During and around the Summer Festival last year, I had many dreams where I was at festivals and the attendance was way down. I would either cry about not being there, cry about how the NKT was dying, I would dream of VGL crying about these things. I don’t know whether to interpret this as it appeared or as if the NKT is dying because I am allowing the Dharma to die in my own mind. I remember when I had my vivid dreams about Manjushri being overrun, one of the conclusions I came to was as long as I keep the Dharma alive in my own mind, I keep it alive in this world; and that as the Dharma flourishes in my own mind, it will flourish in the world. So if the Dharma is appearing to my mind to be fading in this world, perhaps it is because it is fading in my own mind. Having no access to centers, sangha, etc., it is very difficult to keep things flourishing within my own mind, but this is my challenge. I need to take inspiration from rhinocesourus like solitary realizers who spend their whole life practicing in an isolated way, but keep things growing and moving forward. I think central to this is to always maintain the mind of retreat. I am on retreat right now, a special kind of retreat. If I maintain the mind of retreat, this will be my experience. If I lose this mind, then I won’t be and things will gradually slip.
Author: Kadampa Ryan
Conditions for doing blog
Karma goes in waves. I request you, Dorje Shugden, please arrange things perfectly so that when I need to do the journal I have the conditions to be able to do so, and may I trust that when I do not have such conditions that my focus should be on gaining deeper understandings.
Motivation for becoming a diplomat
(I wrote this just after I passed the exam for getting into the State Department in August 2010)
Much has happened. First, I passed the OA with a very high score, so it is essentially certain that I will get the diplomat job. I made billions of requests to Dorje Shugden, so there is no scope for thinking anything other than this is what he has arranged for me. He has taken care of my career wise my whole life. In the end, my motivation for becoming a diplomat is manyfold:
- I wish to be able to provide for my family. This is part of my karmic circumstance and responsibility, and it is not a problem. It is easy to grasp at it as if it is a problem because we judge ourselves against those who are able to dedicate their lives to causing the Dharma to flourish (direct Dharma activities). But these are not my conditions and this is not a problem. We need people gaining realizations of all sorts of different lives, not just Eupames. Living up to my traditional responsibilities is part of my path that has been given to me by Dorje Shugden.
- A Kadampa Spiritual Guide is, in effect, the Ambassador of all the Buddhas in this world. The goal of a diplomatic career is to produce the result of an Ambassador. Within the Foreign Service, rank is embedded in the person as they acquire the skills and competencies of a higher and higher ranked diplomat, culminating in being an Amassador. I wish to gain all the skills and qualities of a good Ambassador so that I may later use them an employ them in the service of flourishing the Dharma. Bodhichitta, at its most practical, is the wish to improve oneself so as to be able to better serve others. A career in the foreign service will enable me to do exactly that. These skills and qualities will become part of me as a person, not just knowledge I possess that I will lose when I die. My focus throughout my career should be on skill building. I need to strive to do my job with a higher and higher degree of quality, understanding that I need to develop these skills so that they stay within me in all of my future lives as tools which enable me to be a more qualified Kadampa Spiritual Guide. In other words, the skills and qualities of an Ambassador are components of the skills and qualities of a Kadampa Spiritual Guide, and I have been given this job to learn these skills. If I learn these skills with this intention, then they will ripen in this way.
- Along the same lines, Bjorn had a Chosang (a dedicated and effective helper) because he had done the same for others in the past. So I need to learn to become a model helper/employee for those I work for to create the karma to have model helpers/employees when I strive to flourish the Dharma – just like Bjorn. Specifically, I need to learn to work to fulfill the wishes and objectives of my superiors. I need to help them complete their goals and objectives. I need to be loyal to them without getting drawn into clan-like conflict with other groups. I need to learn how to let go and be happy for the Foreign Service to determine my next assignment. Ordained RTs submit themselves to the wisdom and decisions of VGL when it comes to where they are posted, trusting that this is what is best for their practice. I need to have a similar mindset, viewing the HR people as Dorje Shugden! There are many other ideas along these lines which I will have to learn.
