Author: Kadampa Ryan

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: We Are Who We Choose to Become

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(9.150) Living beings are like objects in a dream
For, when analyzed, they have no ultimate identity, just like a rainbow.
Thus, in that they both lack true existence, there is no difference
Between nirvana, the state beyond sorrow, and samsara, the state of sorrow.

Shantideva is telling us we have no fixed identity. We have no identity, so we need to stop believing we have one.  We ourselves are empty.  Our samsara is empty.  Nirvana too is empty.  Therefore, we can come to abide in nirvana.  Because we ourselves, samsara and nirvana all lack true existence, we can change from a being abiding in samsara to a being abiding in nirvana. Wonderful!

Nagarjuna says for those who emptiness is impossible, nothing is possible; but for those who emptiness is possible, everything is possible. At present, we grasp at ourselves as being fixed, unchanging, and inherently the person we are today. We hear in popular psychology all of the time we need to be our true self, our authentic self. We tell our children to be who they really are. This always leads to a good deal of confusion amongst kids as they ask themselves the question, well who am I really? They then go searching thinking there must be some inherently them that they are that they need to try and embody. All of this is wrong.

We are who we choose to become. For example, we can decide to impute our I on being a good person. When we do this, we naturally come to embody what a good person would be like. We quite literally become a good person. We see this with professions, when people make decisions to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a salesperson and so forth. They then say they want to be a good doctor or lawyer, and so they try act in those ways. In exactly the same way, we can decide we want to become a Buddha. Indeed, we can change the basis of imputation of our I from an ordinary being to that of a Buddha. With enough familiarity, this could become our living experience.

From a tantric perspective, we can reinterpret popular psychology talking about identifying with our true self or our authentic self by saying that our authentic self is our Buddha nature. Our Buddha nature is our true self, and the wish to attain renunciation is the wish to free our true self from the prison of our false self created by our self-grasping ignorance. The wish to attain enlightenment is the wish to fully unleash our true self to be of the greatest benefit possible to others. What is the nature of our true self, our Buddha nature? It is our very subtle wind and are very subtle mind. These are our continuously residing body and mind that go with us from life to life. It is our continuously residing body in mind that will eventually transform into the body and mind of a Buddha. It is incorrect to say that it is already a Buddha, but it is correct to say that our very subtle body and mind are the substantial causes that will later transform into the body and mind of a Buddha. There is no inherently existent true self, but there is something that goes with us from life to life and will remain with us forever. The question is whether our true self remains merely a potential or whether we fully actualize it by becoming an enlightened being ourselves. With this understanding, we can agree with people who ascribe to modern psychological theories and merely understand those theories in a more Buddhist way.

We often say that there are five principal aspects of the path: renunciation, bodhichitta, the correct view of emptiness, generation stage, and completion stage. How can we understand how all of these fit together? In reality, there is only one activity on the path, namely changing the basis of imputation of our I from an ordinary samsaric being to a fully enlightened Buddha. There are two reasons why we change the basis of imputation of our I, namely for the sake of ourselves (or renunciation), or for the sake of others (or bodhichitta). There are two levels at which we change the basis of imputation of our I, gross and subtle. At a gross level, we changed the basis of imputation of our I to the gross deity body through the practice of generation stage. And at a subtle level, we change the basis of imputation of our I to the subtle deity body through the practice of completion stage.  All of this is possible because our I, our body, and our mind are all empty of inherent existence. We are not fixed or permanently attached to our ordinary body and mind. We can choose the body and mind we wish to have as the basis of imputation for our I. It will take training, it will take persistent effort, it will take time, but it is possible.

We see how we change the basis of imputation of our I throughout our life. We start out as a baby, we later become a teenager, then later become a young adult, then middle aged, then an older person. In our previous lives, we imputed our I on completely different bodies and minds. Our I is nothing more than a post-it that we can place on anything. Some bases are beneficial and some are harmful. But the choice is ours. And we clearly see the emptiness of our I, then we realize we can quite literally construct an entirely new pure identity and become a Buddha.

A Pure Life: Please Don’t Kill

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part five 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 first precept is to abandon killing.  Geshe-la explains the object of killing is any other being from the smallest insect to a Buddha.  In the chapter on karma in Joyful Path, four factors must be present for the action to be complete.  First, for our intention, we must have the correct identification of the person we intend to kill.  We also need a determination to kill the person we have correctly identified.  Killing by accident is not a complete action, though this doesn’t mean there are not negative consequences of accidental killing.  Our mind must also be influenced by delusion, specifically anger, attachment, or ignorance.  It is possible to kill out of compassion to save the lives of others, but this requires great wisdom and courage.  Killing out of compassion is not a downfall since compassion is not a delusion.  The action also requires preparation, namely we prepare the means to engage in the action.  This includes having others do the action for us or engaging in the action as a group.  Finally, it requires the completion – the action must be completed, the person actually is killed and dies before we do.

