Author: Kadampa Ryan

Understanding the three wisdoms and the three lineages

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I am adding this post to the “about this blog” page because I think it helps clarify its nature and purpose.

Some people confuse reliance upon the spiritual guide with fundamentalism.  Venerable Geshe-la explains in Clear Light of Bliss that we should not rely on just the words of Dharma, but rather their meaning.  If we rely on just the words of Dharma, there is a danger that we can become fundamentalist in our understanding of the Dharma.  Fundamentalism arises when we become attached to the literal words of the Dharma at the expense of its meaning.  The literal meaning of the scriptures are correct when interpreted through the lens of how those words are understood by the people who live at the time they were written.  But as cultures change with the flow of time, those same words in a different cultural context produce different meanings.  Our job as practitioners who wish to carry the lineage forward is to gain an understanding of the meaning of the Dharma and carry that forward.  The words that express that meaning will vary from culture to culture and time to time, but the meaning itself is universal and timeless.  Understanding this distinction protects us against the extreme of fundamentalism.

Those who authorize themselves to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma, meaning they test the Dharma they have heard (or read) against their own experience and who develop their own examples, analogies and wordings of the meaning of Dharma, can sometimes be accused by those who remain tightly attached to the literal words of scripture of causing the Dharma to degenerate.  I respectfully disagree.  In fact, I would argue that such a literalist approach in effect causes the degeneration of Dharma because it stunts the growth of the Dharma in the minds of living beings.

To understand this, we must make a distinction between the definitive Dharma and interpretative Dharma.  The definitive Dharma is the inner meaning of the Dharma as understood validly by the minds of superior beings.  It is universal and timeless.  The interpretative Dharma is how the definitive Dharma is expressed in a given cultural-temporal context.  The meaning of the Dharma in ancient Tibet and modern New York City is exactly the same.  But its interpretative presentation can be quite different.  If we fail to make this distinction, there is a risk that we can reject and criticise a perfectly valid interpretative presentation because it doesn’t correspond with our own culturally literalist understanding of the Dharma.  In my view, Venerable Geshe-la’s greatest contribution is he has perfectly transmitted the definitive meaning of the Kadam Dharma into a completely new cultural-temporal context (the modern world).  The book Modern Buddhism is, in my view, the culmination of his efforts.  It is the crown jewel of all of his works.  This doesn’t mean all of the other books are not the transmission of the timeless wisdom of the Kadampa into the modern world, rather it means we can fruitfully interpret all of the other books through the lens of and following the presentation of Modern Buddhism.

This logic also applies at the level of an individual practitioner.  Just as there are those who criticise a modern presentation of the Dharma, there are others who accept the modern presentation of the Dharma but then make the same mistake as the literalists within the context of their own tradition.  These people misinterpret reliance upon the spiritual guide alone as meaning they are not authorized to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma.  When confronted with an insight that is not explicitly in Venerable Geshe-la’s teachings they say, “I don’t remember Venerable Geshe-la ever saying that” and they reject the insight on those grounds alone.  Likewise when they come up with their own insights through their own practice they fail to do anything with them because they are not certain they are reliable because they never heard Geshe-la explicitly say the given idea.  Such an approach to our Dharma practice is safe and good, but it is not good enough.  Taken to an extreme, such an approach can make our Dharma understanding quite rigid, and we develop within ourselves a “parrot like Dharma” not a “heart-felt Dharma.”  A parrot like Dharma is good, but it is not good enough.

To understand this, it is useful to understand the three wisdom and the three lineages.  The three wisdoms are the wisdom arising from listening, the wisdom arising from contemplation and the wisdom arising from meditation.  These three can be understood as follows.  First we listen to (or read) the Dharma and gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  For example, when we listen to Venerable Geshe-la teach or read his books, we can become very familiar with all that he says and that understanding will give rise to a certain level of wisdom within our mind.  This is very good, but it is not good enough.  We shouldn’t stop there.

Just as there are different cultures and temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner has a different personal mental context and experience set.  Somebody who has spent their whole life in modern America has a different mental context and experience set than somebody who has spent their whole life in modern Brazil or modern China.  Even two people who both spent their whole life in modern America will have two very different mental contexts and experience sets.  Every individual in fact has a unique mental context and experience set.  Just as the great lineage holders like Atisha, Je Tsongkhapa and (I would argue) Venerable Geshe-la took the definitive meaning of the Dharma and expressed it interpretatively in different cultural-temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner must take (their understanding of) the definitive meaning of the Dharma and make it their own as understood through their own individual mental context and experience set.  We do this through our own contemplation of and meditation on the Dharma.

