict our freedom.

A Pure Life: Don’t eat at inappropriate times

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part ten of a 12-part series on how to skillfully train in the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  The 15th of every month is Precepts Day, when Kadampa practitioners around the world typically take and observe the Precepts.

The precept here is to not eat at inappropriate times, which is typically understood to mean we do not eat after lunch.  The reason for this precept is not that it is inherently non-virtuous to eat after lunch, rather we do so as purification for all of the negative karma we have accumulated in our past lives related to food.

We all need food in order to survive. But we do not necessarily have to engage in negative actions in order to get our food. However, in our countless previous lives we have engaged in innumerable negative actions in pursuit of food. We see this in particular in the human realm, the animal realm, and the hungry ghost realm. In the human realm, people hunt or fish and kill animals for food.  In Joyful Path, Geshe-la tells the story of the man who was born in a resembling hell that during the day he was eaten by vicious animals, but at night he was visited by beautiful goddesses. This rebirth occured because in his past life he was a butcher, but made a promise to not kill animals at night. As a result, his practice of moral discipline led to him being visited by beautiful goddesses but his killing of animals during the day resulted in his rebirth being viciously attacked by animals. Many people hunt and fish thinking there is nothing wrong with it. But from a karmic perspective killing animals and killing fish is still killing.

We also see tremendous non-virtuous actions in the animal realm related to feeding. It is enough to watch Animal Planet or National Geographic documentaries about the animal realm to see what life is like and how virtually all day every day animals in the wild are either hunting other animals or being hunted.  The hungry ghost realm is worse still. Beings in the hungry ghost realm are almost never able to find food unless it has been specifically dedicated for them by kind practitioners. They engage in virtually every kind of negative action in pursuit of finding something to eat. Even if they acquire their food, the negative karma remains with them. We ourselves have been born countless times in the animal realm and in the hungry ghost realm, and as a result all of the negative karma we accumulated during those rebirths remains on our mind. If we do not purify this negative karma, it will eventually ripen.

When we take the precept to not eat after lunch, it is a practice of purification of our negative karma associated with food. The practice of purification can be understood according to the four opponent powers: the power of regret, the power of reliance, the power of the opponent force, and the power of promise. 

In this context, we aim to make our training in the precept of not eating after lunch a practice of purification. We generate the power of regret by contemplating deeply all of the negative karma we have created in this life and in our countless previous lives related to food. We should consider that we have not yet purified this negative karma and that it remains on our mind. If we do not purify it, we will inevitably suffer the negative consequences. We generate the power of reliance through engaging in the practice of actually taking the precepts. We imagine in the space in front of us is our spiritual guide in the aspect of Buddha Shakyamuni.  Our taking of the precept itself is relying upon the Dharma. If we are taking the precepts with our spiritual friends, us mutually encouraging each other to engage sincerely in our precepts practice is relying upon sangha. We generate the power of the opponent force by keeping our precept throughout the day. Every time the thought or tendency arises in our mind thinking that we should eat something, we can recall all of the negative karma that we have created with respect to food in the past and remind ourselves of are precept to not eat after lunch as purification. This mental action of keeping our precept functions as the direct opponent that we are engaging in out of regret. The power of the promise in this context is not the promise to just simply keep our precept for the day, but rather to refrain from engaging in negative actions associated with food in the future.

It is important to remind ourselves that we are all bound for the lower realms unless we purify. It is not a question of do we fall into the lower realms or not, nor is it like in Christianity where if we are 51% good we supposedly take rebirth in heaven. Rather, from a Buddhist perspective, everyone bound up in samsara will inevitably fall into the lower realms. Indeed, close to 99% of all living beings within samsara are in the lower realms. The lower realms are our actual home, and our present rebirth in the human realm is a very brief and very rare aberration from our normal state.

We also need to honestly acknowledge that up until now we have not taken the practice of purification seriously enough. If we had time bombs strapped to our back and we had no idea when they would go off, we would be extremely motivated to remove the timebombs from our back. Our situation is actually far more dangerous than this. We have countless karmic time bombs which could cause us to take lower rebirth and experience incalculable sufferings, and we have no idea when this karma will ripen or when we all die. It may happen today. We do not know. It is simply too dangerous to remain complacent and allow this negative karma to remain unpurified on our mind. This is the essential meaning of a pure life and the practice of the eight Mahayana precepts. We recognize we have created non virtuous karma by not following these precepts, and our training in them is a practice of purification aimed at solving this problem.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Turning to our spiritual friends

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To go for refuge to Sangha. 

