We continue our discussion of the three difficulties.  The second difficulty is temporarily pacifying our delusions by applying their opponents.  Every delusion has an opponent.  When we apply the opponents, we reduce the power of the delusions within our mind.  I like to think of things in terms of waves.  If a wave with an amplitude of -1 is hit with a wave with an amplitude of +1, the result will be still water.  Each delusion is a different type of negative wave on the ocean of our mind.  To make the waters of our mind peaceful and calm, we need to neutralize these waves by applying the appropriate opponent waves.  The more we do this, the more peaceful and calm our mind will be, and the more genuinely happy we will be.  Many of our deluded states of mind are actually an interaction of many different delusions feeding off of one another.  So, quite often, we need to apply a variety of opponents.  This is no different than people who take several different medicines to counteract different illnesses within their body.

Kadam Bjorn says the power of the opponents within our mind depends upon two factors:  our personal experience of having used a particular opponent and the strength of our desire to be free from the given delusions; and of these, the latter is more important.

The lamrim texts explain in detail the different opponents to the different delusions, for example rejoicing is the opponent to jealousy, patient acceptance is the opponent to anger, seeing samsara’s pleasures are deceptive is the opponent to attachment, wisdom is the opponent to ignorance, etc.  But it is not enough to just “know” what the opponents are, their effectiveness depends on how skilled we are with using them.  An apprentice and a master craftsman use the same tools, but the quality of their work differs greatly.  In this light, it is generally better to pick a few key spiritual tools and to become highly skilled at using them than it is to use a little bit of everything ineffectively.  Over time, through decades and decades of practice, you will gradually become more and more skilled with more and more spiritual tools.

For me, I overcome almost all of my delusions with my faith in Dorje Shugden.  This is the most developed tool I have in my spiritual toolbox.  The way I use it is as follows.  If I am suffering from attachment, wanting something in particular, I request, “with respect to X, please arrange whatever is best.”  Or “with respect to X, if it is supposed to happen, please arrange for it; if not, please sabotage it.”  “Best” here means best for my spiritual training, not what is best for satisfying my worldly concerns.  Then I no longer worry.  I know Dorje Shugden is managing the situation, and whatever happens will be exactly what I need for my spiritual training.    If I am suffering from anger or frustration about something, again I request, “with respect to X, please arrange whatever is best.”  Anger, at its core, is a non-acceptance of things as they are.  It is a wish that things were different than they are.  Dorje Shugden’s job is to arrange the perfect outer, inner and secret conditions for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  If Dorje Shugden has arranged what is perfect and what is best, then how could I possibly wish things were different than they are?  Knowing it is perfect and for the best, I can then accept the aggravating circumstance.  Because I can accept it, I don’t suffer from it.  It is not a problem for me.  It can happen that I accept that something is for the best but I don’t understand why it is for the best.  Here again, I rely on Dorje Shugden.  Dorje Shugden is first and foremost a wisdom Buddha.  A particular external circumstance is neither a problem nor perfect from its own side, rather they become so in dependence upon our view and imputation.  Something is an obstacle only for a mind that imputes obstacle.  Something is perfect only for a mind that imputes perfect.  But it is not enough to just say “it’s perfect.”  For this imputation to have power and meaning within our mind, we need to realize how and why it is perfect.  So I request Dorje Shugden, “please reveal to me clearly how and why this is perfect for my practice.”  In dependence upon this faithful request, he will gradually bless our mind bestowing upon us the wisdom that sees how and why this is true.  On this basis, we can accept.  If we can accept, there is no basis for anger or worry.

But Kadam Bjorn said what is more important than experience with the opponents is the strength of our desire to be free from our delusions.  Here we need to look carefully and honestly.  All delusions promise us if we listen to them they will make us happy, but in the end they deceive us and make us suffer more.  Attachment, for example, tells us if we stare at that hot babe, take that drug or eat that last piece of chocolate, then we will be happy.  But what really happens is the hot babe thinks we are creepy, we become addicted to drugs and we get diabetes from overeating!  All the while, we are left unsatisfied.  It is like drinking salt water, the more we drink the thirstier we become.  It is like licking sugar off of a razor blade, we get some sweet but are cut painfully in the process.  It is like feeding the dinosaur which will eat you, the more you feed it the stronger it gets and the more quickly it devours you.  Anger tells us if we harm the object of our anger it will stop harming us, but the more we harm it the more it wants to harm us.  Jealousy tells us if we are jealous we will be able to hold onto our loved one for ourself, but in reality it just causes them to want to flee even further away.  Doubt tells us it will protect us from believing something that is wrong, but in reality it prevents us from believing anything, even what is right.  Our selfishness tells us it is the only one looking out for us, but in reality it is the root of all our negative actions and its sole purpose is to deliver us to the pit of the deepest hell.  Ignorance grasping at inherent existence tells us we are seeking objective truth, but in reality we are believing in things that don’t even exist.  All delusions lie.  All delusions deceive us.  But yet we still believe in them.  We want to believe their lies.  We like to think this time it will be different and it will work.

We can know all of the opponents in the world, but if we don’t really see how delusions are our enemy, if we don’t really want to remove them from our mind, then our application of the opponents will lack any power.  It is not enough to contemplate how delusions are deceptive in general, but we need to make it personal.  We need to take the time to consider how our specific attachments have created specific problems in our life.  We need to reflect upon how our anger has always backfired and harmed those we love.  We need our personal examples of how our jealousy has pushed away those we wish were closer.  The more clearly we see the harm our delusions are causing in our life, the more motivated we will be to eliminate them.  Then, when we do apply the correct opponents, our practice will have great power.