When we contemplate the Dharma we take the wisdom we have gained through listening and we test its validity in the context of our own life experience and understanding.  For example, I am an early middle-aged American economist diplomat father of five.  This is the context of my life experience, so I test the validity of the Dharma in the context of my world and experience.  When I do this, the Dharma becomes true for me.  I will develop my own examples, analogies and interpretative expressions (wordings) which generate within my own mind the actual meaning of the Dharma in my own mind.  I will have transferred what was the wisdom of somebody else (my teachers) into my own wisdom.  The Dharma will be true for me.  This is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  Venerable Tharchin says that our own examples, analogies and reasonings developed through our contemplation of the Dharma are actually more powerful for us because they make the Dharma true for us.  This does not mean they are more powerful for others, though.  Each practitioner must develop their own understandings through contemplating the Dharma they have heard (or read).

The insights we gain from our own contemplation of the Dharma, these insights that make the meaning of the Dharma come alive in our own mind, are our actual objects of placement meditation.  Just as contemplation functions to transform the wisdom arisen from listening into the wisdom arisen from contemplation, so too placement meditation on the wisdom arisen from contemplation transforms the wisdom arisen from contemplation into the wisdom arisen from meditation.  Put in more practical terms when we listen (or read) we gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  When we contemplate we transform this wisdom into our own personal wisdom.  When we meditate we make this personal wisdom, as Venerable Tharchin describes it, “an acquisition of our personality.”  For example, first we generate an undertanding of what is compassion.  Then we generate compassion in our own mind.  Then we become a compassionate person.

Understanding the three wisdoms helps us understand the three lineages of Kadam Dharma.  The true lineage is not the words written on paper or uttered by the guru, rather the true lineage is the continuum of direct realization of the definitive meaning of Dharma from teacher to disciple.  There is probably a technical name for it, but I call the three lineages the outer lineage, the inner lineage and the secret lineage.  The outer lineage is the wisdom arisen from listening (or reading).  I call it the outer lineage because its basis is a manifest object, namely the words on paper or the words of or examples set by our lineage gurus.  The inner lineage is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  I call it the inner lineage because its basis is a hidden object, namely the personal examples, analogies and experiences within the mind of an individual practitioner.  The secret lineage is the wisdom arisen from meditation.  I call it the secret lineage because it is only open to those who gain personal experience of the Dharma and make the realization of it an acquisition of their personality.  The definitive secret lineage is the Dharma as directly realized with our own very subtle mind of great bliss.  This lineage only arises in the minds of qualified highest yoga tantra practitioners.

How do we know whether our understandings or insights gained through contemplation or meditation are reliable?  There is of course the danger when we contemplate or meditate on the Dharma that we can generate wrong understandings and mistake them for being definitive meanings.  So how do we protect ourselves against that?  Like a good scientist testing their hypotheses, there are several tests we can perform.  First, we can ask ourselves, “does this insight or understanding contradict any known instruction?”  If yes, try again.  If no, we can apply the second test, “is this insight or understanding the natural consequence of all known instructions?”  If no, try again.  If yes, we can apply the third test, “Dorje Shugden, if this understanding is reliable may it flourish within my mind, if it is not please reveal to me how it is wrong and what is in fact correct.”  Dorje Shugden is a Dharma protector.  He does not only protect the outer pure lineage of Je Tsongkhapa, but also the inner and secret lineages.  We request him to confirm correct understandings and to sabotage incorrect understandings.  If we replace our own attachment to our own views with a faith in Dorje Shugden, he will ensure we always stay on the correct inner and secret paths.

How does all of this relate to this blog?  This blog can be understood as me putting into my own words my understanding of the Dharma.  It is my interpretative expression of the inner universal meanings I have understood.  It should NEVER be misinterpreted as me attempting to poffer definitive meanings of the Dharma.  The only truly reliable Dharma texts are those provided to us by our lineage gurus.  The meanings gained from contemplating and meditating on those are reliable.  In the spirit of Shantideva, this blog is my putting into my own words what I have understood.  For me, putting the meaning of Dharma into my own words is a method for clarifying, deepening and consolidating my own understandings.  If other people receive some benefit from it, then all the better.  But no reader should ever confuse the words written in this blog as being intended to be offered as definitive, qualified Dharma.  Rather, it is a sharing of my own experience and understanding.

My hope is simple:  If what I write in this blog is wrong, I hope others will help point out the errors of my thinking so that I can improve my understanding.  If other Kadampa practitioners are coming to similar conclusions through their own listening to, contemplating of and meditating on the Dharma, then the blog can provide a platform for the sharing of such experience.

