Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of mental stabilization

Neglecting to train in mental stabilization. 

The attainment of Tranquil Abiding is necessary to achieve profound realizations.  Therefore, if we fail to make an effort in the following areas we incur a secondary downfall:  (1) To listen to and think about the instructions on tranquil abiding, and (2) To improve our concentration by training in tranquil abiding.

At the end of the day, we have been given perfect methods for attaining enlightenment.  We have been given everything.  All we now need to do is actually do them.  Our main problem is when we do our practices, our mind is filled with distraction.  So while outwardly it appears that we are meditating, inside our mind is wandering everywhere except where it is supposed to be, namely on our practice.  If we can learn to overcome this one problem, progress along the path will come very quickly.

Why is concentration important?  Ultimately, the strength of our concentration determines the extent of our spiritual power.  The more powerful our practice, the more quickly and profoundly we make progress.  It is no exaggeration to say we are fighting a war against our delusions.  It is an all or nothing battle.  Either our delusions defeat us or we defeat our delusions.  There is no middle ground, there is no peace treaty or compromise possible.  Either we exterminate them or they will not stop until we are pinned down into the deepest hell forever.  This may sound like exaggerated rhetoric, but it is not.  Delusions are relentless in their deceptions and they will never stop.  At no point will they ever be satisfied thinking this person is deluded enough, they will keep deceiving us until they drive us literally insane.  The more freedom we give our delusion to reign within our mind, the more they will seize control of us and make us do things which only serve to harm ourself or others.  They are an enemy without remorse.  They have no redeeming qualities.  The only reason why we do not see this or realize it is because they have us so firmly in their grasp that they have convinced us they are our friends.  Against an enemy such as this, we need power to defeat them.  Concentration is our power.

Concentration has two components:  (1) remembering our chosen object of meditation, and (2) realizing its object clearly.  In the beginning, our primary focus should be remembering the object.  To remember the object means to keep it in mind, to maintain the continuum of keeping the focus of our mind on the object of our choice.  The ability to do this is called mindfulness.  Mindfulness simply means remembering our object, or more practically, not forgetting it. 

If we check, there is really only one reason why we forget our objects of meditation.  It is because we think our object of distraction is more important or more interesting than our object of meditation.  To us, the value of our objects of distraction seem evident and seem immediate, whereas the value of our objects of meditation seem abstract and seem to be far off in some uncertain future.  If we want to remember our objects of meditation, we need to reverse this.  Remembering our objects of meditation has to become, for us, the most important thing in our life.  If we can remember our objects of meditation, we will find permanent freedom.  If we allow ourselves to forget them, we will quickly be swept away and become lost forever.  Again, this sounds like hyperbole, but it is not.  The stakes are this high, the choices are this stark. 

So if we want to remember our objects we have to want to remember them because we understand them to be the most important things in our life.  We accomplish this by meditating again and again on the benefits of each meditation we do.  If we check, a very large proportion of all of Geshe-la’s books is simply an explanation of the benefits of the different objects of meditation.  We should not gloss over these and try jump straight to the object of meditation itself.  If we do this, we will quickly become distracted, receive almost no benefit, and then gradually abandon our practice.  If instead, we take the time in the beginning to focus most of our time and attention on contemplating and meditating on the benefits, then we will become very motivated to remember our objects when we are in meditation.  When we meditate on the benefits of a given object of meditation, the most important thing to focus on is not the “what” but rather the “why.”  In other words, just knowing what the benefits are will have little power if we don’t understand why the given object of meditation produces the actual benefit.  If we don’t directly see and understand the connection between the two, our desire to mix our mind with these objects of meditation will be superficial at best and lack the power necessary to remain with them.  When distractions come, we will eagerly go with them.  In particular, we should focus on realizing the benefits of meditating on death, the benefits of bodhichitta, the benefits of the self-generation object and the benefits of the Mahamudra object.  These are our main and most powerful objects of meditation.

If we spend much of our time doing this we incur a secondary downfall.

Earlier I explained that no activity is senseless from its own side, it only becomes senseless when we engage in it with a senseless mind.  The same applies to conversations.  But putting that aside, we can say that a senseless conversation is a conversation about nothing of importance.  There are countless examples of such conversations, but they all come down to a common denominator of the conversations help nobody.  They just fill time. 

It is surprising how many such conversations we have.  If we check our day, it is not uncommon for half or more of our conversations to fall into this category.  Like a bunch of nervous Nellies, we chatter away saying nothing to avoid awkward moments of silence.  Or perhaps our relationship with the other person is so superficial that there is no scope to discuss anything of substance with them. 

