Author: Kadampa Ryan

Are you adding value or consuming merit?

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Every moment of every day, there is one fundamental question we need to ask ourselves:  “are we adding value or are we consuming merit?”  If we had even the slightest understanding of how precious our current human life is and how we have spent countless lives accumulating only negativity, we would not waste a second of this life using up our merit.  We have arrived at the treasure island – now is the time to gather up riches and resources for the future, not indulge ourselves in whatever pleasures we can find.

Every moment of every day we should be seeking to add value to the world.  Every situation we encounter, we should leave it better than we found it.  Every person we meet, we should leave them better off than we found them.  If there is something to be cleaned, clean it.  If there is something that needs doing, do it.  If there is someone that needs caring for, care for them.  If there is something that needs saying, say it.  If there is someone who needs help, help them.  If there is a job nobody else wants to do, do it.  If there is someone in your company, engage with them (get off the computer or your phone).  If there are commitments or promises you have made, keep them.  If there is work that remains to be done, do it.

When it comes to what needs to be done, I usually fall into one of two extremes.  The first extreme is I leave things for other to do.  One thing we all do (or at least I do) is I leave things undone in the hope that those around me will do it instead of me.  For example, if the kitchen needs cleaning or a diaper needs changing, I might go do something else and leave it in the (sometimes unconscious) hope that someone else will clean it or do it.  One of the commitments of training the mind is to not transfer your burdens onto others.

The other extreme I fall into is I will do what needs to be done, but I will do so with a resentful and bitter mind, like some martyr who sacrifices himself for others.  Yes, I am doing what needs to be done, but I am upset or unhappy about it – bitter that I am doing all of the work while others are lazily indulging themselves.  This is really stupid of me to do!  Anger functions to burn up whever undedicated merit we might have.  So here I am, accumulating merit onlyto burn it up immediately afterwards.  Karmically speaking, it is as if I get no benefit or credit from doing the work I am doing.  At the very least, if I am doing the work I shouldn’t then sabotage it with my anger!

We all know when we are actively adding value to the world versus when we are consuming our merit.  We just ask ourselves:  “am I making the world a better place right now?”  If the answer is no, then you have your answer.  We also always know when we are consuming our mierit.  We just ask ourselves:  “am I having somebody else do something for me that I should more appropriately be doing for myself?”  If the answer is yes, then you have your answer.

We should also be careful about the passive burning up of our merit through taking the favorable conditions we have around us for granted.  There are two tests we can check our mind with.  First, are we imputing “mine” on anything in our possession?  Do we think “my house”, “my car,” etc.?  If we do, that thought functions to burn up our merit when we experience our house, car, clothes, etc.  We should view everything we have as being temporarily in our keeping.  It has been given to us so that we can improve it to pass on to the next person.  We are like an asset manager who seeks to optimise the value of the assets of their clients for the sake of the clients.  It is not my house, it is the house I am providing my kids.  It is not my car, it is the car I use to drive my family around.  These are not my clothes, they are for others do they don’t have to look at my ugly body.  This is not my soap, it belongs to others do they don’t have to smell me.

A second test we can use is are we feeling grateful to those who provided us with what we enjoy?  We did not build our house, make our car, grow our food or sew our clothes.  When we enjoy these things, our focus should be on mentally generating a feeling of gratitude towards those who provided them.  The fact that we paid for these things is irrelevant, others still provided them for us and if we had to make them ourselves, we couldn’t.

Now none of this means we should not rest.  Of course we need to rest, but only so that we can work more.  We do not rest for rest’s sake.  We rest  because we understand if we do not then we will burn out and be able to work even less in the long run.  We rest not to waste our precious human life, but so that we can make the most out of it.  Again, if we are honest with ourselves, we know when we are resting to be lazy versus resting up so that we can get back to work fresh.

This precious opportunity will end very soon.  We do not know how long we have before our time on the treasure island comes to an end.  Everything we do should be aimed at gather up resources and good conditions for the future, not sacrificing our future on the alter of our present needs.  It does not get any better than what we currently have, so we need to stop making excuses, stop lying to ourselves, stop justifying our delusions and just joyfully get on with the task at hand of gathering up riches for our future lives.  The spiritual road in front of us is long, we don’t want to run out of provisions along the way.