Reflections on key requests/dedications

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden
It is not just ’May I take my place in VGL’s mandala,’ it is “May I fulfill my role within VGL’s mandala.”
I make requests as follows:
1.  I entrust my life to you, please do with me what you wish.
2.  Please protect and guide my retreat.
3.  Please help me to be ready to leave by the end of this life.
4.  May my every action be aimed at building my pure land, so that I may guide ALB1 from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.
5.  May I take my place and fulfill my role within VGL’s mandala.

 

Reflections on emptiness

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
Since all things are equally empty, it does not make any sense to be happy about one appearance but unhappy about another.  Every appearance is, from this perspective, equally neutral.  Instead, each appearance is what you make of it.  It is a form of laziness to just allow our opinions and experiences of different appearances to be that which naturally arises when we encounter them.  Our natural reactions are attachment and aversion, and if we assent to these reactions we will remain forever trapped within them and we will never know real freedom.  If instead we realize that all appearances are equally empty, then we are free to do with each of them what we wish.  We can equally use all appearances, and come to equally enjoy all appearances.  Then nothing will have the power to interfere with our freedom of perfect happiness.  In explaining this to kids, or to anybody else for that matter, it can be reduced down to a very simple phrase which can be repeated again and again:  “life is what you make of it.”  Every situation is “what you make of it.”  If kids and people can learn this fundamental lesson, then everything else will take care of itself. 

Reflections on skilful means

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
My ability to help anyone first and foremost depends on my not needing them to be any different.  First I need to get rid of my own delusions about how they are before I will be able to help them change.  This need for them to be different will obstruct the wisdom I need to help them from coming through.  When I do try help them it will not be well received because theyw ill sense my attachment to changing them and they will reject/rebel against my advice.  
 
It is my own inner realizations of Dharma that functions like a force of gravity drawing people in so that I can help them and invite them into my pure land.  I need to create a sun of realizations within my mind to draw people into my orbit.  Even more so, I need to create a black hole of Dharma realizations within my mind, at the center of which is a wormhole to the pure land (Heruka’s heart).
 
I should not blind copy people on very private correspondance.  This causes them to not trust me and to not confide in me.  If they cannot confide in me, then I cannot help them.  People need to be able to trust in me, and when I do this it weakens that trust because they assume I will do it to them as well.  My intention in doing so is I want the other person to skillfully help or to learn how to deal with different situations so they become more helpful to others.  I guess it is a balance, but one that I should err on the side of not doing.  

Reflections on observations of other cultures

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
(This was written when I was in Texas)

Texas is a place with high pride, low capacity people.  Need to channel pride into a confidence that if you work hard you can accomplishing anything combined with equanimious humilty accepting where you are at.  You can do what you can do, work hard to learn the rest.
 
American culture is based on individualism, so show how practicing Dharma is a natural conclusion of that.  Self-made Buddhas.
 
One of the reasons I am here in Texas is to help build within my mind the bridge between Kadampa Buddhism and the Christian world I inhabit.  To be able to express the meanings of Kadampa Buddhism in terms Christians can understand, and ultimately to show how the essential meaning of Christianity is Kadampa Buddhism.  If I do become a diplomat, and come to abide in different worlds (Islamic, Hindu, etc.), then I will have the opportunity to build similar bridges.  In this way, I will gain the realizations necessary to be able to transmit Kadampa teachings effectively to this whole world.  One of the biggest Western conceits is to grasp at their point of view as the universal one.  I need to break free from this uni-cultural straight jacket and do as VGL is doing, namely learning to transmit the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma through the different cultural logics of this whole world.  When we take the larger, more broad understanding of JTK in this world, we see he has many different bodies sent throughout the world bringing the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma and learning how to transmit them in different cultural contexts.  It is a limitation to require others to adopt my cultural logic before I can then explain to them the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma.  Rather, I need to come to understand their cultural logics, meet them where their minds are at, and then through these logics transmit the meanings of Kadam Dharma.  I am not talking about mixing here.  I am talking about remaining centered within the hub of the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma and from this hub being able to radiate out into the spokes of every religion and every culture this meaning in a way they can understand, appreciate and put into practice.  In this way, I can draw them in and deliver them to freedom.  This is what VGL is trying to do in this world, and it is amazing.  May I do the same.  

Reflections on overcoming fear of abandonment

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
“Just because certain delusions are big within our mind does not necessarily make them complicated to understand or overcome.  We have a tendency to rationalize our failures to overcome certain delusions by over-complicating and over-dramatizing them.  In the end, the problem is not that our delusions are particular complicated or dramatic, it is just an issue of them being currently stronger than the opponents we have built up within our mind to oppose them.  We basically need to ‘bulk up’ our opponents through repeated exercise until eventually they are strong enough to overcome our delusions.  We need to be patient with this process.  It can take a long, long time for us to build up new sufficiently powerful virtuous mental habits to overcome our aeons-old deluded mental habits.  The Great Pyramids were built one stone at a time through back-breaking labor of thousands.  When it comes to building our own Great Pyramids of virtue within our mind, we work alone, and must place the bricks one at a time ourselves. The Buddhas can help give us strength, but we must do all of the work ourselves. 
 
