The strong wish for the holy Dharma to flourish can be a virtuous wish or it can be an attachment. Most often it is a mix in our mind.

Attachment thinks some external thing or condition is a necessary requisite for our happiness – having this external thing is a cause of happiness, and I can’t be happy without this external thing.

For example, imagine I am attached to the people close to me not suffering. This means I mistakenly think my happiness depends on them being OK. If they are not OK, I can’t be OK. I need them to be OK before I can be OK. When they suffer, I suffer; when they go down, I go down with them. This is an attachment to them being OK. I think my happiness depends upon something external, not on my own inner peace. The wish that others were free from all suffering could be a mind of pure compassion (for the sake of others, free from all attachment) or it could be an attachment (for the sake of myself, motivated by a delusion of attachment). Most often it is mixed. I want others to be free from suffering for pure compassionate reasons and for attachment reasons. My training in compassion includes gradually purifying my compassion of all attachment so that it is completely pure, free from all self-concern or attachment.

In exactly the same way, strongly wishing for the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish can be a pure wish or it can be an attachment. For example, if I’m attached to the people in my life being free from delusions – thinking my happiness depends upon them not being deluded – then I could strongly wish that they appreciate or practice the Kadam Dharma so that their delusions could decrease since I find their delusions so annoying and disturbing to my mind. I need them to practice Dharma for me to be OK. That’s attachment in my mind to the Kadam Dharma flourishing.

Resident Teachers and Center Administrators develop attachment to the Dharma flourishing all the time, or at least that’s how it appears. They have dedicated their lives to the flourishing of the Kadam Dharma, often facing significant judgment and concern from their family members who fear they have gone off and joined some cult. They might become attached to their family appreciating the Dharma so that this painful judgment stops. Or they might show up to a Summer Festival and only 2 of their students came, or maybe none at all. They might feel they have failed as an RT. They might work for many years to cause the Dharma to flourish in their area of the world, but try as they might, nobody seems interested.

Any endeavor usually involves some sort of “key performance indicators” where our success is measured against some metric. For RTs and center administrators, it can easily become “how many students do you have, is your center able to financially support itself, are you opening up new branches, how many people from your center go to festivals, etc.” It is very easy to become attached to all these things. All of these wishes could also be completely pure wishes, or they could be motivated by attachment – thinking our happiness depends upon these external things and if we don’t have these external things we can’t be happy. Most often our wish is mixed – part pure, part attachment. So just as we purify our compassion of attachment, so too we need to gradually purify our wish for the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish of attachment as well.

Just because our wishes right now are mixed does not mean they are wrong. We need these wishes, but we also need to make them more and more qualified and we do so through gradually purifying them of any trace of attachment, self-concern, and ignorance.

In many ways, it appears (to me at least) that attachment to the pure Kadam Dharma flourishing is one of the biggest, most pervasive, most corrosive attachments within our tradition (within any spiritual tradition, really), even if it is subtle and operating hidden like a tiger underneath the surface. It seems so justified, surely attachment to this wish is a good thing. No, attachment is attachment, and all attachments are delusions. The wish isn’t necessarily an attachment, but it can be. It can also be a pure wish.

Pointing this out is not a criticism of our tradition, it is an act of love. It is because we love our tradition and want it to flourish that we feel compelled to dig deeper and see what is going on in our mind. This is not finding fault in our tradition, it is finding fault in delusion. VGL’s surely does not have attachment to the Dharma flourishing, his motivation is completely pure. He has done the work to abandon all attachment to it flourishing and so must we. Perhaps I’m the only one with this attachment in my mind, I don’t know. But I do know it is present in my mind and so it is my responsibility to root it out. What others do by looking in this particlar mirror is up to them. I also need to eliminate all attachment to the people of my tradition eliminating this attachment from their mind (if it even exists in their mind, which I don’t know).

To me, it seems our job is to make our wish for the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish a completely pure wish. The more we do, the more we align ourselves with VGL’s pure intention and the more all our pure deeds (and this tradition) will flourish. The more we do, the more we fulfill our heart commitment to Dorje Shugden and the more effective he can be in our life helping us fulfill all our pure wishes.

Indeed, it is because we want the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish that we need to purify our mind of all attachment to it flourishing. Like all attachments, attachment to the pure Kadam Dharma flourishing actually creates obstacles to it flourishing in this world. People will feel manipulated, we will act all cult-like, we will become defensive when attacked, and we will create the karma to be separated from what we are attached to.

Clearly it is better to be attached to the pure Kadam Dharma flourishing than to making a bunch of money or having a great professional reputation, but it is better to have a pure wish for the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish than to have this wish mixed with attachment.

Hardly anybody ever talks about this attachment, or at least not publicly. But we do need to look into the mirror of Dharma and see if we have it in our mind, see how it disturbs our inner peace, gradually reduce it with the opponents, and finally eliminate it with the wisdom realizing emptiness. We owe it to ourselves to do this work since it is a delusion in our mind creating unhelpful karma for ourselves. We also frankly owe it to VGL to do this work. We owe it to all our lineage gurus who have done so much to pass this lineage on to us to do this work. We owe it to all living beings who we have been charged with carrying the lineage forward for to do this work.

But the choice is ours, of course. It’s not like it is bad to have this attachment (well, actually it is bad to have this attachment since all delusions are objects of abandonment). Being attached to the Dharma flourishing is good. But purifying our motivation of all attachment is even better.

Again, perhaps I’m the only one.