Does this mean we should become quiet and reserved and only engage in conversations with others if they want to talk about the Dhama, because after all, only the Dharma really matters!  No, that is an absurd way of thinking.  Because as explained earlier we need karmic relationships with others, we need to engage with others.  There is nothing decreeing our conversations with others have to be devoid of meaning.  It is not difficult to engage in substantive discussions with anybody.  It suffices to take a genuine interest in the person you are talking to and asking them about their life.  Within a few minutes you can be discussing something of value. 

But sometimes, yes, this is not possible.  There are some people who we seem to only cross occasionally in the elevator and the only thing that we can seemingly discuss is, “boy, it sure is cold today” before they get off on their floor.  So be it, it’s better than just ignoring them.  But in general, with minimal effort we can have meaningful conversations with pretty much anybody.

To attain enlightenment requires great effort.  If we do not try to eliminate our laziness, or our attachment to sleep or other worldly pleasures, we incur a secondary downfall.

Enlightenment cannot be bestowed upon us.  The state of enlightenment is a dependent-arising, which means it is something that only arises when all of the causes and conditions for its existence have been assembled.  The laws of karma state that if the cause has not been created, it is impossible for the effect to arise.  This means if we ourselves do not create the causes for our own enlightenment, it will never happen.  We will remain trapped in samsara forever, or for at least until we do create the causes to get out.  There is no escaping this.  Since we are going to have to do it eventually, we might as well start now.

Sadly, our mind is pervaded by laziness.  We don’t want to do anything.  Interestingly, we find it easy to generate the effort to do things that are harmful to us, but we struggle mightily to do the things that are actually good for us.  For us, a good day is one where we don’t have to do anything and nothing is expected of us.  We struggle to get out of bad, we procrastinate everything that doesn’t have to be done right away, we take forever to work up the determination and focus to start working, and when we do we almost immediately start looking to do something else, like check our email or Facebook for the 36^th time today.  We never get around to starting our exercise regime, we continue to eat unhealthy foods despite knowing better, dishes pile up, laundry goes undone, thank you notes never get written, days go by until eventually we die without having ever gotten anything done.  If we consider the analogy of the blind turtle putting its head through the golden yoke explained in the lamrim teachings, we realize that our current precious human life only happens once ever approximately 600 trillion lifetimes!  For us to fitter away this precious opportunity doing nothing is a waste of cosmic proportions.  But look at how many people do exactly that.

For us as Dharma practitioners, if we waste our life in this way, we will die with a mind of intense regret.  We will realize we had been given the opportunity to finally break free from the cycle of samsara, but we squandered the opportunity on meaningless things and now it is too late.  We will feel like the fool who had been taken a treasure island for a day who forgot to gather up any riches before it was time to go.  If we die in such a miserable state, we will most certainly fall.  We cannot let this be our story. 

Effort in a Dharma context does not mean hard work.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Effort means taking delight in virtue.  In other words, a mind of effort is one that enjoys doing what is good for us.  Venerable Tharchin explains the problem is we don’t actually believe Dharma works.  If we don’t believe it works, it is very difficult to generate the effort necessary to do it.  But if we see clearly how it does work and we see how everything is in fact eminently doable, then, he says, “effort comes effortlessly.”  We will feel like somebody who stumbled upon plans to make a time machine or a wishfulfilling magical device.  We are so excited about the prospects, that we don’t even think about the work it takes to get it built. 

So the trick to generating the mind of effort is to constantly ask ourselves the question, “how does that work?”  The Dharma does work and there are valid answers that explain how and why.  In some other religions, people are discouraged from asking too many questions or probing too deeply.  In the Kadam Dharma it is the opposite.  The more we ask the question, “how does that work?” the more we receive satisfactory and perfectly reasonable answers.  We get enough of these and we start to see, not just believe, that the Dharma does indeed work.  Of course at first it begins with little things like happiness depends upon a peaceful mind, but in dependence upon these initial understandings we can get the ball rolling.  We keep probing, trying and coming up with answers, and gradually more and more practices make sense.  Then at some point we see, “if I do this, I see how it will set me in irreversible motion, and if I can attain that escape velocity I will eventually be guaranteed to attain enlightenment.”  From this, we do more, probe more, until eventually we see directly how the entire path actually works, from the initial steps all the way to final enlightenment.  If we understand this, effort will not be a problem for us at all.