While we are in this building process, we must accept that there will be times that our delusions will overwhelm us, arise within our mind and there will be nothing we can do to stop them.  We are simply not there yet.  We should not feel guilty or beat ourselves up when this happens, but we should also not fall into the other extreme of allowing this to happen unopposed or think that it doesn’t matter.  It does matter that delusions are running rampant in our mind, and this must eventually stop.  We lose many battles, but we use each defeat to strengthen our resolve that we must win the war.  If we never give up trying, eventual victory is assured.
 
As far as opposing the delusion itself, it primarily comes from two things.  First a very strong ignorance of grasping at an independent existence of our self.  If we realized that we are in reality an universal membrane of which each appearance is an inseparable aspect, then we experience first hand the impossibility of abandonment.  The fear of abandonment is the quite natural pain we feel arising from the false view of our separateness.  When the iron cage of our self-grasping melts away, we feel ourselves merge inseparable into an infinite ocean of everything from which we have, in reality, never been separate from.  It was only our ignorance that tricked us into thinking we were separate.  But we never have been.   We then rest comfortably in the knowledge that abandonment is an utter impossibility, a painful reflection in the distorted mirror of our self-grasping.
 
Second, it comes from plain vanilla attachment that, despite everything we know intellectually about the Dharma, still believes that our happiness depends upon ‘being with’ certain others.  We feel their presence provides us with some security against being alone.  We do not need anything from others, we need to do things for others.  When we  are becoming attached to somebody, especially as a Dharma practitioner, we tell ourselves all sorts of lies that we are not becoming attached, somehow everything is pure this time, etc.  In the beginning that may be true, but when we start to get those good feelings coming from being close to somebody, we start to grasp at them, consider them to be valuable, and mistakenly believe that they are coming from our relationship with the other person.  Since these feelings are good, and they are temporarily relieving the pain of our insecurity (coming from our grasping above), we then start to fear losing the other person, and with them our good feelings.  As soon as we assent to this mistaken view, we are doomed.  This is the pivotal turning point in the process.  If this lie arises in our mind, but we recognize it as wrong and deceptive, it will have no power over us.  But if we are not mindful and allow it to arise and we unconsciously assent to it, then it will sneak in and come to possess our mind.  The sad reality is when this happens, it is this very view that will 100% guarranteed destroy the very relationship we are so desperate to protect.  We then become high maintenance and needy, and nobody likes that.  It becomes annoying and a pain to be around us, and eventually people will leave us.  When we are in such a state, it really doesn’t matter what others say or do, nothing will convince us or prove to us that they love us, and the more we insist on such proof, the more annoying we become and the more quickly we bring about the very thing we fear – them leaving us.  
 
 
How do we convince ourselves that they love us.  Some would say it comes down to just choosing to trust them.  Certainly that is better than trying to have them prove it.  But the best solution is to give up even trying to convince ourselves by realizing it does not matter at all what they feel.  They do not need to love us, we just need to love them.  Full stop. 

Our main practice: faith in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

At the Summer Festival this year, Gen-la Dekyong said something astounding.  She said that Venerable Geshe-la admits to having only one realization:  “Faith in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa.  But this is enough.”  This was a message she emphasized many times during her teachings.  It was clear that her main and indeed only practice is reliance upon her Spiritual Guide.  This is our Guru’s main practice, and so therefore all of his teachings should be viewed through this lens.

How can we understand this?  First, we must understand who is Je Tsongkhapa and second we understand how faith alone is enough.  Who is the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa?  He is the synthesis of all three jewels in Kadampa form.  He is the embodiment of all good in Kadampa form.  He is the union of all of the compassion, wisdom and spiritual power of all of the Buddhas in Kadampa form.  According to Highest Yoga Tantra he is known as Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka.  Guru means he is by nature our Spiritual Guide.  Sumati means he is the Je Tsongkhapa of Sutra.  Buddha means he is Buddha Shakyamuni.  Heruka means he is Buddha Heruka, in particular Dharmakaya Heruka.  Each of these four are aspects of one being, him.   In short, he is the embodiment of the Kadampa path of Sutra and Tantra.  For us Kadampas, he is the highest and supreme object of refuge.   Within our tradition, we view all of the different deities as being emanated by Je Tsongkhapa.  The main deities on the Kadampa path are Buddha Shakyamuni, Buddha Vajradyara, Manjushri, Avalokitehsvara, Vajrapani, Dorje Shugden, Heruka and Vajrayogini.  Reliance on Dorje Shugden deserves particular mention.  We are to very clearly understand that Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden are actually two different aspects of the same being.  So it is impossible for us to deny one and affirm the other.  Venerable Geshe-la has also made it very clear that we are to realize this dual nature of Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden.  All of the polemics with the Dalai Lama/Dorje Shugden issue can be seen in this light.