The reality is we are killing all of the time.  Every time we scratch our arm, we are no doubt killing thousands of tiny bacteria or microbes.  Even if we do not eat meat, we are indirectly killing thousands of insects who died in the rice paddies or to the pesticides sprayed on our food.  Samsara is a slaughterhouse, and everything we do essentially kills.  This doesn’t mean we are doomed and it also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother trying to not kill because it is unavoidable.  What it means is we need to do our best to lead as low impact of a life as we can.  We should work gradually to kill less and less while working within our capacity and the karmic conditions we find ourselves in.

There are also many forms of negative actions that are adjacent to kill it that we should also try avoiding. For example, rejoicing in negative actions is karmically similar to engaging in those actions ourselves. Virtually every day on the news there are reports of people being killed in some form of military conflict. The United States, for example, has been at war nonstop for essentially the last 25 years. Our soldiers are killing people on an almost daily basis and the news is typically reported as a success story of having killed some “terrorists” or some other perceived enemy. These reports are designed to generate a mind of rejoicing in such killing. While this is not us killing ourselves, when we rejoice in such activities, we create karma similar to killing others.

There are also many subtle forms of killing that we may not even be aware of nor our role in perpetuating the systems that engage in such killing. Social scientists have coined the term structural violence to refer to societal structures that function to shorten the lives of particular groups of people. For example, due to structural racism in the United states, people of color tend to have worse access to health care, higher rates of poverty, lower rates of education, suffer from higher rates of crime, and so forth all of which contribute to shortened life spans compared to most white people. One study estimates that 8,000,000 African Americans are missing compared to what should be if structural racism did not exist. These are the victims of a form of unintentional slow-motion genocide.

Once we are aware that such structures exist and inflict violence, even if a subtle form of violence, against certain populations and then we do nothing to correct for it or we even seek to rationalize away such effects by denying it is occurring or it is justified based upon some arbitrary criteria, then we are participating in or enabling a subtle form of killing.  We may even be voting for such policies.  Even simply benefiting from such structures and not using our surplus privilege associated with being at the top of such structures to dismantle them, is a form of perpetuating them. These things would not be a violation of our Mahayana precepts per se, but they do move in a direction similar to the action of killing.  As Mahayana practitioners, we should be striving to move in the direction of not killing. And we should cast the net wide to avoid even subtle forms.

Mother’s Day for a Kadampa

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

As Kadampas who practice the Lamrim, every 21 days is Mother’s Day.  We are all quite familiar with the various contemplations of how all living beings are our mother and how kind they were to us as our mother, therefore we should develop a profound feeling of gratitude towards our mother of this life and all our mothers of our past lives.  Very often though, primarily because we make our meditations intellectual exercises of recalling certain points as opposed to exercises of the heart where we change our feelings, these contemplations on the kindness of our mother no longer really move our mind.  We might recall them, but we don’t internalize them and let them touch our heart.  On actual Mother’s Day, we should take the time to reflect deeply and sincerely upon them so that our heart moves and we genuinely feel gratitude and a wish to repay our mother’s kindness.

Have we always neglected our mothers?

I sometimes wonder if ancient Tibetan culture was the same as our modern culture.  In modern culture, particularly in modern psychology, the trend is to blame our mother for all of our problems.  We are encouraged to go back into our childhood and find all the different ways our mother made mistakes and how that is “the underlying cause” of why we are the way we are today.  We likewise completely take for granted everything our mother has done for us.  As kids, we are completely blind to it. 

We think it is “normal” that our mothers do everything for us, and we feel “justified” in getting angry with them when they don’t do it perfectly.  In truth, our mother could have just abandoned us on the street.  She owes us nothing.  Nobody owes us anything.  It is our expectation that they do that actually prevents us from appreciating all that she did for us.  It is the very nature of modern motherhood to give everything you have to your kids only to have them take your kindness for granted, blame you for all of their problems, and want to have nothing to do with you because you are such an embarrassment.  Perhaps it has always been such, which is why the meditation on the kindness of our mothers has always been taught.

It’s time to apologize for being such a jerk

On Mother’s Day, I think it is important to not just express our gratefulness, but to sincerely apologize for what a jerk we have been to her over the years.  Explain that when you were a kid, you didn’t understand, and now it is only as an adult (and perhaps a parent yourself) that you are beginning to realize all she did for you.  Apologize for yelling, apologize for disobeying, apologize for being embarrassed by her, apologize for ignoring her, and apologize most of all for taking for granted all that she has done for you.  Explain to her that all of your good qualities now come from her. 