Your turn:  Give one example of how you are adding value to the world.  Give another example of how you are consuming your merit.

Looking forward in life – always!

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Our life loses its meaning and becomes increasingly depressing to the extent that we are always looking backwards at what happened before, good or bad.  We cannot drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror!  Of course we need to learn from our past, but if we have nothing we are looking forward to, no destination we are heading towards, our life becomes one empty of meaning.  We can liken it to old people who feel as if they have nothing left to look forward to, who feel their best times are all behind them.  How sad.

In contrast, the more we are forward looking in our outlook, the more our life has meaning and purpose.  We become more willing to accept difficulties and hardships because we see how overcoming them serves a larger purpose and they are simply the mountains we must climb to reach our final destination.   Being forward looking gives us something we are working towards, it gives our life direction.  We feel like we are building towards something great.  We feel forever young.  We can let go of worrying about the past or being nostalgic for it, but rather use it as the foundation for where we are going.  When we have a future we are building towards, we know how to use whatever life throws at us.  When you have direction in your life, you know clearly in which way you need to pivot when life’s curve balls come our way.  Gen Lekma once said, “Dorje Shugden wastes nothing of our life,” in other words, he knows how to use everything that happens to us as building towards the final goal.

The most valuable side effect of realizing the truth of countless future lives is we are able to always be forward looking in our thinking, no matter what our age.  The more forward looking we are, the younger we feel.  The paradox of old age then becomes the older we get, the more we look forward to our future lives, the more pure our intentions become, the happier we become, the younger we feel.  We feel like we are on the cusp of our next great adventure, like setting off for college for the first time.  We take stock of what we have learned from our past to prepare ourselves for the adventures to come.

One of the central differences between the way economists and politicians look at problems is how they reason.  An economist thinks things through to their logical end conclusion, and then works backwards to figure out how to get there.  A politician is always just focused on putting our fires and uses short-term ad hoc solutions which enables them to live another day.  But if we are always pursuing short-term solutions to everything, we are in reality just deferring our biggest challenges to later.  At some point, these challenges catch up to us and overwhelm us.  When we know our final destination, we know what we need to do and we stop sacrificing the long-term on the alter of short-term crisis management.  The more far forward we can see, the more effective we are at understanding what needs to be done and what direction we need to go.

Along the same lines, the difference in the different scopes of being, initial, intermediate and great, is how far forward they think.  An ordinary small scope being can’t see beyond this life.  A special small scope being sees beyond this life but can’t see beyond samsara.  An intermediate scope being sees beyond samsara, but can’t see beyond themselves.  A great scope being sees beyond themselves to the final result of full enlightenment for all.

The tantric practitioner goes one step further by envisioning not only what the final result looks like but how we practically get everyone there.  We must first build our pure land so that beings may take rebirth there and complete the path.  We then extend the limits of the pure land until it encompasses the entire universe and all living beings.  This is a cosmic project which will take lifetimes to accomplish, but adopting it as our purpose enables us to be as far forward thinking as possible, and therefore it gives us the greatest meaning and joy throughout our life.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where because you were looking backwards, you got stuck; but when you started looking forward, you became free.

“Bringing life into the path” through reliance

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

Samsara is uncontrolled rebirth.  The main point of virtually all of our Dharma practices is to gain control of our mind so that we can gain control over the process of death and rebirth.  Our main practice in Tantra is to bring death, intermediate state and rebirth into the path through the three bringings in Generation Stage and through the various mixings of completion stage.  But our ability to do any of these depends upon sufficient preparation.  Luna Kadampa said our ability to go to the pure land at the time of our death depends upon our ability to bring the pure land into our living reality every day.  In short, in order to do the three bringings at the time of death we need to first “bring life into the path.”  We can call this the fourth bringing!

Our job in life is to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.  Virtually all of us still grasp at a gap between our Dharma lives and our normal lives, like they are two separate things.  This dicotomy must eventually fade away to where our normal life is our Dharma life and our Dharma life is our normal life.  Our normal life can take any aspect, from the lowest beggar to the highest king, from the ordained person in solitary retreat to the working parent.  Regardless of our external circumstance and vocation, our task is always the same – to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.

