Author: Kadampa Ryan

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Never abandon bodhichitta

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Giving up bodhichitta. 

This vow says if, due to self-cherishing or discouragement, we give up our bodhichitta motivation we incur a root downfall.  To give up our bodhichitta motivation does not mean forgetting it sometimes, rather it means we actively make the decision to stop helping somebody.

Often times when we hear this, we are far more likely to fall into the extreme of indulging others in their delusions and negativity.  We remain in dysfunctional or even abusive relationships with people because we “don’t want to abandon them” or we think we don’t want to abandon helping them.  To protect against this tendency, we need to conjoin our love and compassion with a little bit of wisdom.  The bottom line is we don’t help people by indulging them in their delusions and negativities.  To take an easy example, if somebody is abusing us we are not helping them by allowing them to do so.  We may think we are helping them by sticking around, but unless there are very unique circumstances, we are not actually helping them.  Perhaps our fear of leaving them kidnaps the instruction on not abandoning our bodhichitta and uses that as the justification for why we never leave. Or perhaps we have fallen into a savior or martyr complex, which is quite different than qualified bodhichitta. All these are mistakes.  Us remaining in deluded relationships enables them to create all sorts of negative karma towards us, and we wind up wasting our precious opportunity by remaining trapped. 

Yes, we may be able to transform their abuse, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t also transform the challenges associated with no longer being with them.  If all situations are equally transformable since they are all equally empty, then this can’t be a reason for staying or leaving.  Instead, the question is what is the least deluded and most virtuous course of action for all concerned?  It takes enormous spiritual strength to leave a relationship when it needs to be done.  Sometimes the most spiritually challenging thing to do is not stick around, but leave.

But doesn’t this “abandon” the other person?  We think, “I am helping them somewhat in the good times and if I left they would have nothing good in their life and they would get worse, so I need to stick around for them.”  But it is also equally possible that the best way we can help somebody is by our absence.  Sometimes our absence is more helpful than our presence – either because they are then forced to learn how to stand on their own two feet or perhaps they realize there are natural consequences to their actions.  It all depends upon the context of the situation.

The test I use to decide whether it makes sense to stick around is very simple:

  1. Do I have the spiritual capacity to stick around without being destroyed myself in the process?  If no, then leave.  If yes, proceed to question 2.
  2. Is the other person genuinely, from their own side, trying to get better and change themselves?   If no, then leave.  You will never change them.   Only they can change themselves.  If they are only trying to get better because you said you would leave if they don’t, then as soon as you take them back, they will revert back to their old bad habits and you will have to make threats again.  This is no way to live a life.  If yes, they are trying to change, proceed to question 3.
  3. Do I have some obvious alternative where I could be helping far more people if I left?  If no, then stay.  If yes, then leave.  We can think of the example of Buddha Shayamuni.  He was married and had kids, but he had very clear indications that he could help far more people by leaving his relationship.  But we also need to get real here – how many of us are poised to become the next Buddha Shakyamuni?  In modern times, the overwhelming majority of the cases will be its best to stay in our normal relationship nexus.  But it can be, depending upon our circumstances, that there is very little holding us in a given context and it is clear we could bring greater benefit by moving on. 

But even if we leave somebody physically, this does not mean we have broken this vow.  In our hearts, we never abandon anybody.  In our bodhichitta, we never abandon anybody.  The way we help others will vary all the time – sometimes with our presence, sometimes with our absence – but our wish and determination to help them never varies.  Ultimately, the best way we can help them is by attaining enlightenment for them. Then we will have the ability to remain with them every day, in this and their countless future lives, and we will have both the wisdom and skillful means to actually be able to help. Temporary help is good, but we should never sacrifice the ultimate help we can provide on the altar of the temporary help we might be able to give now, especially if all we are really doing by providing that temporary help is create dependency, preventing them from learning how to stand on their own two feet.

A Pure Life: Putting the “Mahayana” in Precepts Days

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part three 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.

This practice is called training in the eight mahayana precepts. The eight precepts themselves are specific moral disciplines that we train in. What makes them mahayana precepts is we train in this moral discipline with a bodhicitta motivation. Any virtuous activity can become a bodhisattva’s perfection by engaging in that virtue with a bodhichitta motivation.

What is bodhichitta? Bodhichitta is a mind that spontaneously wishes to attain enlightenment for the sake of protecting all living beings from their suffering. It observes that all living beings are suffering, drowning in the ocean of samsara, and wishes to do something to help them. But it recognizes that at present we currently lack the ability to help living beings. We ourselves remain trapped within samsara, controlled by our delusions, and limited in our capacity to do much good to help people over a sustained period of time. We also frequently have no idea how to actually help people, and all we can do is perhaps offer them a shoulder that they could cry on. Observing this, we conclude it is not enough to simply wish others did not suffer, but we must ourselves do something to free them from their suffering.

If a mother saw her child drowning in a river, she would not merely wish the child not drown but would actively dive in to try save her. But the problem is at present we do not know how to swim. So even though we would want to help others, we lack the ability to actually do so. We then ask ourselves, who does have the ability to help all living beings and lead them out of the ocean of samsara onto the island of enlightenment? Only a Buddha does. A Buddha possesses the omniscient wisdom that always knows how to help others and is able to continue to help others life after life without interruption unimpeded by their own death or the death of those they are trying to help. A Buddha is also able to emanate countless forms for each and every living being trapped within samsara. They are not limited by simply one body and one voice, but can emanate as many forms as living beings need to always be there with them 24/7 life after life. Buddhas also possessed the skillful means necessary to guide complicated samsaric beings how to enter, progress along, and eventually complete the path. Let us face it, most people reject the advice that they receive even if it’s exactly what they need to hear. Having skillful means knowing how to encourage people to engage in spiritual practices makes the bodhisattva’s task possible.

Understanding that only a Buddha has the ability to actually fulfill the compassionate wish to protect others from their suffering, we then make the firm determination that we ourselves must become a Buddha in order to help all other living beings. The primary wish of bodhichitta is the wish to help others, and the wish to attain enlightenment is the secondary wish we need to do in order to fulfill our primary wish. Geshe-la gives the analogy of wanting a cup of tea. If we generate the intention that we would like to have a cup of tea, we naturally get a cup, a tea bag, and hot water. This happens almost automatically and is a natural consequence of our primary wish to have a cup of tea. In the same way, when we wish to protect all living beings from their suffering, we then naturally get the body, speech, and mind of a Buddha that enable us to fulfill our primary wish. This happens almost automatically and without our having to give it much thought, we are simply driven by the desire to protect others and we naturally do what is necessary in order to fulfill that wish.

Each of the eight precepts by itself is a practice of moral discipline. What makes it a mahayana practice of moral discipline is we engage in them with a bodhicitta motivation. When we explore each of the eight precepts themselves, I will attempt to explain how our observing that precept specifically helps us gain the ability to protect others from their suffering. But generally speaking, how does our practice of moral discipline help us attain enlightenment? 