- My hope is when I retire, I can then do long retreat, and especially focus on writing my own commentaries to VGL’s teachings. The commentaries will be my sharing of what I have learned and understand of the Dharma he has taught, not an attempt at providing definitive Dharma. He has given us the definitive Dharma, but it is still useful to have different commentaries to these teachings. I likewise want to write the Kadampa Quest books. And throughout my career and my being a parent, I also wish to maintain my blog/journal. Perhaps at some point I will go public with it, but in the meantime, I write it. This too can also later become books. Perhaps I will have a website where I make all of this freely available to others. These are things which still need to be resolved.
While I may not have conditions that enable me to be near the NKT in terms of my activity, my commitment to practicing Dharma remains the same. When I met with Olivier and Flavia a few summers ago, I had in my gut a feeling that this would happen, and that it would be sometime in my mid 50s when I reintersect with them in terms of being able to teach and spread the Dharma directly again. We will see.
The decision to surrender
A lot of people get confused how one practically surrenders completely to the spiritual guide. It seems as if you would become a lifeless zombie frozen incapable of acting. The reality is it is the exact opposite. Right now we are a lifeless zombie incapable of acting since we are completely controlled by our delusions and have never tasted the enlightened experience of being all living beings.
It can seem like surrendering means you no longer make any decisions. But this is wrong. You do make one decision, over and over again: the decision to surrender and submit to the spiritual guide in all of his aspects. This is the best decision to make in every situation we find ourselves in. I will repeat, this is the best decision to make in every situation we find ourselves in. There is no situation in which this is not the best decision, and if we make any other decision in any situation, we are making the sub-optimal decision. Any other decision is a product of our ignorance.
Given that things are empty, when reduced down to its essence, every situation has three components: what is appearing, how we respond and what direction we are heading in (towards what destination are we moving). What is appearing is dependent upon our past karma. How we respond is dependent upon our present wisdom. What direction we are heading in (towards what destination we are moving) is dependent upon our aspiration. In all three of these domains, our spiritual task is to learn to surrender/submit completely to the spiritual guide. With respect to what is appearing, we need to actively and continously surrender/submit completely to Guru Dorje Shugden. With respect to how we rspond, we need to actively surrender/submit to Lama Tsongkhapa. With respect to what direction we are heading in (towards what destination we are moving) we need to actively surrender/submit to Guru Father Heruka (or Vajrayogini as the case may be).
Most of our worries in life are about what is appearing. We are such externally-oriented beings. As times become increasingly impure, this will only become more so the case. For this reason, I believe that reliance upon Dorje Shugden is already and will increasingly become our primary and most important refuge. Dorje Shugden has the power to control what karmically ripens, both externally and internally. Normally, samsara is uncontrolled karmic appearance. When we surrender/offer all of our karma into Dorje Shugden’s care, then he becomes the master of our universe, he becomes the Director of our (Truman) show. It is so simple to do: generate a pure intention, and request ‘please arrange whatever is best.’ By ‘best’ we mean, what is best for the swiftest possible of enlightenment of all living beings, understanding that our own enlightenment is an essential condition/pre-requisite for their enlightenment (the means to the end). We have to get to the point where we actually don’t want to make the decision ourselves. We want him to decide everything for us. We have our own plans and our own goals, and we grasp onto them and become very attached to them. We generate enormous stress for ourselves through this. What freedom to let all of this go! We need to be like a good soldier who is ready (indeed eager because he has complete confidence in his general) to go wherever he is to be deployed and to perform whatever mission is asked of him. For a lot of RTs, they surrender themselves completely to VGL in terms of letting him decide where they go and what they do. They are happy to do so because they trust his omniscient wisdom. But for the overwhelming majority of us, it seems as if we are on our own in this respect. But this is not the case. We too can enjoy the same enlightened direction in our life by learning how to surrender/submit to Dorje Shugden. I try have no plans of my own, no agenda of my own other than to surrender/submit to Dorje Shugden. There is no stress, no anxiety, no worry, just an adventurous heart ready for whatever the Protector ripens next. There is no basis for aversion to anything (for example the baby crying when I am trying to mediate or do my journal). My ignorance makes me attached to my wishes, and I suffer when they are thwarted. My faith in Dorje Shugden helps me let go of that aversion and be happy to assume responsibility for whatever the situation he emanates for me calls upon me to do. No questions asked, no hesitation, no worry, no second-guessing, no frustration, just the peaceful equanimity of a confident faith that the Protector has taken charge.
