| You need to assume responsibility for the meaning of your life. Properly viewed, like if just a series of emotional challenges, everything else is just the context for that. The challenge is to respond free from delusion and full of virtue. |
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| A very interesting, and perhaps powerful, mind is the mind that says, ‘this is my last life in samsara.’ |
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| 1. It is a mind that knows it is leaving. Because it knows it is leaving, it does not get attached to what one has in this place. You can use and enjoy what you have, but you do not become attached to it because you know you are going to be moving on. You also become less bothered by what you do not like in a place because you know it is temporary. |
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| 2. It also helps bring into focus what matters (what you can take with you) and what does not (what you cannot). You then naturally focus on cultivating what matters and don’t become bogged down with what does not. You can take with you the personal qualities you develop and experiences you have, but you cannot take with you the objects of that place. |
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| 3. As an analogy, the mind changes when we know we are leaving a place. When we knew we were leaving America, when we knew we were leaving Geneva, and now the mind that thinks/knows we will be leaving Denton eventually to perhaps take up a job at the State Department. You do what needs to be done in that place and then you move on. There are certain tasks for you to do in each place, and when they are completed, you then move on to the next place. You move on once you have copleted what needs to be done in that place. One of the advantages of working in the State Department is no matter where you are, you are always leaving. So you train in this mind of always going to be leaving. There are certain things you have to do and get done before you leave. |
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| 4. If this is my last life in samsara, then I can view everything I am doing as the things I have to do to get my affairs in order before I leave samsara. I can also view my every activity as me preparing to go. Me getting prepared to go. To be able to go, there are certain things I have to get done, certain things I have to do. But since I have made the internal decision that I am going, I then focus my efforts on doing those things so as to be able to go. |
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| 5. The mind that I am leaving is definitely a part of the mind of renunciation. What is less clear is the proper balance on the mind of ‘this is my last life.’ From one perspective, it is more powerful of a mind that says I am leaving and gets all the advantages of it more strongly. But from another perspective, it can lead to either attachment to results and stress and pressure from that or it can lead to complacency if this mind is conjoined with a false pride that it is a given that this is your last life. I need to give this one more thought to fully flesh out the proper balance here, to find another formulation of the thought. |
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| 6. One other thing, we are born alone and we will leave alone. But from another perspective, others are minds are not separate from my own, so we are all always together |
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| Life really is like a karmic video game, or karmic virtual reality game. Nothing is really happening, it is all just karmic appearance arising from the clear light of my very subtle mind. But despite that, there are definite things that need to be done. If we do not realize it is a karmic video game, then there is a very real risk of us getting sucked into it and we will suffer from it as if it was real. First and foremost, you must make sure that the game master is Dorje Shugden. Without his protection, what karmic appearances arise will be completely random at best, or uncontrollably awful at worst. If we are not mindful of how we are responding to what arises, we can easily set of chain reactions of very adverse karmic appearances, which we continue to respond to negatively, which causes even more negative karmic appearances, etc. With Dorje Shugden as the game master, he still has to work with the karma that is on your mind. He cannot invent karmic appearances for you. So what appears will still be quite normal for samsara, but what he can control is which karmic seeds ripen, in what order, in what mental context in terms of how we interpret the karmic appearance, and towards what goal. His only goal is to forge us as quickly as our karma will allow into the Buddha we need to become. We hand over our karmic storehouse to him, request him to manage it for swiftest possible enlightenment and the enlightnement of all, and then we need to keep planting onto our mind more and more useful, virtuous and pure karmic seeds that he can use towards his objective. We align ourselves with his intention, request him to forge us into a Buddha and then give him plenty of karmic material to work with through a steady stream of our virtuous actions. |
