Author: Kadampa Ryan

The power of prayer

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

Bodhisattvas and Buddhas accomplish most of their virtuous and enlightened actions through the power of prayer.  This is one of the most important abilities we need to develop on the spiritual path.  Very often we neglect this, thinking it superstitious or not really believing that it works.  But if we can understand how it works, then we will see that it is possible to develop this power, and then we will be very motivated to do so.  The power of prayer lies behind most miracle powers, we become a spiritual “magic-user” (sorry, I did too much Dungenons and Dragons when I was a kid!!).

What is the power of prayer?  A Buddha has the ability to have all of their prayers fulfilled, whatever they pray for becomes a reality (within the constraints of how it works which will be described below).  It is the principle means by which bodhisattvas and Buddhas help living beings.

So how does it work?

  1. Deep and stable realization of emptiness, specifically the tantra-prasangaika view.  The TP view has two main recognitions:  first, like the standard prasangika view, that all objects are mere mental projections of the mind; and second, like the Chittamatrins, that the nature of these projections of the mind itself (all things are only mind).  When we have an experiential understanding of this view (how things actually exist), when we experience the entire universe as the body of our mind.  The entire universe is a single, fully integrated organism of our mind.  We experiences all objects, the whole universe, as parts of the body of our mind.  Our mind is in the shape of the world, and we realize by changing the shape of our mind we can change the shape of the whole world.
  2. Rich in merit.  Rich people have lots of resources, and with these resources they can make a lot happen.  They simply spend or deploy their resources to bring about whatever it is they want to see happen.  Some rich people only spend their resources on themselves, fulfilling the wishes of their self-cherishing mind.  But some rich people become philanthropists who spend their resources on helping others as much as they can.  They actively acquire more wealth so that they can use this wealth to help others.  Bill Gates is a good example of this.  A bodhisattva is a spiritual philathropist, but instead of external wealth, they rely upon internal wealth of merit and realizations.  They actively acquire as much inner wealth as they can so that they can share it and give it to others.  Just as externally rich people can accomplish their external wishes, internally rich people can accomplish their external and internal wishes.  Why?  Because ultimately all things are mere karmic appearances of mind.  Their merit gives them the karma to make any good thing appear.
  3. A pure motivation.  At present, we lack the power of prayer.  But Buddhas already have this power.  We can, in effect, have this power as well by tapping into and harnessing their power of prayer towards the ends of our own prayers.  But this will only work if our motivation is aligned with theirs.  They will not fulfill any non-pure prayers, because that is not their function.  They will, however, spontaneously fulfil all pure prayers because that is their function.  So our job is to align our motivation with theirs.  It is like aligning the sails of a sail boat.  If the sails are aligned right with the winds, then the boat will move forward.  In the same way, if our motivation is aligned with that of the Buddhas, then their pure winds will push our spiritual prayers forward.  To align our motivation, we simply need to think about a given situation we would like to pray for, and then ask ourselves “what would the Buddhas want from this situation?”  Then, once we understand what they would want, we then from our own side try to generate the same wants and desires in the situation.  In general, what do Buddhas want?  They want living beings to gain realizations.  Worldly beings want to be free from unpleasant feelings.  This is what sometimes puts our motivation at odds with that of the Buddhas.  For them, unpleasant feelings are an important condition for many different Dharma realizations (patience, renunciation, compassion, the wish to purify, etc.).  But we do the internal work to want what they want, realizing that what they want out of the situation is more infused with wisdom.  In terms of how to generate merit, the three most important things to do are:  (1) generate a bodhichitta motivation for your every action which multiplies the power of your actions by the number of countless living beings, (2) engage in every action conjoined with guru yoga, seeing all aspects of the situation as aspects of your spiritual guide, the synthesis of all the Buddhas – this multiplies the power of your action by the number of countless Buddhas, and (3) make mandala offerings, recognizing the pure world you are offering as an offering of a promise that you will work for as long as possible to transform your dream into the pure world you offer for the benefit f all of the beings in your dream.  Mandala offerings in particular are powerful in that they lay the karmic potentialities on your mind to transform your world into a pure world, where everything that arises is perfect for the enlightenment of all beings.
  4. Deep faith.  Buddhas are as powerful as we make them.  Their power for us does not exist from its own side, but arises in dependence upon the power of our faith.  The more pure faith, the more power they have to fulfil our prayers.  To develop a qualified faith, we primarily need to understand the mechanism by which Buddhas can accomplish their deeds.  When we understand how it works, it seems perfectly doable.  When it seems doable, we believe they can do it.  Then faith is not fantasy wishful thinking, it is a knowledge of what is possible.  So what is the mechanism by which they work?  First, they are empty, in other words, they are not separate from our mind but are rather parts or aspects of our mind.  Second, they have the power to activate karmic potentialities.  This is their essential function.  Just as water and sunlight will activate ordinary seeds to produce a crop of plants, the water and sunlight of our pure motivation and faith spontaneously function to activate the pure karmic seeds we have planted on our mind (see above in the section on merit).  When this karma activates it produces karmic appearances that are the nature and function of our prayers.