Geshe-la explains the essential meaning of going for refuge to Sangha is to apply effort to seek Sangha’s help.  All us face difficulties in life, and when we do, we quite naturally turn to others for help and guidance on how to respond.  This is natural and normal.  Since we have two types of problem – outer and inner – it is also entirely natural that we turn to two different types of help.  For our outer problems, we can and should continue to turn to the external experts exactly the same as everybody else.  There is nothing about being a Dharma practitioner that means we shouldn’t rely upon external help for external problems.  What being a Dharma practitioner does mean is that in addition to turning to external sources of help for our external problems, we also turn to Sangha for help with our inner problems of delusions and negative minds about what is happening in our life, and our inner problems of uncontrolled death and rebirth. 

To keep things simple, we go for refuge to Buddhas when within our mind we pray to them and request their blessings.  We go for refuge to Sangha when we turn to any aspect of our tradition in this world.  Sangha is comprised of all our Gen-la’s, our Resident Teachers, our center administrators, all our Sangha friends, and even the various on-line Kadampa groups on Facebook, etc.  In a practical sense, to go for refuge to Sangha means (1) we acknowledge that we have an inner problem of delusion, (2) we have faith and confidence in our Sangha friends that they can help us resolve our inner problem, and (3) we have enough humility to be willing to ask for help.  All three of these are necessary, and each one individually represents a good deal of inner work.

To acknowledge that we have an inner problem means we are mentally clear on the difference between our outer problem and our inner problem.  Our outer problem is the outer circumstance, such as a controlling boss, an angry spouse, a lack of money, a bad reputation, etc.  Normally, we are completely convinced that this outer problem is the cause of our unhappiness, and because we wish to be happy, we apply great effort to change our outer circumstance.  Believing that certain external conditions are necessary for our happiness is the delusion called “attachment.”  Believing that certain external conditions are causes of our unhappiness is the delusion called “aversion.”  The fundamental point of departure on the spiritual path is the clear recognition that our happiness is completely independent of our external circumstance and is entirely dependent upon how our mind relates to that external circumstance.  Our external circumstance can be awful, but internally we have just the right attitude towards it, and not only will our awful external circumstance not be a problem for us, it will be viewed as a blessing pushing us towards enlightenment.  Likewise, our external circumstance can be fantastic, but internally we have just the wrong attitude towards it, and not only will our external circumstance not lift our spirits, but it will even become a source of further misery.  This clearly shows that our experience of our circumstance depends entirely upon changing our mental attitude and reaction towards it.  This is our inner problem we turn to Sangha to overcome.

Having faith and confidence in our Sangha friends that they can help us overcome our inner problem means we trust that our Sangha friends will give us good advice based on their own experience.  We all have people in our life who we turn to for advice.  We also all have people who we don’t turn to because we know their advice is not good.  Some people think of faith as a bit like Cupid who shoots us with the love arrow, either we feel it or we don’t.  This is wrong.  Faith, like love, is something that can and should be cultivated with effort.  So we need to apply effort to cultivate faith in our Sangha friends.  Faith does not mean we turn a blind eye to the faults of that which we have faith in, rather faith is a wisdom mind that knows how to receive benefit from whatever qualities or faults appear to our mind.  Some people, not understanding this, generate faith when they think the object of their faith appears perfect, but then they become crushed when the object of their faith appears to make mistakes.  This is not faith, this is just a form of attachment to spiritual people.  It is not complicated to receive benefit from the mistakes of our Sangha friends, we just view their mistakes as lessons in what not to do.  It is important, also, that we make effort to be on good terms with everybody in the Sangha.  This is not easy, but it is worth our while.  We can view each member of the Sangha as revealing to us some aspect of our own mind, and by learning how to be on good terms with each member of the Sangha, we are working on that part of our mind.  But faulty appearing Sangha members aside, we should also cultivate close mentor-mentee style relationships with those teachers and senior Sangha members who particularly inspire us.  Different people have different experience and presentations of the Dharma, so it is normal that some teacher’s explanations will work for us better than others.  But it is not enough to just attend the teachings, we need to develop a close relationship with the person where we allow them to know of our faults and delusions fully and openly in complete trust that they are only there to help.  They know us better than we know ourselves, and sometimes that is threatening to us, but we accept this just like we accept our doctor knowing the ways in which we are sick.

It is said that the Spiritual Guide is kinder than all the Buddhas because he helps us directly when we are at our most deluded.  By the same logic, we can perhaps say that our Sangha friends are kinder still, because they help us every day.  Sangha does not just help us by providing advice, but also by providing us with living examples of people doing their best to change themselves with the Dharma.  Their example and their experience are often greater teachers for us than even the highest master’s perfect discourses.  In many ways, we can say that our Sangha friends are the most precious people for us in the whole world.

Happy Tsog Day: How to practise the perfection of mental stabilization

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 39 of a 44-part series.

I seek your blessings to complete the perfection of mental stabilization
By abandoning the faults of mental sinking, mental excitement, and mental wandering,
And concentrating in single-pointed absorption
On the state that is the lack of true existence of all phenomena.