To attain enlightenment, we need to purify our very subtle mind of the two obstructions. The two obstructions are the delusion obstructions and the obstructions to omniscience. Delusion obstructions are simply the delusions of our mind, and the obstructions to omniscience are the imprints of our past delusions and past deluded actions. Once we have purified our very subtle mind of the two obstructions, we will naturally attain enlightenment. In other words, enlightenment is essentially already within us, we simply need to uncover it.

How do we purify our mind of the two obstructions? We do so by meditating on the emptiness of our very subtle mind where all of our delusions and their imprints are stored. When we directly realize the emptiness of our very subtle mind, it functions to uproot directly and simultaneously all of the contaminated karma we have accumulated since beginningless time.

How do we then gain a direct realization of emptiness? That depends upon our ability to concentrate our mind. In the Sutra teachings on tranquil abiding, we learn how to concentrate our gross mind. And in the tantric teachings regarding controlling our inner winds, we learn how to concentrate our very subtle mind. It is impossible to concentrate with our very subtle mind if we are incapable of concentrating with our gross mind.

Concentration is primarily a training in overcoming distractions. Distractions cause our mind to move away from our chosen object of meditation towards something else. If we do not mix our mind with the Dharma, it will have no power to transform our mind. Distractions are the thief that robs us of our spiritual life.  Geshe-la explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune that distractions are of three types: mental excitement, mental wandering, and mental sinking. Mental excitement is when our mind moves to an object of attachment. Mental wandering is when our mind moves to another object of Dharma other than our chosen object of meditation. Mental sinking is when we lose the clarity or grip of our mind on our chosen object, but our mind has not necessarily gone to something else. In the beginning, our primary obstacle is mental excitement.

Why does our mind go to objects of attachment instead of our object of meditation? The reason why is our mind is naturally more interested in objects of attachment because we still believe them to be causes of our happiness and we have not yet realized that our objects of meditation are causes of happiness, rather we find them to be quite distant or perhaps even boring. Our mind will naturally go to wherever it feels it will be happiest. Why does our mind believe objects of attachment are causes of happiness? Simply habit. The habit of believing the lies of our attachment that external objects are indeed causes of our happiness. We are so accustomed to these lies that we do not even call them into question. If we are to overcome our mental excitement, we must stop being fooled by our attachment.

A good example is spam. We have all received the emails from the Nigerian Prince who promises to transfer us a bunch of money for safekeeping if only we give him our bank account numbers. When we first receive this email, we wonder maybe it is true, and we are tempted to send our bank information. But when we know clearly that this is a scam and a lie, we are no longer fooled and do not feel tempted to send our information. In fact, simply receiving such an email reminds us of the need to be careful to not be fooled by the many scams that exist out there. We may not be able to prevent such spam from arriving in our inbox, but we can cut the power or the danger of such messages by seeing them as the lies that they are. In the same way, our minds of attachment are like spam. They promise us all sorts of happiness if only we follow their advice. When we first encounter such lies, we are tempted and often do follow their advice. When we fail to find the happiness that they promised, our attachment then lies to us again and says we did not experience it because we did not do it well enough. So once again we believe the lie and follow it. We start to do this again and again, until eventually we have no choice and we follow such lies blindly believing them to be the truth.

But with Dharma wisdom, we can recognize attachment for the lie that it is. It is the spam of our mind. When the thoughts of attachment arise in our mind, we then see them for the lies that they are. The more they come, the more we strengthen our determination to not be fooled. Like with our spam, we might not be able to prevent such thoughts from arriving in our mind, but with wisdom we can cut the power of such thoughts over us in terms of controlling our behavior.

How do we gain such wisdom and such power? Through training in moral discipline. The practice of moral discipline is quite simply seeing the dangers of engaging in negative behavior and then making the determination to not do so. It is a wisdom that is no longer fooled by the lies of our attachments. It sees through these lies and recognizes them as deceptive, trying to trick us into engaging in negative behavior thinking it will bring us happiness when in fact it only brings us more suffering.

So how then do we train in moral discipline? When the temptation to break our moral discipline arises in our mind, we remind ourselves of the wisdom that caused us to take the vow or precept in the first place. We recall how the minds of attachment encouraging us to break our moral discipline are in fact deceptive, promising us happiness but simply guaranteeing more suffering. The practice of moral discipline is not an exercise in willpower. If in our heart we still want to engage in the negativity, we may for a short period of time be able to refrain, but all we will actually be doing is repressing our attachment wanting to do the opposite until eventually our attachment grows in strength and it overwhelms our willpower.

Rather, moral discipline is the practice of changing our desires. By contemplating again and again how our delusions are deceptive and how our wisdom and virtues are non-deceptive, we gradually change our desires to no longer want to chase the objects of our attachment and be fooled by their lies, and rather we want to train in the opposite virtues which we know are reliable methods for bringing us the happiness that we seek.  It is easy to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts, but the actual training is keeping them in the face of our deluded temptations to break them.

When the temptations arise in our mind, we then recall the disadvantages of breaking our moral discipline, the deceptiveness of the attachments lying to us, and the benefits of observing our moral discipline and following pure conduct. Through engaging in these contemplations again and again and again, we gradually change our desires. We no longer want to follow attachments, we instead want to follow our wisdom and virtues. By gaining experience with these contemplations and in keeping our vows, we gradually build up tendencies similar to the cause within our mind that are familiar with this way of thinking. Then, when we are in meditation itself and objects of distraction, or objects of mental excitement, arise in our mind, we are not tempted to go follow them but rather we see them as deceptive. We are then able to more easily renew our determination to not follow our distractions and instead to keep our mind focused on our object of meditation.

It is for this reason that Geshe-la explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune that the practice of moral discipline overcomes gross distractions and the practice of concentration overcomes our subtle distractions. We first need to overcome our gross distractions through the training in moral discipline and then we can overcome our subtle distractions through our training and concentration. By training in concentration, we can gradually gain control over our gross mind, which then creates the space for us to gradually gain control over our subtle mind through the trainings of learning to control our inner winds. Once we can control our inner winds, we will eventually be able to make manifest our very subtle mind of clear light. Once this mind is manifest, we can then engage in the meditation on the emptiness of our very subtle mind and purify our mind of the two obstructions and thereby attain enlightenment.

In this way, we can see the very clear connection between our training in the practice of the Eight Mahayana Precepts and our eventual attainment of enlightenment. When we see this connection, we can easily generate the bodhicitta motivation to take the Mahayana precepts. In this way, our practice of the eight precepts becomes training in the eight Mahayana precepts.

Happy Tsog Day: How to Generate Aspiring Bodhichitta

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 3 of a 44-part series.