If we can develop the power of prayer, there will literally be nothing we cannot do.  It is the primary means of helping living beings, and thus should be our primary focus in terms of building up the skills of a Buddha.

What is samsara?

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Samsara is nothing more than the turbulant waves of the ocean of my mind.  Delusions are like violent winds which create rough karmic waves on the ocean of my mind.  The winds of delusion activate contaminated karmic seeds on the ocean bed of our mind.  When these seeds activate they push up, creating contaminated waves.  These waves then create distorted appearances on their surface, appearances of objects that exist from their own side independent of the ocean.  In fact, they mask and obscure the ocean completely where we are totally unaware of the fact that everything is, in reality, only mind.  When we assent to these appearances, we come to believe in a world of objects that exist from their own side, totally separate and independent from the mind.  We believe that our mind simply observes a world that exists out there, independent from the mind itself.  We believe this because this is what appears to us and we never put it into question.

But when we realize that the entire universe is actually nothing more than the ocean of our mind, and every object is like a wave on this ocean, then everything becomes possible.  To cause samsara to subside, we simply need to allow the waters of our mind to become completely still.  By opposing, reducing and finally eliminating our delusions, the wind stops blowing, and the waters of our mind calm.  When this happens, contaminated appearances subside and our mind settles into the clear light Dharmakaya.  It is like choppy water that becomes increasingly still, and as it does so, the water becomes increasingly clear and transparent, less and less obstructed, until it becomes completely clear and without obstruction.  Before, the ocean of our mind was in the shape of samsara.  Now the ocean of our mind is in the shape of a perfectly still and obstruction-free clear light. 

From this clear light, we can then intentionally choose to put the ocean of our mind into the shape of the pure land with ourselves as the deity.  We emerge new, pure waves in the aspect of the pure land.  All beings, which were previously imprisoned by our mind into contaminated appearances have now been freed as pure beings abiding in the pure land, inseparable from the ocean of clear light emptiness.  The mental action of emerging a pure land out of the ocean of our mind plants new, pure karmic potentialities on the ocean bed of our very subtle mind.  These seeds will later ripen due to the pure winds of compassion and bodhichitta, causing the ocean of my mind to actually transform into a pure land within which all beings can take rebirth and complete their training.

The best way to cause the ocean of our mind to subside into the clear light is to connect with the emptiness of each object, recognizing them as distorted, contaminated, falacious appearances.  While they appear to be there, they are in fact illusions or distorted reflections on the ocean of my mind.  Recognizing them as such, I can then let go of them and allow them to dissolve and subside back into the ocean of my mind.  I keep doing this with every object that arises until eventually I abide in the completely still pure, clear light Dharmakaya.

Middle way between excessive freedom and obedience

Kadampa Ryan Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

As a father, I have tended to give my kids a lot of freedom to make their own choices.  The primary reason for this is I feel it is important that they learn to make their own correct decisions, and they only way they can do this is with lots of experience of having to make their own decisions.  But when our kids are making the wrong decisions, it is our job as their parents to help them make the right ones.  This involves discipline.  I have avoided this because I feel getting angry at my kids does more harm than whatever mistake they have been making.  I have also avoided this because I myself really dislike it when other people tell me what to do and it invites rebellion.  But I have gone too far to the extreme of granting excessive freedom to my kids, and this is doing them a disservice.  Because our kids lack sufficient experience or understanding of what is important, it is our job to provide them with limits for those areas where they are not yet capable of making the right decisions.