Happiness is a state of mind, therefore its cause comes from within the mind. In the preface of virtually every book Geshe-la has written and in the first class of every general program course taught in Dharma centers around the world, we are taught that the cause of happiness is inner peace. If our mind is peaceful, then we are happy regardless of what is happening externally. And if our mind is unpeaceful, we are unhappy regardless of what is happening externally. This shows that inner peace is the true cause of happiness. What then is the cause of inner peace? Mixing our mind with virtue. The more we mix our mind with virtue, the more our mind becomes peaceful both now, while we are mixing our mind with virtue, and in the future, when the karmic effects of our mental action of mixing our mind with virtue ripen. Concentration is being able to mix our mind with virtue single-pointedly, free from all distractions. The perfection of concentration is concentrating on virtue with the bodhicitta motivation.

There are three main faults to be abandoned when training in concentration: mental excitement, mental sinking, and mental wandering. Our mind naturally goes towards whatever it thinks is a cause of happiness. Because we currently think external objects of attachment are the cause of happiness, our mind naturally moves towards them. When our mind moves towards an object of attachment, this is mental excitement. Mental sinking is when our mind gradually loses clarity and focus of whatever it is we are trying to concentrate on. It becomes dull, heavy, and we can even fall asleep. Mental wandering is when our mind moves to some other object of Dharma that is not our chosen object of meditation. While technically not a delusion, it is a distraction. We overcome mental excitement by considering the relative benefits of thinking about our object of attachment compared with thinking about our object of Dharma, and then choosing to return our mind to the object of Dharma. We overcome mental sinking by uplifting our mind, improving our posture, and restoring our object of meditation by renewing the contemplation. We overcome mental wandering by reminding ourselves that our chosen object of meditation is not what our mind has wandered towards, and that allowing mental wandering can become a bad habit preventing us from ever making progress along the path.

Improving our concentration occurs in stages, called the mental abidings. With the first mental abiding, we are able to meditate on our object single-pointedly for one minute. On the second mental abiding, we are able to concentrate on our object without distraction for five minutes. With the third mental abiding, every time we forget our object of meditation, we are able to regenerate it very quickly, like effortlessly picking up a ball we just dropped. And on the fourth mental abiding we overcome all faults of gross mental sinking and gross mental excitement for our entire meditation session. In other words, we never completely forget our object of meditation, but we may still have subtle faults to our concentration, such as subtle mental sinking and subtle mental excitement. If we attain the fourth mental abiding on an object of meditation, we can then enter into retreat and it is said we can attain tranquil abiding within six months. Tranquil abiding is an extremely powerful mind of concentration that is free from all gross and subtle mental seeking and mental excitement and is able to remain single-pointedly focused on our object of meditation for as long as we wish, indeed for the rest of our life.

The mind of tranquil abiding is equivalent to a first form realm god mind. Just as it is possible to have a human body but have the mind of a hell being, so too it is possible to have a human body but the mind of a god. Even in sutra, tranquil biting is not the pinnacle of our concentration, but rather the first major milestone in improving our concentration. Our mind can move further and further up into the god realms, attaining increasingly profound levels of concentration, up to an including the peak of samsara. A detailed explanation of these different levels of concentration can be found in the book Ocean of Nectar.

According to tantra, the very subtle mind of great bliss is infinitely more powerful than the mind of tranquil abiding. It is also much easier to generate the mind of great bliss than it is to attain tranquil abiding. Geshe-la explains in and Oral Instructions of Mahamudra that if we can attain the fourth mental abiding on the indestructible drop at our heart, our winds will enter, abide, and dissolve into our central channel. We will then perceive the eight dissolutions until eventually we arrive at the very subtle mind of the clear light of bliss. Through further training in the five stages of completion stage of Heruka, we can increase the quality with which we are able to cause our inner winds to enter, abide, and dissolve into our central channel and thereby generate increasingly qualified experiences of the mind of clear light of bliss. The mind of clear light is the most concentrated mind possible. Why is this? The reason is our mind naturally moves towards whatever we consider to be a cause of happiness. But since there is no experience more sublime than great bliss, our mind has no desire whatsoever to go anywhere else because to do so would be to move from the most pleasant state possible to something less pleasant. Thus, our mind settles into the clear light of bliss much like a marble would settle at the bottom of a bowl.

Happy Tara Day: May the Dharma and all good fortune flourish

Kadampa Ryan How to Rely Upon Tara, Tara Days

This is the tenth installment of the 12-part series sharing my understanding of the practice Liberation from Sorrow.

May I strive in my practice of sacred Dharma and increase my realizations,
May I always accomplish you and behold your sublime face;
And may my understanding of emptiness and the precious bodhichitta
Increase and grow like a waxing moon.