Train in the three difficulties. 

The three difficulties are things that we find difficult to do.  It is difficult to recognize our delusions, but it is even more difficult to overcome them.  And it is the most difficult to eradicate them altogether.

First difficulty:  recognize our delusions.  Gen Lekma was my first teacher, so in many ways she is my spiritual mother.  In my mind she is a saint, and my proof of this is she put up with me!  I was about as obnoxious as a new student could be.  I was incredibly arrogant and I doubted everything.  So I would alternate between being a “know it all” and somebody who wouldn’t stop asking probing questions about every little detail.  Come to think of it, I was like my 4 year old who never stops asking “why?” about everything!  So if you know her and then see her, please give her a hug from me, and tell her I say thank you for putting up with me!

Gen Lekma patiently and persistently answered all of my questions.  Probably every day I would send her a list of about 20 new questions I had, and she would answer them, each time giving me valid and definitive answers to my questions.  The reason why I kept asking was because I felt like I had found a spiritual gold mine – I was getting real answers and I couldn’t get enough.

At one point, though, she had other things to do and started falling behind with my questions.  They kept piling up, and I started growing anxious.  Several days went by, hundreds of questions were going unanswered, and then I received from her a very short email.  It said, “with respect to all of the questions you have asked, there are good answers.  Please go find them.  Love, Lekma.”  At first, I felt a bit abandoned, but then I started to think deeply about what she said – there are good answers.  Up until that point, doubts and questions for me were an object of stress and uncertainty.  If there are not good answers to my questions, then the Dharma was perhaps unreliable, and then I would go back to having nothing.  But here she was saying, “there are good answers.”  So I didn’t need to worry, questions didn’t have to be a problem.  In Understanding the Mind Geshe-la explains that there are two types of doubts, doubts tending towards delusion and doubts tending towards the truth.  Before, my default would be if I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t believe it.  But with this answer, my mind shifted where my default was if I wasn’t sure, I could trust that it was true I just don’t understand how or why yet.  So instead of being a source of anxiety and worry, my doubts became an inexhaustible fuel for joyfully plunging ever deeper into the Dharma.  Her answer also said, “please find them.”  In other words, I didn’t need to ask somebody externally, I could look for myself, cultivate my own discriminating wisdom, and find my own answers within the Dharma.  This helped me break my transforming my teachers into objects of attachment.

The reason why I bring up Gen Lekma is in my last meeting with her as my teacher before I moved to Europe, I asked her for some final advice.  She said, “train in the three difficulties, in particular identifying your own delusions.”  The most dangerous thing about pride is it makes you blind to your own faults and delusions.  If you can’t see them, you can’t overcome them.  Once we become aware of a sickness in our body, we are naturally motivated to find a remedy and to apply it.  It is the same with the inner sickness of our delusions.  Most doctors all agree medicine is 80% correct diagnosis, 20% cure.  Once the illness is correctly diagnosed, the cure is usually self-evident.  Again, the same is true with our inner sickness of delusions.

Our normal view is those thing which provoke our delusions are obstacles to our practice.  Quite the opposite, they are our practice.  Just as angry people are an essential condition for our training in patience, those in need are an essential condition for out training in giving, those who provoke delusions within us are an essential condition for our practice of training the mind.

So training in the first of the three difficulties is actually very easy – just interact with living beings!  Family, kids, co-workers and people on the road are all especially skilled at provoking delusions within us.  We should be incredibly grateful to them for this service they provide, because without them we would have incredible difficulty identifying our delusions.  If we don’t see our sickness, then our training in Dharma lacks any power.  We are told in the Lamrim teachings that the way we should listen to Dharma is the same way as a patient told they have some terrible sickness would listen to the doctor explaining their cure.  If we don’t have our own inner sickness in mind when we listen to or practice Dharma, it will remain abstract at best.  Most likely we will listen to the Dharma with a clear understanding of the inner sickness of delusions of all of our family members, and we will think, “oh, so and so really needs to hear this!”  No, all of the Dharma is personal advice for us.

The world is filled with deluded people.  This is why they are so precious.  This is why we don’t need them to change.  This is why we can accept them just as they are.  Their highly deluded behavior suits us just fine because that is how we are able to identify our own inner sickness.  These people are the field of our practice, they are in fact emanated by our Dharma protector to give us an opportunity to progress along the path.  The bottom line is this:  modern people are lazy.  If we weren’t forced to overcome our delusions, we wouldn’t and we would remain trapped forever.

Guard both as you would your life. 

Here both refers to the two types of commitments we have taken.  The two commitments are the specific commitments, namely the 18 commitments of training the mind; and the general commitments, which are all our other commitments, such as refuge, pratimoksha, Bodhisattva, and Tantric vows.  We should guard our commitments as we do our life because they are the best way to overcome our faults.

When I started this series of posts, I discussed at length how we tend to completely neglect training in our vows and commitments.  We go from viewing them as something we fear to something we pay lip service to until finally they are just something we ignore.  This vow reminds us to not make that mistake.  In reality, our vows are like the condensed meaning of the entire path.  Instead of upteen books with countless pages, all of our practices have been reduced down to the 240 or so essential instructions.  Each of these, in turn, can be reduced down further.  The Pratimoksha vows can be reduced down to “do no harm,” either to yourself or to others.  The refuge vows can be reduced down to “rely on the three jewels to solve your inner problem.”  The bodhisattva vows can be reduced down to “put others first.”  Our Tantric vows can be reduced down to “maintain pure view.”  Our task is to see how all of the books can be condensed into the vows and commitments, and how the vows and commitments can be condensed down into these basic principles.