I think the key is creating very clear rules, that are fair and reasonable, and these rules need to be applied consistently with clear and proportionate natural consequences when they are violated.  The rules do not need to be enforced with anger – ever.  Anger destroys the constructive value of the rules.  In life, people need the skill of respect for authority, but this is different than obedience.  Obedience is you obey out of fear, respect for authority is acknowledging that the other person is an authority (be it through superior knowledge, experience or legitimate power of decision-making), and this authority needs to be respected.  There is nothing wrong with teaching our kids respect for authority, but there is something wrong with “breaking them” like some horse that needs to be trained so that they “obey”. 

Rules should be clear, reasonable and process based.  It should be crystal clear what is expected and what is not allowed.  The rules should be reasonable, fair and not arbitrary.  Most importantly, they should be focused on the question of “how” things are done.  When we do things, we do them right.  We focus on hard-work, diligence, thoroughness, doing things properly, not specific outcomes.  For example, a rule we are needing to teach our 4 year old is “if you cry/get angry for it, you don’t get it.”  Yes, we should have taught that at 2, but like I said, we have been too far to the extreme of excessive freedom.

When applying rules (I like the word applying better than enforcing), I have found it is vital to eliminate any trace of doubt.  This is how it is going to be.  Kids, even small babies, can sense your doubt a mile away and they will exploit it and test it.  But if they know it is unamigiously as you say, then they don’t test it.  This is why it is very important for the rules to be fair and reasonable, because what is more obnoxious and counter-productive than the strict application of unreasonablness!

It is likewise important to teach our kids how to interact with others.  We are thinking of introducing a rule that our kids have to play together at least 1 hour a day on the weekends.  We are establishing a rule of limiting the number of hours per day our kids can be in front of a screen of some kind (TV, xbox, computer, etc.).  We are establishing a rule that nobody leaves the dinner table until everyone is done (or at least the other kids).  We have a rule that after snack homework is done before we play (“do what you have to do before what you want to do”).  And even on Christmas, today, we try apply certain rules:  we don’t start until after 8:30, each person opens their presents one at a time in order, you always say thank you, etc. 

Finally, it goes without saying that “those who make the rules must follow the rules.”  Nothing is more self-defeating than breaking your own rules.  In the end, our kids need to learn moral discipline, which depends on self-discipline, which depends on having good habits.  Those habits are formed by following good examples and having been raised in a family that “does things right.”  Success in life depends upon discipline, and as parents this is a skill we need to cultivate within our kids.  Discipline does not mean punishment, it means self-control to do the right things.

Working to fulfill others’ virtuous wishes

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

We watched recently a documentary about the election of Barack Obama.  It was a behind the scenes look at the people who actually ran and executed the campaign.  There were thousands of 20-somethings who volunteered themselves 15-20 hours a day over a period of 20 months to get him elected.  While they were exhausted, they felt like they were contributing to something of great meaning, they felt like they were fulfilling a higher purpose.  And so they did so joyfully and with genuine enthusiasm.  In many ways, you can say it was they who got him elected.

This reveals a great many things.  First, Obama in his previous lives must have volunteered himself smililarly hard and enthusiastically thousands and thousands of times (or perhaps once with a bodihchitta motivation, which would have the same karmic effect, such is the power of bodhichitta…) to help others fulfill their wishes.  This is what created the karma to have all these people help him.  If he didn’t have such karma, they wouldn’t have worked for him and he never would have gotten elected.  Second, when people feel like they are fulfilling a higher purpose and their project is one of great meaning, then even if they are working very hard and long hours, they do so joyfully and enthusiastically.  It is not the financial rewards or the status that motivates good people, it is the meaning of the purpose for which they work which drives them. 

So how does this then apply to us? 