Every once in a while, there are these people who show up to our Dharma centers for whom everything comes easily.  They seem to walk into the door with realizations and Dharma comes to them quite instinctively.  This happens when people have a lot of imprints from Dharma practice in previous lives.  But sometimes, because everything comes so easily, they never learn how to apply effort to their practice and at some point their imprints exhaust themselves.  Once it starts to get more difficult, they sometimes drift away or experience some sort of spiritual crisis.  With effort, eventually all attainments will come.  Without effort, we are just burning up our good karma.  It can also happen where we become complacent with our spiritual progress.  We have enough Dharma wisdom in our mind to be happy in this life, and that is good enough for us.  Of course we would never admit that this is the case, but our actions sometimes speak louder than our words.  To protect ourselves against this, we pray to Tara that we always feel inspired to strive in our practice of Dharma, and that we never become content with our spiritual progress until we have attained the final goal.

May I be born from a sacred and most beautiful lotus
In the excellent, joyful mandala of the Conqueror;
And there may I accomplish the prophecy I receive
Directly from Conqueror Amitabha.

Being born anywhere in samsara, even as a Dharma practitioner, is very dangerous.  There is always the risk that we become sidetracked or distracted by samsara’s pleasures and then waste our precious human life, burning up our virtuous karma, and then we die.  There is also the risk that powerful negativity could ripen, resulting is us engaging in negative actions or experiencing terrible misfortune.  The greatest danger is we die with a negative or deluded mind, and then fall into the lower realms, losing the path for possibly eons.  The only way to protect ourselves from these dangers is to attain rebirth in a pure land.  A Buddha’s pure land is like a Bodhsiattva’s training camp. We are able to receive teachings directly from Buddhas, are protected from strong negativity, and are able to progress along the spiritual path.  If we can remember Tara at the time of our death, she will bless our mind and take us to her pure land.  There, we can continue with our training and our eventual enlightenment is guaranteed.  While technically not free from samsara, from a practical point of view, it will be as if we have escaped from all uncontrolled rebirth.

O Goddess upon whom I have relied in previous lives,
Embodiment of the divine actions of all the Buddhas of the three times,
Bluish-green One with one face and two hands,
O Swift Pacifier, Mother holding an upala, may everything be auspicious.

We all have different biological mothers, but Tara is our common spiritual mother.  She cares for and nurtures our spiritual life in the same way our regular mother cares for our physical life.  But we need to create the causes for Tara to continue to be our spiritual mother in all of our future lives.  Tara will never stop loving us, but from our side we can drift away from her, making it harder for her to care for us.  If, in contrast, we always stay close to her, she will always care for us spiritually in this and all our future lives.  As explained earlier, every action we engage in creates four karmic potentialities:  tendency similar to the cause, effect similar to the cause, environmental effect, and the ripened effect.  The ripened effect is the potential to take a rebirth similar in nature to the action we engage in, for example an action of hot anger creates the cause for rebirth in a hot hell.  Whenever we engage in an action of pure faith and reliance upon Tara, such as engaging in our Tara practice, we create a ripened effect to be reborn with her as our spiritual mother.  If throughout our life, on every Tara day, we make a point to engage in Tara practice, we will create a rich reservoir of virtuous karma to have her continue to be our spiritual mother in all of our future lives.  For myself, in addition to engaging in Tara practice on the 8th of every month, I dedicate every day that Tara always be my spiritual mother.  If she will always be my mother, what will I possibly have to fear?

O Conqueror Mother Tara,
Whatever your body, retinue, life span and Pure Land,
And whatever your supreme and excellent name,
May I and all others attain only these.

Buddhas appear in many different forms, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist.  While I haven’t heard Geshe-la say so, I have heard many people say that Jesus’ mother Mary was also an emanation of Tara.  This does make sense and there is certainly no harm in believing this to be true.  Regardless, Tara’s emanations pervade the whole world and appear in many different forms to help living beings, and especially Kadampa practitioners.  Can we say with any certainty that the very device we are reading this post on is not emanated by Tara?  I would say as soon as we believe something is an emanation of Tara, it becomes that for us.  If we view everything as emanated by Tara, then for us, everything will be.  When we recite this verse, we should pray that we gain the wisdom to view everything as emanated by her for our spiritual training.

Through the force of my making these praises and requests to you,
Please pacify all sickness, poverty, misfortune, fighting and quarrelling,
Throughout all directions where I and others live,
And cause the Dharma and all good fortune to flourish.