I am running out of time, so I will have to explain later how it works to surrender in terms of how we respond and the direction we are going. But briefly, the way we respond to all situations is to oppose orthogonally the nexus of delusions arising in any given moment. This as well can be done quite simply through making simple requests such as ‘reveal to me what I should do’ or ‘please give me the wisdom to know how to respond’. Likewise, we can simply ask ourselves, ‘what would VGL do?’ or ‘what would Lama Tsongkhapa do?’ much like Christians ask what would Jesus do. Then we do that. He has perfect wisdom and perfect skilfull means, so really these two types of request are just two sides of th same coin.
In terms of what direction we are going, our job is to make ourselves useful to others. Our final goal is the complete freedom of all beings. This is what we are working towards. To bring this about, we need to recognize that we have imprisoned all beings in the samsara of our creation (our contaminated dream). Thus to free them we need to gather and dissolve all our appearances into the bliss of the Dharmakaya (transform ourselves into Chakrasambara). As a way station or an interim step in that process, we likewise transform ourselves and our entire empty world into Heruka’s pure land. Heruka’s pure land is like a funnel which gathers all appearances from the deepest hell to the highest pure land gradually inwards towards the Dharmakaya inside the nada inside Father Heruka’s heart. From the Charnel grounds into inside the protection circle, then into the celestial mansion, then into the deities of the commitment, body, speech, heart and great bliss wheels. Then into Father Heruka himself, then into his indestructible drop, then into the nada. When you enter into the nada, it is like a magic portal that when you pass through the entire interpretative mandala dissolves behind you and you emerge into the infinite expanse of the clear light Dharmakaya. It is then that you realize that the entire path to enlightenment was like an unwinding of the contaminated karmic ball of knots we have been creating since beginningless time. We release ourselves (and all beings) from the infinite chains of our past deluded deeds. It all unwinds and dissolves and we emerge united with all beings in inseparable and irreversible freedom.
The Lamrim of Dorje Shugden
We are the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa. Our principle defining characteristic is our union of Sutra and Tantra. One of the most important things for us to do as Kadampas is to realize this union. I have worked extensively in the past on the union of the Lamrim and our generation stage object. But just as important, we need to realize the union of the Lamrim and our reliance upon Dorje Shugden. Ultimately, it is the power of our lamrim minds that gives our reliance upon any deity its meaning and power, therefore it is very important to enjoy meditating on this union.
What follows is not the definitive union, but simply the union as I currently understand it. As practitioners, our job is to contemplate the relationships between the different aspects of our practice so as to unite them. When we realize their relationship as perfectly harmonious, mutually reinforcing and non-contradicory, and when we get a special feeling of wisdom, then we know we are on the right track. We can work with this over the course of our whole lifetime, gradually deepening our understanding and realization of these connections.
To gain an understanding of the connections, you just malke internal requests that it be revealed to you the connection or relationship between a particular lamrim meditation and an aspect of your practice, like reliance upon Dorje Shugden. Then see what comes.
Briefly, here is a start of my understanding:
- The real nature of Dorje Shugden is the spiritual guide. He is my spiritual guide in the aspect of Dorje Shugden. The spiritual guide manifests himself as Dorje Shugden in order to provide us protection. Frankly, I think this is my favorite aspect of the Spiritual Guide, his most useful aspect in terms of helping us solve our daily problems. I need to surrender myself completely to my Spiritual Guide in the aspect of Dorje Shugden and request him to take over completely the ripening of the karma for myself and all the beings of my dream.
- I have a precious human life in which I can create very powerful karmic connections with the great protector Dorje Shugden. With these connections, he can care for me and protect me in this and all of my future lives, creating the perfect outer and inner conditions for my training leading to my eventual enlightenment. If I can make my reliance upon Dorje Shugden irreversible, my attainment of enlightenment is guarranteed. He will not let me not attain enlightenment! I will put myself on an uninterrupted fast track to enlightenment.