  1. First, if in the future we want to accomplish the project of liberating all beings, we will need a lot of help to get the job done.  Like Obama, we will need many many volunteers who will help us out.  How do we get these volunteers?  By ourselves volunteering to help others fulfill their virtuous wishes.  If we do this with a bodhichitta motivation, understanding how our activities will benefit countless beings in countless future generations, then it karmically multiplies the value of our volunteerism.  For me personally, I have always been very bad at this.  I am happy to work on my projects, but I have always been bad about volunteering myself to help others accomplish their projects.  If I continue like this, in the future even if I have a virtuous wish, I will have nobody to help me fulfill it.
  2. In our own lives, we need to see how our activities are building towards fulfilling a higher purpose.  It is this higher purpose which will give us literally unlimited energy to work hard and keep going, and to do so enthusiastically and joyfully.  What higher purpose can there be than bodhichitta?  What higher purpose can there be than the project of building a pure land in which all living beings can take rebirth and complete the path?  If I grow tired or I lose my enthusiasm to work, it is because I have strayed from this purpose.
  3. We have an incredible opportunity to right here and right now be like a volunteer for Barack Obama, but instead of volunteering to work work to fulfill a politician’s worldly purposes (even a virtuous politican’s virtuous worldly purposes), we can volunteer to work to fulfill the living Je Tsongkhapa’s spiritual purposes in this world.  VGL’s wish and project is a ‘campaign’ to lead all beings to enlightenment.  His project is give people everything they need and to inspire them to take up the path which will permanently free them and all that they love from all suffering.  What can be more meaningful than that?  If we feel anything less than joy and enthusiasm in our work for fulfilling VGL’s wishes, it is because we do not really share them or we are not really working to fulfill his wishes, but rather our own.  If we do the work to put our mind genuinely behind this wish, then we will find literally endless energy to work continuously towards this end.  Even if our motivation is not perfect, the nature of the object towards which we work is so pure that the karma we create by volunteering ourselves is limitless. 
  4. We need to rely upon Dorje Shugden as the ‘campaign manager’, or our boss, in terms of assigning us our individual task.  The campaign manager has the big picture in mind, and his job is to assign work to the volunteers so as collectively their efforts produce the final result.  So we should request him to reveal to us and arrange the conditions for us to assume our job in the spritual campaign.  In ALL situations, our number one job is ALWAYS to gain Dharma realizations.  Externally, my current situation is I can help through caring for my family.  If I provide a good childhood for 5 kids, then I create the causes to be reborn at least five times in good families.  This will make a big difference in terms of my future.  Likewise, I am making this blog/website so that I have access to ample good teachings in the future (assuming what I have to say is good, that is!!! hee hee).  I am trying to learn how to transform a very normal life into a deep spiritual retreat, which I hope will benefit countless living beings in the future who live ‘normal’ lives.  This seems to be the conditions Dorje Shugden, my campaign manager, has arranged for me. 

Conclusion:  I need to see my living my life as my volunteering myself to fulfill the virtuous wishes of VGL in his project/campaign to liberate all living beings.  If I maintain this recognition as the purpose behind all of my actions and the context of my life, then this is the karma I will create.

Doing everything for others

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

VGL says in Eight Steps to Happiness that the path to enlightenment is very easy, all we need to do is change the object of our cherishing from self to others and everything else will come naturally.  The essence of the Mahayana path is to have our every action be for the benefit of others.  Once we have made this shift, then we naturally look for ways of increasing the quality of the benefit we bestow upon others through our actions.  The most valuable thing we can do for others is help them overcome the real cause of their problems, their delusions.  To do that, we need to gain the wisdom knowing how to overcome delusions.  We acquire that through our own practice of Dharma.  Once we have this logic, then it is just an issue of taking things to their logical conclusion.  If only Dharma realizations provide any lasting freedom or happiness, then we should not stop gaining realizations until we have gained them all – in other words, attained enlightenment.

But the linchpin to all of this process is making this change in the object of our cherishing.  It is not enough to just mentally know we should or understand this logic, we need to bring about a genuine transformation in the reason or purpose behind our every action.  Every day, no matter what our circumstances, we are engaging in actions.  The easiest and most important method for transforming our life into a retreat is to mentally do everything we are normally doing anyways, but do it mentally for the benefit of others.  If we can do this, then our transforming the rest of our life into a retreat will come naturally.  If we fail to do this, then it will be impossible to really transform our life into a retreat.  Like with the path itself, this is the key step.

In the beginning, we should not worry about trying to do our every action with a bodhichitta motivation, but even just simply train in doing our actions for the benefit of others.  We happily serve others.  So in our work, we help our boss and clients/students, at home we help our kids, with our partner we support them in their goals and help with a disproportionate share of the household work, with our friends we try help them be happy, on the road we let others go first, when we are with strangers we give them a warm and friendly smile, when we bathe we do so so others don’t have to smell our bad human odors, etc., etc., etc.  We are doing all of these things every day anyways, we just need to change our reason for doing them from doing them for our own benefit to doing them for the benefit of others.