Endure both, which ever arises. 

Here both refers to both good and bad conditions which we encounter in our life.  We should accept both and prevent either from interfering with our spiritual practice.

All good and bad circumstances in this context can be included within the eight worldly concerns.  If we are overly concerned with any of these they become obstacles to our Dharma practice.  If we are concerned about experiencing pleasant things, we can become elated and further attached to samsara.  If we are overly concerned about avoiding unpleasant things, we can easily lose our faith in the Dharma when things go wrong.  If we are preoccupied with wealth, it can become a distraction and cause greater involvement in worldly pursuits to the detriment of our Dharma practice.  If we are overly fearful of a lack of resources, we can become depressed and worry about material things to the detriment of our practice.  If we seek praise we can develop pride and a feeling of being superior to others.  If criticism scares us, we will suffer badly when we inevitably experience it.  If we are overly concerned with having a good reputation, we can wind up ignoring our fellow Dharma practitioners and may even feel superior to our spiritual guide.  Like with criticism, if we wish to avoid a bad reputation we will become unhappy in those unavoidable moments when we have one.

To “endure both” essentially means to transform both.  A Dharma practitioner seeks to accept all things as they arise.  What prevents us from accepting things is we don’t know how to use them to accomplish our purposes.  The primary reason for this is our purposes are worldly, so some things are good and other things are bad.  If our purposes are spiritual, namely we seek to advance ourself along the spiritual path, then all situations are equally useful, just in different ways.  With the wisdom that knows how to transform any situation into the path, we know how to “use” everything, and so therefore we can accept everything, indeed we can embrace everything.  With such a powerful mind, we become a fearless being.  Nothing is a problem for us, everything is fuel for our path.  Instead of being buffeted by life’s waves, we learn how to surf them to the Island of Enlightenment.  All anxiety, stress and worry simply fade away, and we become a pillar of support and stability for those around us.  Since we see nothing as a problem, when others explain to us their difficulties we quite naturally see how such challenges can be used for good.  A mind that can accept everything is actually a pre-requisite for the mind of renunciation because the paradox is it is only by fully accepting the truth of suffering that we can move beyond it.

How can we transform each of these eight conditions into the path?  Wealth can be used to benefit others and support them (or ourselves) in their (our) practice of training the mind.  Poverty can help us let go of attachment to all things and become truly rich with the mind of contentment.  Pleasant experiences can be offered to the guru at our heart, transformed in our tantric practice or serve as a reminder of the need to accumulate merit.  Unpleasant experiences can help us generate the wish to avoid negativity, engage in purification, escape from samsara and generate compassion for those who suffer.  Praise can be redirected internally into praise for the guru at our heart and all the Buddhas who inspired good things.  Criticism is our greatest teacher because we are so often blind to our own shortcomings, and without others pointing them out we wouldn’t be able to overcome them.  A good reputation can enable us to spread the Dharma easily and inspire others to follow the spiritual path.  A bad reputation can give us an opportunity to break free from concern about what others think, purify our negative karma and even go on retreat since those with a bad reputation often lose their positions.  If we practice like this then we can transform any circumstance into the path, and always remain happy and undisturbed regardless of the circumstances.

A pure practitioner seeks to simplify the entire path into two things:  appearances and response.  No matter what appears, they simply focus on responding with wisdom and virtue.  If we understand karma and emptiness, life is little different than a video game.  None of it is real, things arise and we respond.  To win the game, we merely need to respond correctly to whatever arises.  We will make many mistakes, but if our intention to complete the game never wavers, we will be reborn again and again as a practitioner, gradually improving the ability with which we play the game until eventually we master it and can respond to everything perfectly all of the time.  When we reach this state, we will attain a “deathless state,” we will become a true Conqueror, undefeatable by Samsara.  And then we can teach others how to play as well.

There are two activities, one at the beginning and one at the end. 

Whenever we engage in any Dharma activity, there are two important things.  First set a pure motivation at the beginning and then conclude with an appropriate dedication.  In between the motivation and dedication, we rely upon mindfulness and alertness.

Why are motivation and dedication important?  The quality of our karma is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) determined by our internal intention, or motivation for the action.  The same action, such as giving flowers to our wife, can have dramatically different karmic results.  If we give her flowers for selfish reasons, such as we want her to forgive us for forgetting our anniversary, then the karmic result will at most be some mild forgiveness.  If we give her flowers because we want others to give us flowers in our future lives, that is what will happen.  If we give her flowers motivated by renunciation wishing to escape from samsara, then the action will ripen in a pure karmic seed which will contribute to our liberation.  If we give her flowers imagining that by doing so we are giving flowers to countless living beings, we multiply the good karma by the number of beings we imagined we are giving them to (namely countless).  If we give her flowers with a bodhichitta motivation, the action will ripen in the form of our enlightenment.  Same action, different motivations, different karmic results.  The same is true for any virtuous action.  So by setting a good motivation at the beginning, we can make sure we get the maximum karmic benefit from our spiritual efforts.