For the sake of all mother sentient beings,
I shall become the Guru-Deity,
And then lead every sentient being
To the Guru-Deity’s supreme state.  (3x)

Aspiring bodhichitta is the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. It differs from engaging bodhichitta, which embarks upon the path. Aspiring bodhichitta is like wishing to go to some destination, and engaging bodhichitta is making the trip. Bodhichitta is generated by first generating compassion for all living beings who are also trapped in a circle of fire, wishing to protect them from such suffering, and then considering how we currently lack the ability to do so. We then consider if we become a Buddha, then we will be able to help each and every living being every day until eventually every last one of them is led to the final goal of full enlightenment.

It is important at this stage to remove any doubts we have about our ability to become a Buddha ourselves. Gen Tharchin explains if we understand how the path will take us to the final goal of enlightenment, then effort becomes effortless. But if we do not think attaining enlightenment is possible, then our bodhichitta will be intellectual and lack any power to move our mind. We see this in our daily life all the time. We think, “yeah, that would be great, but there is no way I will ever be able to do that.” We discourage ourself into paralysis, and think it would be better if we adopted a more reasonable, achievable goal. But when we think it is possible to accomplish our goals and we know exactly what we need to do to attain them, then we become filled with burning energy to take the necessary steps to accomplish our goal.

How can we generate a strong conviction that we can attain enlightenment? The key for me is recognizing that we all have a Buddha nature. This means our actual nature is enlightenment, but it is covered or obstructed by our delusions and their karmic imprints. If we can purify completely our mind of these two obstructions, then our enlightened state will naturally arise. Our problem is we identify with our contaminated karma (and its effects) and not our pure potential. We are, quite simply, confused about who we are. When we identify clearly who and what we are, then we start to see our contaminated karma and its effects as crusty mud on the clear light diamond that is our true self. On the basis of this understanding, we then quite naturally generate the wish to clean ourselves. How? According to Sutra, this can take aeons, and for most of us that seems to be too long, and so we give up trying. But Tantra provides a special technology for almost instantly cleaning our Buddha nature of its two obstructions. The key is understanding that all our contaminated karma is stored on our very subtle mind. If we realize the emptiness of our very subtle mind directly, then we can directly and simultaneously purify all our contaminated karma we have accumulated since beginningless time. For me, it helps to imagine that my very subtle mind is like a sphere and all my contaminated karma is stored on the surface of that sphere. If I can get into the center of the sphere (realize the emptiness of my very subtle mind), the fire of this wisdom will burn away the roots of all my contaminated karma stored on the sphere directly and simultaneously. It is said that if we can attain a direct realization of the emptiness of our very subtle mind, also known as meaning clear light, we can attain enlightenment in a matter of just a few months!

Thus, to access this special spiritual technological method, we first need to make manifest our very subtle mind and then meditate on its emptiness. How do we make our very subtle mind of great bliss manifest? First, we need to generate a pure bodhichitta motivation. Then, through the power of completion stage meditations, we cause our inner energy winds to enter, abide, and dissolve into our central channel at our heart. When we do, we will naturally experience the eight signs of dissolution, the last of which is the clear light of our very subtle mind. Once we have made manifest this clear light mind, we then meditate on its emptiness using the exact same emptiness meditations we use in Sutra – namely, we identify our mind as it normally appears, differentiate its constituent parts, and then recognize that our very subtle mind is neither one of the individual parts, the collection of the parts, or separate from the parts. Seeing this, we then “see” the emptiness of our very subtle mind. We continue to meditate on this emptiness until eventually it becomes a direct vision. When we have this, we have attained meaning clear light, and enlightenment is very close.

The challenge, then, is simply causing our inner energy winds to gather and dissolve into our central channel motivated by bodhichitta. This is not hard, actually. Wherever we direct our mind, our winds naturally gather. Through training in the various completion stage meditations, we direct our mind inside our central channel at various points. With enough familiarity, our mind gets inside our central channel and our winds naturally gather. Through single-pointed concentration over an extended period of time, our winds begin to enter, abide, and dissolve into our central channel, we will perceive the eight signs, and our very subtle mind of the Clear Light of Bliss will become manifest. Geshe-la explains it is not hard to engage in completion stage meditations – visualizing our channels, drops, and winds and imagining our mind enters into them is certainly much easier than the elaborate generation stage meditations we engage in. Many ordinary people have familiarity with penetrating the central channel, such as those who do hatha yoga and kundalini practices. But their meditations do not lead to enlightenment because their motivation for engaging in them is often worldly. It is only when we engage in completion stage meditations with a motivation of bodhichitta and faith that our indestructible wind at our heart is one with our Guru that we can generate enough power to generate the clear light mind. Thus, we can see the union of Sutra and Tantra. The precious minds of faith and bodhichitta are the quintessential butter that come from mixing the instructions of Sutra; and entering, abiding, and dissolving our winds into our central channel is the quintessential essence of Highest Yoga Tantra practice. The two together quickly lead us to enlightenment.

With this explanation, we can understand precisely what we need to do to attain enlightenment and see that it is something entirely doable. Maybe we doubt that we can complete our training in this life, but there is no doubt it will not take that long compared to beginningless time. We are, if truth be told, just a whisker away from enlightenment. We have never been closer to attaining enlightenment than we are right now. If we commit ourselves to this path, there is no doubt we will progress swiftly to the final goal, if not in this life, within a few short lives. If we engage in this practice sincerely, we will definitely be able to take rebirth in the pure land at the end of this life, where we will be able to complete our training without ever having to fear taking an uncontrolled samsaric rebirth again. Our good fortune is beyond imagination – almost incomprehensible. Understanding all this, we will know attaining enlightenment is possible, and feel a powerful motivation in our heart to engage in the necessary trainings to reach our spiritual goal. This is the mind of aspiring bodhichitta.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Behave yourself in Spiritual Communities

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Speaking falsely about profound emptiness. 

This vow says if we lack a correct understanding of emptiness and yet teach emptiness to others, claiming with a selfish motivation that we have a direct realization of emptiness, we incur a root downfall.

I don’t know anybody who claims to have a direct realization of emptiness, so I think there is little danger of any of us incurring this root downfall, but there is a danger of us committing a similitude of this downfall.  Those who have some notions of emptiness know how much fun it is to debate and discuss it.  Few, if any, of us have a correct understanding.  Yet when we speak, we have a natural tendency to speak as if we were to a certain extent an authority on the subject.  I, for one, do this all the time.  Even though I am not engaging in a root downfall, I am certainly quite frequently engaging in a similitude of this downfall.  I need to stop this.

This does not mean we can’t discuss emptiness.  Rather it means we need to make it abundantly clear to any potential reader or listener that what we are explaining is just our personal understanding of what the teachings mean, but everyone who reads or listens to our explanations should take them with a grain of salt and investigate these matters for themselves. 