My father once said about his mother, “everything good in our family comes from Grandma.  That’s the truth.”  This is a perfect attitude.  It is the truth.  The truth is mother’s really struggle with the fact that everything they do is taken for granted and that they are blamed for everything.  Yes, it is good for them in terms of being able to learn how to give love unconditionally, but it is hard.  All it takes is one honest conversation where you admit you were a real butt with her, and where you express sincere gratitude for everything you previously took for granted.  Such a conversation can heal decades of grief.

No, our mothers aren’t perfect, but why should we expect them to be?

Sometimes when we encounter the meditation on the kindness of our mothers we develop all sorts of objections because it is true, our mother did make a lot of mistakes.  My mother had all sorts of serious mental health issues, we had an off and on terrible relationship until eventually she likely killed herself on my wedding day.  I had all sorts of resentments towards her for years, then I had guilt after her suicide, and now I find it difficult to think anything good about her.  All I see is her many faults and delusions.  Most of us have problems of one kind or another with our mothers.  I personally feel it is vital that we identify the delusions we have towards our parents, in particular our mother, and work through them.  We need to get to the point where our mind is completely healed of all delusions towards them.  This is not only a way of repaying the kindness of our mother, it is a way of healing our own mind.

Our mothers were not perfect, they made many mistakes, and they were full of delusions.  This is also true, and acknowledging that fact is not a denial of their kindness.  We can hold the view that they were emanations of Buddhas who appeared to make the mistakes that they did to give us a chance to grow.  Every child grows up cataloging the many mistakes their parents make and resolves when they are parents they won’t do the same thing; only to find when they do become parents they wind up making many of the same mistakes.  The power of osmosis with our parents is the most powerful force shaping our lives and shaping our mind.  It is not enough that we heal our mind of all the delusions we have towards our mother, we also need to look into our mind and identify all the delusions we received from her. 

Venerable Tharchin once told me the only reason why the people in our life appear to have delusions is because we ourselves possess the same delusions within our own mind and we therefore project beings who have the same faults.  Our task, therefore, is to identify within ourselves the delusions that appear in others and then root them out completely.  When we do so, he said, several amazing things will happen.  First, our relationship with the person will improve.  Second, we will have less delusions in our own mind.  And third, the faults we see in the other person will gradually “disappear.”  Why?  Because they were never coming from the other person in the first place.  He concluded by saying, this is how Bodhisattva’s ripen and liberate all beings.  When we attain Buddhahood, he said, it appears to us as if everybody attains Buddhahood at the same time with us.  In fact, we see that they have always been so.  If we love our mother, this is essential work.

Tara is our eternal mother

Mother’s Day, though, is about much more than just our relationship with our own mother of this life, or even recalling the kindness of all our past mothers.  I think on Mother’s Day we need to recall the kindness of our Spiritual Mother, Guru Arya Tara.  Tara promised Atisha long ago that she would care for all Kadampas in the future.  The fact that we have a spiritual life today is due to her kindness.  She gave birth to our spiritual life.  Like all mothers’ kindnesses, we don’t even see it.  She operates unseen, and we take it for granted.  But there is no doubt, it is thanks to her that we have a spiritual life.  She gave birth to it, she has nurtured it, and she cares for us now even if we never think of her.  For some, she appears herself as Vajrayogini, and therefore serves as our Highest Yoga Tantra Yidam.  Tara is one of the Buddhas who often appears early in our spiritual life.  Almost everybody has a very positive experience with encountering her.  But then, over time, we tend to forget about her as we move on to other practices.  But like any mother, she never forgets her spiritual children.  We should remember this, and generate our thanks to her for it.

Viewing all living beings as our children

Finally, I think it is worth recalling that just as all living beings have been our mother, so too we have been the mother of all living beings.  We can correctly view all living beings as our children, and love them as a good mother would.  The contemplations on the kindness a mother shows to her child are not there just to help us develop gratitude towards our mothers, they are also examples of the attitude we should have towards all of our children.  How many of us would be willing to remove the mucus from a stranger’s nose?  Our mother did that for us.  We should love others so much that we would gladly, and without hesitation do the same for others.  Of course, we shouldn’t go around offering to others to do so, but training in the mind that is willing to help any living being in any way we can is the real meaning of Mother’s Day.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Emptiness of Cessation

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(9.149) Just as there is no truly existent production of things,
So there is no truly existent cessation.
Thus, living beings are not truly born,
Nor do they truly cease.