Early on in the process, there is a critical turning point we need to reach.  At present, we want worldly attainments more than we want spiritual attainments.  As a result, we put effort into worldly attainments and little effort into spiritual ones.  We need to reverse this.  The method for doing so is a consistent practice of the 21 lamrim meditations.  The main function of the lamrim is to change our desires from being worldly desires to being spiritual desires.  When this is what we want, we will naturally work to fulfill them.  This is why the lamrim is the foundation for all that follows, and why if we lack a lamrim foundation we will never get very far no matter how many advanced practices we try. 

Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of effort

Gathering a circle of followers out of desire for profit or respect. 

If, for selfish reasons, we try to gather followers we incur a secondary downfall.

This is actually a very difficult vow for us.  On the one hand, it implies that we are supposed to gather a circle of followers.  This makes sense because we are trying to attain enlightenment so that we can lead others to the same state.  But to actively seek to gather a circle of followers seems to us like proselytizing and unbelievably arrogant, so we don’t quite know how to generate the wish to gather a circle of followers without it seeming weird and deluded.  It is obviously incredibly unskillful to get on top of our soapbox and try gather people up.  So how can we understand this desire?

Perhaps some examples can help us get a feel for this.  If we bake some really good chocolate chip cookies, we naturally want to share them with our kids because they are so good.  We are happy to share them with others.  When we discover some new way of doing things that really works and we see others struggling with the same problem, we naturally want to share with them our strategy so that it is easier for them.  When we succeed in accomplishing something and we see others trying to do the same, we are happy to share our experience with them to help them along.  It is the same with the Dharma.  All of these examples contain two key ingredients:  (1) an appreciation of the value of what we have, and (2) others who from their own side already want but don’t have what we have to share.  If we don’t ourselves appreciate the value of what we have and others don’t want what we have, then it is inappropriate to try gather people to share it.  But if we do have such an appreciation and others do want what we have, then it is entirely natural to want to share it with them. 

So how do we actually gather such a circle?  Obviously, if we belong to a Dharma center, regardless of whether or not we are the teacher of that center, we naturally want the center to grow and for more and more students to come to the center.  There is nothing wrong with this.  When we have something special, we naturally want to share it with others.  If we see the value of what the center has to offer ourselves, then we will naturally want others to also benefit from it.  So we will do things like help with publicity or we will tell some of our friends or relatives about the center if we think they might be open to it. But the best thing we can do is create a loving, open, fun and accepting atmosphere at the center.  If the culture of the center is like this, then people will naturally, from their own side, want to stay.  So we really don’t need to do anything other than actually practice what we have been taught with the other people at the center.  When new people come, we don’t jump on them and try convert them, we just be friendly and open and let them discover things.  It is better to offer them tea and cookies than Dharma advice.  We wait for them to ask questions before we start giving them answers. 

Outside of a Dharma center, we can recall the story of Venerable Tharchin I mentioned in a previous post, where Geshe-la said if he didn’t come out of retreat he would be a worthless Buddha because he didn’t have karmic relationships with living beings.  Our ability to help anybody depends upon our karmic relationship with them.  From a practical level this is obvious, if you don’t have any connection with somebody how can you help them?  Also, we see every day that we are able to more easily help those we are close to than those we hardly know or interact with. 

At a deeper, unseen level, the only way we can actually help people is through them receiving blessings of the Buddhas.  Geshe-la explains that living beings are basically incapable of generating a virtuous mind on their own.  Due to our past of having spent virtually all of our previous lives in the lower realms engaging only in negativity, the overwhelming gradient in our mind is towards the negative.  We see this every day.  It is much easier to get angry at somebody than it is to do something nice to them without expecting anything in return.  This is where Buddha’s blessings come in.  Buddhas have the power to activate positive karmic potentialities on the minds of living beings.  They can find that needle in the karmic haystack of negative tendencies and ripen it.  Once it ripens, we then are far more likely to engage in virtuous actions, which plants more positive seeds, which can then be ripened as well, gradually building up karmic momentum like a spiritual locomotive until eventually it becomes more natural for us to engage in virtue and it actually becomes hard to engage in negativity. 

We may ask, if Buddhas have the power to start such virtuous karmic cycles in the minds of living beings, why aren’t they doing it to everyone every day.  The short answer is they are doing the best they can, but from our own side we haven’t created the causes and conditions for them to do so.  It may be bright and sunny outside, but if all of our windows are sealed shut, very little light can creep into our room. And this is where our karmic connections with living beings come in. 