There is nothing more important in this world than realizing emptiness.  The only way to escape from a prison with no doors is to wake up from the dream in which we are trapped in such a prison.  Realizing emptiness is how we do this.  Given its importance, this is something we must discuss all the time; but given its importance, it is something we must discuss in a correct and skillful way.

Accepting property that has been stolen from the Three Jewels. 

We incur this downfall if we accept goods that we know have been stolen from the Three Jewels.  We do not incur this downfall if we accept something that we do not know has been stolen.

If have even a suspicion that something we are using has been stolen from the three jewels, then it is our responsibility to ask the question to make sure we are not stealing.  If we don’t, we are incurring a similitude of this downfall.  If we know, or have reason to believe, that somebody else has stolen something from the three jewels and through our actions we somehow lend legitimacy to their claim over the object, then I think this is also an example of accepting property that has been stolen from the three jewels. 

If we have it within our power to return property that has been stolen and we fail to do so, then I also think this is a similitude of a downfall. 

Making bad rules. 

Those in charge of spiritual communities incur this downfall if they make rules that unnecessarily interfere with pure Dharma practice, such as having business activities take precedence over the practice of meditation.

We have to be careful with understanding this.  The development model of the NKT is one of indigenous growth.  In other words, things are built in dependence upon the extent to which a local sangha is willing to do the work to build it.  A mother center may provide some initial support to get a branch class of the ground, but the expectation is after that initial start up support, the center is basically on their own until they reach a sufficiently big size that they are in a position to buy some building or start taking on full-time staff.  Then there is another period of brief support which quickly ends, and the now larger center is basically on its own until it reaches the point where it could become a KMC.  The NKT takes no outside money from anybody.  The Dharma cannot flourish in this world without the underlying supporting physical infrastructure.  This requires both money and labor on the part of the local sangha. 

Happy Tara Day: How to increase our faith in Tara

Kadampa Ryan How to Rely Upon Tara, Tara Days

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

Homage to the Twenty-one Taras

OM Homage to Venerable Arya Tara

The main purpose of reciting the twenty-one homages is to generate faith in Arya Tara.  Faith is what gives Buddhas power to help us.  It is not they hold back their help waiting for our faith and respect, rather when we generate faith we open the blinds of our mind to allow the sunlight of their blessings to pour in.  There are three types of faith:  believing faith, admiring faith, and wishing faith.  Believing faith believes in the qualities and abilities of holy beings.  Admiring faith generates a feeling of wonder, amazed at their incredible good qualities.  Wishing faith wishes to be the beneficiary of such power, and superior wishing faith wishes to gain these good qualities ourselves so we can do for others what the holy beings can do for us.  The more faith we have, the more powerfully we will receive the blessings of the given Buddha.  To paraphrase Lord Acton, faith empowers and absolute faith empowers absolutely. 

When we recite the twenty-one homages, we can train in increasing our faith.  Typically, we recite the twenty-one homages three times.  With the first recitation, we can primarily train in believing faith; with the second recitation, we can focus on admiring faith; and with the final recitation, we can emphasize wishing faith.  In this way, we will build up powerful potential energy in our mind for the remainder of the practice.

Praising Tara by her life story

Homage to Tara, the Swift One, the Heroine,
Whose eyes are like a flash of lightning,
Who arose from the opening of a lotus,
Born from the tears of the Protector of the Three Worlds.

Each time we receive a Tara empowerment, we hear Tara’s life story.  She has both a common and an uncommon life story.  Her common life story is as a bodhisattva, some sexist monk said if she continues in this way, she can pray to be reborn as a man so she can become a Buddha.  Upon hearing this, she vowed to always take rebirth in a female form and ultimately attain enlightenment in a female form.  She was the first feminist.  Her uncommon life story is Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion, wept as he looked at how many beings remained to be liberated.  His tears fell into the clear light emptiness, and Arya Tara arose telling him to not worry, she would help him free all living beings.  When we recite this verse, it is important to make this personal – she became Tara for us, and so we should generate a feeling of closeness and gratitude.

Praising Tara by the brightness and radiance of her face

Homage to you with a face like a hundred full moons in autumn
Gathered together into one;
Blazing with brilliant light
Like a thousand constellations.

Sometimes people wonder how it is Buddhas can help all living beings directly and simultaneously.  There are so many living beings, how exactly can we understand their emanations pervading all worlds?  For me, there are two analogies that help, both of which are illustrated by this verse.  First, while there is only one moon in the sky, it nonetheless spontaneously reflects on the surface of every body of water in the world without its light being diminished in the process.  In the same way, the wisdom moon of Mother Tara shines in the sky of our mind, and spontaneously appears on the surface of every mind of faith in the world.  Second, imagine a wheel with countless straw-like spokes.  If you shined a light inside any one spoke, it would illuminate just that spoke, but if you moved the light into the hub of the wheel, it would illuminate all of the spokes directly and simultaneously.  In the same way, Tara’s brilliant light shines into the spokes of our minds like a thousand constellations.

Praising Tara by her colour, what she holds and her causes

Homage to you who are bluish gold,
Your hand perfectly adorned with a lotus flower;
Who arose from practising giving, moral discipline,
Patience, effort, concentration and wisdom.

Blue generally represents Buddha Akshobya, the completely purified aggregate of consciousness of all the Buddhas; and gold (yellow) represents Buddha Ratnasambhava, the completely purified aggregate of feeling of all the Buddhas.  A purified aggregate of consciousness is one that is free from the two obstructions, and a purified aggregate of feeling experiences all phenomena equally as manifestions of bliss and emptiness.  By praising Tara as being bluish gold, we recall her purified consciousness and feeling and generate faith.  A lotus flower generally symbolizes how an object of complete beauty and purity (a lotus flower) emerges from a contaminated source (the mud in the pond).  In the same way, our eventual enlightenment will emerge despite our origin being contaminated.  Tara holding a lotus flower symbolizes her power to lead contaminated beings such as ourselves to enlightenment.  All Buddhas attain enlightenment in exactly the same way – through training in the six perfections of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom.  We sometimes think Buddhas were always enlightened and they are somehow different than the rest of us, but they were suffering sentient beings once as well just like us, and through their practice of the six perfections they attained enlightenment.  If we do the same, we too will attain the same results.  Recalling Tara’s causes reminds us of that and shows her power to help us train in the six perfections ourselves. 

Praising Tara by her being honoured by the Conquerors and the Bodhisattvas

Homage to you who surmount the Tathagatas’ ushnishas,
Whose victorious actions are limitless;
Who are greatly honoured by the Sons of the Conquerors,
Who have attained every perfection.

The primary purpose of this verse is to increase our faith in Tara as an enlightened being.  Normally, we view our spiritual guide on our crown.  Tara being on the crown of all the Tathagatas indicates that she is the spiritual guide of all the Tathagatas.  Victorious actions refer to her victory over the four maras, delusions, and all other objects of abandonment along the path.  She is honoured by all the Bodhisattvas (Sons of the Conquerors) because she is their mother, and she has attained every perfection.  Considering these qualities, we generate deep faith in her.