If the cessation of things were truly existent, then there would be no production of things.  There would just be endings.  Nothing would change, everything would just stop.  For example, we would just die.  We don’t just die — we die and take rebirth.  We die and take rebirth because the cessation of things and the production of things are not truly existent.  If they were, then we would just die.  It appears that we do because we grasp at truly existent cessations.  But we do not really die, and we’re not really born.  And we do not really live either.

Another good example is karma.  We experience the results of the actions of previous lives, because the cessation of those actions was not truly existent.  If they were, there would be no karma carrying over, no cause and effect.  If actions truly ceased, then no effects would be experienced.  So our actions don’t really end.  Everything we do truly echoes in eternity.  If this makes sense, then it will so influence our life and our practice.

Happy Tsog Day: Destroying our Greatest Inner Demon

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 29 of a 44-part series.

Equalizing self and others

In that no one wishes for even the slightest suffering,
Or is ever content with the happiness they have,
There is no difference between myself and others;
Realizing this, I seek your blessings joyfully to make others happy.

As explained above, there are two methods for generating bodhicitta: considering how all living beings are our mother and exchanging self with others. Meditation on equalizing self with others is the first meditation of the second method. The second method for generating bodhicitta is more powerful than the first method because we cherish ourselves more than we cherish our mother. Since it is more powerful, the practice Offering to the Spiritual Guide dedicates five full verses to the practice.

When we equalize self with others our objective is to generate the same degree of cherishing for others as we have for ourselves, in other words, to cherish others as we cherish ourself. This is not that uncommon of a mind. Political leaders who view their job as serving the public interest consider the happiness and welfare of all their citizens as being equally important. If some politicians can generate this mind, then surely we can generate this mind as a would-be-bodhisattva. We likewise find this mind in many families that consider every person in the family to be equally important and make decisions based upon what is best for the family as a whole. Some teachers do the same with the students in their classroom and some employers do the same with the people who work at their company. Even in normal society, we would say a political leader, a parent, a teacher, or an employer who puts their own interest ahead of the interests of those they serve is a corrupt person.

There are several different methods we can use to reach this mind. One method for doing so is to realize that all living beings have an equal wish to be happy all the time. There is nothing about our own happiness that makes it more important than the happiness of anybody else. Since we all share an equal wish, and there’s nothing that makes us more important than anybody else, it follows that we should cherish the happiness of each and every living being equally. A particularly powerful way of generating this mind is to consider how all living beings are like cells in the body of life. Just as we would not say the hand does not care what happens to the foot, so too when we have equalized self with others, we cannot say that we do not care about what happens to other living beings because we are all part of the same body of life. The definitive way of generating this mind is to consider how all living beings, including ourselves, are all equally empty and therefore equally projections of our mind. There is no basis for cherishing one appearance in our mind over another since they are all equally appearances to our mind. Whichever line of reasoning works for us, the goal is the same, namely to generate a feeling that cherishes all living beings equally.

The dangers of self-cherishing

Seeing that this chronic disease of cherishing myself
Is the cause that gives rise to unwanted suffering,
I seek your blessings to destroy this great demon of selfishness
By resenting it as the object of blame.

In the teachings on training the mind, we are encouraged to gather all blame into one. The meaning of this practice is every time we experience any problem, or we see anybody else experiencing any sort of suffering, we blame it entirely upon the mind of self-cherishing. In the Lord of all Lineages prayer it says, “since beginningless time the root of all my suffering has been my self-cherishing mind, I must expel it from my heart, cast it afar, and cherish only other living beings.”

How can we understand self-cherishing to be the cause of all our suffering? All our suffering comes from our negative karma, and all our negative karma is committed with a mind of self-cherishing. Self-cherishing considers our own happiness to be more important than the happiness of others and is therefore willing to sacrifice the happiness of others for the sake of ourselves. All non-virtuous actions fundamentally are willing to harm others in some way for the sake of ourselves.

Further, what happens to us is only a problem because we consider our own happiness to be important. If we did not consider our own happiness to be important, then what happens to us would also not be important, and therefore not a problem. From this we can see the only reason why we have any problems is because we cherish ourselves.

Intellectually this is not difficult to understand. The practice is to develop the habit of gathering all blame into one. We need to do this again and again and again throughout our life, whenever we see ourselves or others suffer, we do the mental exercise of identifying exactly how and why it is the fault of self-cherishing. The more we do this, the more determined we will become to destroy this demon within our mind.

Practicing from the Heart: “Please Reverse this Sad Situation”

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

I have spent the vast majority of my Dharma career being a Kadampa Vulcan, stuck in my head or intellectualizing or abstracting myself from all that I was experiencing. The Dharma just gave me powerful tools for doing that.