Karmic connections are like invisible karmic fiber optic cables through which the light of the Buddha’s blessings can pass.  Because we are practitioners, we are actively trying to open up our windows to the light.  So light is flowing into us.  Then, through the karmic connections we create with others, this light can then flow out to others.  The more karmic connections we have with others, the more bandwidth our cables have, and the more light of blessings flow through.  It is for this reason that Venerable Tharchin said, “for every step we take towards enlightenment, we bring all living beings with us in proportion to the karmic connection we have with them.” 

Interestingly, apparently bad karmic connections with others is better than no karmic connections at all.  There are two stories which illustrate this point.  The first is (if I recall the story correctly, perhaps some scholar can help me get the story right), Buddhas first five disciples were actually beings in the past who had engaged in some serious negativity towards a previous incarnation of Buddha.  There is another story of a yogi who really wanted to help some local farmer, but the yogi and the farmer had no connection at all.  No matter what the yogi tried, nothing worked.  So the yogi came up with an idea – he went into the farmers field and smashed all of his crops.  That got the farmer’s attention and he came out saying he would kill the yogi who was running off gleefully.  The yogi knew that now, once the negative karma between him and the farmer had exhausted itself the yogi would have a close karmic connection through which he could help.  This doesn’t mean we should go around and intentionally destroy people’s work to create karma with them, but it does illustrate the power and importance of karmic connections.

Regardless of whether or not we are currently a teacher, we are all aspiring Bodhisattvas.  As such, we need a vast web of karmic relationships with as many beings as possible.  It is through this web of karmic relationships that we will eventually be able to lead everyone to enlightenment.  How do we build such karmic relationships?  By cherishing others, serving them, helping them and caring for them in every way possible.  We can also pray for others.  No matter what is happening, we can always pray for others.  Even when we ourselves are sick in the hospital dying, nothing can stop us from praying for others.

If we do not make a special effort to practice patience when we find ourselves getting angry we incur a secondary downfall.

Anger will never go away on its own.  If we don’t get rid of our anger, it will destroy us.  Our anger ruins everything that is good in our life.  We may love our children very much, but because we get angry at them and fail to apologize for it, they harbor resentment against us and eventually come to reject everything we have to say and rebel against everything we stand for.  Later, when they have kids, they don’t want us to be part of their life and we are denied the opportunity to see our grandkids.  They blame us for all that is wrong in their life and despite all we have done for them they want nothing to do with us.  This is not uncommon at all, and it is incredibly painful.  If we want to avoid this being our own story, we must bring our anger under control. 

Everytime we get angry we not only hurt those we love, we also create the causes to go to hell.  This is a karmic truth, no matter how much we wish it was otherwise.  Is it worth it?  Is it worth it to destroy our relationships with those we love only to wind up in hell later for it?  This is no game, this is a fact.  Sometimes when we are forced to confront this karmic truth it makes us feel guilty and we start to beat ourselves up over it.  But guilt too is a form of anger – anger against ourselves.  Or we start to freak out about how we are getting angry and can’t stop ourselves, and we get all tight and neurotic.  This doesn’t help either.  So then we think it is better for us to ignore this karmic fact and not think about it.  But that is just burying our head in the sand, and when the end of this life comes there will be no sand left to hide in.  We must work through these things and channel the emotions the karmic truth of this creates in us to productive purposes.

The first thing we need to do is apologize as soon as we can.  The longer we wait to apologize, the more time the karma has to take root within our mind.  In particular, we should never go to sleep before we have apologized.  Venerable Tharchin explains that falling asleep functions to plant the negative karma deeper within our mind and so makes it harder to uproot.  But if we apologize before we go to bed, then we can hopefully clean up the negative karma before it takes root. 

Second, we need to stop anger in its early stages of development.  The earliest stage of anger is inappropriate attention – we focus on the bad, and then we exaggerate it.  Instead we need to choose to focus on the good and we need to become an expert at saying “it doesn’t matter” for the bad. 

Third, we need to surrender our lives to Dorje Shugden.  We get angry because we wish things were different than they are.  When we rely on Dorje Shugden, he arranges all the outer and inner conditions so that they are perfect for our practice.  Perfect here doesn’t mean perfect for our worldly concerns – in other words it doesn’t mean they will be what our delusions want – rather, perfect here means perfect for our spiritual training.  If what we want is to grow spiritually, then the fact that things are so bad from a worldly perspective will be experienced as being a good thing from a spiritual perspective.  We will be happy things are so bad because we see how beneficial that is for our spiritual growth.  If things are “perfect” there is no basis for us wishing things were different than they are, and so therefore there will be no basis for ever getting angry.  I literally overcome about 95% of my own anger in this way.