There is no mental habit more important than this to develop.  From this mental habit, the rest will come naturally and essentially effortlessly.

Ever closer union

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

There is really only one activity on the spiritual path:  cultivate an ever closer relationship with the Spiritual Guide, in all of his forms.  How do we do this?  First, we come in contact with his teachings and start to put them into practice (Dharma).  Then, we start to develop friendships and personal relationships with others who are also practicing his teachings (Sangha).  Eventually we start to cultivate relationships with the different Buddhas, such as Je Tsongkhapa, Dorje Shugden and Heruka or Vajrayogini.  Then we receive empowerments into these deities, and train to become just like them.  Then, we start to understand how each of these deities is actually an emanation of the Spiritual Guide.  We then mix ourselves closer and closer with the Spiritual Guide, first at the level of self-generation, then at the level of mixing with his body mandala, then with his completely pure subtle body.  The nada at the middle of the subtle body is like the final conventional portal into the Dharmakaya, or his Truth Body.  A Buddha’s Truth Body is the ultimate nature of all things. The Spiritual Guide, from a practical point of view, is a portal through which all of the Buddhas express themselves in this world.  So it is perfectly correct to view all phenomena as by nature the Spiritual Guide.  Finally we realize that all of the different things we have been creating karma with, from the first teaching to the final meditations, are all by nature his emanations.  We realize every moment of every day is part of his emanations. 

The Spiritual Guide assumes countless forms according to the karmic dispositions of living beings.  Each one of these forms functions to prevent us from sinking deeper into samsara and tries to send us in the direction of enlightenment.  Every single moment of our life, every single thing that appears internally and externally is one of these forms.  Our problem is we do not realize this.  By becoming aware of this, these forms become empowered to accomplish their function.  The emanations of the spiritual guide become activated by our becoming aware of them and developing a mind of wonder at his infinite skill.

The Spiritual Guide operates on many different levels.  Functionally, there are four main levels:  the world of our normal life, the world of generation stage, the world of completion stage and the completely pure world of the Dharmakaya.  Each level is increasingly refined.  Traveling through these different stages is the path.  We get t the next level by learning how to be completely balanced with the flow of change at the previous level.  Absent that balance, we get swept away and pulled in. 

There is no relationship in the universe more important to maintain and cultivate than that with the Spiritual Guide.  The real fruit of a marriage comes from cultivating an ever deeper relationship with somebody.  Doing so requires tremendous inner work.  In exactly the same way, but at a much deeper level, the spiritual path is primarily traveled through cultivating an ever deeper relationship with the spiritual guide.  It is hard work to draw ever closer to him because it requires us to shed all that is impure and out of alignment with the way things really are and function.  But that is the whole point and that is why it works.

Since I  no longer have regular physical access to Sangha, for me this blog and my virtual spiritual activities are my main ways of creating karma with sangha.  Looking forward, it seems clear that a new world is being created, a digital world, and more and more beings will be spending more and more time in this world interacting with others in this digital world.  So just as we need to bring the Dharma into the physical world, so too we need to bring it into the digital world and learn how to practice in that world.  This blog exists on the cloud of this virtual world, and is like my digital reliquary (for whatever it is worth…  :)).

I have not been very interested in venturing onto Facebook, but I am starting to reconsider.  If the world we are moving into is a digital one.  If used correctly, Facebook is a powerful way of keeping in contact with and cultivating relationships with the people who have been important in my life.  In particular, my sangha.  I am thinking of making a “Kadam Ryan” Facebook page as a means of keeping in contact with my sangha.  Since I do not have physical access to them, I can still maintain their relationship in my life through Facebook.  In this new digital world, at least for now, Facebook is how people stay in contact with each other and how they hang out.  Just as the most important relationship to cultivate is the one with the Spiritual Guide, so too with the Sangha.  The Sangha are those other beings who are clustered around the spiritual guide.  By drawing close to them, we anchor ourselves in the karmic orbit of the guru, not only for this life but through life after life.