For me, one of the most important clarifications Venerable Geshe-la provides in Mirror of Dharma is when he explains the purpose of contemplation is to have the Dharma touch our heart, and it is only when it has touched our heart that we have found our object of meditation. For somebody who for decades viewed the goal of contemplation as arriving at clear intellectual understandings of the Dharma and the interconnections between the teachings, this was a revolution in my practice. This doesn’t mean we don’t also need to come to correct understandings intellectually, it means that is just the beginning. Our contemplation is not complete – we have not actually found our object of meditation – until we feel it in our heart. He then implored us, “please reverse this sad situation.” Mic drop…

When I was telling my story of all that had happened to myself and my family to my daughter’s therapist during a family session, the therapist said, “wow, that’s a lot. But the way you describe it, it is as if you are talking about it in the abstract or what happened to somebody else.” This was a pivotal moment for me because she was exactly right. I think it is my defense or coping mechanism for dealing with all the hurt I have encountered in my life. I guess it is a trauma response not that different than what I’ve heard sometimes happens when people are being raped – their mind goes some place else because it is too traumatic to be where they are.

But something unexpected, but perhaps entirely predictable, happened when I started trying to reverse this sad situation. I became filled with rage. Rage at my father for hating my mom more than he loved us and for all the different ways he judged both me and my family over the years. Rage at my mother for not being able to emotionally hold it together as we were growing up and for her committing suicide the day before my wedding. Rage at others close to me for things I’d rather not discuss publicly.

But anger is the worst of all delusions, so repress, repress, repress. No wait, can’t do that. I need to acknowledge and accept the existence of delusions in my mind, take the time to see them for what they are and examine where they come from (thank you Gen Wangden for pointing me to the right place, you have a real skill for that).

So where did the rage come from? Even deeper hurt. But letting that out of the bottle, especially when I’ve been repressing it for 50 years, well, hurts. Overwhelmingly so. When I came back to India after having been with my daughter at the clinic in LA, everything that I had been repressing came flooding into my mind and it was overwhelming – more than I could handle. It became urgent to not feel such things. But the turning point for me was when Jim Travis told me, “feel it, brother.” This gave me permission to allow myself to feel the hurt I had been abstracting myself from. I then spent a week on retreat putting myself back together from a near total emotional meltdown.

Along the way, a dear friend told me when we allow our feelings to somatically pass through us – accepting them wholeheartedly instead of pushing them down or rejecting them – it unlocks the wisdom we need to heal our hurt. This was definitely my experience at the time and has been on a few other occasions since, but the Vulcan habits run deep and it is easy to slip into my old ways.

Enlightenment is not just the completely purified aggregate of discrmination, seeing all phenomena individually as manifestations of their emptiness. It is also the completely purified aggregate of feeling that according to Sutra is essentially the supreme good heart of compassion and bodhichitta and according to Tantra is the mind that genuinely feels great bliss when encountering anything (I would say compassion and bodhichitta are the substantial causes of the mind of great bliss. Opps, I did it again, another intellectualization when I’m trying to speak from my heart…).

To reverse our sad situation, we need to learn to practice from our heart. When we first embrace this way of practice, the truth is we don’t become more Zen or more kind-hearted, we become much more emotionally volatile. Again, like Spock when his human side comes to the surface and he has to battle the powerful emotions he had previously been repressing.

But here we discover a different problem: Culturally, within our tradition, we create little space for each other to be deluded or emotionally troubled. This is especially true for the so-called “senior practitioners.” There is so much pervasive pretension within our tradition, with people emotionally pretending to be all put together to supposedly show a good example. This leads to all sorts of “conflict averse” behaviors where people just pretend to be OK with what is going on when in fact they are not and there is very little ability to actually discuss these things with each other without being accused of being deluded or being a trouble maker or disturbing the harmony of the center or whatever. It is because I love my tradition that I point such things out. It is not a criticism, it is a diagnosis.

The truth is there is a great deal to which modern Kadampas use the precious Dharma Venerable Geshe-la has given us to repress and pretend, not accept and dismantle. I would say “please reverse this sad situation” is true not just at the level of our individual practice, but also at the level of us as a spiritual community.

So to all those who have known me for many years, I’m sorry if I have been a bit more emotional of late, even angry. Sorry for pushing conversations to put squarely on the table what I perceive is going on, even if it is uncomfortable to hear said out loud and it is easier to just pretend that all is OK both within myself and within us as a spiritual tradition. But you know what? Sorry, not sorry. This is where I am at in my heart. This is me practicing from my heart. This is me trying to reverse my sad situation.