Fourth, we can channel these feelings into a wish to purify.  If we made a big mess in our house, obviously we need to clean it up.  We live there, after all.  In the same way, if we made a big karmic mess in our mind, then we need to clean it up.  We can never escape residing within our own mind.  We can think, “if I don’t purify, disaster awaits me.  If I want to avoid that, I need to purify now.”  One of the most common obstacles to generating a strong wish to purify is we struggle to think of what negative actions we have committed that are so bad.  But everytime we see somebody else commit some negative action, we can view that person as a mirror reflecting back to us what we have done to others in the past.  We are, from a karmic perspective, actually looking at our own past deeds.  This is true regardless of whether the other person is committing the negative action against us.  If we dream of somebody harming somebody else, where did these appearances come from?  Our own karma.  It is the same with the waking world.

Not apologizing when we have the opportunity. 

If we have disturbed another person by acting unskillfully, and later the opportunity to apologize arises but, out of pride or laziness, we fail to do so we incur a secondary downfall.

Just as others harm us all of the time, we too harm others all of the time with our unskillful actions.  Normally we internally excuse our wrong behavior on the grounds of the other person provoking us in some way, “it’s their fault!”  But nobody has the power to provoke us, we allow ourselves to be provoked.  Ultimately, we need to be responsible for all of our behavior, regardless of what others do.  This is not easy, but its not being easy doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. 

When we do harm others, such as saying something hurtful, then later, once we have calmed down, we need to make a point of apologizing.  I know a mother who has a bad habit of getting angry at her kid.  She is a very powerful and smart woman, and when she gets angry she can be downright nasty, controlling and hurtful.  But she also has an unshakable habit of always apologizing to her kid afterwards when she eventually calms down.  She tells her kid, “I’m sorry I got angry at you and treated you in that way.  Mommy’s anger just took over, and I am sorry.  When I get like that, I want you to know it is not your fault that I get so angry, it is my responsibility.  Just ignore me and know that it is my anger talking not me.”  Then she has a good laugh with her kid about how crazy she sometimes acts.  Because she has consistently done this, her son has learned how to take her mother’s anger in stride where it doesn’t affect him.  He knows she will later come apologize.  This doesn’t mean that he might not need to change his behavior if he has been doing something wrong, but it does prevent the anger from destroying the relationship and making things worse.  This mothers habit of apologizing and having a good laugh not only disarms the harmful effects of her anger, it also teaches her kid how to relate to his own feelings of anger and what he should do when he himself gets upset. 

Until we are an advanced bodhisattva, getting angry is pretty much unavoidable.  But apologizing afterwards is completely within our control.

One last thing, sometimes we hold off on giving our apology because actually it was the other person who started it and clearly they are the one who committed the bigger harm, so we think surely they must apologize first.  This is a completely mistaken way of thinking.  First, if they don’t apologize then we start getting upset at them about not apologizing when we think they should.  Second, just because they did something wrong doesn’t in any way excuse or justify our own mistakes.  We need to own up to our mistakes and take responsibility for them.  Third, when we apologize it often creates the space for the other person to apologize as well.  And even if they don’t apologize in return (which of course will have the potential to really make us angry again), we can at least know we did the right thing by apologizing.  If the other person doesn’t apologize as well, that is their mistake.  But at least from our own side we have done the right thing.

Not accepting others apologies. 

If someone who has previously harmed us later apologies and, without a good reason but not out of resentment (which is a root downfall) we refuse to accept, we incur a secondary downfall.

Very often if we were in a fight with somebody and they later apologize but we haven’t yet overcome our own anger towards them, we will take advantage of their apology as a sign of weakness and then we attack them one last time.  When we do this, they then get angry back and the cycle can start over, or at a minimum they decide they better not apologize again in the future because when they do so they get their hand bit off.  This is obviously completely wrong.

When somebody apologizes, that is them admitting they were wrong and they are seeking to make things right again.  Why would we not want to cooperate with that?  As bodhisattvas, we want others to attain enlightenment.  If they generate regret for their negativity and try to do something nice to set things straight, we should be delighted and welcome fully their effort.  From our own side, we should repay their apology with one of our own, and we should try have a good laugh with them about how sometimes we act silly.  Our accepting their apology is also a very powerful way of letting go of our own pent up resentment towards the other person.  Resentment is like a cancer within our mind.