Most of our experiences in samsara are difficult.  Occasionally, things go “well,” but most of the time, life is a constant struggle.  Sickness, poverty, misfortune, fighting, and quarreling come like waves of the ocean, one after the other, just in different forms.  It is true that we can learn to surf this suffering, but sometimes it is nice to not have constant problems so we can spend time building something good within our mind.  Just as our ordinary mother would create safe spaces for us to play, so too Tara can create safe spaces for us to develop our mind.  For example, we now have international retreat centers, international and national festivals, Dharma centers, facebook groups, etc.  All of these are spaces carved out of samsara where we can develop ourselves spiritually in relative peace, free from major obstacles or obstructions.  Internally, we may still need to battle our delusions in these spaces, but even that is easier than doing so out in the savage lands of samsara.  Understanding she can help us in this way, we pray that she protect us and our practice so that the Dharma and all good fortune can flourish.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Our actual refuge

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To go for refuge to Dharma

It is not enough to wish to become an enlightened being, we must know how to do it.  Dharma usually has two different non-contradictory meanings.  The first is the Dharma is the set of instructions given by Buddha explaining to us, step by step, how we transform our mind from its current deluded state into that of a Buddha.  It teaches us how to identify within ourselves the states of mind we need to abandon and explains how to do so.  It also reveals to us the inner qualities we need to cultivate and provides methods for doing so.  It is a complete path that connects each and every mind to the final destination of enlightenment without any gaps or obstructions.  Just as all roads lead to Rome, so too all Dharma paths eventually lead to enlightenment.

The second meaning of Dharma is the realizations of the truth of Dharma within our own minds.  In other words, Dharma is not just the instructions for how to gain realizations, but it is also the realizations itself.  Because all our suffering comes from our delusions and negativity, Dharma is our real refuge because it protects us from these things.  If we have a realization of patience, it protects us from the harms of anger.  If we have a realization of love, it protects us from the dangers of self-cherishing.  If we have a realization of our precious human life, it protects us from wasting it on meaningless things.  Tantric realizations protect us from ordinary appearance and ordinary conceptions.  This is our actual refuge, and all other forms of refuge are ultimately aimed at building within our own mind the definitive refuge of our Dharma realizations. 

The root of refuge is understanding the nature of our inner problem.  Doctors say 85% of good medicine is correct diagnosis of the problem.  When the problem is correctly diagnosed, then the treatment becomes obvious.  Our fundamental problem is we are confused about the nature of our problem.  We are convinced our problem is what is happening externally, with some things being good and other things being bad.  So we put all our effort into changing our external circumstance and it seems to us that the Dharma is useless at best since it does nothing to solve what we perceive to be our problem.  Due to not understanding the nature of our problem, we gradually have less time and energy for Dharma because we are absorbed with other things.  But when we are very clear about the nature of our problem, the need to go for refuge to the Dharma becomes obvious.  If our problem is an internal one, it is clear that external things won’t help us solve our problem.  We will then look at different internal solutions, and investigate their different qualities, and eventually we come to see that the Dharma is the solution.  In particular, when we come to understand our problem is our mind is plagued by the wisdom grasping at inherent existence, we realize that only the Dharma can provide us with a solution because only it teaches emptiness.

Since Dharma itself has two meanings, to go for refuge to Dharma, therefore also has two meanings.  The first is to make effort to seek out Dharma instructions and to improve our understanding of what we need to do to actually train our mind.  Fortunately, Geshe-la makes this very easy for us.  He has given us a complete set of books that meticulously go over every stage of the path from our first steps all the way to the final goal.  He has struck the perfect balance of giving us everything we need and nothing we don’t need.  Likewise, he has established for us Dharma centers throughout the world so that we can receive teachings directly.  Having books is great, but having somebody we can go to and receive individually tailored instructions is invaluable.

The second way of going for refuge is to make the pursuit of the inner wealth of Dharma realizations our life purpose.  We see that our problem is our mind and we make effort to actually change our mind in the direction the Dharma teaches.  If what we want out of life is to increase our realizations, then we suddenly develop a genuine equanimity with respect to life’s ups and downs.  It really doesn’t matter what happens because we know how to use everything to train our mind.  Since every situation is equally empty, we realize every circumstance is equally good in terms of the opportunity it affords us to train our mind.  The driving force of business people is making money, and motivated by this wish they work incredibly long hours and devote tremendous energy.  With the same vigor, we pursue the inner wealth of Dharma realizations.  They are our bottom line.  If the pursuit of inner wealth is our life’s purpose, it doesn’t matter if we are young or old, rich or poor, powerful or not, sick or healthy, in every circumstance we can practice.  Nothing can interfere with us doing what we wish.  Because we know we are building for a better future we get something more fulfilling than temporary pleasure, we get inner contentment and confidence knowing we are on the right track.

But we should not fool ourselves.  Training in Dharma is not easy, in fact sometimes it can be very hard.  We have literally aeons worth of bad habits built up, and these do not change over night – they scarcely change even after decades of practice.  But they do change, and because the Dharma presents correct methods, if we never give up, it is guaranteed we will get there in the end.  In sports, we say “no pain, no gain,” meaning if it isn’t hurting, you are probably not making any progress.  It is the same with our Dharma practice.  When we actually try go against the grain of our delusions, in particular our attachment, it can be really difficult, even sometimes painful.  But like a rebel soldier fighting for a good cause, we gladly assume the difficulty because we know it is worth it in the end.