We all know “the path begins with strong reliance,” but at a deeper level we can say not only does the path begin with strong reliance, the entire path is strong reliance.  The Guru is the synthesis of all Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha.  Many people misunderstand this to mean the appearing form of Venerable Geshe-la that we normally see is the synthesiss of all Buddhas, Dharma and Sangha.  Despite our best efforts, the Spiritual Guide that we normally see appears to be an ordinary being (though wise, cute and cuddly, to be sure).  It would be wrong to say that this ordinary form that we normally see is the synthesis of all three jewels.  Rather, what we need to do is first gain a complete understanding of all of the Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha, and then we just “name” that entire collection “my Guru” or “my spiritual Guide.”  We take the entire collection of the three jewels as they are appearing in our life, and we think this entire collection is “my Guru.”  Once we have some experience of conceiving of the collection of all three jewels in our life as that which is guiding us to enlightenment (our Guru), then we start to delve deeper and we begin tracing the source of all of the three jewels in our life, and we find the source to be Venerable Geshe-la.  Then, we will see all of the three jewels emanating from him and we will understand him to be the projector of the three jewels into our mind (karmically appearing world).  He will be, for us, the synthesis of all three jewels.

At Venerable Geshe-la’s last Summer Festival before he retired, he spoke of how we can view our resident teachers as “temporary emanations”, where when they are on the throne and when they are teaching, we can view it as the living Guru Je Tsongkhapa enters into the teacher, gives the teaching through them like they are a stereo speaker, and then after the teaching, our teacher goes back to being a normal being.  This will enable us to receive the blessings as if we are receiving teachings directly from Je Tsongkhapa without falling into a wierd cult-like extreme out of the sessions.  We relate to our teachers as normal people in normal circumstances.  We had all heard this before.  But then he said something new (or at least new to me) – that we should do the same with Venerable Geshe-la.  This was a pivotal moment in my understanding of the spiritual guide.  My Spiritual Guide is Je Tsongkhapa – the living Je Tsongkhapa.  The appearing form of VGL is simply his tool for projecting the three jewels into my karmically appearing world.  The form of VGL will eventually die, but my guru, the living Je Tsongkhapa, will always be there simply projecting through different forms.  When I conceive of all the three jewels, as appearing in my life, to be my guru, then even when the form of VGL dies, my guru is still with me, helping me, guiding me, blessing me in the aspect of the entire collection of the three jewels as appearing in my life.  Viewed in this way, the Spiritual Guide never dies, he just changes aspect according to the evolution of karma.  This is the real meaning of the Kadampa tradition.  This is the real meaning of our spiritual lineage.  It is the continuum of Je Tsongkhapa in this world.

What is the essence of reliance on the Spiritual Guide?  It is to regard our Spiritual Guide as a perfectlyreliable Buddha and to put their instructions into practice.  When you check this closely, the essence is faith.  But what is the essence of faith?  It is “trusting.”  When we trust, we let go of our fears, we let go of holding ourselves back, and we just “go with it” into the unknown confident in the knowledge that we are entering into a joyful water slide whose end is the ocean of the Dharmkaya.  The Dharma is completely trustworthy and reliable.  It will never deceive us, never lead us down the wrong road.  We may misinterpret or misunderstand the Dharma, but that is not the fault of the Dharma.  The Dharma itself is perfectly reliable.  We can trust it.  The Buddhas and the Sangha, as appearing in our life, are like road signs pointing us in the direction of how to practice the Dharma.  This doesn’t mean they do things perfectly, rather it means we can learn perfectly from everything they do – some show us what to do, and some show us what not to do.  But in doing so, all show us the way.