The difference between a worldly person and a spiritual person is which life they are working for.  Worldly people work to enjoy good effects in this life.  Spiritual people use this life to create good causes for their future lives.  The road of our future lives is endless and it is guaranteed.  The road of this life is indefinite, and it could end at any time.  It doesn’t matter at all what happens in this life, any more than it matters what happened in last night’s dream. We are so obsessed with what we are “feeling.”  Who cares what we are feeling?  What difference does it really make?  It is only because we think we are important that we think what we feel is important.  But the self we think we are doesn’t even exist, so how could its happiness possibly be important?  And even if it was important, what is more important this one fleeting life or our countless future lives?  There comes a time in our normal life where we work hard now to have things easier in the future.  We voluntarily endure the sufferings of University so that we can get a good job and have a better life thereafter.  We happily work hard and save up our money to go on a special trip.  This involves sacrifice in the short run, which we gladly accept because we know the rewards are greater on the other side.  Such is the optic of the spiritual practitioner.

We cannot blame others for being so inconsiderate and harmful to us.  It is not their fault.  They don’t even exist, they are just karmic echoes of our own past harmful and selfish behavior.  We have nobody to blame but our past delusions which drove us to negativity.  If we did not have the karma on our mind to be harmed, nobody would even appear to harm us.  Our negative karma propels them to harm us.  When they do so, they create negative karma for themselves and they will suffer in the future.  From our side, if we accept the suffering, we purify our negative karma and so are better off; but from their side they accumulate negative karma and will have to experience similar suffering (or worse) in the future.  So who is better off and who is worse off.  It is we who should be saying sorry to them. 

This does not mean we should allow others to abuse us and take advantage of us.  There is a middle way between being a doormat and being a raging lunatic.  We do not help people by allowing them to abuse us, so we must break the cycle.  But we also don’t help them by retaliating, which just causes the cycle of mutual harm to continue.  Ghandi showed the middle way.  We accept the harm, but we refuse to cooperate with its wrong purpose.  We accept the harm as purification, but we don’t reward it by giving people what they want.  Blackmail only works when we give in.  If we refuse to give in, even if people throw everything they have at us, then we break the cycle.  We accept the harm in the short run to be free from it in the long run.  If people blackmail us and we don’t give in, they may try to blackmail us again in the future, but both they and we will know it won’t succeed.  We have stared them down once before, and we can do so again.  Eventually they give up trying.  This helps them and it helps us.

Of course, if we can avoid others harming us we should do so.  There are enough instances of people harming us where we cannot avoid it that we don’t need to needlessly expose ourselves to harm that is avoidable.  Sometimes not cooperating with others delusions means ending that particular relationship.  We do not stick around with others abusing us if we can leave.  But for the harm we cannot avoid, or for the harm that is too insignificant to warrant ending the relationship over, we accept it and refuse to cooperate with it.  We shouldn’t go to extremes with this.  In general, we should go along with others wishes as long as they are not harmful.  We don’t expect others to be perfect and always completely free form harm.  We need to accept others mistakes and give people the space to change.  But on important things, we need to fearlessly say no and not give in.

Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of patience

Retaliating to harm or abuse. 

If out of impatience we retaliate to harm or abuse we incur a secondary downfall.

We are harmed or abused by others all of the time.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  We have spent countless aeons in the lower realms where we ourselves harmed and abused others as a way of life.  Even in this life, despite having received Dharma teachings, we continue to lash out at people when they have done basically nothing wrong.  So it is only natural that now we experience the karmic echoes of our past actions.

People criticize us all of the time.  People put us down, directly or indirectly, all of the time.  People snap at us all of the time.  People blame us for whatever ails them all of the time.  People get mad at us for no reason all of the time.  When we make the slightest mistake, people respond disproportionately against us all of the time.  Our bosses or coworkers blame us for things we are not responsible for, and they take credit for our accomplishments.  People cut us off on the road, or cut in front of us in line.  People ask us to do their work for them, and then they get mad at us when we don’t do it as they wanted.  We can do everything we can to make others happy, but they still get upset at us, judge us and are never grateful for what we do.  We give to others, and they take.  When we ask for something in return they say no or make a problem.  People take advantage of our kindness and then forget us on our birthdays.  We make a point of investing in them, but they don’t really care what is happening in our life.  When something important happens in our life, they fail to notice or care.  Our political leaders play games and make the world’s problems even worse.  No matter how much work we do for others, they never give us a break.  They take, take take without end and give almost nothing in return.  When we become tired or frustrated they get mad at us for not being in a good mood.  Our business leaders drive the global economy into ruin for the sake of their own personal enrichment.  Companies pollute the earth, shortening lives, destroying the environment for future generations, all to make a little extra money for themselves.  People suffer from homelessness, hunger and crime, but nobody lifts a finger and indeed they blame the victims for being lazy.  In short, we live in a world with countless causes for frustration.  It is a small wonder that we are not in a perpetual war of all against all.