Happy Protector Day: Helping the Pure Kadam Dharma Flourish

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Protector Days, Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The 29th of every month is Protector Day.  This is part 9 of a 12-part series aimed at helping us remember our Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden and increase our faith in him on these special days.

All my harmful thoughts and actions
That have offended your mind, O Great Protector,
I confess from the depths of my heart.
Please purify them swiftly, and care for me with love, like a mother for her child.

With this verse, we can purify all the negative karma that obstructs our ability to receive the care and protection of Dorje Shugden.  Such negative karma is like interference preventing a reception of our mobile phones or junk clogging up the arteries of a person.  We can generate a regret for whatever we have done in the past which has created negative karma preventing us from receiving the care and protection of Dorje Shugden.  Then we strongly imagine from Dorje Shugden purifying light rays and nectars flow down and touch all the beings inside the protection circle, ourself included, purifying all of the negative karma obstructing us from receiving Dorje Shugden’s care and protection.  We then strongly believe that all of these being are now without obstruction.

I beseech you from the depths of my heart, O Supreme Deity,
Please cause the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa to flourish,
Extend the life and activities of the glorious Gurus,
And increase the study and practice of Dharma within the Dharma communities.

We can understand this as follows:  The key point here is we realize how the Dharma of Je Tsongkhapa is the solution to all the problems of all beings.  The reason why beings suffer is because they too are trapped in a dream-like world of suffering created by their own self-centered minds.  They need to wake up from this dream into the pure world of the Buddhas.  The Dharma of Je Tsongkhapa provides a solution for destroying this self-centered mind, thereby enabling all beings to wake up from their worlds of suffering.  This is the solution to all of their problems.

Please be with me always like the shadow of my body,
And grant me your unwavering care and protection.
Destroy all obstacles and adverse conditions,
Bestow favourable conditions, and fulfil all my wishes.

Here we request Dorje Shugden to accomplish his main function, namely to arrange perfect conditions and to eliminate obstacles to our practice.  There are two types of condition:   When we are confronted with a situation which we think could be better, we request Dorje Shugden to arrange whatever is best and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.  If the external situation changes, then we know the situation was beyond our capacity and we can use that to develop bodhichitta, wishing later to have a capacity that can transform anything and everything.  If the external situation remains the same (or gets worse) then we can know that we need to work on the delusions that this situation generates for us.  We can equally do this with internal conditions.  An important thing worth noting at this point is Dorje Shugden will arrange what is best for our practice, not what is necessarily best for our worldly concerns.  We might even say Mick Jagger is actually part of Dorje Shugden’s mandala when he sung ‘you don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.’

Now is the time to show clearly your versatile strength
Through your four actions, which are swift, incisive, and unobstructed,
To fulfil quickly my special heartfelt desires
In accordance with my wishes;

Here we request Dorje Shugden to arrange whatever is best in general, in his own mysterious ways and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function. Ask people their Dorje Shugden stories when you are at festivals, and you will be amazed.  If our motivation is pure, he can arrange anything.

Now is the time to distinguish the truth and falsity of actions and effects;

Here we request him to make clear the relationship between cause and effect for all the beings within the protection circle.  At present, we think negativity is entertainment and exciting and we think virtue is boring.  In reality, negativity creates the cause for enormous suffering and virtue is the cause of all happiness.  Here we request that Dorje Shugden to bestow special wisdom blessings on all beings within the protection circle so they naturally, from their own side, make good choices.

Now is the time to dispel false accusations against the innocent;

Here we request Dorje Shugden to enable all beings within the protection circle to stop making mistaken and false imputations on others, but to correctly impute onto everybody ‘emanation of my spiritual guide’ and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.  At present, we impute onto others ‘object of attachment’ ‘object of aversion’ or ‘irrelevant.’  These are false accusations we impute on others, and we relate to them as if they were really these things from their own side.  This creates all our problems.  The only valid imputation of anybody is ‘emanation of my spiritual guide.’  The ultimate nature of all things is the Dharmakaya, so it is correct to say that everybody is an emanation of my spiritual guide.

Now is the time to protect the pitiful and protectorless;

The reason why people are pitiful and protectorless is because we have been neglecting them.  Their experience is what we have karmically created for them in our empty dream.  So here we request that he provide protection for all the beings we have been neglecting and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.

Now is the time to protect Dharma practitioners as your children.

It is particularly important to provide care and protection for Dharma practitioners because by helping them directly, indirectly it helps all living beings since they have vowed to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.  It is like opening up a second cash register at the supermarket.  Everybody gets through the line twice as fast.

In short, from now until I attain the essence of enlightenment,
I shall honour you as the embodiment of my Guru, Deity, and Protector.
Therefore please watch over me during the three periods of the day and the night
And never waver in your actions as my Protector.