Why is faith in him enough?  We can understand this by understanding the relationship between faith and realization.  Faith begins with believing faith.  Believing faith is we believe in an object of Dharma based on valid reasons.  Valid reasons derive from logic and our own personal experience of the truth of Dharma.  When we have believing faith of an object of Dharma, such as cherishing others is the root of all happiness and cherishing ourself is the root of all suffering, then we naturally come to admire that object of Dharma, marveling at how incredible it is!  This is admiring faith.  When we admire something, then we naturally want that thing for ourself, for example wanting to have the realization that sees the truth of cherishing self and others.  This wishing faith then naturally leads to effort in our practice to gain this realization.  From our effort comes the actual attainments, in this case our realization of exchanging self with others.  So the meaning here is faith alone sets in motion this chain of events, which fall naturally and automatically like dominos.

So why is faith in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa alone enough to assure the final attainment of enlightenment?  Because the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa is the very embodiment of the Kadampa path.  By generating believing faith in all of his amazing good qualities of body, speech and mind we will later naturally and automatically eventually attain all of the attainments of wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa within our own body, speech and mind.  The book Great Treasury of Merit is our root text for generating believing faith in all of his good qualities.  From this it is clear that faith alone in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa “is enough.”

It is quite significant that our Spiritual Guide has admitted to only one quality.  He is doing so to reveal to us that this is the most important thing.  It is not unlike Christians whose main practice is faith in Jesus.  Since Western and modern culture are profoundly influenced by Christian norms and values, it seems only natural that the adaptation of Kadampa Buddhism to the modern context would function best when faith in the supreme object of refuge of the path is the main and sufficient practice. Realizing this fully will take the tradition light years ahead in terms of being able to seamlessly integrate Kadampa Buddhism into modern life.  Gen-la Dekyong said that the mission of the tradition is to attain the union of modern life and Kadampa Buddhism.

This has helped me recall that reliance upon the Spiritual Guide is the sole activity on the path.  But more than this, it has deepened this understanding tremendously because it provides exact specificity as to how we are to do it – namely by generating faith in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa.  Thus I am going to make this my main practice at least between now and Portugal.  I’m excited to get started!

My view of how to do a Kadampa blog correctly

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog

Another post-festival blog posting!  Sorry for the barrage, it was just a really great festival so I have a lot to write about.  I will probably have one more tomorrow on “making faith in the wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa our main practice.”

An additional fundamental lesson I learned at the Festival is how to more correctly do a Kadampa blog.  First, why is it a good idea to do a blog at all?  Back when the Dalai Lama/Dorje Shugden issue was flaring up a few years ago, Venerable Geshe-la said at the Education Council meeting that what was needed is positive examples and experiences of Kadampas on the internet.  At that time, the internet was a black hole of negativity against the NKT, and since the world was becoming increasingly connected through the internet, anybody who looked for us on the internet would find only negativity.  By having positive examples and experiences on the internet, such as through Kadampa blogs, we can introduce an alternative narrative that one finds on the internet about the NKT – from the point of view of the practitioners.  Then, people could judge for themselves seeing how we see ourselves compared to how some others view us.

Additionally, Venerable Geshe-la said in Joyful Path that we should use the meditation break to discuss Dharma with our Dharma friends, sharing our experiences and understandings.  Thanks to the internet, we can now do that with the entire global Kadampa family.  Gen-la Dekyong said at this year’s Summer Festival that the focus of the tradition is on the union of modern life and Kadampa Buddhism.  This is what Kadampa blogs are all about – how individual Kadampas from around the world are each, in their own way, bringing about this union in their lives.  In this way we can all learn from one another and benefit from each other’s efforts.  She said in particular we need good examples.  We have perfect teachings in the books, what we need to also have is many good examples showing that the Kadampa path works.  Blogs can help in this regard, and authors of blogs can try to become a good example.  A good example never tries to “show a good example”, rather they should simply become one.  If others see them that way, then all the better.  But certainly being a good example increases the odds that others see you as one.  But if we are trying to “show” a good example then it is artificial and therefore significantly less good than just “being a good example.”