If we allow these myriad causes of frustration to get to us, it is very easy to begin lashing out at those around us.  Sometimes we rationalize it thinking we need to get angry to deter people from taking advantage of or harming us, but usually it is just our frustration that boils over.  Because we are Dharma practitioners, we know we are not supposed to get angry, so outwardly we pretend to be calm, but internally we are just repressing our frustration until it eventually blows up in some dramatic fashion.  We develop deep resentment for those who put us down again and again and again, and sometimes we can no longer keep it in and we lash out.  This is the nature of samsaric life.  When we do lash out, it invariably makes things worse.  We then either “double down” on our anger and get mad again, or we start repressing again waiting for the next volcanic eruption to occur. 

How do we stop this hellish cycle?  We need to stop it at its root.  Once anger has started, it is very difficult to rein back in.  But we cannot repress our anger, because doing so just guarantees one day it will explode.  The root of anger is wishing things were different than they are.  We wish those around us weren’t so difficult.  We wish life wasn’t so difficult.  We wish we could just have a moment to take a rest.  But the tighter we grasp onto things needing to go well, the more painful it is when they do not.  Samsara is wave after wave of aggravating circumstances.  This is its very nature.  This will never change.

The root of the problem is we want the wrong things.  We want what our eight worldly concerns want (pleasant experiences, happiness, a good reputation, praise, etc.).  In short, we want to experience good effects.  This is the root of our problem.  Instead, we need to want to create good causes.  Bad effects now are the karmic echoes of our past bad causes.  Good causes now are the karmic seeds of future good effects.  We cannot take with us into our future lives the good effects we experience now, but we can take with us the good karmic causes we create for ourselves.  They are our real inner wealth.  The inner wealth of good causes is to bodhisattvas what money is to business people or power is to politicians. 

Not avoiding a bad reputation. 

If we unnecessarily engage in actions that cause us to receive criticism or a bad reputation we incur a secondary downfall.  However, if our actions benefit others, cause the Dharma to flourish, or are necessary to preserve our moral discipline, it does not matter if a few people criticize us.

I would say in modern times our biggest attachment that creates the most problems for us is attachment to what others think about us.  First our parents, then our friends, then society, then our kids, etc.  We need to break completely free from this and make our own decisions about what is the right thing to do, and if other people have a problem with it, then frankly it is their problem, not ours.  We shouldn’t let their misunderstanding of what is best for us prevent us from doing what is in fact best for us (and them) in the long-run.  Buddha showed this example when he left his father’s palace.  This was not his father’s first choice, but because Buddha’s motivation was pure and his father eventually came to see this, he agreed to let his son go even though he didn’t necessarily want to. 

But we also need to be careful to not go to the other extreme with this.  In general, we should go along with others’ wishes for us, unless doing so is somehow harmful.  We should try be of service to whoever we meet and do whatever is the most beneficial for others.  We should not unnecessarily antagonize others with our actions nor should we abandon our conventional responsibilities.  Unless the situation is extreme and we have received very clear indications, we should never abandon our partner or our children thinking we need to do so to pursue our spiritual goals.  We also need to assume our full parental and professional responsibilities.  If we don’t do so in the name of supposedly following our spiritual path, all we will do is bring the Dharma into disrepute and cause others to reject it.  Who does that help?  There is no contradiction whatsoever between living up to our normal modern responsibilities in the world and being a Kadampa.  If there were, it would be impossible to attain the union of the Kadam Dharma and modern life.  As explained by Geshe Chekewa, “remain natural while changing your aspiration.”  We live our external lives completely as normal, but inside we change everything.

Not helping others to avoid negativity. 

If we have the ability and the opportunity to help others avoid committing negative actions but, without a good reason, fail to do so we incur a secondary downfall.

As a general rule, we shouldn’t get into other people’s business or tell others what they need to do.  Our job is to make our own actions correct.  The more we try tell others what they need to do, the more they will rebel against us and the Dharma which they know is behind our proselytizing.  There is nothing wrong with sharing our own experience if people are open to hearing it, but we should leave it up to them to apply our experience to their own circumstance.  This is why quite often when you ask a Kadampa teacher some question about what you should do they won’t answer you directly but they will instead tell some story from their own experience (or that of their friends).  They leave it up to you to apply the story to your own life and situation as you see fit.