Dedication is important because the mental action of dedication completes the virtuous karma we just accumulated, determining how it will ripen.  We can dedicate our virtues to winning the lottery or for the enlightenment of all beings, but the karmic results will be vastly different.  Dedication is like choosing how to invest our money.  If we earn a lot of money and want to invest it, we need to decide what to invest it in.  In exactly the same way, when we accumulate a lot of merit from our Dharma practice, we need to choose what to invest it in.  The greater the “scope” of the karmic investment fund we place it in, the higher the spiritual return.  Just as there are four different scopes of being, so too there are four different scopes of dedication.  An ordinary, initial scope being is concerned with the welfare of this life alone, and their dedication is made towards that end.  This has the lowest spiritual return on it.  A special, initial scope being is concerned with the welfare of all their future lives, and their dedication is made towards that end.  The same is true for an intermediate scope being striving for liberation and a great scope being striving for enlightenment.  The spiritual return of an initial scope being can be liked to a spark, the return of an intermediate scope being can be likened to a candle, and the return of a great scope being can be liked to the blazing of the sun.  It is important to note that the scope of our dedication (and our motivation for that matter) are not determined by the words we say, but rather by the mind with which we say them.  Just as it is possible to hold Mahayana tenets with a Hinayana motivation, so too it is possible to recite a Mahayana dedication verse with a worldly motivation with only worldly results.

Dedication also functions to protect the merit we have accumulated from our subsequent anger and other delusions.  All delusions, but anger in particular, function to destroy the non-dedicated virtuous karma we have previously accumulated.  The reason for this is easy enough to understand.  If a wave with an amplitude of +1 is hit with a wave with an amplitude of -1, the result will be the cancellation of any wave at all.  In the same way, when the positive wave of our virtues is hit with the negative wave of our delusions, the result will be the neutralization of our virtuous karma.  It will be as if we never engaged in the virtuous action at all.  Anger in particular is destructive because it runs exactly counter to all virtue.  The wish of anger is to harm, which is exactly the opposite of all virtuous wishes.  Since our virtues are still weak whereas our anger is strong, anger burns through our merit like a wild fire after a drought.  In particular, anger directed at a bodhisattva is karmically equivalent to wishing to harm all living beings (wishing to harm somebody who wishes to help all living beings indirectly harms all living beings).  Such anger almost instantly can wipe out aeons worth of non-dedicated merit.

When we dedicate our merit, however, the merit develops a type of special protective sheathing.  If we saved our money by putting it under our bed, it can be destroyed in a fire; if we saved it by putting it into the bank, it is safe.  If our wealth is primarily our house and we have no insurance, if it burns down, we lose everything.  But if we do have insurance, our wealth is safe even if the house burns down.  It is the same with dedication.

Very often we quickly blitz through generating a motivation because we want to get to the meat of the main practice.  We likewise distractedly recite our dedication prayers because we know as soon as we finish our practice we need to start our day.  During the day itself, we rarely if ever take the time to establish a good motivation and the beginning and almost never take the time to dedicate at the end.  As a result, all of this virtue largely becomes wasted.  We would not leave the family jewels just lying around, but would take great pains to make sure they were safe.  In the same way, we should not leave the inner jewels of our virtuous karma unprotected by not dedicating them.  We need to apply effort to make setting our motivation and dedicating to be our new habit, but of all the habits to cultivate, this is the most important one.

Perform every suppression of interference by one. 

Here one refers to the practice of taking and giving.  We should overcome all obstacles, delusions, etc., through the practice of taking and giving.  This is the supreme method for overcoming our obstacles.

This may be too cultural of a reference, but in the 1980s in the U.S. there was a television show called “MacGyver.”  I can’t remember the details, perhaps he was some sort of spy, but every show he managed to solve every adventure with duct tape and a Swiss Army knife.  With these two tools, he could put together anything with whatever other materials he had at his disposal.  So prominent was this show, that “MacGyver” actually became a verb, namely “to MacGyver something.”  This meant to find an ingenious solution to something with whatever limited materials we had at our disposal.  For Kadampas, the practice of taking and giving is our duct tape and Swiss Army knife of overcoming obstacles.  With taking and giving, we can not only transform any adverse situation into the bodhisattva’s path, but we can actually overcome the obstacles themselves.

How does this work?  The starting point for the practice of taking and giving is others’ happiness is more important than our own.  The mind of giving says, “I have something good, I would rather others have it instead of me.”  The mind of taking says, “others have something bad, I would rather I have it instead of them.”  About a year ago, on Facebook there was a picture of a police officer who gave his shoes to a homeless person.  Why did he do this?  Because the police officer realized the homeless guy needed the shoes more than he did, and besides he can always get more shoes later whereas the homeless guy cannot.  The practice of giving is exactly the same.  We have all sorts of good things, our time, our body, our mind, our energy, our love, our wisdom, and we see others need these things more than we do, so we give to them.  Besides, we know we have the means to get more of these things.  If we were walking down the street and we saw some old lady struggling to carry her heavy grocery bags, what would we do?  Quite naturally, we would carry the bags for her.  Why?  Because we realize we are in a better position than her to carry that burden easily.  The practice of taking is exactly the same.  We see others carry various burdens, physical or emotional, and we see that we are in a better position to carry those burdens than they are.  We know how to transform adverse conditions into the path, we have built up the strength of our body and mind through our previous bodhichita-inspired actions.  So we naturally assume the burdens and sufferings of others.