Eventually, our practice will lead us to the point where we come to the conclusion that it would be far better to have the Spiritual Guide live our life than for our ordinary selves to do so.  When we reach this conclusion, we can then begin “bringing life into the path.”  In the normal three bringings, we dissolve the guru into ourself, then identify with the guru in various aspects like a life boat guiding us through each stage of the death process.  We need to do exactly the same thing when we bring life into the path.  For me, for example, I ask myself the question:  who would make a better U.S. diplomat – ordinary me or my Spiritual Guide?  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if living Guru Je Tsongkhapa were influencing and guiding U.S. diplomacy?  In a similar way, who would make a better father?  Clearly, he would do a better job on both counts than ordinary Ryan!  So I generate the strong wish that he take over, that he enter into me and work through me and my circumstance.

On the basis of that wish, I then dissolve him into me, engage in self-generation, and try to let go and indeed forget ordinary Ryan.  It is like I put my ordinary self in the back seat, I withdraw my ordinary self from the picture and create the space for the guru to arise and act.  The more we forget our ordinary self (and I mean completely forget) and the more we identify with the guru-deity being the actor in our life, at some point we will make a transition where we actually “feel ourselves as being the guru-deity living our life” (every word here has meaning).  It is very subtle, very blissful and very magical.  Eventually, this feeling refines further and further, functioning to gather and purify more and more of our reality into the guru-deity’s body, mind and deeds.  Eventually we merge completely into the clear light Dharmakaya while simultaneously the reliquary we have created as a bodhisattva continues to function to liberate beings in the world.

If we practice in this way, doing the three bringings during our morning meditation, doing the fourth bringing during our daily life, then once again doing the three bringings as we go to sleep, then soon enough our entire life will be one continuum of bringing the pure land into the here and now.  Once we have attained some experience of this, death will have no hold on us – we will have already passed beyond.  Death will be no different than discarding some old clothes or an old car.  Of course we will need new “clothes” and a new “car” (our next life, or our next emanation body), but we will continue as an extension of the transcendental being, the living guru, Je Tsongkhapa.

Happy Je Tsongkhapa Day everyone!

Your turn:  Describe how through relying upon Je Tsongkhapa you can solve the biggest problem you are facing in your life today.

Whatever life throws at you, make something good out of it

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

At the end of the day, we all want what is good all of the time.  The mistake of samsaric thinking is grasping at some things as being inherently good and other things being inherently bad.  This is a problem because there are far more problems in samsara than there are good things.  Difficulties come effortlessly, whereas good things usually take tremendous effort and are very short-lived.

The Dharma takes as its starting point that problems are inevitable (samsara is the nature of suffering).  Paradoxically, it is by accepting this reality that we can completely change our strategy in life to one that will really work.  Our focus shifts from trying to avoid the inevitable to learning how to adapt to and transform the inevitable.  My Grandmother would always say, “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”  This is exactly right, and the Dharma simply gives us a palet of tools with which to do so.  Things are good or bad depending upon whether we can use them to accomplish our purposes.  If our purposes are worldly, then most of what happens in samsara is bad.  But if our purpose is to train our mind, then everything that happens becomes useful.

Our job as a Dharma practitioner is to learn how to make something spiritually good out of whatever life throws at us.  So when adversity hits, instead of vainly wishing it was otherwise, we accept things as they are and get down to the business of making something good out of it.  If this becomes our focus, we will gain more and more skill and experience at doing this until we reach the point where we can effortlessly and joyfully surf life’s waves to the beach of enlightenment!

Your turn:  Describe some particularly difficult curve ball life has thrown at you, and how you made something good out of it.

Everything is equally good, just in different ways

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the key to daily happiness is having the right purpose.  If our purpose is to strive to satisfy our desires for wealth, power, pleasure or a good reputation, then some situations we face will seem good and others will seem bad.  If instead our purpose is to train our mind then every situation is equally good, just in different ways.  Since every circumstance we encounter is equally empty and since every circumstance provides an opportunity to oppose delusions and train ourselves in virtuous responses, from the point of view of wishing to train our mind, every situation is equally good.  With such an outlook, we can be happy with anything, anybody, anywhere and anytime.

It may not be immediately obvious to us how every situation is equally useful from the perspective of training our mind, but we at least can know for sure it is.  This is especially true if we have surrendered our karma to Dorje Shugden.  If we have done this, not only is every situation equally good for training our mind, every situation is equally perfect.