- I can die at any moment, which means I must use every moment of my life to develop deeper and closer karmic connections with Dorje Shugden. I don’t know how long my opportunity to become closer to his holy being will last, and I cannot afford to waste a minute of it. The biggest risk of death is losing our practice. If we lose our practice then we may need to wait aeons before we start practicing again, and as a result we will have to suffer from delusion and karma for a very long time. Dorje Shugden is the our best protection against this risk. His job is to arrange and maintain the outer and inner conditions for our practice. In other words, he can protect us through the process of death, the bardo and rebirth so that we can continue with our practice in our next life. Our death is actually his finest hour, where our reliance upon him can make the most difference. Who else would I trust for this most important moment of my life? He can maintain the continuum of my practice beyond this life, and life after life, until I attain enlightenment. He is my insurance policy against losing my practice.
- If I do not have strong reliance and protection from Dorje Shugden, not only will I likely succumb to delusion within this life, but more dangerously I will fall into the lower reams at the time of my death. I currently respond with delusion when extreme hardship arrives. There is no more extreme hardship than death. If I respond to death with delusion, I will fall – at which point I will lose everything. I have completely neglected purifying my negative karma, therefore I no doubt have a mountain of it remaining on my mind. What hope do I have of not falling? It is only through my reliance upon Dorje Shugden that I can avoid this fate. One of the main ways he helps us is he can control what karma ripens. He arranges conditions for us by ripening the karma on our mind in special ways and sequences to create the experience of ‘perfect conditions.’ Just as he does this for us in life, he can do this for us during the death and rebirth process, protecting us against lower rebirth and propelling us to another life in which we can practice. Absent this help, my mind alone is not sufficently trained to ensure that I do not fall. I am not trying to go all fire and brimstone, but this is the reality of the situation.
I will continue with the rest of the relationships between the different lamrim meditations and our reliance upon Dorje Shugden in future posts. For now, these are the ones moving my mind the most and that are the foundation for all the others.
Wisdom, compassion and teaching your children to sleep through the night
One of the hardest things about being a parent of small children is sleepless nights. This is actually an issue of spiritual concern.
- If we do not sleep properly then we will not be able to do our daily practice. If we don’t do our daily practice, then everything will fall apart.
- If you are exhausted, then during the day you will have less capacity to respond positively to the challenges that parenthood bring. You will then get upset more often, spoil your relationship with your child, create all sorts of negative karma and generally be miserable day and night. If you can get the sleeping down, you will be able to deal with anything. If you can’t get proper sleep, you won’t be able to deal constructively with anything.
- Attachment to sleep is one of our biggest delusions, and this gives us a chance to work on overcoming it.
- We will suffer from sleepless nights to the extent that we are thinking about ourselves. This is an excellent opportunity to practice cherishing others
- Learning the proper wisdom/compassion balance when it comes to teaching our children to sleep through the night helps us in many other areas of parenting. Unfortunately, this is something we often mess up.
The bottom line is this: we are not helping our children by not helping them learn to fall alseep on their own and to sleep through the night. But at the same time, we need to acknowledge their capacity and gradually work to expand it. Our compassion without wisdom will not be able to tolerate our kids crying, and so we will rush in to console them. But if we do so, we deprive them of the opportunity of learning how to calm themselves down and fall alseep on their own. We can in fact create a dependency on us for them to fall alseep, which will make them less confident in themselves and also make them more tired because they too are not having very restful nights. Eventually, every parent must let their child cry to fall asleep, the only question is how many sleepless nights will they inflict upon themselves and their children before they do so. Therefore we should unapologetically adopt as a goal to teach our children how to sleep from the very beginning of their life.
How do we do this?
- Rhythm is everything. We should establish a night time sequence of events that we stick to every night that starts a couple of hours before they go to bed. Then, when you start this sequence, the child already knows what comes next and where this particular sequence leads. For example, our ritual for our older kids literally starts as soon as we get home. We walk in the door, the first thing we do is take baths. Then dinner, then a video/reading, then brush our teeth, then bed. We do the same thing every day, the kids learn and know the rhythm, and it works. For the little ones, we do bath, bottle, bed.