Perhaps the greatest example of this in the world is Christ dying on the cross.  We are told that he died to save us from our sins.  For many, many years this made no sense to me.  How could his dying help me in any way?  But Geshe-la explained in Eight Steps to Happiness that Christ was most likely practicing taking and giving on the cross.  He had done nothing wrong himself, yet he took the negative karma of all living beings onto himself so that others could be free.  By generating faith in him, Christians align themselves with Christ’s special blessings which function to take their negative karma away and to give back to them the Kingdom of Heaven.  How wonderful!

The question may arise, “why would anybody want to do take all suffering upon themselves and give to others everything good that they have?”  It is a good question, and on the surface it seems like a crazy thing to do.  We can barely handle our own problems, surely we would be crushed under the weight of taking on all of the negative karma, delusions and sufferings of all living beings!  First, we need to make a distinction between our external practice of taking and giving and our internal practice of taking and giving.  Externally, we should only give that which we can afford to give or can relatively easily replace.  If we give away everything and find ourselves on the street unable to eat, then we are actually undermining our ability to give in the future.  Externally, we should only take on burdens that we can reasonably carry.  If we stretch ourselves too thin, we will be unable to accomplish anything and those who were counting on us will be let down.

Internally, however, we can go wild with this practice.  How does this work?  The important thing to keep in mind is virtuous minds activate virtuous karma and negative minds activate negative karma.  The mind of taking and giving is a supremely virtuous mind, so it is impossible for it to activate any negative karma at all.  Quite the opposite, it will act as a force field protecting us from the activation and ripening of any negative karma.  But the trick to engaging in this meditation in a qualified way is we need to choose to completely forget this karmic loophole in the practice!  If we keep this loophole in mind, when we engage in the practice of taking and giving we will know we are not really doing it, and so our practice will lack power to move our mind.  Instead, we try to forget that we know it is a safe thing to do and we throw caution completely to the wind and with all of our heart we take on all their negative karma, delusions and suffering and give back all hard-earned merit, realizations and happiness.  The more we forget it is safe, the more powerfully this practice will transform our mind.  We need to genuinely be willing to take it all on ourselves and genuinely willing to give it all away.

The benefits of this practice are limitless.  We quickly purify all of our negative karma with respect to the beings whose suffering we take on.  We generate powerful and close karmic connections between ourself and others, through which we will later be able to lead these beings to enlightenment when we become a Buddha.  We accumulate vast quantities of merit which in the future will fulfill all of our wishes.  We completely eviscerate our self-cherishing mind because the practice of taking and giving runs completely counter to it.  We also quickly ripen our ability to actually be able to engage in the practice of taking and giving in the future, just like Christ could.  This practice is also a powerful method for transforming our love and compassion from some abstract notions to practical principles we live our life by.  This practice increases our wisdom understanding that suffering and happiness are merely imputed phenomena.  And almost miraculously, the more we engage in this practice in meditation the more circumstances will spontaneously arise in our daily life where we can practically, externally take the burden of others upon ourself and give to others all the good we have accumulated.

We may ask, “I see that the practice of taking and giving is beneficial, but why should I suppress every interference with this one practice?  Surely it makes sense to use a wide variety of methods according to the varying circumstances I find myself in.”  While it is true that it makes more sense to use different tools for different jobs, it is still nonetheless wise to perform every suppression of interference with this one practice.  Why?  First, the effectiveness of any practice is determined by two main factors:  the natural function of the practice and the depth of our experience in using that practice.  It may be that some other practice might be a more exact opponent to our specific problem, but if we have not used that particular opponent very often in the past, it will lack power in our mind.  Instead, if we use a general purpose opponent like taking and giving in every situation, then our personal experience of this practice will deepen quickly, making it a very powerful method for overcoming any opponent.  There was once a boxer named Mike Tyson who for many years was simply unstoppable.  He had a crushing upper hook that was knocking out all of his opponents in the first round.  He had so mastered this one punch, he basically needed nothing else.  It is the same for the seasoned practitioner of taking and giving.  The second reason why we want to focus only on this method is by directly training in taking and giving, we are indirectly applying every other method.  Taking and giving is a practice that directly or indirectly encompasses all of the other practices.  Third, taking and giving is the principal method by which Buddhas benefit living beings.  Every day Buddhas are constantly taking on the delusions, negative karma and suffering of living beings and giving back their wisdom, pure karma and realization of great bliss.  It is their main method of benefiting living beings.  Since we are training to become Buddhas ourselves, it is only fitting that we start acting like one now.

The precepts of training the mind

Do all yogas by one. 

This means that we should perform all of our actions with the intention of benefiting others.   If we do all our other practices with the same intention, they will all have great meaning.

In one of his most famous lines, Geshe-la says in Eight Step to Happiness that the path to enlightenment is very simple:  we simply need to cherish others’s happiness more than our own.  All other realizations flow naturally from this.  There is a tendency amongst many to always thirst for new instructions and more instructions.  We easily become distracted or bored when we hear the same instructions over and over again, and become very excited when we hear something new.  We often like to contemplate the really deep and profound questions that require us to push our analytical reasoning skills to the limit.  We love the intellectual jujitsu of the debates on tenants.  Why?  Part of it may be our love of Dharma, but if we are honest a large part of it is we treat Dharma instructions like we do any other samsaric object, namely some external thing that has some power to give us some happiness.  The first time we try mint chocolate chip ice cream, we are in heaven.  But if we had to eat it every meal, every day, we would soon become disgusted.  We treat the Dharma the same way, and quickly become bored.  Dharma teachings no longer “do it” for us.  The high gradually wears off and we wander in search of something new.