Praising Tara by her subduing unfavourable conditions

Homage to you who with the letters TUTTARA and HUM
Fill the realms of desire, direction and space.
With the seven classes of evil spirits beneath your feet,
You are able to draw all beings to bliss.

Here, we imagine that from the mantra rosary at her heart, countless light rays radiate out in all directions, filling the entire universe and dispelling all unfavorable conditions and obstructions to our practice of Dharma.  We imagine she is doing this for the benefit of ourself and all living beings.  There are countless evil spirits (all empty) who wish to obstruct our Dharma practice, but she is able to overcome them all single-handedly.  Through her powerful actions, we then imagine she draws all living beings into the bliss of her Dharmakaya where they are perfectly freed from all unfavorable conditions.

Praising Tara by her being worshipped by the great worldly gods

Homage to you who are worshipped by Indra, Agni,
Brahma, Vayu, and the other mighty gods;
And before whom the host of evil spirits,
Zombies, smell-eaters and givers of harm respectfully offer praise.

Normally living beings look up to the worldly gods, but worldly gods worship Tara.  If we bow to them and they bow to her, then we certainly should also bow to her.  Normally we fear evil spirits, but they too offer praise and respect to Tara.  We would think evil spirits would also fear Tara since she is the opposite of evil and has the power to overcome them, but she is so loving and skillful, even her would-be enemies respectfully offer her praise.  By relying upon her, we too can gain the ability to earn the respect of those who oppose our virtuous wishes.

Cherishing Only Others with Wisdom:

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

Once we make the decision to cherish only others, the question then becomes how do we do so with wisdom. There are many common traps we can fall into along the way.

Venerable Geshe-la famously explained in New Eight Steps to Happiness that, “the path to enlightenment is really very simple – all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realizations will naturally follow from this.”

The whole reason why we attain enlightenment is to help others more effectively. Attaining enlightenment itself depends upon generating bodhichitta, the actual wish to attain enlightenment for the sake of others. Bodhichitta depends upon great compassion, a mind that cannot bear the suffering of others trapped in samsara and strongly wishes to protect others from samsara’s sufferings. Great compassion depends upon cherishing others, considering their happiness and freedom to be something important to us. We develop this mind primarily by developing a feeling of gratitude for others kindness, realizing how self-cherishing is the cause of all our suffering, and clearly understanding that cherishing others is the actual root of our enlightenment (the solution to all of our own and others problems) since all other realizations of the path flow naturally from this. All this leads to the conclusion we need to cherish only others.

But once we have made this decision, it is very easy for us to fall into a wide variety of traps and mistakes. In particular, I want to highlight five mistakes that I have made in the hope others might be able to avoid them. It is not enough to just cherish only others, we need to learn to do so with wisdom.

One mistake we make is developing a savior complex. We think it is our job to save others, that we are responsible for both their suffering and for saving them from it. Such an approach, while well-intended, winds up creating dependency in others where they become incapable of helping themselves, they wait for the messiah, and think they can’t be happy or escape from their suffering without us doing something. In effect, this disempowers them to save themselves.

A related mistake is cherishing others with a martyr complex. Here, we wind up sacrificing ourself – destroying our own capacity to help – in the name of cherishing others. This can take many forms, such as taking on more than we can handle, pushing ourselves beyond our limits, leading to some form of burnout. Or it can take the form of sacrificing our own practice of Dharma because we are so busy “cherishing others” we don’t have time to properly invest in our practice, or maybe others resent our practice and so we think to cherish them we need to abandon it, even if only on the margin. This can also lead to resentment of those we are supposedly cherishing. We know our cherishing of them is leading to our burnout, destroying our capacity, or causing us to sacrifice our practice and then we start to resent others for not realizing what they are doing to us – we do so much for them and they just take, take, take, and don’t give a damn about how it is destroying us.

A mistake that has many, many levels to it is cherishing others mixed with attachment. The common denominator of all these levels is us being OK depends upon them being OK. When they do down, we go down with them. Our happiness depends upon them being OK. Nobody is OK in samsara, we are all drowning, so if we confuse our cherishing love with attachment to them being happy, then instead of it leading to enlightenment, our cherishing others makes the whole world’s problem our problem, and all the suffering of the world our suffering. We can quickly become despondent, discouraged, and give in to despair. It’s true, we need to “feel” other’s suffering as acutely as our own, but this doesn’t mean we should make everybody’s suffering our own. We care about their suffering as much as our own, but we don’t experience it. It’s not our suffering. This is a crucial distinction.

Another common mistake is helping too much, this often flows out of the savior complex, but can also come from just a lack of wisdom understanding what is more beneficial. We all know the saying of it is more helpful to teach a man to fish than give him one. The answer, of course, is give him a fish while you are teaching him how to do so so he doesn’t starve before he learns how to fish for himself. When we help too much – doing things for others that they can do for themselves – they never learn how to actually do things on their own and remain forever dependent. Breaking this cycle can be very difficult, especially if we have been carrying others too much for a long time. It puts us in these terrible dilemmas where either we step in to help or they crash and burn, perhaps losing everything they have been working for their whole life. But if we take a gradual approach, it can be done. It’s also like teaching a toddler how to walk. At first, they hold your finger but at some point they need to let go and walk on their own.

An additional common mistake we can make is assuming cherishing others means giving them whatever they want. Most people are completely controlled by their delusions, so what they want is what their delusions want. If we give others what their delusions want, we just feed their delusions which actually harms them. Sometimes, we have to say no – we could give them what they want, but we refuse to do so because we know it is not what is in their best interests. Or sometimes we have to speak some hard truths to them – give them some tough love, things they need to hear but don’t want to hear. They may even hate us for doing or saying these things, cut off communication with us, blame us for all their problems, start a smear campaign against us with anybody and everybody they speak with, including those we know. It can get real ugly. They may resort to all sorts of emotional blackmail or guilt trip us about being a bad Buddhist for not doing what their delusions want us to do for them. But we sometimes need to love others enough to do or say things that they will hate us for. This is a hard one.

Each one of these mistakes has many levels and we should request blessings to identify how we are making them. Then, we gradually purify our cherishing of others of them. At the same time or subsequently, we can then start informing our cherishing of others with the wisdom realizing emptiness, understanding that the others in our life are actually mere karmic projections of our mind. Realizing this without falling into the extreme of solipsism is a whole other topic worth exploring. Once we have some experience of the union of cherishing others and the wisdom realizing emptiness, then our tantric practice of pure view of others, the power of prayers to help them, etc., all take on much deeper meaning and develop significantly more power. But again, that is another very large topic.