Happy Tara Day: Causing the three worlds to shake

Kadampa Ryan How to Rely Upon Tara, Tara Days

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

Praising Tara by the light that radiates from the letter HUM

Homage to you who strike the ground with the palm of your hand
And stamp it with your foot.
With a wrathful glance and letter HUM,
You subdue all seven levels.

This also refers to Tara’s ability to engage in wrathful actions and can be understood from the above.  I’m not sure what the seven levels are.

Praising Tara by her Dharmakaya aspect

Homage to you who are happy, virtuous and peaceful,
Within the sphere of the peace of nirvana.
Fully endowed with SÖHA and OM,
You completely destroy heavy evil actions.

This verse refers to definitive Tara.  The conventional Tara is the green deity we know and love.  She manifests this form so that living beings can more easily develop a relationship with her.  But actual Tara is Dhamakaya Tara, or Truth Body Tara.  This is definitive Tara.  The Dharmakaya is a Tara’s realization of great bliss mixed inseparably from the emptiness of all phenomena.  She is referred to as the mother of all Buddhas because all Buddhas arise out of her Dharmakaya – she gives birth to them from her realization of bliss and emptiness.  What does the Dharmakaya feel like?  Happy, virtuous, and peaceful.  This is her inner pure land, and anytime we ourselves feel happy, virtuous, or peaceful, we are experiencing a similitude of her pure land.

Praising Tara by her divine actions of peaceful and wrathful mantras

Homage to you who completely subdue the obstructions
Of those who delight in the Dharma Wheel;
Rescuing with the array of the ten-letter mantra
And the knowledge-letter HUM.

Peaceful actions refer to a Buddha’s ability to pacify negativity, delusions, or their imprints in either ourselves or in others.  All living beings possess Buddha nature.  What does this mean?  It means we all possess within ourselves the potential for an enlightened mind, and all we need to do is purify our mind of all that defiles it and our natural enlightened state will be unleashed or uncovered.  What is our mind defiled by?  Principally three things:  negative karma, delusions, and their imprints.  Technically negative karma is also an imprint of a delusion which is why we normally say the “two obstructions,” referring to delusions and their imprints.  But from a practical point of view, we place particular emphasis in the early stages of our practice on purifying our negative karma (lower scope meditations), then overcoming our delusions (intermediate scope meditations), and finally the remainder of our contaminated karma (great scope meditations).  Tara can help us pacify all three of these, as explained by her ten-letter mantra whose principal function is to bestow all of the Lamrim meditations.  According to Tantra, the two main objects to be pacified are ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions.  Ordinary appearances are phenomena appearing to exist independently of our mind (the things we normally see), and ordinary conceptions are grasping at the wrong belief that objects do in fact exist in the way that they appear.  For example, when we think of ourself, we see our ordinary body and mind.  This is an ordinary appearance.  When we grasp at them actually being ourselves, this is an ordinary conception.  Tara also has the power to pacify all our ordinary appearances and conceptions.

Praising Tara by her divine actions of wrathfully shaking the three worlds

Homage to TURE, stamping your feet,
Born from the seed in the aspect of HUM,
Who cause Mount Meru, Mandhara and Vindhya,
And all the three worlds to shake.

Buddhist cosmology is incredibly vast.  The universe as we know it actually only one world system.  There are the thousand worlds, which is a thousand world systems or universes as we know them.  There are the two thousand worlds, which is a thousand of the thousand worlds, or one million universes.  And there are the three thousand worlds, which is a thousand of the two thousand worlds, or one trillion universes.  In truth, there are countless universes, and the three thousand worlds is a shorthand for implying countless that makes it somewhat easier to grasp.  Just as the stars in the sky form galaxies, super clusters, and so forth, the three thousand worlds also cluster together and are arranged in different ways, so too the three thousand worlds cluster together and are arranged in particular way.  In the center of the three thousand worlds is Mount Meru, which is actually comprised of countless different pure lands at different levels of purity, such as the Land of 33 Heavens where Buddha went to teach his mother after she took rebirth there.  At the top of Mount Meru is Heruka’s celestial mansion.  Surrounding Mount Meru are the four major and eight minor continents, like an archipelago of different clusters of universes – they can be likened to superclusters of galaxies.  The universe that we live in is simply one of many universes in what is known as the Eastern continent, but is in reality just a cluster of universes.  Traditional cosmology as we know it just talks of our one universe where the Big Bang unfolded, but this one universe is as insignificant as our own planet is in our universe.  The vastness of Buddhist cosmology is almost beyond comprehension.  Interestingly, some astrophysicists have a similar view arguing we live in a multiverse, or a n-dimensional multiverse, but they have no idea how these universes are shaped.  Just as the science of quantum physics is gradually catching up with Buddha’s teachings on emptiness, it is only a question of time before science catches up with Buddha’s teachings on cosmology.  Tara’s blessings and power pervade everywhere.  Vajrayogini and Tara are actually the same being, just appearing at two different levels – Action Tantra version as Green Tara and Highest Yoga Tantra version of Red Vajrayogini.  Vajrayogini is in union with Heruka inside his celestial mansion atop Mount Meru and her wisdom is able to cause all three thousand worlds to shake!