Finally, the virtual world provides the global Kadampa family an unprecedented method for staying together as an International Kadampa Buddhist Union.  As time moves on, more and more practitioners will be following primarily a local variant of the tradition.  The General Spiritual Director and his/her deputy travel the world for the major events which establish the general framework for the global spiritual family, Resident Teachers attend the International Teacher Training Program which helps create a common understanding and common bond, but most of one’s individual karmic connections with Sangha will be local.  Through the internet in general, and blogs and social media in particular, the Kadampa family can experience a similitude of that initial Summer Festival experience when it truly was the only coming together of the global Kadampa family – a feeling of total oneness.  Kadampas from around the world can share their experiences with one another and through these exchanges not only learn from one another but also build powerful karmic relationships which function to knit together the global Kadampa family.  The reality is we are moving into an increasingly virtual world.  Just as Venerable Geshe-la is encouraging us to take the Dharma into the city centers because that is where the people are at, so too we need to bring the Dharma into the virtual world because this is where the people are spending their time.  For all of these reasons, for me I think doing something like a Kadampa blog is a good idea.

But even if that is the case, how then do we do a Kadampa blog well/correctly.

  1. I think we have to have a clear understanding that this is part of Venerable Geshe-la’s wishes.  This can be established through the above discussion.
  2. We need to be crystal clear that a blog should never be a substitute for receiving traditional teachings.  A blog cannot and should not be a teaching platform.  Readers should not relate to it as such.  It is a sharing of experience in the meditation break, it is not a teaching.  And the writers of blogs should also not (even sub-consciously) view their blog as a teaching platform.  If blogs cause readers to no longer go to their local center as much, then it is a sign that something is astray.  Either the author is not approaching their blog correctly or the reader is not relating to it correctly.  Either way, in our writing of a blog we need to be crystal clear in making clear that a blog should not be related to as a means of receiving teachings or as a substitute for receiving traditional teachings.  The sign that we are doing our blog correctly is when our readers are even more enthused about going to their local center.  In this vein, while I welcome people posting comments on my blog I tend to not respond to them because it feels too much to me like a back and forth exchange transforms a sharing of experience into a quasi-teaching.
  3. We should also be very careful with our language choices that we are not explaining our understandings as if they were “definitive Dharma.”  We should add things like, “in my view” or “it seems to me” or “what I understand about this is” to make this clear.  At present, the only person who is qualified to write definitive Dharma is Venerable Geshe-la.   The way I look at it is no single one of us holds all of the wisdom of the tradition, but each one of us holds a piece of it.  By coming together and sharing what we understand, while keeping clearly in mind that we only have a small piece of the overall puzzle, we can all learn from one another and develop a more comprehensive view of the myriad ways in which VGL has revealed the Kadam Dharma in this world.  There is a HUGE difference between a Kadampa blog and a Kadampa book.  The former is a simple sharing of experience of an individual practitioner, the latter is imputationally considered more a presentation of definitive Dharma.  Even if the author of the book makes it very clear that the book should not be considered definitive Dharma, conventionally speaking this is how people relate to books.  Blogs, in contrast, are conventionally understood by all as more of a daily/weekly journal of an individual practitioner’s spiritual path.   Kadampa bloggers should make this distinction very clear in all of their writings so as to avoid any confusion by the potential readers.
  4. I think we need to adopt the same mind as Shantideva when he wrote the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, namely that he was primarily writing the Guide to help him clarify and improve his own understanding, and if others received benefit from it then that is a nice secondary effect.  But the main purpose is writing as a means of deepening and consolidating one’s own practice.  You almost need to forget that others will be reading it, but still nonetheless keep it in mind so that you keep your bodhichitta alive.
  5. We make a clear distinction between sharing experience and teaching.  When we are sharing our experience or understanding, we are just explaining what we have understood.  But our intention is not to teach.  We hope people receive benefit, but we are not doing it so that they do.  Our strong emphasis is to work on the secondary wish of bodhichitta, namely the wish for ourselves to become a Buddha, and not the primary wish, namely to lead all beings to enlightenment.  When we teach, our strong emphasis is on the primary wish of bodhichitta.  This is a fundamental difference.
  6. Venerable Geshe-la has said that Modern Buddhism is our Guide to the Union of Modern Life and Kadampa Buddhism.  Just as there is the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and there is the Guide to Dakini Land, so too there is a Guide to the Union of Modern Life and Kadampa Buddhism.  This latter Guide is the book Modern Buddhism.  I feel that Kadampa bloggers should take this precious book as our root text, and to the maximum extent possible align our blog with the presentation of the Dharma in Modern Buddhism.  Of course we will draw on all of the other books as well, but we do so in the context of how they filter into the presentation in Modern Buddhism.