The point is, while it is true all other realizations naturally follow from the decision to cherish only others, actually doing so skillfully and with wisdom is a vast practice. But slowly, slowly we purify our cherishing love of these mistakes and learn how to deepen it with emptiness and the tantric teachings, and eventually it carries us all the way through compassion, to bodhichitta, to full enlightenment, to the real reason why we did all this in the first place – to be able to help others find everlasting peace and happiness.

Happy trails!

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Have respect for the Hinayana

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Causing others to abandon the Pratimoksha. 

We incur a root downfall if we cause an ordained person to give up their Vinaya practice saying that it is not relevant to the Mahayana path.

I know some very senior ordained teachers who talk of women effectively throwing themselves at them.  The temptations must be great indeed.  To engage in actions which cause somebody to lose their ordination, which we can do merely with some wrong words spoken, is, in my view, to commit spiritual murder, or at the very least to assist in somebody’s suicide. 

I am aware of the fact that these are dramatic words.  But when somebody gets ordained, their old ordinary self quite literally dies and a new being is born, Kelsang Something or Another.  If that person disrobes, the person who was formerly known as Kelsang whatever quite literally dies, vanishing from this earth. 

We sometimes think ordained people are so strong, and sometimes the recently ordained think everything will now be so easy.  But both views are wrong.  One of my teachers once said, “getting married is easy, it is staying married where the real work is.  In the same way, getting ordained is easy, it is staying ordained where the real work is.”  Just as we would be careful to not encourage others to do things which might jeopardize their marriage, so too we need to be careful to not encourage ordained people to do things which might jeopardize their ordination. 

This vow does not only apply to the ordained Pratimoksha vows, but it also applies to the lay Pratimoksha vows (though the negative karma is greater with the ordained vows).  If we knew somebody was an alcoholic, we certainly wouldn’t invite them to a bar or put them in situations that might cause them to relapse.  In the same way, taking the Pratimoksha vows is like the alcoholic who stops drinking.  But there are tremendous tendencies within us to relapse back into our old samsaric ways.  Samsaraholics Anonymous does not exist, but it should.  And we should be just as considerate towards not leading those who have taken such vows into temptation as we would of our friends addicted to drugs, cigarettes or alcohol.

Belittling the Hinayana. 

We incur a root downfall if we have a disrespectful opinion of the Hinayana path, maintaining that it does not lead to actual liberation.  One of the most useful concepts in the Dharma is the notion of common and uncommon paths.  When I was growing up, we had a split-level house.  Halfway up the stairs, things branched off and I could go outside for example, or I could keep going up all the way and make it to my room.  It is impossible for me to get to my room without taking those first stairs, but I don’t need to take them if all I want to do is go outside.  In this way, the first half of the stairs are “common” to both paths, and the second half of the stairs is part of the “uncommon” path.  Both the person who wants to go outside and the person who wants to go to the top floor must use the first half of the stairs, but only the person who wants to go to the top floor must do all the stairs.  For such a person to belittle the first half of the stairs is to deny themselves part of their path.

In the same way, all the paths to liberation are “common” to the Mahayana path, they are part of our path.  So to belittle them is to belittle the very foundation of our eventual enlightenment.

Few among us, though would actually outright belittle those who travel other paths, but there are many subtle levels where we do this.  First, it is not uncommon for Mahayana practitioners to, even if only internally, generate pride thinking they are somehow better because than those travelling another path that leads only to liberation. 

Second, when we speak with people from the Theravadin tradition, or other traditions that seek only liberation, we need to be mindful that some of them consider it insulting to call them “Hinayanists,” the translation of which means “lesser vehicle.”  Now in the context of the Mahayana teachings (“great vehicle”) we don’t mean it in an insulting way, we use the term merely to differentiate between the intermediate and the great scope.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it is quite understandable why they could find it insulting for us to refer to them in that way.  So when we speak with them, or when we speak in public forums where they might be present, we should show appropriate consideration.

Third, another common way in which we effectively belittle the Hinayana is in how we actually practice the Dharma.  We show a bias towards the great scope meditations and especially our tantric meditations, and pay little attention to the initial and intermediate scope meditations.  Everyone enjoys meditating on love and the self-generation as the deity, but it is a little less fun to meditate on death, the lower realms, the sufferings of samsara and technical subjects like the 12 dependent-related links.  So we generally tend to avoid these meditations and focus on the ones we enjoy.  Of course these higher level meditations are wonderful in and of themselves, but their real power is only uncovered when they are engaged in on the solid foundation of the earlier meditations.  We can generate worldly compassion and love without the earlier meditations, and this is a good thing, but if we want to generate spiritual compassion and love (meaning concern about other’s future lives), then we need these earlier meditations.  We cannot generate a qualified compassion without first generating a qualified renunciation.  We cannot generate a qualified renunciation without first generating a qualified fear of lower rebirth and a realization of our own death. 

There is of course nothing wrong with engaging in the higher meditations without having built the foundation within our mind, the point is our higher meditations will only be as qualified as the foundation we have built.  We still should train in all the meditations from the very beginning because each meditation informs all the others, but our qualified realization of a higher meditation will never outstrip the extent to which we have qualified realizations of the lower meditations.  Engaging in advanced tantric practices are good, but they will only produce their declared benefits when done with the proper foundations. 

Happy Protector Day: Removing the Faults We Perceive in Others

Kadampa Ryan Protector Days, Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The 29th of every month is Protector Day.  This is part 2 of a 12-part series aimed at helping us remember our Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden and increase our faith in him on these special days.

We can learn to be happy all the time, regardless of our external circumstances.  Normally, we are happy when things go well, but unhappy when things go badly.  When we are a spiritual being, all situations, good or bad, equally provide us with an opportunity to train our mind and create good causes for the future, so we are equally happy with whatever happens.  In this way, we can develop a real equanimity with respect to whatever happens in our life.

We have the power to free all the beings we know and love from this world of suffering.  We have the opportunity to become a fully enlightened Buddha who has the power to lead each and every living being to full enlightenment.  So eventually we can save everyone we know and love.  We can understand this at a deeper level by understanding that we are dreaming a world of suffering.  By purifying our own mind, we dream a different dream, a pure dream, and thereby free all these beings.

With this background in mind, in this series of posts I will explain a special practice we can do to make the most out of our precious human life, namely surrendering our life completely to the protection and guidance of the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden. 

Normally we explain what to do in the meditation session first, but I wanted to explain how we rely upon Dorje Shugden in the meditation break first because this is where we first gain experience of him and see how useful he is.  Then, we naturally want to deepen our practice of him in the meditation session.

I would like to explain two key practices for the meditation break:  taking personal responsibility to remove the faults we perceive in others and viewing our life as a training ground for becoming the Buddha we need to become.  I will explain these over the next two posts.