Praising Tara by her divine actions of dispelling internal and external poisons

Homage to you who hold in your hand
A moon, the lake of the gods;
Saying TARA twice and the letter PHAT,
You completely dispel all poisons.

Conventionally, Tara’s blessings are particularly powerful at dispelling external poisons, such as those we might ingest.  I personally suffer from terrible allergies, some of which are deadly.  When I have a strong allergic reaction to something I eat, I of course take my Benadryl or other allergy medications, but I also recite with great faith Tara’s mantra requesting that she protect me.  Those who have allergies can do the same, even allergies as light as hay fever.  But principally, Tara’s blessing dispel the inner poisons of our delusions.  Outer poisons can at most harm us in this one life, but the inner poisons of our delusions harm us in all our future lives.  Considering our delusions to be inner poisons is a particularly powerful way of thinking of them.  If we ingested an external poison, we would do everything we can as quickly as we could get rid of it from our body or to take an antidote.  But we would never think that the poison is us, we see clearly the difference between the poison and ourselves.  In the same way, our delusions are not us, but they do terrible harm to us, and we should feel great urgency to purge them from our system.  Tara is the antidote to all of the inner poisons of delusions.  She is known as the Lamrim Buddha because she helps Atisha’s followers and her blessings specifically function to bestow Lamrim realizations.  Lamrim is like a net of virtuous minds that functions to oppose all delusions directly or indirectly.  By weaving the Lamrim within our mind, we protect ourselves against any possible combination of delusions, and thus achieve protection from all inner poisons.  

How to Engage in Vajra Recitation when Reciting Heruka’s Mantras:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

There are three ways of engaging in mantra recitation: verbal, mental, and vajra. Verbal recitation is when we verbally recite the mantras with our mouth and voice. Mental recitation is when we recite the mantras with our mind alone. Vajra recitation is when we imagine our guru is reciting the mantras for us in our mind as a blessing empowerment.

When we recite Heruka’s mantras, we imagine that our four mouths (from the four faces of ourself generated as Guru Heruka) and all the retinue deities (who are purified aspects of our guru’s subtle cannels and drops) recite the mantras like a collective chant as the mantras circle in and out of our central channel according to the visualization.

As they do so, we should imagine that they – who are seen as inseparable with our guru – are collectively reciting the mantras like a healing ceremony or a spiritual surgery by a team of enlightened doctors, bestowing the blessings of the function of each mantra we recite on our mind. We strongly believe this is happening and generate a profound feeling of joy.

We do all of this while maintaining deep faith in Guru Heruka, a bodhichitta motivation, single-pointed concentration, and an understanding that ourself, the mantras, and the guru deities reciting the mantras are all manifestations of emptiness.

We can engage in vajra recitation for the sake of ourself as described above or for the sake of others, imagining that we dissolve those we love into our self-generation, and then we – as Guru Heruka – perform vajra recitation on them, blessing and healing their mind as our guru does to us.

Such amazing spiritual technology!

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Inherently Existent Objects Cannot Be Produced

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

The third reason Shantideva gives to establish selflessness is reputation of inherent production of existents and non-existents. Before with the logical reasoning of the vajra thunder bolt we looked at the impossibility of inherently existent production from the side of the causes. Here Shantideva looks at the impossibility of either an existent or a non-existent being inherently produced, in other words looking at it from the point of view of the effect.

(9.145) If something is truly existent,
What need is there for a cause to produce it?
And if something is non-existent,
Again, what need is there for a cause to produce it?

First Shantideva shows there is simply a contradiction between saying an object is inherently existent and that it is produced. If it is inherently existent, then it exists inherently and therefore does not need to be produced since it already exists on its own. Likewise, it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about production of a non-existent since a non-existent does not exist.

(9.146) Even with a hundred million causes,
A non-thing will never transform into a thing.
If it remained a non-thing, how could it become a thing?
From what state could it transform into a thing?

(9.147) While it is not a thing, it cannot exist as a thing;
So when could it ever become a thing?
It would be unable to separate from being a non-thing
Without first becoming a thing;

(9.148) But without its being separated from the state of being a non-thing,
It is impossible for the state of a thing to arise.
Likewise, a functioning thing cannot become a permanent thing
Because, if it did, it would have two mutually exclusive natures.