So how can we realize how every situation is equally good for training our mind?  There are five things I do (any one of which can work).  First, I ask myself, “what delusions does this situation give me an opportunity to oppose?”  Second, I ask myself, “what virtues does this situation give me an opportunity to practice.”  Third, I ask myself, “what does this situation teach me about the truth of the Dharma.”  Fourth, I ask myself, “what skills does this situation give me an opportunity to build within myself?”  And the fifth thing I do is I request wisdom blessings from Dorje Shugden asking, “please reveal to me how this situation is perfect for training my mind.”  With our reliance on Dorje Shugden, we want to get to the point where we feel within ourselves we have completely surrendered control to him and we say “please do with me what you wish” confident in the knowledge that we are in his care and protection.

Of course, none of this will work if in our root desires we do not value training our mind more than we value our pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure and a good reputation.  This only works if our deepest desire is to train our mind.  So how do we develop this desire?  For me, there are several thoughts which work to help me stay centered in this desire or purpose.  First, I consider how the only thing I can take with me from life to life is the karma I create and the habits of mind I cultivate.  Everything else I have to leave behind.  Second, I consider how happiness depends entirely upon whether my mind is peaceful, not whether I have satisfied my worldly desires.  The less my mind is deluded and the more my mind is virtuous, the more my mind is peaceful and thus the happier I will be.  Third, I remind myself I am working for a purpose larger than myself.  My Spiritual Guide is seeking to forge me into the Buddha I need to become to be able to benefit the beings with whom I have the karma to lead to enlightenment.  The situations he is giving me now are designed to cultivate within me the realizations I need to be able to help these beings.  Knowing that the happiness of countless others in the future depends upon me gaining these realizations now, for their sake I need to learn what needs to be learned and gain experience with what needs to be experienced.

Sometimes it will take a long time before we have reached the point where we are equally happy with every situation, but it seems clear to me if we work in this direction we will get there.  And once we are equally happy with the situation we are currently in, it will be time to move on to the next situation and the next spiritual assignment.

Your turn:  Explain how some “obstacle” in your life is actually “equally good, just in a different way.”

Why people have affairs

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

At the beginning of many relationships, there is this special magic you feel with the other person.  Your heart naturally feels warm when you think about them, they appear to you to be just a wonderful person, you see good in them, and every once in a while, they also feel the same way about you!  Magic!  This feels so good because in our heart of hearts, we all long to be linked with others by love.  It is as if our heart knows that this feeling of separation and isolation we feel is not the natural state of our relationship with others and we get a glimpse of the experience of loving interconnectedness.

The reason why people have affairs is because they lose this feeling with the person they are with (more on that below).  They then meet somebody (or refind a long lost love from earlier in life), feel that magical spark again, and since it feels so good they start heading towards it.  If there are sexual feelings towards this new person, and especially if the feelings are reciprocal, it is almost an irresistable combination.  They see the difference in the feelings towards their regular partner, become increasingly dissastisfied, and gradually the relationship erodes away.  Affairs are often not just sexual flings, they are usually a by product of having lost that special feeling with the one we are with, and then being hit with it with somebody else.

All of these dynamics occur because we mistakenly think these special feelings reside in and are dependent upon the other person.  We relate to the other person like we relate to any other samsaric object, really, where we believe that happiness resides within the other person and by “consuming” the other person we can get some of it.  The problem is as soon as we start relating to other people like they are samsaric objects that have the power to give us happiness, things start going south!  We start to relate to them like a drug, where we are trying to get our fix, and we need more and more of them to get the same high.  But then they are no longer able to provide us with the same good feelings they once did, and we become frustrated with them because they are not living up to our expectations.  We lose the magic.  We then are willing to do anything to get it back.  We start acting in all sorts of goofy ways towards the other person, alternating between being a sychophant to being a raging lunatic, and then back again.  The relationship grows increasingly dysfunctional, we increasingly blame the other person, and we start to hate ourselves for how we are stuck in such a dynamic.  We blame them for how we are, and so we start hating them.  We have invested so much in chasing the end of the rainbow with them we become willing to do anything to get some good out of the relationship to justify all that we have done.  But the more we run after the mirage, the more it escapes us.  Eventually, we decide to end it.  But we go back – again and again – caught in a vicious cycle.  Eventually, though, we realize it is a cycle and start to break free completely.  At some point we walk away and don’t fall back in.