Taking personal responsibility for removing the faults you perceive in others

Normally, we think it is the responsibility of others to remove the faults we perceive in them, but if we think about this carefully, we will realize that actually we are uniquely responsible for all the faults we perceive in others.  At a simple level, we can say that the world we experience is the world we pay attention to.  If we pay 90% of our attention on the 10% of faults in the other person, then it will seem to us that the person is 90% faulty.  This is how we will experience the other person.  This is how we make ‘enemies,’ ‘friends,’ ‘sangha,’ and even ‘Buddhas.’  In the same way, we ‘make’ faulty people. 

We can also understand this by considering emptiness.  If we consider emptiness according to Sutra, we understand that everything is just a dream-like projection of our mind. Where does this faulty person come from?  Our own projections of mind.  There is no other person other than emptiness. Are we responsible for the appearance of faults in the people of our dreams?  If yes, then we are likewise responsible for the faults in the people of the dream of our gross mind.  If we consider karma and emptiness together, we realize that others are mere appearances arising from our own karma. We engaged in actions in the past which are now creating the appearance of a ‘faulty’ person.  So it is our own past faulty actions which created this appearance of a faulty person. 

If we consider emptiness according to Tantra, we understand that these faulty people are actually different aspects, or parts, of our own mind.  We consider our right and left hands to be aspects or parts of our body.  In the same way, when we understand emptiness according to Tantra, we realize that others are merely aspects or parts of our mind.  Just as I am an appearance in my mind, so too is the ‘faulty’ person.  Both are equally appearances to my mind inside my mind.  They are different aspects of my mind.  So this is the ‘me’ part of me and that is the ‘faulty’ part of me.  When we meditate deeply on these things, we will come to the clear realization that there is no ‘other person’ other than the one created by my mind, so we are uniquely responsible for all the faults we perceive in others.

Given this, how do we actually remove the faults we perceive in others?  There are several things we can do.  First, we should make a distinction between the person and their delusion.  Just as a cancer patient is not their cancer, so too somebody sick with delusions is not their delusions. By making a separation between the person and their delusions, we no longer see faulty people, rather we see pure people sick with delusions.  We see faulty delusions, but pure beings.

Second, we need to develop a mind of patient acceptance that can transform everything.  The mind of patient acceptance is a special wisdom that has the power to transform anything into the spiritual path.  This wisdom enables practitioners to ‘accept’ everything without resistance because the bodhisattva can ‘use’ everything.  When we have this mind, what would otherwise be a fault is considered to us to be perfect because it gives us a great opportunity to further train our mind.  If we can learn to use whatever others do for our spiritual development, then their otherwise ‘faulty’ actions for us will be perfect.

Third, it is also very helpful to create a space of 100% freedom and non-judgment of others, and in that space, set a good example.  A bodhisattva does not try or need to change others.  When people feel controlled or judged, they become defensive.  If they are defensive, then it blocks them from changing because they are engaging in a process of self-justification.  For change to take place, it has to take place from the side of the person.  Internal change can only come from the inside.  Therefore, in the space of not controlling or judging others, we set a good example.  This will naturally inspire people to change from their own side.

Fourth, Venerable Tharchin once explained to me that we need to “own other’s faults as our own.”  Since the faults of others are projections of our own mind, the only reason why others appear to have any faults is because we possess those faults ourself.  Our job then is to find these faults in ourselves and purge them like bad blood.  We take the time to find where we have these same faults, and then we use the Dharma to eliminate them from ourself with a bodhichitta intention to be able to help the other person, and anyone else, who appears to have this fault.  If we practice like this, there are many different benefits.  We will gain the realizations we need to be able to help the other person overcome their problem because we have personal experience of having done that ourselves.  We will show the perfect example for the other person of somebody striving to overcome and eventually becoming free from what troubles them the most.  Our example often helps much more than our words.  More profoundly, the problem will actually disappear in the other person because it is coming from our own mind anyways.  And at the very least, we ourselves will have one less fault.  

Finally, we can adopt a pure view of others as emanations of Dorje Shugden.  I will explain this is greater detail in the next post.

Happy Tsog Day: How to Go for refuge

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 2 of a 44-part series.

Before we engage in any Dharma practice, we must first prepare our mind. We first prepare a shrine and our meditation seat, and then sit in the traditional posture. The most important thing is to maintain a straight back. We then turn our mind inwards. Since normally our mind is completely absorbed in the things we normally see and perceive, we need to first dispel all distractions. First, we can engage in some gentle breathing meditation, imagining that all our distractions and delusions are expelled from our mind in the form of black smoke, and we breathe in the blessings of our spiritual guide in the form of five-coloured wisdom lights representing the five omniscient wisdoms.

Once we have done this for a few breaths, we can then engage in a brief Mahamudra meditation on the nature of our mind. Geshe-la explains that our mind is by nature clarity and cognizing. Clarity means that our mind itself is formless. Because it is formless, it can cognize – or know – any form. If our mind had a form, then all objects known to our mind would also possess that form. Practically speaking, when we meditate on the conventional nature of our mind, we feel as if all our normal, ordinary thoughts dissolve away, like clouds back into the sky, and we are left with an infinite expanse of clear light that is a universal field of knowing. Nothing appears but the clear light, but we see this clear light as an all-pervasive field of knowing. It is like a three-dimensional blank canvas upon which any thought can be generated and known. We should feel as if our gross conceptual thoughts have completely ceased and our mind becomes completely still. We then rest in this inner stillness where everything is completely calm.

We can then generate the causes of going for refuge – namely fear and faith. Geshe-la explains in Oral Instructions of Mahamudra that we should generate a fear of samsaric rebirth like we would if we were trapped in a circle of fire. Normally we do not like generating fear and we jump straight to faith, but this is a mistake. It is primarily because we do not have a genuine, heart-felt fear that our refuge – even after so many years of dedicated practice – remains superficial and intellectual. Only when we are truly gripped by genuine fear will our refuge be qualified. Geshe-la explains that the root cause of samsara is we identify with our ordinary body and mind as if it were ourselves. In short, we remain in samsara because we identify with it as ourselves. We are like a fly on flypaper – stuck to samsara. I imagine that I am standing on top of small island surrounded by a vast molten ocean of lava and fires, in which countless hell beings are drowning. I am quite literally trapped in a circle of fire. On this island are those close to me – such as my family and work colleagues – and all living beings in this world in the aspect of human beings. The island is made of crumbling sand that is rapidly sinking into the molten ocean of samsara, gradually taking everyone I know and love into the fires of hell. Inside the ocean of fire, we can occasionally see sea monsters of the Lord of Death rising up, capturing those who have fallen off of the island, dragging them down into the depths of hell below. Myself, my family, my work colleagues, and everyone else is similarly stuck onto samsara, like flies on flypaper, and we are all sinking. It is important to remember that this is not a metaphor, this is our actual situation. We are stuck on to the island of our human bodies, sinking rapidly into the circle of fire surrounding us, swallowed up by the sea monsters of the Lord of Death, dragged down into the abyss where we may not re-emerge for countless aeons. We should let this fear touch our heart.