Those the grasp at inherent existence say that an object is either inherently existent or inherently non-existent. In moment one for example the object does not exist, and those that grasp at inherent existence would say that it truly does not exist. It inherently does not exist. In moment two, those that grasp that inherent existence say the object inherently exists. Yet they have no explanation for how something can transform from a state of inherently not existing to a state of inherently existing. Transforming from being a non-thing to a thing. How does that happen? Where does the thing come from? Yet when it exists, we grasp it as having its own independent existence. All of this is quite impossible.

I’ll try to simplify with an example of a seed and a sprout.  If the sprout were truly existent, it would not need a cause, seed, to produce it.  It would be self-existent.  With respect to the sprout at the time of the seed, again it wouldn’t need a cause to produce it either since it is a non-existent.  So the question is how does an inherently existent sprout, a thing, come into existence from being a non-thing at the time of the seed?  This would be impossible. 

Essentially all we need to know is — something cannot arise from nothing.  Also, it cannot arise from that which is itself not an effect of some other cause.  It can only be produced from that which is itself a product, so nothing is inherently existent.

Realizing Non-Dual Karma and Emptiness:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Gross and subtle ordinary appearances and conceptions can be understood from the side of the object and from the side of the mind realizing it.

Overcoming gross ordinary appearances essentially means a direct realization of emptiness in meditative equipoise on emptiness. At such times we perceive directly the mere absence of all the things we normally see. We have attained the first union of non-dual appearance and emptiness – the union of the appearance of clear light and its emptiness. We see the clear light as non-dual with its emptiness. We see the clear light as a manifestation of its emptiness. This is essentially the first profundity. From a sutra perspective, this is realized with a gross mind. From a tantra perspective, this is realized with our very subtle mind of great bliss. In Mirror of Dharma, VGL differentiates the union of non-dual clear light and emptiness and non-dual bliss and emptiness as two different examples of the union of appearance and emptiness. But it is still just the first profundity, just at a deeper level.

But to “complete the practice of clear light” we need to purify our obstructions to omniscience. Just as the conventional nature of the mind is so clear it can know objects, the clear light is to empty it can appear subtle conventional objects as non-dual with emptiness. In Eight Steps to Happiness, VGL explains that subtle conventional truths are not conventional truths, but ultimate truths. They are various things appearing directly as emptiness. An omniscient mind perceives “only emptiness” but it appears in myriad ways, of which the appearance of clear light is merely one. The non-dual appearance of myself as the deity, my car, my computer, my phone, Donald Trump, etc., are others. They are these various things appearing directly as emptiness or, from another angle, only emptiness appearing as various things.

In other words, to directly overcome subtle dualistic appearance – attain a realization of non-dual emptiness and subtle conventional truths (seeing subtle conventional truths directly as ultimate truths, only emptinesses), we need to train in the second, third, and fourth profundities, both in meditation and outside of meditation. We do it inside of meditation by meditating on non-dual profundity and clarity, for example with our self-generation meditation; and we do it outside of meditation by training in subsequent attainment, in particular according to the instructions of training in the meditation break explained in Tantric Grounds and Paths in the section on Isolated Body. This process of realizing the second, third, and fourth profundities itself occurs at two levels: at the level of our gross mind (Sutra) and at the level of our subtle and very subtle minds (Tantra).

I would also add even this explanation is not sufficient. We need to realize Nagarjuna’s intention according to the Ganden Oral Lineage. VGL explained this in his oral commentary to Mirror of Dharma and through the Gen-la’s in Arizona. The difference between the explanation from the perspective of the four profundities and from the perspective of Nagarjuna’s intention is we realize not only the union of appearance and emptiness (four profundities), but the union of karma and emptiness (Nagarjuna’s intention). We realize not just the union of appearance and emptiness, but the union of KARMIC appearance and emptiness. This is like the difference between realizing a static picture (four profundities of the non-dual Toyota and emptiness) and a dynamic karmic movie (seeing the Toyota driving down the street as the unfolding of karma inseparable from emptiness, seeing it as a manifestation of emptiness, seeing it as only emptiness appearing as a karmic unfolding appearing in this way). Realizing non-dual karma and emptiness is even deeper than the mere realization of non-dual appearance and emptiness of the four profundities according to highest yoga tantra. I think only when we realize non-dual karma and emptiness with our very subtle mind of great bliss do we actually remove the last traces of obstructions to omniscience and realize Nagarjuna’s (and Buddha’s) ultimate intention and attain full enlightenment.