But if we still grasp at other people as samsaric objects, it is just a question of time before we fall into a similarly dysfunctional dynamic with somebody else.

So how do we protect ourselves against this?  Simple, we need to realize that the magic is within us and within our own mind, and it is in no way dependent upon the other person.  This magic is called affectionate love, and we can cultivate it within our mind with training.  We can feel this magic towards everyone all of the time.  Our affectionate love can become like the sun which radiates out towards all around us.  The sun does not need the objects it illuminates to be a source of warmth, it simply radiates from its own inner fire.  It is the same with affectionate love.  When we know it comes from within and is not dependent upon or sourced in others, then we stop chasing the rainbow and instead we start becoming a loving person.  We learn how to feel affectionate love for everyone around us.  Of course we will express this love differently with different people depending upon our karmic relationship with them, but the warm, magical feelings within us remain within us all of the time.  We must apply effort to cultivate and sustain these feelings, but it is an internal project, not one of stalking and manipulating others to get them to do what we want them to do so we can regain the feelings.

So how do we generate these feelings?  Simple:  take the time to identify and appreciate the good qualities of others.  Each being has within them Buddha nature, so each being has within them all of the qualities and potential for all goodness.  We need to appreciate others.  See the good in others, draw it out, transform all of their faults into opportunities to practice.  Then you will appreciate all that they do, good and bad, and your feelings of affectionate love will be stable and ever lasting.

(Please note, no, I am not having an affair!  I am just reflecting on what I have observed and understood.  Just thought I needed to clarify that!  hee hee)

Your turn:  Describe how relating to others as an object of attachment has created problems in your life.

The middle way of career ambition

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is not easy for a Kadampa to get career ambition correct.  But it is very important that we try if we are to thrive as a tradition in this modern world.  In my view, there are two extremes when it comes to career ambition.  First, is the extreme of not living up to our full professional potential.  Second, is the extreme of becoming attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  The middle way is pursuing your career fully as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to forge you into the Buddha you need to become.

Before we encounter the Dharma, many of us have a well-developed sense of career ambition.  I wanted to be a high-powered engineer, then lawyer, then banker.  We then encounter the Dharma, learn about abandoning worldly concerns, learn how the only thing that matters is gaining realizations, and then we start to think that pursuing a career is inherently mundane.  We look around us at the various examples in the Sangha and see that “to be committed to the spiritual path is to do the minimum amount of normal work as possible so that we can do retreats, etc.”  We come from a historically monastic tradition, so as a tradition we have few examples of professional Kadampas.  This is something new we are learning as a tradition.  There is a cultural bias within the Kadampa community that looks down on those pursuing a normal career, as if doing so is necessarily somebody preoccupied with worldly concerns and not really committed to their practice.  For others, some of us are naturally lazy, not really wanting to do much or accomplish much.  With such a mind, when we encounter the Dharma it provides us the perfect excuse for not pursuing our professional careers!  We now (mis)use the Dharma as our pretext for being lazy and doing nothing.

It is a big problem if, as a tradition, we shun professional life.  We will then evolve into and be perceived as a collection of losers and misfits who only pursue their spiritual lives with full vigor because we have nothing better we are able to do or accomplish with our lives.  Competent, intelligent and professionally capable people will then shun the tradition or certainly not feel at home amongst us.  We will have little chance to thrive and succeed for the long-term if we are a collection of societal “rejects” and “losers”.  People will conclude the Kadampa path is only for those with no life.  And once people start to develop a “life” they will then falsely feel they need to choose between their spiritual life and their newly emerging normal life.  We will become a tradition of people living far below their professional potential, implicitly grasping at professional life as inherently worldly.  Such ignorance is rooted in the unsaid belief that the Dharma cannot be practiced in certain circumstances or ways of life.