The biggest fear of a Dharma practitioner is the fear of losing the path.  If we do not lose the path, we have nothing to fear; but if we do lose the path, we have all of samsara to fear.  When we recite this verse, we are creating the causes to be able to meet Dorje Shugden and rely upon him again in all our future lives.  In this way, we maintain the continuum of our practice and go from joy to joy until we attain enlightenment.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  What does a Buddha see?

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To go for refuge to Buddha

A Buddha is an enlightened being, somebody who has already completed the path.  Every Buddha was once just like us, an ordinary, ignorant person prone to mistakes and sorrow.  They realized the nature of their problem, put effort into improving themselves, and continued to do so until they became completely free from all delusions and the imprints of their past deluded actions.  Once they attained that state, the duality between them and everyone else (indeed, everything else) disappeared.  They ceased to be a being somehow trapped in just one body repetitively dying and being reborn, and they transcended into a higher state that is simultaneously beyond samsara yet still active to the beings who appear themselves within it.  Because they lack nothing, they give everything continuously. 

They realize that everyone can enjoy the same blissful state and so they work tirelessly to gradually lead everyone to freedom.  When someone we know dies, it feels to us as if they have left this world.  When we die and are reborn, we have no recollection of our past lives and everyone seems a stranger.  For a Buddha, even though their conventional emanations may cease, they never feel as if they die.  They remember their relationships with every living being and work to build upon them.  When somebody dies and is reborn, the Buddha just picks up where they left off with that person, just in a different karmically appearing context.  They can see directly into other’s minds in exactly the same way we currently see into our own.  But unlike us, they don’t judge anybody for their confusion or delusions, rather they realize all these beings are simply confused, indeed deceived by their deluded states of mind.  So they patiently try reveal the paths of wisdom while respecting everyone’s individual choice to follow it or not.  They do not feel as if they are in one place and not another, but they experience themselves as simultaneously being everywhere, equally fully present for each and every living being helping in every way possible every day.

Sadly the Buddha sees (from one perspective at least) that the minds of virtually all beings remain completely closed, and indeed blind to the fact that they are suffering from a schizophrenic hallucination that they believe to be real.  Driven by this confusion, living beings endlessly harm, rape, even kill one another.  They constantly create the causes for their future suffering, creating false divisions and differences between people.  Endlessly, they see beings being chewed up in the meat grinder of samsara, relentlessly without end.

But they also see when practitioners generate Buddhas within their own minds, such as in our sadhanas or Tantric practices, it is like a portal opens up between the infinite ocean of wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s mind and the mind of the individual practitioner.  Buddha’s blessings spontaneously pour through this opening in the same way water pours through the opening of a dam.  In this way, the Buddha feels as if they are nourishing the minds of living beings.  Gradually, over time, just like a baby growing in the womb of its mother, a living emanation takes root within the minds of some.  Most of the time, the being is closed off to this Buddha within their heart, but some are making sincere efforts to align themselves further and further with the Buddha within them.  They seek to stop identifying with their ordinary body and mind, and instead to start to identify with the Buddha emanating within.  Gradually, the duality between themselves and the emanation ceases, and then the duality between the emanation and the Buddha themselves ceases.  Then, like a magic crystal opening up, the being is able to reflect more and more purely the light and actions of the Buddha in this world. 

Some very rare beings reach the stage where they can do this most of the time, if not all the time, and their every action of body, speech and mind is actually that of the Buddha in this world.  Such a being is known as a “Spiritual Guide.”  A Spiritual Guide is like a sun within the darkness of the world, radiating out in all directions.  Normally we think of the sun as the ball fire in the center of our solar system, but in reality, can we say the rays of sun that reach the earth are separate from the sun itself?  In the same way, the countless emanations of Buddha in this world are not separate from or other than the Buddha himself. 

To go for refuge to Buddha, then, means to turn to this light.  To make effort to open our mind to it so that these blessings may flow down into us.  It is to realize there are immortal enlightened beings standing ready to enter our life and draw us back into their bosom.  It is to be inspired to become an instrument through which they work in this world.  It is to aspire to become just like them.  It is to long to unite inseparably with them for all time.

Happy Tsog Day: How to practise the perfection of effort

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 38 of a 44-part series.

I seek your blessings to complete the perfection of effort
By striving for supreme enlightenment with unwavering compassion;
Even if I must remain in the fires of the deepest hell
For many aeons for the sake of each being.

Effort is taking delight in engaging in virtue, like a child at play. The perfection of effort is engaging in effort with a bodhicitta motivation. The method for generating effort is simple. First, we generate faith in our spiritual practices understanding their benefits. This gives rise to an aspiration wishing to engage in the practice and attain these benefits, and that aspiration naturally leads to joyful effort. For effort to be qualified it needs to be joyful. We need to be happy to engage in the virtue, not do so begrudgingly out of some sense of obligation.