I think if we understand why a Kadampa blog is a good idea and we understand what are some of the things we can do to do it correctly, then a Kadampa blog is a perfectly appropriate aspect of a Modern Kadampa’s life.

The importance of receiving teachings

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Another fundamental thing I was reminded of at this Summer Festival is the importance of receiving teachings.  Unfortunately, due to the absolutely crazy karma that I have had over the last several years, about January 2010 I stopped doing my correspondence FP classes.  I have consistently been on FP or TTP since 1995, so this marked a major milestone on my spiritual path.  If I check honestly, I stopped for two reasons – one valid, one not valid.  The valid reason for stopping was given all that I had going on, I simply couldn’t keep up with it, even at a very slow pace.  Sometimes this may happen in life, but if we are lucky it will only be for very small patches of time.  The not so valid reason is since I felt like I could successfully transform my every day into a teaching through my “faithful mind of a student” (to the extent that I had one), I didn’t feel like I needed it any more.

The problem with this second reason is it is very short-sighted.  The only reason why I didn’t feel like I needed it was because I was riding high on the mountain of merit and blessings I had accumulated and received from the previous 15 years of intensive study.  But how did I get that merit and those blessings in the first place?  By receiving teachings and putting into practice what I was learning.  Eventually this merit will exhaust itself and the blessings will dissipate and then I will fall back.

Additionally, when you are not receiving new teachings, you are not being exposed to new ideas and points of view on the Dharma.  What happens then is new experiences bounce around the structure of Dharma you have already built within your mind, revealing new things about the interactions of what you know, but it doesn’t take you beyond your narrow understanding of the ocean of Dharma that has been revealed to us by our Spiritual Guide.  When we are exposed to new ideas and points of view on the Dharma, the structure of Dharma within our mind not only deepens it broadens.  So without new teachings, it is very easy to stagnate on the path.

Further, in general new understandings of the Dharma only arise in our mind in dependence upon oral transmission blessings. The importance of these is often under estimated.  We think, yeah, they are important, but they are not that big of a deal.  This view is not correct.  We can understand why by considering the emptiness of receiving Dharma teachings.  The Dharma is transmitted mind to mind, like a Vulcan mind meld, almost.  Literally, at a profound level, what is happening when we receive teachings is the teacher is transferring/transmitting their own personal experience of the Dharma into the minds of the students.  Conventionally this happens through “listening”.  The mental realizations of the teacher take on a grosser form of speech.  When the student “listens” to the teachings (as opposed to merely hearing them), the realization then gets transferred into the student’s mind.  The more faith the student has, the more fully and deeply they “listen”.  When we don’t listen to Dharma teachings, we don’t receive these oral transmission blessings, and as such we are largely on our own without a teacher.  We might think that if we have a faithful mind of a student we can receive teachings directly from our guru through our daily lives.  This is true, we can do this.  But surely the teachings of our Spiritual Guide pass through “the sound of Dharma” more fully than they do through other sounds (due to their nature being pure).  So receiving teachings through our daily life is good, but it is no substitute for receiving traditional teachings.

And this points to an important relationship.  One one hand, we have the extreme of thinking that we can only receive teachings through attending traditional teachings.  This view arises from a limited understanding of how the guru can reveal the Dharma to us.  On the other hand, you have the extreme of thinking you don’t need any traditional teachings at all.  This view falsely derives from the observation that it is possible to receive teachings through everything, therefore thinking that because that is the case I no longer need teachings.  But just as the sound of Dharma carries more Dharma than non-Dharma sounds, so too the entire experience of attending teachings teaches more Dharma than our non-teaching experiences.  The middle way between these two extremes is to attend as many traditional teachings as your karma allows while maintaining the faithful mind of a student in all of our daily activities so as to receive teachings through everything.

In my personal case, this means attending as many of the major festivals as my karma allows and starting up again my FP studies.  I was fortunately able to make it to this Summer Festival.  I can’t do the Summer Festival next year because I will be back in Washington on a mandatory training.  But, since I will be in DC next Fall, I should be able to take maybe 2-3 days to attend the Fall Festival in Portugal where Venerable Geshe-la will be granting the Prajnaparamita empowerment and giving an “oral transmission” of the his new book, “The New Heart of Wisdom.”  So I should really do everything I can to try attend, especially since this very well might be the last teaching Venerable Geshe-la gives before he passes on.  This is a must.  As far as my FP studies are concerned, what I can do is substitute one day of my normal daily practice with listening to a teaching by correspondence.  This I should normally be able to do.  I can also use this time I have this Summer when the family is in the U.S. to listen to as many teachings as I can.  I feel very fortunate in that I am able to receive teachings from Venerable Tharchin, arguably the most experienced meditater in the tradition.  For those who don’t know him, he teaches the entire tradition how to do retreat.