The solution to this problem is realizing that Dharma instructions are not something that have any power to do anything to us, rather they indicate practices we ourselves need to do with our mind.  If we are actually changing our mind with the instructions we have received, when we hear the same instruction again in the future we will get something new out of it.  Why?  Not because the instruction itself has changed, but rather because the mind understanding that instruction has changed.  If we find ourselves bored with Dharma teachings we have heard before, it is a perfectly reliable sign that we have not actually changed our mind with that instruction since the last time we heard it.  If we had changed our mind, even if only on the margin, hearing the instruction again will confirm and reinforce our own personal experience, and our mind will be blessed to see a new or deeper perspective on the instruction.

Many Dharma practitioners observe the fact that Geshe-la’s books don’t contain everything and there are many incredibly interesting avenues left unexplored.  So they set out to fill in the gaps with other books and other teachings.  I remember once, shortly after I became a Highest Yoga Tantra practitioner, I set out to understand the symbolism of every single aspect of every single visualization within the sadhana.  If we check the books, we will realize that Geshe-la explains – at most – about half of the symbolisms.  I knew that Gen-la Losang knew the symbolism behind every single aspect, so I prepared a spreadsheet with each aspect and all of the symbolisms I knew from the various books, and I asked him to help me fill in the blanks.  He wrote back saying he knew but said I didn’t need them.  This, of course, peaked my curiosity even more.  I knew he knew, but perhaps he didn’t know me and what a “sincere practitioner” I was.  So I wrote him back and lengthy email explaining to him all of the valid reasons (with scriptural references, of course) as to why I did need these explanations.  I concluded by reminding that it was a bodhisattva vow to respond to all questions asked out of faith!  He then wrote back again saying, “It is unthinkable that Geshe-la would not give us everything we need to attain enlightenment.  It is also unthinkable that he would give us something we don’t need.  Why?  Because he wants us to focus on gaining deep and personal experience of what is important and not become distracted by what is not.  So instead of trying to make your Dharma understanding more complex, try to make your experience of Dharma more simple.”

This was an incredibly powerful teaching for me, as I had become very attached to receiving more and more Dharma instructions and making my understanding more and more complete.  Now, my goal is to simplify my practice more and more down to the essentials.  When we do so, what we find is by practicing a few simple things directly we train in everything else indirectly.  So we actually lack nothing.  And if all of Dharma is boiled down to one thing, it is cherishing others.

We may object, “but it says in the Lamrim teachings that the quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma is bodhichitta,” so shouldn’t bodhichitta be the “one” we perform all yogas by?  The answer is no because bodhichitta is the last domino that falls naturally if we, with effort, topple the first domino of cherishing others.  If we cherish others and then consider their sufferings, compassion arises naturally.  If we have compassion and we consider we currently lack the ability to help others, bodhichitta arises naturally.  So the real beating heart of bodhichitta is cherishing others.

Shantideva says in Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life that cherishing others is the root of all happiness and cherishing ourelf is the root of all suffering.  He also observes that Buddhas cherish only others and samsaric beings cherish only themselves, and then he invites us to look at the difference!  There is no practice more important than cherishing others.  It is also one that we don’t have to be Buddhist to appreciate.  It is the true universal panacea, accessible to all.

Do not seek happiness by causing unhappiness to others. 

This includes obvious things like killing and stealing.  It also includes wanting others to have misfortune so that we benefit.  Karmically speaking if we violate this commitment we create the causes for future misery, whereas if we follow it we create the cause for future happiness.

This vow is fairly simple and straightforward:  don’t sacrifice somebody else’s happiness for the sake of our own.  Every decision we make in life will involve trade-offs.  Our normal way of assessing such trade-offs is “others lose, I win” is good, “others win, I lose” is bad.  The Kadampa, in contrast, always seeks win-win solutions; and when they are not possible, they would rather the other person win and they be the one who loses.  The reasons for this have already been explained in detail in the discussion of the previous vows, such as the one on not being the first to get the best.   The real trick of this vow is to be mindful of all of the different circumstances when it can arise.

This vow also advises us to not take sadistic pleasure in the suffering of others.  Venerable Tharchin says that when we rejoice in the misfortune of others we create the causes to experience similar misfortune ourself in the future.  He gave the example of Palestinians rejoicing when an Israeli café is blown up, or Israelis rejoicing when Palestinian leaders are assassinated.  Think of Al-Qaeda’s rejoicing at 9/11 or American rejoicing in the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  Venerable Tharchin ominously said, “from a karmic point of view, rejoicing is no different than pulling the trigger ourself.”

Those who are in positions of authority or who possess some degree of power constantly have to make decisions that affect the lives of others.  From an ordinary point of view, their decision making criteria is:  (1) maximize the benefit and minimize the harm to myself, and then (2) divert benefit to my friends and deflect harm to my enemies.  Since everybody is doing this, society quickly becomes a war of all against all, where only might makes right.  It is for this reason that some ancient practitioners used to pray to never become politicians or to occupy any position of power.

Modern Kadampas, however, take a different approach to such questions.  We are taught not to shun wealth, power or position, but instead to use them to benefit others.  Bill Gates enormous wealth in and of itself is neutral, but it becomes incredibly useful when he uses it to help others.  Our mission as a tradition is to attain the union of Kadam Dharma and modern life.  Wealth, power and position are parts of modern life, so our job is to unite the Kadam Dharma with them.