The other extreme is to become attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  We pursue worldly goals of wealth, power, reputation for their own sake.  We allow ourselves to become distracted with the concerns of this life.  We start to mistakenly believe our happiness depends upon worldly success in our career.  We allow ourselves to start engaging in negativity in the name of getting ahead.  We start to value our own happiness above that of our colleagues, clients or competitiors.  There is no doubt that the professional, working life is dominated by worldly mentalities.  We can very easily get swept away by such mentalities and come to possess them ourselves.  We start to view every professional setback as an obstacle or a problem, becoming despondent when we don’t achieve what we want.  Later in life, when we are no longer rising in our careers and we start to have to take old people jobs, we become depressed as if our best days are behind us.  When we retire, we feel as if our life has been robbed of all meaning since the only thing we have ever known is our professional careers.  We become sad, depressed individuals, frustrated with our dwindling potential, staring into an increasingly steep descent into irrelevance.

The middle way is to view our professional lives as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to help us develop the skills we will need to become the Buddha we need to become.  We must live up to our full professional potential.  Why?  Because it is in doing so that we will develop the skills we need.  Operating at a higher professional level requires a higher level skill set – working with people, being able to communicate effectively orally and in writing, analytical skills, managerial skills, problem solving skills, creativity, innovation, managing risk, inspiring others, transforming setbacks into opportunities, etc.  We need these skills to be able to help the tradition flourish and to be most effective at helping people.  As a tradition, we also need to gain the realizations for how to maintain a 100% kadampa life in the context of any professional life, from the highest king to the lowest beggar.  To run centers and to enable the tradition to flourish, we need to know how to get things done in this world.  We need the world’s best and brightest not only helping the tradition flourish but occupying the world’s most important and powerful positions so such power and wealth is being used with compassionate, bodhisattva intentions.  And yes, there is a financial component to this.  We need the wealth and resources necessary for the tradition to flourish at a material level.  We do not pursue material development for its own sake, but because we realize there is a material foundation and infrastructure required for the tradition in this world.

Dorje Shugden, our Dhama protector, knows what skills and realizations we need to become the Buddhas we need to become.  We should trust that if he has arranged for us to have certain professional skills and potential that he has done so because it is in developing those skills and living up to that potential that we will gain the realizations and skills we need.  To not live up to our fullest possible professional intention is to waste the conditions he has given us and to deny the fruit of our past virtuous deeds.  We do not seek these things for their own sake, but rather by having them we can help more people.  If we view things through the lens of eventually we need all of the skills and qualities of a modern Kadampa Spiritual Guide, then we will view our professional circumstance as part of our spiritual training.  We will simultaneously live up to our professional potential and our spiritual potential as part of the same continuum.  All contradictions between our so called worldly life and our spiritual life will dissolve away and we will become inspiring examples to all.

Reliance on Dorje Shugden in the context of our careers also enables us to let go of worrying about what happens.  From an ordinary perspective, certain things will be a setback for our career and others will be good; but from a spiritual perspective when we know Dorje Shugden is arranging everything, good or bad, everything that happens to us will be a spiritual boon!  Both success and setbacks in our career give us opportunities to develop spiritually, so we will be able to take in stride (indeed joyful stride) whatever happens in our career.  This takes the stress out of career progression and enables us to focus on the journey.

While I don’t know enough about the Mormon and Jewish communities, and I am sure there are things not worth emulating, we can nonetheless take inspiration from these communities.  Both are minority religious groups who are nonetheless very successsful professsionally.  They possess disproportionate power and wealth relative to their numbers in the world.  Culturally, they value hard work, discipline, and living up to their full professional potential.  Externally, we should be just as professionally successful as they are, but internally our motivations are 100% Kadampa.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where have fallen into one of the extremes of career ambition and what you learned from that.

Cherishing others enough to listen to them

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

Our self-grasping ignorance falsely convinces us that we are just our ordinary body and mind.  It seems natural to cherish ourselves, but what we are confused about is who we really are.  In reality, we are the fully inter-dependent mandala of all living beings, of which our ordinary body and mind are but one small part, like one of countless limbs on the body of life.  We cherish all living beings not out of self-martyrdom but rather because doing so is simply more accurate in terms of cherishing who we really are.  Instead of seeking to optimize what is best for the small, ignorant conception of self; we seek to optimize what is best for our full selves, namely the ocean of all living beings.