Some people relate to their Dharma practice as hard work and they struggle to be able to do it. They have to force themselves to sit down to practice, attend classes, and so forth. Once again it is useful to recall that we are desire realm beings, which means that we have no choice but to do whatever it is that we desire. If we do not want to practice Dharma, and we force ourselves to do so against our will, then it may work for a short period of time, but in the long run our desire to not practice will win out and eventually we will come to resent our Dharma practice and even perhaps abandon it altogether. Just as the practice of moral discipline requires us to dismantle our negative tendencies and to actively construct virtuous tendencies, so too with the practice of effort we need to actively deconstruct and dismantle our laziness of attachment which prevents us from joyfully engaging in Dharma practice and then create within our mind a wish to practice through generating faith in the benefits of our practices.

The laziness of attachment is a mind that thinks happiness can be found by doing non-Dharma things. Because we want to be happy and we think doing these non-Dharma things is how we become happy, we wish to do so. For some, Dharma practice can seem like the ultimate buzzkill destroying all our fun. Once again, we have everything backwards. Shantideva says that we run towards the causes of suffering as if they are a pleasure garden, and we run away from the causes of happiness as if they were monsters to be feared. We need to recognize that our attachment to the pleasures of samsara are like giant hooks that bind our flesh to inevitable sickness, aging, misery, and death.

I once had a vision while meditating about being on a disk floating in space. There were all sorts of beautiful beings enticing me to move towards them, I did so and, not realizing, fell over the edge. As I did, the enticing beings then removed their disguise revealing they were in fact demons who then said “gotcha” as I fell into the lower realms. This is exactly how samsara works. We spend our whole lives chasing after attractive forms, wasting our precious opportunity to attain permanent freedom from all suffering, and then at the moment of our death when it is too late, it is as if everything we had ever worked towards were these enticing creatures who then say gotcha as we fall to the lower realms.

When we chase after our objects of attachment they never give us the happiness that we hoped for. And even after enjoying them, we feel we never feel satisfied and can often feel guilty about what we have done. In the process of chasing our objects of attachment, we accumulate all sorts of non-virtuous actions, engage in deceit, and break our vows. In the Lord of all Lineages prayer it says, “like mistakenly thinking a poisonous drink to be nectar, attachment with grasping at objects of desire is the cause of great danger.” We are like a prisoner who has found a way out of the prison, but chooses not to leave because it is macaroni and cheese day in the cafeteria!

There was once a Tibetan who had practiced sincerely throughout his life and reached the moment of his death knowing he was bound for the pure land and he suddenly had a doubt about whether he wanted to go. He developed a strong attachment to Tibetan butter tea and was worried he might not ever have it again. His spiritual guide reassured him, “do not worry the tea is even better in the pure land.” He was then able to let go of his attachment and he was then able to go to the pure land. The same logic can be used for all our objects of attachment. No matter how good we think they are, they are even better in the pure land. If we truly want pure enjoyments, the best thing we can do is to abandon our laziness of attachment.

Normally we consider someone to be mature if they consider the welfare of their future to be more important than their present. For example, we consider someone who studies hard in school or who saves their money for the future to be mature because they are preparing for a better future. By working hard now, we can enjoy an even better future later. But if we fail to work for the future and only live for our present happiness, life will get harder and harder overtime. In exactly the same way, if we use this life only for the sake of happiness in this life, we will waste this precious opportunity we have to prepare for our future lives. Understanding all this, we can dismantle our laziness of attachment, and instead choose instead to realize that true happiness lies on the other side of engaging in Dharma practice. Because we want to be happy both now and in the future, we then happily engage in practice. Joyful effort does not mean sacrificing our present happiness for the sake of future happiness, rather we are delighted to engage in virtue now because it makes our mind peaceful, and we are even more delighted knowing that we are building a better future for ourselves.

I have always found this verse to be particularly inspiring. We need to generate a mind that is willing to take rebirth in the fires of the deepest hell for the sake of each being. Effort is not simply about willing to do the work it takes for ourselves to attain enlightenment, our real motivation is to work endlessly for the benefit of all living beings, even if that means we must go into the fires of the deepest hell for many eons for the sake of each being. Venerable Tharchin said that he wishes to attain rebirth in the lower realms because that is where all the living beings are and he wants to help them. Such is the courageous mind of the perfection of effort.

In truth, if we truly wish to lead an effortless life, then attaining enlightenment is the best course of action. Once we attain enlightenment, all our actions become effortless. In Oral Instructions of Mahamudra, both the mandala offering and the migtsema prayer emphasize being able to effortlessly benefit all living beings. This comes primarily through applying effort now to be able to benefit them effortlessly later. One way of understanding this is to think about how spaceships travel in space. Because there is no friction in space, if they first apply effort firing their rockets, they set the spaceship in motion. Once set in motion, it continues without obstruction forever. In the same way when we remove the two obstructions from our mind, we remove all sources of friction in our mind, and all the virtuous actions we created while a bodhisattva are like the rocket fuel getting us started and then making all our actions as a Buddha effortless.