The question then becomes, “how can a modern Kadampa wield power in a correct way?”  First, they use their wisdom born from seeing the benefit of cherishing others to see how “win-win” decisions can be arrived at.  Given that everything is in fact intimately inter-related, there are actually very few circumstances where a “win-lose” is required.  This will be self-evident to the mind that knows how to transform adverse conditions into the path.  Second, they make their decisions from the perspective of “maximizing the aggregate benefit for everyone involved, irrespective of who enjoys such benefit.”  If the policy is a good one, then the aggregate benefits will exceed the aggregate costs.  This is different than a policy that might be very beneficial for one group but at the expense of everyone else.  Third, the “winners” of the policy decision should be made to compensate the “losers” of the policy decision in such a way as the losers are at least indifferent between the policy being enacted and it not being enacted.  For example, in a free trade agreement, the country as a whole might benefit, but within that country different groups are winners and losers.  For example, the country’s exporters and their consumers might win, but the country’s farmers and industrial workers might lose.  A correct policy would be one where the exporter and consumer winners are taxed in some way, and the proceeds are transferred to the farmers or industrial workers in the form of professional re-training, etc.  Finally, if there must be “losers” then the modern Kadampa decision-maker will structure things so “wisdom wins” and “delusions” lose.  For example, guaranteeing equal rights represents a tragic loss for those in positions of privilege, but it is a victory for society as a whole when oppression and discrimination lose.  As Ghandi said, “even the oppressor is unfree when they oppress, they just don’t realize it.”

There may be some residual doubt in our mind about the wisdom of having wealth, power and influence.  Lord Acton famously said, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  But this is only true for a mind controlled by self-cherishing.  Therefore, as a practical matter, to protect ourselves against this danger, we should always make sure that our mind of cherishing others outstrips the power we wield.  If this is the case, we still need to be mindful, but we should be spiritually safe with such power.

Do not turn a god into a demon.  God in this context refers to training the mind, and demon refers to delusions such as pride and attachment.  If we practice incorrectly we may increase our delusions, such as pride, with our Dharma practice.  Therefore, we should try to study and practice with firm understanding and correctly.

Because for many of us our delusions are at present more powerful than our virtues, they have an uncanny ability to hijack our Dharma understanding and use it to make us even more deluded.  Pride is the most common example of this.  Ordained people can feel like only they are the real practitioners and everybody else just can’t let go of samsara.  Prasangikas can read there is no enlightenment outside of the wisdom realizing emptiness and then conclude they have the monopoly on the truth.  Mahayanists can look down on Theravadan practitioners as being “lesser.”  Dorje Shugden practitioners can look down on the Dalai Lama’s followers as having sold out the pure Dharma for Tibetan politics.  Buddhists can look down on devout Christians with their grasping at an external creator and denials of basic science.  Resident Teachers can look down on those who are not “committed enough” to follow the study programs perfectly.  Center administrators can look down on those who contribute little to the functioning of the center.  So called “scholars” can look down on those with a simplistic understanding of the Dharma.  So-called “practitioners” can look down on scholars as just intellectual masturbators.  Those from more established, successful Dharma centers can look down on those whose centers are struggling to survive.  Those who have not yet been fired by Geshe-la can look down on those who have been.  Those who have been fired several times can look down on those who haven’t yet.  Those who have been around for many years can look down on those who are naively enthusiastic in the honeymoon stage.  Those on ITTP can look down on those just on TTP; those on TTP can look down on those just in FP; those on FP can look down on those just in GP.  Those who go to pujas at the center can look down on those who don’t.  Highest Yoga Tantra practitioners can look down on those who are not.  The list goes on and on and on.  It’s all the same though:  people can look at some good aspect of their Dharma practice as being somehow superior to that of others, and they use this as a basis for generating pride.

It is not just limited to pride.  Our attachment to worldly pleasures can kidnap our understanding of the Tantric teachings to use them as a justification to indulge in our attachments.  Dharma Teachers’ attachment to people coming to their classes can kidnap their compassion and bodhichitta to use them as a justification to manipulate or guilt trip others into coming to class.  Center administrators’ attachment to growing the center can kidnap their wish to flourish the Dharma to take advantage of people’s time, labor and circumstance.  Our wrong understanding of renunciation can cause us to feel we are somehow not allowed to be happy.  Our discouragement can kidnap the teachings on humility to become an excuse for not really trying.  Our doubt can kidnap our wish for wisdom and cause us to reject generating faith.  Our intellectual laziness can kidnap our faith and prevent us from pushing beyond faith to generating personal wisdom.  Our attachment to remaining with our partner can kidnap the teachings on cherishing others to remain in an abusive or dysfunctional relationship.  Our laziness can kidnap the instruction “don’t worry, be happy, just try” as a pretext for never getting serious about training in our vows and commitments.  Our aversion to our family, jobs and life circumstance can kidnap the teachings on our precious human life to convince us such things are obstacles to our practice instead of objects of our practice.  Our externally exaggerated understanding of what it means to be a Dharma practitioner can create tension in our mind when, due to our circumstance, we are unable to practice in such a way.  Our self-hatred can transform every Dharma teaching about the faults of our delusions into a whip we beat ourselves with.  Our judgmental attitude towards others can kidnap all of the teachings and use them as grounds to condemn others for their shortcomings.