- We should put our children down to bed before they have fallen alseep. We first make sure all of their needs are met (clean diaper, well fed, blankets in order, pacifier, right temperature, etc.), then we put them down into their bed while they are still awake (but calm).
- Once we put them down, there is no picking them back up unless things are really really extreme. We can go back and give them their pacifier when they lose it, we can pat them lovingly, we can say things like ‘you can do it’, but we don’t pick them back up. Then gradually, over time as their capacity increases, you go back less often, you stay less time, you start to not pat them but just console them with your words, etc. Then, you start to not go back at all but just say something reassuring like ‘you can do it’ from a distance.
- We need to learn to distinguish between fussing and really needing something. Often what happens is the baby will be crying or wimpering or making frustrated sounds, but they are working through them. If you let it ride, they then have various points where they calm down (sometimes just through having exhausted themselves with their cries). They have a moment or two of calm, and then they start up again. But they cycle back to calm again. Gradually, the amount of time fussing decreases and the amount of time calm increases until eventually they are alseep. When they are cycling in this way, you don’t need to go back to them – just let it ride. But if they lose their pacifier or teddy bear, reach a point of total hysteria where they will not likely be able to calm themselves back down without some consolation, or they have pooped something awful and need to be changed, then you should go address that need and then leave them again. You have to be prepared to do this for several nights, possibly even weeks, before they start to get the hang of it. Don’t plan on doing anything else during this time because you will then just get frustrated with them. Know that it may take several hours every night of dedicated work before they finally settle down. Investing the time to teach them will save you countless hours in the future when you can just put your kid to bed, close the door and not have to go back until morning. So while difficult, it is worth the effort.
- Get them attached to a good teddy bear. This can become their support and means of consolation. We have found that those teddy bear security blankets are ideal. They are both a teddy bear and a security blanket in one. It should have things on it, like ears or tails or tags, that the kid can pull at. One thing we also do is we have the mother sleep with it several nights so that she gets her smell all over it. You can even consider putting it in the mother’s bra! It may seem non-Dharma to encourage an attachment, we should not let the best (non-attachment to anything) be the enemy of the good (attachment for the teddy bear instead of the parent walking them around until they fall alseep!). Eventually the child will outgrow their teddy bear, but if in the meantime they can use it to calm themselves down and enable both yourself and your child be properly rested, it is a small price to pay. If it helps, mentally engage in the guru yoga of the teddy bear. By nature, the teddy bear is the spiritual guide, but he is appearing in the aspect of a teddy bear. So you are not cultivating an attachment in a samsaric object, you are teaching reliance upon the spiritual guide!!!
- Resist the temptation to go ‘save’ them from their crying. Once you make the decision you are going to let them cry and that you are not going back, then you have to stick with it all the way (barring, of course, something really extreme). If you let them cry for 15 minutes and then crack and go get them, then you are not helping them. The only thing you are doing is guarranteeing that tomorrow night they will cry for at least 15 minutes before they settle down because they will think crying for 15 minutes is how you get a parent to come. They will then cry even more the next night. But if instead you let them cry for as long as it takes, then the next night it will be less time crying, then less again the next night and so on until eventually they don’t cry at all.
When it comes to the child sleeping through the night, again, you need to work gradually.
- Time everything so that you feed the kid a bottle when you, as parents, go to bed. Typically, in the early days, the kid can go 2-3 hours between feedings. So if you go to bed at 10:45, make sure you feed them a bottle at 7:45 so that they are sufficiently hungry at 10:45. Likewise feed them at 4:45 and so forth going backwards in the day.
- Try expand the time-scale between feedings during the night, not during the day. During the day, you want to stuff them like a sausage. But at night, you practice expanding the scope of time between feedings. For example, if your child normally does 3 hours between feedings, then when they start to wake up after 3 hours, instead of feeding them give them their pacifier, console them, etc., but don’t feed them until 4 hours. Then feed them a bigger than usual bottle (since they will be hungry). Then do the same thing again, trying to stretch it out to 4 hours again. If you can do this, you will get them down to one feeding a night. You feed them before you go to bed, once in the middle of the night, and then once again when you wake up. This is a major accomplishment.