People will not be open to your perspective if they do not feel you understand them.  If you speak without first demonstrating that you fully understand where they are coming from, they will dismiss what you have to say and they will spend their time trying to explain to you their perspective.  As banal as it is to say, it is impossible to demonstrate you understand somebody if you do not know how to listen to them.  People know when you are really listening and when you are actually just planning on what you are going to say.

If you look at all of the great examples within ours and other traditions what you find is people who actually know how to listen to others as an act of cherishing them.  How do we do this?  I would say there are four key elements to effective listening:

  1. Shut off completely your own inner commentary and just try to understand where the other person is coming from.  Generate a sincere desire to understand the other person.
  2. Accept the other person without judgement, regardless of what it is they are saying.
  3. Have no ulterior, selfish motive where you are in any way attached to or dependent upon what choices the other person makes.  In other words, you only want what is best for them.
  4. You filter everything you hear through the lens of how everything that is happening to the other person is actually perfect in terms of giving the other person an opportunity to work on improving themselves.

Developing the skill of listening well is one of the most important qualities we need to develop along the bodhisattva path.  Fortunately, this is a skill we can practice developing all day, every day.  Very often the mere act of really listening to somebody is all we need to do to help them.  They are able to verbalize what is happening to them, and by doing so they can better see and understand their own situation and how they should proceed.  When we accept them without judgement, they are able to accept themselves.  By seeing how what is happening to them is perfect, they miraculously start to see things the same way without us even having to say a word.

Your turn:  Give an example from your life where simply listening to somebody helped them.

Contributing to, not taking from the world

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Every moment of every day we face a choice in terms of our strategy for engaging with the world.  It all turns on what we are trying to do at any given moment.  The choice is between contributing to the world in some way or seeking to take from the world in some way.  The former accumulates merit and creates the causes for a future of abundance (material, emotional and spiritual).  The latter burns up our merit and creates the causes for a future of impoverishment (material, emotional and spiritual).

The question we should ask ourselves in every situation is “how can I add value?”  Normally, however, the question we are asking ourselves is “how can I get what I want?”  Sometimes we are tring to get somebody to do something for us.  Sometimes we are cleverly not doing what we should be doing in the hopes that others will do it for us.  Sometimes we are chasing after some pleasure.  Sometimes we go fishing for compliments or affirmations that others see value in us.  Sometimes we are trying to steal the limelight or the credit for what was in fact the work of a team.  Sometimes we are seeking for everybody to be in agreement that we are the best, and that those we are threatened by are morons.  If we are not adding value to the world, but instead are constantly trying to harvest samsara’s goodies, how will we know anything but destitution in the future?

In our relationships, we are constantly trying to manipulate others into doing what we want – sometimes what we want is for them to like us, sometimes we want them to just leave us alone, sometimes we want them to do some work for us, sometimes we are trying to get them to live up to our expectations for them.  Often times we just want to feel loved.  But the more we grasp at these things, the more elusive they become, leaving us feeling despondent, frustrated, needy and bitter.  What kind of life is that?

John F. Kennedy famously said, “ask now what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.  In his prayer, St. Fancis of Asisis said “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.”  In the Tao Te Ching it says “if you want to be given everything, give everything up.”  Ghandi sought to place zero demands on the world, but to only give.  Shantideva said considering ourselves important is the root of all suffering and considering others important is the root of all happiness.  What are all these poining to?  In every moment we need to seek to give, not get; to contribute, not take; to invest in the future, not consume our future now.

Of course the choice is ours.  The reason why we choose to take instead of to contribute is because we value our happiness now more than our happiness in the future.  The irony is the satisfaction, even in the present, that comes from investing in a better future far outstrips the temporary pleasure that comes from taking now.  It is hard to make this switch in life strategy, but all of the holy beings guarrantee us it is worth the effort!

Your turn:  Give an example of how you are currently taking from the world.  What are you going to do differently now?

Please make dedications for Paul Ashton

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

He is a close Sangha friend of mine who was just diagnosed with cancer.

For details, please read:  http://realkadampa.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/prayers-for-paul-ashton/