With that being said, situations do arise where we have some degree of influence over others and they are about to engage in some negative action and if we say something we could stop them (or at least get them to think twice).  When such situations arise, we should not just sit on the sidelines, we need to act.  Basically, if we can help somebody we need to do so.  Our ability to do so depends entirely on whether the other person trusts us that we have their own best interests at heart.  If they feel like we are just trying to manipulate them for our own purposes, or we are wanting them to stop due to our own attachment to them doing the right thing (attachment to others happiness is quite different than love and compassion), then they will just reject what we have to say.  But if they know we have no hidden agenda and only want what is best for them, and ultimately we don’t need them to make the choice we want them to make, then they will be open to listening to what we have to say.  We never know when somebody we know and love might start doing stupid, self-destructive things, so we need to cultivate trusting relationships with everyone in our life so that if the day does come where we need to intervene, they will listen to us. 

Our intervening doesn’t guarantee that the other person will stop, and we need to be prepared for them to engage in the negative action anyways.  But at the very least we will be able to say we did all that we could, but ultimately the other person’s actions are beyond our control.  When this happens, we can renew our bodhichitta saying may I one day become a Buddha so that I can always be there for this person and gradually lead them along correct paths.

Some people assert that we can attain enlightenment without abandoning samsara or delusions while working for the welfare of sentient beings.  If we hold this view and encourage others to think the same we incur a secondary downfall.

It is quite a popular misconception in society to think that Bodhisattvas do not strive to escape from samsara, but they instead seek to remain within it so that they can help living beings get out.  The belief is quite similar to the idea of Shepherd-like Bodhichitta, which is the idea of a shepherd who tends to their flock and only once all of their flock is safe do they themselves get to safety.  It is like the Captain of the Battalion who is the first man on and the last man off the field of battle.  Such an attitude is sublime, and there are some very profound Highest Yoga Tantra ways of practicing this type of view, but ultimately it is not the most compassionate mind possible and is in fact karmically impossible to accomplish.

It is not the most compassionate mind possible because what happens if the shepherd is killed before all of his flock is safe?  For example, it is only once we are in the life boat ourselves that we are in a position to help others get up into the life boat.  If we drown, then all those who are not yet in the boat will drown with us.  The popular misconception is based on a false belief that once we attain liberation or enlightenment we are somehow incapable of coming back to save people.  This is completely wrong.  Once we become a Buddha, we can send countless emanations out into the world of beings to help people along.  From the safety of the pure land, we can help everyone for the rest of time.  But if we remain in samsara ourselves, we are always in danger of being swept away and all of the beings who we otherwise would have helped if we had escaped will continue to suffer.  It is not karmically possible to be the last one out because our compassionate mind of cherishing others will swiftly bring us to enlightenment whether we want to attain it or not! 

Understanding that king-like bodhichitta (the wish to attain enlightenment first so that we can rescue all others) is the highest mind, there is a danger, however, that our self-cherishing can hijack this Dharma fact and use an internally insincere application of king-like bodhichitta as the rationalization for our self-cherishing of putting ourself first.  We should never underestimate the ability of our delusions to hijack our Dharma understandings for their own deluded purposes. 

So how do we protect ourselves against this danger?  The answer is simple.  We go about our life from the perspective of shepherd like bodhichitta, always putting others first, serving ourselves last, etc.  But when it comes to our formal practice we use king-like bodhichitta.  For example, when we engage in our formal practice or go on retreat, we are, from an external point of view, not helping other people.  We could be using that same time to help other people, and it can seem selfish to go off to meditate or to go on retreat.  This is particularly a problem for parents, especially when the partner in the relationship is not also a practitioner.  But if we spend all of our time out “helping people” and we don’t create any time for our formal practice, then our ability to actually transform our mind will remain quite limited.  The reality is sometimes we can transform our mind at a deeper level when we are in meditation than when we are out engaging in activities.  The more deeply we meditate, the more deeply we reprogram our mind, which then filters up into all of our other activities.  So even if it creates some tension (within reason of course) with our family or partner, we should make a point of taking the time to engage in our daily practice and to engage in retreat, and we should ask our partner to respect that this is the only thing we ask for in our relationship and we would like their support for this.  They may be unhappy about this at first, but if they see that over time after you do your formal practice or after you go on retreat you come back more loving, more patient, more kind and more serving, then eventually your daily practice and your going on retreat will become a priority for them.  Then, there are no problems and everything gets easier.