- Once you have done this, continue to stuff them full of lead during the day, especially just before they go to bed, and then try stretch it to 5 hours before you feed them in the middle of the night using the same tactics as above. You can still feed them again when you wake up, even if it is less than 4 hours between feedings. Once you have stabilized 5 hours, repeat the same process for 6 hours, then 7 hours until finally they can do 8 hours! As a rule of thumb, a baby can do their weight in pounds minus 2 hours. So a 6 pound baby can stretch at most 4 hours before you really should feed them. A 7 pound baby can stretch at most 5 hours, an 8 pound baby 6 hours and so forth. But every baby is different, so really you need to figure this out according to your own kid’s capacity. This has at least been our experience after 5 kids.
One final note on doing your daily practice during the training of your children. Pre-children, our routine was say sleep 8 hours, then do our practice for 1 hour, for a total time period of 9 hours (this is an example, modify the number of hours accordingly to your individual circumstance). So when you are training baby, when you get up to feed them the middle of the night bottle, instead of trying to go back to bed do your practice in the middle of the night, then go back to bed and wake up at the end of the same 9 hour period. In this way, you will still get the same number of hours of sleep and the same number of hours doing your practice, but it will just be in a different order. There are several advantages to doing this:
- The hours you do sleep will be more effective. The problem I have had is when I wake up to feed the bottle, I tend to become more awake. It then takes me longer to fall alseep so these hours are wasted. Then when I wake up to do my practice, I am too tired to do so, and my practice is of poor quality (or sometimes not at all if I am really tired). If instead you do your practice, your mind becomes more subtle and collected so then when you do go back to bed you will fall right asleep. The reason why we can’t sleep is our gross winds do not dissolve. If you make your mind more subtle through your practice, they will dissolve more easily.
- You willl have more virtuous dreams, leading up to sleep yoga. Just as the last mind we have at the time of death determines the quality of our next rebirth, so too the quality of our mind we have as we fall alseep determines the quality of our dreams. If we fall alseep with a virtuous mind, we are more likely to carry that virtue into our sleep and dreams. Eventually, as our mindfulness improves, we will be able to carry it into our sleeping state and do lucid dreaming. When we first start lucid dreaming we will want to fly around or do other such things, but eventually we can teach ourselves to meditate in our dreams. Some of my most profound meditation experiences have come from doing this because at this point we are meditating with our subtle mind. Think Shantideva!
I hope all of this proves useful to all those sleepless Kadampa parents out there!
Wisdom Buddha Dorje Shugden’s two functions
The function of a Dharma protector is to arrange all the outer and inner conditions of our lives so that everything that happens to us is perfect for our swiftest possible enlightenment. But Dorje Shugden is more than just a Dharma protector, he is also a wisdom Buddha. It is not enough to just know that the outer and inner conditions of our life are perfect for our enlightenment, but to be able to take full advantage of these conditions we need to understand and realize directly how (or in what way) they are indeed perfect. When we have the wisdom which realizes how our conditions are perfect, then we can fully take advantage of them and move most swiftly to enlightenment. The blessings of Dorje Shugden bestow upon us this wisdom of realizing how the conditions he has emanated for us are in fact perfect. Then we are not only happy with everything, but can use everything most effectively to advance along the path.
When we realize the emptiness of ourselves, all beings and Dorje Shugden then we realize that his power is not limited to just arranging perfect conditions for ourselves and bestowing upon ourselves the wisdom realizing how our conditions are perfect, but we can also invoke him to accomplish this same function for each and every living being. We pray to him that he arrange all the outer and inner conditions for each and every being so that whatever happens to them is perfect for their enlightenment. He can then bestow upon us the wisdom that sees directly how whatever arises in the life of any living being is in fact perfect for their enlightenment. Then, we can share our point of view with others, helping them to see their lives and challenges as gifts from all the Buddhas designed to quickly deliver them to the bliss of full enlightenment.