If we think carefully, there is not a single Dharma instruction that can’t be taken wrong!  The teachings on reliance on the spiritual guide can be misunderstood to make us cult-like.  The teachings on death can be misunderstood to make us morbid.  The teachings on the hell realms can be misunderstood to make us fatalistic.  The teachings on equanimity can be misunderstood to make us aloof to others’ plight.  The teachings on compassion can be misunderstood to make us depressed.  The teachings on concentration can be misunderstood to make our mind rigid.  The teachings on emptiness can be misunderstood to make us nihilistic or solipsistic.  The teachings on divine pride can be misunderstood to give us a “Jesus complex.”

Every correct Dharma understanding is necessarily a middle way between two extremes.  One extreme is our normal samsaric views, the other extreme is some wrong understanding of the meaning of the instruction. How do we know if we have gone to the other extreme with a Dharma instruction?  Kadam Bjorn said, “there is not a single Dharma mind that is tight and narrow, they are all spacious and open.”  The function of all correct Dharma understandings is to make our mind more peaceful and calm.  So the test is simple:  if our mind is becoming more tight, narrow, agitated or judgmental we have gone too far; if our mind is becoming more open, spacious, peaceful and accepting we are on the right track.

Do not aim at being the first to get the best. 

If we own something jointly, we should not want to possess it all for ourselves. If we share something, we should not want the best parts for ourselves.

Aiming to be the first to get the best is the natural tendency of this world.  The reason for this is very simple:  we live in a world where resources are finite and our desires are limitless.  We fear if we do not aim to be the first to get the best we may wind up with nothing at all.  In the workplace, the “successful ones” all seem to put the interests of themselves ahead of everybody else.  They seek the best jobs, they claim the most credit.  When it comes time to bear some unpleasant burden, they manage to maneuver themselves into a position of “management” while we are left to do all of the work.  When there is cake being cut, we want the first piece; when we are waiting in line, we resent those in front of us; when we are in traffic, we cut in front of others; when there is a good seat, we try grab it before somebody else does; when we are at the supermarket, we pick the best fruit for ourselves, etc.  In short, we live our life as one giant scramble to take the last cookie in the cookie jar for ourselves, thinking it is better to have than to go without.

A Kadampa does the exact opposite.  We strive to be the first to get the worst.  If somebody is to go without, we would rather it be us.  We volunteer for the worst jobs that everybody else tries to avoid, such as cleaning the toilets.  We take the smallest and worst piece for ourselves.  We give others credit for all successes and take the blame for all failures.  We would rather lose so others can win.  We provide for others instead of take for ourselves.

Venerable Tharchin goes so far as to say we should simply abolish from our mind any sense of “owning anything as our own.”  We should ban the thought “mine” from our mind.  Our house is not ours, it is what we provide for our family.  Our money belongs to all living beings, we are merely the present custodian managing it for their benefit.  Our body has been given away as a servant to others.  Our realizations are gained on their behalf.  We have literally given away our “self” to others, having transferred this imputation onto others.  We hold nothing back for ourselves.  We would rather be working tirelessly for others than having some “me” time.

And here is the kicker:  we do all this gladly!  On the surface, the above does not exactly make for a good marketing slogan – “Become a Kadampa, get the worst of everything!”  Our reluctance to do this once again shows we have everything completely backwards.

Why are we happy to do this?  First, because we value our future lives more than this present life, our priority in life is to store up good karma for the future, not exhaust it all now on fleeting samsaric rewards.  Second, because we realize samsara’s pleasures are deceptive, they seem as attractive to us as candy we know is laced with poison.  Third, because we have exchanged ourself with others, it is simply more important to us that others be happy than for ourself to be.  Fourth, because we have bodhichitta, we want to push ourselves to become a better person and scrupulously avoiding being the first to get the best does exactly that.  Fifth, because we understand emptiness, we realize it is all a dream so there is no “best” to be had anyways.  Finally, because we are a tantric practitioner, we seek to bring the result into the path by emulated the actions of a Buddha now.

Even in a worldly sense, avoiding being the first to get the best is simply a good life strategy.  Nobody respects the selfish, and everybody tries to knock down the arrogant.  Ghandi said his goal in life was to become the lowest of all.  Who does not hold him up as the highest of all?  Those who put the interests of others first, even at the expense of themselves, are venerated as the greatest statesmen and the world’s moral beacons.  When we start to live our life in this way, others around us begin to do the same.  Geshe-la famously says in Eight Steps to Happiness that somebody who cherishes others more than themselves is like a magic crystal that has the power to transform and purify any community.  Internally, most of our stress in life can be traced back to anxiety about getting our share and making sure we have enough.  All of this vanishes when our priority is for others to get the best.  Many of the world’s externally richest people feel perpetually poor.  No matter how much they have, it never satisfies their desires and they always want more.  There is always somebody with a bigger yacht, a higher position, or a more beautiful wife.

To be truly rich is to feel as if we lack nothing.  No amount of external possessions can ever create this feeling.  Such a feeling comes only from the internal mind of contentment.  The richest person in the world is the one who is most content with what they have, not the person with the biggest bank account.  The reality is we already have it all.  It is only our ignorance grasping at this small self we normally relate to as being “us” that deprives us from enjoying everything.  If everything is our karmic dream, all beings and all things already belong to us.  This small self is just one wave on the ocean of who we really are.  This larger us, the one that is indeed all living beings, already possesses everything, and it makes no difference who enjoys what because we are all one and the same.

This vow does not mean we should shun wealth, position, power and so forth.  Such things are incredibly useful if used for the service of others.  But we do not need to seek them out.  If we live our life as a Bodhisattva, such things will effortlessly fall into our lap.  Our task is to simply use everything in service of others.