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| Within the karmic game itself, we have two objectives. |
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| 1. To clean up the karmic mess we have previously created. The karma of our mind is contaminated. It has created a very expansive and messy samsara in which countless living beings are suffering from all of samsara’s torments. We have created this samsara. It is the contaminated world of our creation. We need to clean it up. How? First, through ceasing to respond in a deluded and negative what to what arises. This prevents things from getting worse. There will still be plenty of negative karma from our previous negative actions on our mind which will ripen, but we will cease to plant new seeds (or at least plant them at a slower rate) for future suffering. Second, we need to correct for the harm we have already done. We should take responsibility for everything that has happened or is happening to everyone. Directly or indirectly we are responsible for everything because it is all our karmic dream. We have set in motion everything that is happening with our past actions (I need to explain this in more detail, but I won’t for now for the sake of the flow of this idea). To correct for our past wrong deeds, we need to engage in a series of virtuous actions that are, in effect, the opposite of all the harm we have done. Actions motivated by bodhichitta are orthogonal to ALL of the negative actions we have committed with respect to all living beings. It is the supreme and most rapid method for correcting for our past harm. It is the opposite of all the harm we have done. Likewise, actions motivated by compassion, exchanging self with others and all the other Mahayana minds function to correct for the harm we have committed. We engage in helpful actions that create happiness in others. This is like cleaning up a room. First we stop making more of a mess, then we engage in a series of actions to clean up the mess we previously created. Eventually, we are able to clean everything up and return it to its proper place. What is the proper place for every phenomena? The clear light Dharmakaya. The ultimate supreme method for correcting for the harm we have created is the meditation on having gathered and dissolved all phenomena into the clear light Dharmakaya motivated by conventional bodhichitta. When you connect with the emptiness of a phenomena, motivated by bodhichitta, it functions to purify the contaminated karma giving rise to that appearance. Doing this with all phenomena is like managing to put the genie of samsara back into the bottle in one go! By holding this concentration, moment by moment it functions to purify or clean up all of samsara. In short, stop making more of a mess, assume responsibility for everything, and take corrective actions, the supreme of which are conventional and ultimate bodhichitta. |
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| 2. Once you have cleaned up the mess, then the second phase of the project begins: building your pure land. It is not enough to just clean up the mess you have created, you must also build a new pure world for all beings. We do this primarily through our tantric practices of generation and completion stage. Through these practices we karmicly build a new pure world. We build this world so that we may invite all beings into it so that they themselves can engage in all of the stages of the path leading to their full enlightenment. First, we must build it within our mind. Then, we must come to abide within it ourselves. Then we invite others to join us. Then we help them complete all the tasks and absorbtions to be completed within the pure land to take them to their own enlightenment. The Pure Land is, for all practical purposes, a training camp for Tantric bodhisattvas. It is like a Tantric University, or a Tantric incubator. In reality, building the pure land is one of the corrective actions we can engage in as mentioned above in number 1. But whenever we engage in our tantric practice, we first generate bodhichitta, then we engage in all sorts of virtue, then we dissolve everything into the clear light Dharmakaya, then from that Dharmakaya we build our pure land. So for this reason, I have listed it in this order. |
Kadampa Working Dad 
You are the only one left in samsara my friend.
You only ever teach yourself, praise yourself, talk to yourself, get angry at yourself, lie to yourself, justify things to yourself. You’ve never really met anyone or will ever part from anyone.
This is the paradoxical reality that befits a samsaric mind.
Gotta love it, thanks for indulging me then! 🙂
Yeah but just imagine if I really believed that? There are loads of different views we flip between depending on what we practice. Which is cool.
As for Tantra, sometimes the first step for me is the pig… yes, the pig! Self-generate as a pig. As a pig i cannot generate Bodhichitta, i cannot even speak of it, i certainly cannot ‘teach’ others the path because i do not appreciate my precious human life yet let alone the ridiculous good fortune of appreciating or having the ability to practice Tantra. Gen Tharchin said, we are more fortunate than all of the gods put together! How cool.
I’m soon to be someone’s bacon roll…
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