From our perspective, Dorje Shugden is the same being as the wisdom Buddha Manjushri. Manjushri appears in two aspects, as Je Tsongkhapa to lead us along the path and as Dorje Shugden to arrange all the conditions of our practice. It is therefore impossible to reject one without rejecting the other two. Since we all agree that Manjushri and Je Tsongkhapa are perfectly reliable Buddhas, since Dorje Shugden is for us just a different aspect of this same being, Dorje Shugden is also perfectly reliable. We cannot reject him without rejecting the others. Since we cannot reject the others, we cannot reject him.
The Dharmakaya and Ehwa
I watched Avatar with the kids recently, and was struck by the relationship between Ehwa, the divine entity of Pandora, and the Dharmakaya.
The idea of Ehwa is that all life on Pandora is actually part of a larger living entity called Ehwa, like different cells in one fully integrated, seamless organism. Physically, each being may appear separate, but spiritually they are all different aspects of the same single entity. A being arises from Ehwa, returns to Ehwa when they die, and can even pass from one body to another through Ehwa. Bliss arose when the consciousness of two different beings ‘bonded’, or realized their non-duality, such as when they went on the horses or the birds. They ceased to function as two separate entities, but became and functioned like one. The more the Navi realized the non-duality between themselves and Ehwa, the more they became one with Ehwa. In dependence upon Jake’s prayer, he was able to invoke all of Ehwa, in other words the whole planet and all of its aspects (the different beings) towards the end of ridding the planet of those who would destroy it. The planet functioned and acted as one entity. Jake’s evolution as a character was his moving from viewing himself as separate from Ehwa to becoming one with Ehwa, and as he did so he grew in capacity and understanding.
In the same way, all beings are in reality different aspects or different parts of one seamless entity, the Dharmakaya. It is only due to our ignorance that we conceive of and relate to ourselves as a separate entity. Due to this ignorance, we grossly limit ourselves and isolate ourselves experientially from what we really are. Due to our ignorance, different aspects of ourselves enter into conflict each other. But when we realize our non-duality with all beings and all things, then we naturally come to live in harmony with all of reality. The more we realize this non-duality, the more our experience becomes bliss and wisdom instead of the pain and suffering of delusion and ignorance. In reality, we are everything. All of life, all of the universe, is in reality one single, fully integrated, seamless entity. This is our true nature. This is who we really are. We are not this small, isolated, individual self we think we are. We ignorantly conceive of ourselves as a wave that is somehow independent from its ocean. We somehow grasp at a universe of independent waves and deny the ocean entirely. Because we conceive of things this way, this is how we experience them, and as a result we experientially cut ourselves off from the underlying splendor of it all.
But just because we conceive and experience things this way doesn’t make it true. No matter what we think, we are, in fact, the ocean. Our task as a completion stage practitioner is to experientially make the transition from conceiving ourselves as an independent wave to becoming the ocean itself, to experience ourselves as the ocean itself. To experience ourselves as one single entity which is all things. To experience ourselves as the one entity which is all things.
Knowing that we are the one entity which is all things, in our present state we have two problems:
- We are in conflict with ourselves. Different aspects of ourselves (the different beings of this world) are in conflict with each other.
- We are in the wrong shape. The cummulative effects of our delusions and ignorance since beginningless time have completely disfigured and distorted the shape of ourselves. We are currently in the aspect of a samsara, a distorted contaminated world at war with itself.
If we realized we were one entity, we would come to live in harmony with all the other aspects of ourselves. Delusion leads to conflict, wisdom leads to harmony. We need to completely reconfigure ourselves into the shape or aspect of a pure land with all beings living in harmony as different aspects of the one entity of the Dharmakaya. We would then all share in the bliss of all beings experiencing themselves as one. Ultimately we exist and function as one, conventionally we have many different aspects or waves of the single entity. We are not one and not different but both simultaneously. In our tantric practice, we first realize ourselves and the whole universe as being the ocean of the Dharmakaya. Then, out of compassion and an effort to undo all of the harm and disfigurement we have done to ourselves, the one entity, we reconfigure ourselves in the aspect of a universal pure land with all beings in harmony as the one entity of the Dharmakaya, partaking of its shared blissful wisdom – one single consciousness and many different consciosnesses simultaneously. This mental action functions to slowly and gradually reconfigure ourselves, the one entity, as the pure land itself and all of its inhabitants. Once this is our living experience, we have reached the outer pure land. We then turn our attention to the Dharmakaya itself, and gradually gather, aborb and purify all phenomena into the complete purity of the ocean of the clear light Dharmakaya. Until we are a Buddha, any conventional appearance comes mixed with contaminated appearance (even if we know better), so even the pure land appears contaminated by ignorance. But when we aborb completely into the Dharmakaya, all duality dissolves away into clear light. Only once we have fully realized that state can we then appear ourselves as conventional appearance without ever leaving the ocean of bliss and emptiness. We shape ourselves as the pure land and as countless emanations in the ordinary conventional world so as to gradually draw all beings back into the bosom of ourselves completely gathered and purified in the Dharmakaya.