The point is this:  each one of us has our own karmic circumstance.  All of us, however, can follow the same principle – namely we receive as much traditional teachings our karma allows while viewing the rest of our experiences as teachings being revealed to us through our daily lives.  This, to me, seems to be the middle way.

The importance of reconnecting with Sangha

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I just got back from the Summer Festival.  I have been going to Summer Festivals every year since 1995, but due to all of the karmic changes in my life over the last few years, for the first time I wasn’t able to make it in 2010 and 2011.  I tried to go to Brazil, had bought my ticket, taken my vacation time, but stupidly didn’t bother to check whether or not I needed a visa until it was too late.  So this is the longest I have gone without being at a festival and reconnecting with my global spiritual family.  It was so nice to be able to go to the festival, reconnect with old friends and receive live teachings.

It is amazing how at a festival Dorje Shugden manages for you to have a personalized festival meeting up with everyone you need to and having the conversations you need to have.  Some of the highlights for me were as follows:

  1. I was able to meet Venerable Tharchin, who I consider to be my main teacher for more than a decade now.  Normally when I meet with him, I just babble on and never listen.  So this time I said I was going to talk little so that I can listen more.  In fact, I even told him that in the meeting as a joke, but I made a new mistake this time!  I didn’t walk into the meeting with a question in my heart.  So when I told him I want to listen, I stopped talking and then he just stared at me in silence…  It was a very powerful teaching in and of itself, namely whenever we go for refuge, be it a meeting with your teacher, a live teaching or in your prayers, we should always have a question in our heart.  How can we receive answers if we don’t have questions?
  2. I was able to meet with one of my old teachers.  She is now the Resident Teacher at Manjushri.  I haven’t really spoken with her much in a few years, and like me, she has been in a period of karmic flux over the last few years.  It was very nice to speak with her.  She started out the meeting by saying we don’t really give advice any more, rather we share our experience and people take from it what they want.  For about the next hour, she then proceeded to tell an elaborate tale about jealousy, how attachment to what other people think of you prevents the flourishing of the Dharma, and how her job now is to just love people.  She had an amazing ability to see deeply into the hearts of others, see what their core problem is, and bring it to the surface so that we can work through it.  Even though she was just “telling a story” for me, it functioned as a very powerful teaching about something deep in my heart.  Amazing!  It was really great to see her again.
  3. I was able to have good, long conversations with two very dear friends from my time when I was in Paris about 14 years ago.  We have seen each other at various festivals over the years, but never really had the opportunity to have a real deep conversation about how each was doing and what we have been working on in our practice.  One friend has basically spent the last decade in hell, but through sincere reliance has managed to change himself completely.  He said what enabled him to change was realizing that “identifying our delusions is itself a spiritual practice, and even if we spend our whole life doing just that, it is a well used spiritual life.”  Because he didn’t realize this before, the more he would study Dharma the more he would see his faults, and therefore the more he would beat himself up over being inadequate.  So far from making him happier, he would feel worse and worse about himself robbing him of any joy.  But when he realized becoming aware of our faults is itself a spiritual training he was able to accept where he was at and therefore create the space to change himself as opposed to beat himself up.  With another friend, I was able to realize I have had all sorts of jealousy, competitiveness and insecurity towards him, but through talking we were able to both have a good laugh at our respective delusions and reestablish that vajra brother bond.
  4. I was able to spend a good deal of time with my fellow Kadampa in the blogosphere, Vide Kadampa, author of the blog “Daily Lamrim” (in the links section).  It was truly amazing how much we have in common in terms of our outlook and approach to the Dharma.  We discussed the benefits and potential pitfalls of doing a blog (also subject of a future post), but mostly we talked about starting on the Tantric path.  He has laid a fantastic foundation of Lamrim, and we discussed how to integrate our lamrim practice into our Tantric practice.  He too is a Kadampa Working Dad, and somebody I cherish very much as a close Dharma friend.

I have much more I will write about my experience at the Summer Festival, but an additional resolution I have made is to make my blog postings shorter and more readable.  So I will sign off here for now.  The main point is the virtual world is great for being able to maintain your connection with your global Sangha family, but it is no substitute for reconnecting with your spiritual family live.  While sometimes our karma may not allow it, in our heart we should always maintain the wish to be with them and to reconnect with them every opportunity we get.  In my view, this is vital for our continued spiritual progress and has the added benefit of creating the causes to meet once again our spiritual tradition in all our future lives between now and our eventual enlightenment!