Then, to generate faith, we can imagine our root Guru in the aspect of Lama Losang Tubwang Dorjechang appears in the space in front of us, surrounded by all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the three times. They have come, like helicopters, to rescue us before we sink into the fires of hell. All we need to do is let go of our grasping at samsara and grab onto the hook of our Guru’s compassion, and he will bring us to the pure land. How do we let go of samsara? Through the practice of the three higher trainings – moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom. With moral discipline, we let go of all behaviour inconsistent with the Dharma. With concentration, we let go of distractions thinking about samsara. And with wisdom, we let go of grasping at identifying with samsara. Why do we let go of samsara? Because we do not want to sink ourselves and because we want to become a helicopter-like Buddha ourselves so we can extend the hook of our compassion to those we love just as our spiritual guide has done for us. With this mind of fear and faith, we then go for refuge according to the Sadhana.

With a perfectly pure mind of great virtue,
I and all mother sentient beings as extensive as space,
From now until we reach the essence of enlightenment,
Go for refuge to the Guru and Three Precious Jewels.

Namo Gurubhä
Namo Buddhaya
Namo Dharmaya
Namo Sanghaya  (3x)

A perfectly pure mind of great virtue refers to our minds of fear and faith as described above. With the second line, we recall ourselves and all living beings trapped in the circle of fire, sinking into samsara. With the third line we recall the final destination of our spiritual training is to bring ourself and all living beings into the clear light Dharmakaya, or Truth Body, of all the Buddhas. To go for refuge – the fourth line – we promise to make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, turn to Sangha for help, and practice Dharma. For our refuge practice to be qualified, we need to have a very clear understanding of what, exactly, is our problem. Normally, we blame our external circumstances for our problems, but when we go for refuge, we recall the difference between our outer problem and our inner problem. Our outer problem, such as having to pay taxes, is solved through outer means; but our inner problem, our actual problem, is our deluded reaction to our external circumstance. The Three Jewels cannot help us pay our taxes, but they can help us mentally relate to doing so as an act of giving to all living beings, for example. The Three Jewels can help us change our mind towards our outer circumstance, so that everything becomes a cause of our enlightenment instead of a cause of suffering.

Unlike other practices, in Offering to the Spiritual Guide our refuge practice has two uncommon characteristics. First, we explicitly go for refuge to the Guru, recognizing him as the synthesis and source of all the other Three Jewels. Second, we recite the refuge prayer in Sanskrit to recall the original language Buddha taught in. This makes us feel more closely connected to the origin of these instructions.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Be careful explaining Dharma

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Explaining emptiness to those who are likely to misunderstand. 

We incur a root downfall if we teach emptiness in an unskillful way and cause those who are listening to develop serious and harmful misunderstandings.  Emptiness is very easily misunderstood, and it is not difficult to unintentionally explain a nihilistic view.  We normally remain on the extreme of existence, but it does not take much to swing to the other side and become overzealous in our explanations. 

As a general rule, we should make sure that our wisdom understanding emptiness does not outstrip our compassion.  This will protect us from falling into the extreme of non-existence, or falling into the extreme of solitary peace.  The only thing emptiness negates is the mode of existence of the world.  Beings still exist, the world still exists, suffering is still experienced.  We go places, things happen, etc.  But it is all taking place in a karmic dream and none of it is any more real than last night’s dream.  But just because it is a dream does not mean it doesn’t matter what happens in it.  For as long as beings grasp at the dream as being real, they suffer terribly within it.  Just as it is appropriate to come to the aid of somebody we think is real, so too if we are in a dream it is appropriate to come to the aid of somebody in the dream.  They suffer, we can help, so we do so. 

In fact, it is impossible to fully unwind the dream of samsara without a measure of compassion because if others are empty, then their minds and indeed their very lives are part of our dream.  An ocean cannot be tamed by calming a single wave.  The sign that our understanding of emptiness is incorrect is we feel there is no harm done by negativity and we think it doesn’t matter what happens to others because they are not real.  The sign that our understanding of emptiness is correct is we feel an overwhelming sense of personal responsibility for whatever happens to anybody because it is all taking place in our dream.  Just as we would expect a good God to care for and protect his creation, so too when we understand emptiness it is a given we must care for everything and everyone because it is all part of the fabric of our mind.  The duality between self and others completely dissolves where it becomes absurd to even think to free oneself without freeing all others.  In fact, for a mind that understands emptiness correctly, such a thought could not even arise.

Causing others to abandon the Mahayana. 

If we cause a Mahayana practitioner to give up their bodhichitta by telling them they will never become a Buddha, and advise them to enter the less demanding Hinayana path, we incur a downfall.

Gen Tharchin explains that the secret to developing unstoppable effort is to understand that all the goals of the spiritual path are indeed eminently doable.  At present we give lip service to the idea of attaining enlightenment, but deep in our heart we think it is an impossible goal far beyond our reach.  When we read the teachings on Tranquil Abiding, much less all the grounds and paths of a bodhisattva, we realize we have barely even begun our training, even if we have been applying full effort for many many years.  Not seeing how it is possible, we may think it would be nice to be a Buddha but besides the words which fall from our lips about it, there is no fire in our belly to really go for it. 

The deep truth of emptiness is if we cannot keep the flame of Dharma alive in our own mind, it will become extinguished from the world we perceive, and all we dream will be lost.  But if we can become like an immovable vajra and the flame of Dharma is never extinguished from our own mind, it is just a question of time before we are all free.  The bitter cruelty of samsara is also its greatest weakness – it is a self-imposed prison.  There is literally nothing which can stop us from walking straight out its door other than our failure to make the decision to do so.  Once we decide to leave and we have seen through its lies, nothing can stop us.  It still may take a very long time, but nothing can stop us. 

We may love our children, for example, very much and be willing to do anything for them.  But if we die without having secured our spiritual future, who will look after them?  Can we trust the task to anybody else?  But if we can place our mind on the firm grounding of the clear light, death for us will be no different than falling asleep at night knowing we will awake the next day to continue our work.  We do not recognize all the beings around us as our past mothers or our past children, but as we become firm in our wisdom we will see and recall our past time with them, we will understand the long arc of their history and we will know no matter what karmic disguises they or ourselves assume, it is still them and it is still us, and we are still with them gradually guiding them to freedom. 

Discouragement is the killer of more spiritual lives than anything else.  It is our discouragement which enables our attachments to overcome us.  If we do not believe our freedom is possible, we won’t fight for it with all our being, and we will settle for the most comfortable situation we can arrange in samsara.  But if a man’s child or wife were captured, he would not rest – ever – until they were freed.  This is our very situation, and we have the potential to free all them – literally in one go.  The only thing stopping us is nothing.