Being listened to by those in power
Throughout my life, I have had the problem of not being listened to by those in positions of power. At the same time, it has appeared to my mind why those in positions of power are wrong or could benefit from the ideas I want to share with them, but they are not open to listening. Sometimes they just dismiss me, sometimes they are closed minded and not willing to listen, sometimes they are just not willing to put in the effort to read anything more than a Twitter-length explanation of something. When they don’t listen, yet I think they are wrong, I then lose faith in those in power, become frustrated by them, become discouraged that things will never change, etc. This has happened in many contexts of my life, professionally, personally and in the Dharma.
So what is at play here?
- The first thing to check is my pride. Are my ideas genuinely right, or is it just my pride that makes me think they are?
- Next, I need to check my attachment to my own ideas. It is very easy to become attached to one’s own ideas, and then frustrated when those ideas do not move forward.
- Next, I need to take the time to try see things from their perspective. They are not resisting my ideas just because they are wrong and stubborn, but because of their world view accumulated through their own experiences which are different than my own. Different people see issues differently depending upon where they are sitting. Even the same person can view things differently by changing where they are sitting. So I should try understand things from their perspective, not just reject their position from my perspective.
- Next, I need to improve my modes of communication and delivery. Perhaps the problem is not the ideas, but how I am delivering them. I need to learn to deliver them in a way that people can accept. I should not deliver the message like an attack or I am breaking down the doors or that others are wrong, but rather work with people trying to help them, etc.
But if after all of that, I still feel like they are wrong but not listening, what should I do? Why is this happening
- This comes from my negative karma of idle chatter. When you say a bunch of nonsense, then people do not listen to you even when you do later have something valid to say. So I need to purify this and stop engaging in idle chatter in any form.
- This comes from my negative karma of not listening to others when I have been in positions of power. I have done the same things to others – not listening to them when I was wrong and could have benefited from what they had to say. I need to purify this too and not make this same mistake again when I later assume positions of power.
- I need to accept the karma that is in play. Karmic inertia is sometimes quite slow as it takes time for already activated karma to play itself out and for new karma to assert itself and become the dominant force. I need to patiently accept this, and during this time I need to work on assembling the causes and conditions for the karma to actually change.
- I need to cease to be the perpetual outsider. I always construct myself as an outsider when it comes to authority and power. I construct myself as the unlistened to outsider who knows better. I need to become an insider, but in the good sense, not the bad sense. One of the reasons why I am an outsider is I find it easy to work on projects that are my idea, but I find it difficult to commit energy to other people’s projects. Since I am unwilling to volunteer to help other people accomplish their projects, they do not let me ‘in’ to a position of greater power. So I remain an outsider. I need to learn to help those in positions of power accomplish their vision and their projects, then they will naturally want to bring me in. The goal here is not to become a sychophant, but to become a productive, contributing member of the team. To make this transition, I need to contemplate the worthiness of the projects that they are working on, come to appreciate them myselves so that I want to contribute to them, then I volunteer.
Launch of Dorje Shugden Debate website
This website has been prepared for the benefit of Buddhist practitioners as well as the general public (journalists, concerned persons, etc.) to better understand the different arguments on both sides of the current controversy surrounding the practice of Dorje Shugden.
The goal is to have in one place all of the major arguments on both sides of this debate so that individuals can examine the debate and come to their own conclusions.
Kadampa Working Dad 