Making our life our retreat

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog, 4. Practicing in Daily Life

In general, the place of practice within our life goes through a progression:

  1. Before we encounter the Dharma, we simply have our life.  It is full of problems and our aspirations are generally to accomplish the things of this life (wealth, a good reputation, pleasant experiences, high position, etc.).  We pursue these things, but never really find any satisfaction or meaning. 
  2. We then find the Dharma, and at first we organize our practice around our life.  Our normal life is first and foremost, and when we have spare time or capacity, we then engage in our practice.  But it feels like our practice and our life are two different things.  We continue like this and we gain some experience of the Dharma, it starts to solve some of our problems, we start to change our outlook, and we start to make the connection between how much we practice and how happy we are.
  3. We then organize our life around our practice.  We realize that our practice is the way to solve our problems and to be happy.  Doing our practice is as essential to our day as taking a shower or eating.  Just as we clean and nourish our body, so too we need to clean and nourish our mind with our practice.  We realize that our practice is actually the most important thing we do in our day and in our life, and that through it we can manage the rest of our life.  But there still feels like there is a gap between our life and our practice.  We practice to be able to survive in our life.
  4. We then make our practice our life.  Here we make the central focus of what we do in our life to be directly doing practice related things.  We directly engage in Dharma activities as the main activity of our life.  This can take the form of working for a center, being a Resident Teacher, or generally working to help spread the Dharma.  We see no point in worldly life and we make Dharma activities our life.  This stage is still characterized by some grasping at inherently worldly life and inherently spiritual life, and so we reject the former and do the latter.  Sometimes this stage is also combined with some pride in the ‘spiritual life’ we have chosen and we look down on those who are still doing worldly life. 
  5. We then make our life our practice.  Here we realize that all situations are equally empty, therefore all situations provide an equal opportunity to practice Dharma.  We abandon the grasping at the distinction between worldly activities and spiritual activities.  If we have a mind of practice, then everything we do becomes our practice; if we have a worldly mind, then everything we do becomes worldly.  This is equally true regardless of whether our life is occupied with Dharma activities or with conventionally worldly activities.  We realize that in the previous stage we were a bit tending towards the extreme of spirituality and as such were not ‘normal’.  But we also realize that it was OK to be like that.  But at this stage, the duality between our life and our practice is essentially gone.  Everything we do in our life is our practice and our practice is everything we do in our life.  The essential meaning of Dharma practice is to train our mind, and our life simply provides us with the external context for doing so.  We realize we can simultaneously live a completely normal life and a completely spiritual life and there is no contradiction whatsoever between the two.  This does not mean we necessarily abandon making Dharma activities the central activities of our life.  It is perfectly possible for somebody to continue to directly engage in Dharma activities of teaching, working for centers, etc., as the main activity of their life, but they do so with a different mind and point of view.  But some others might experience a rebalancing of the activities of their life where they more resemble the norm of what people do in this world (work, family, etc.).
  6. We then make our life our retreat.  Amongst the modes of engaging in Dharma practices, retreat is the highest form.  When we are on retreat, we leave all worldly activities completely behind and allow ourselves to focus exclusively on our practice.  We stive to have 100% of our bodily, verbal and mental energies single pointedly focused on training our mind in the Dharma.  Just as before we overcame the perceived duality between our life and our practice, on this stage we overcome the perceived duality between our practice and our retreat.  Once again, since all situations are equally empty, with a “mind of retreat” every moment can equally be our retreat.  All duality between our life, our practice and our retreat are completely dissolved and we feel directly and simultaneously:  (1) our life is our practice of retreat, (2) our practice is our life of retreat, (3) our practice is our retreat of life, and (4) our retreat is our practice of life.  Each one of these four recognitions are experienced simultaneously as different aspects of the same mind.  This does not mean there will not be times when we engage in traditional retreat, rather it means that when we do so it will just be a different phase or iteration of one uninterrupted continuum of our life as retreat. 

Spiritual principles for approaching one’s career choices

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

In the course of a professional career, one faces many choices.  The question is how to make good professional choices in a spiritual way.  In many parts of the world, especially old Asia, spiritual life and professional life are conceived of as mutually exclusive.  Part of bringing the ancient wisdom of Kadampa Buddhism into the modern world is overcoming this false duality.  Every professional situation is different, but certain principles can help guide us in making spiritually and professionally good choices.

  1. Our main focus should be skill-building.  Every job we do provides an opportunity to develop within ourselves further skills.  Heruka, the principal deity of Keajra, is the Spiritual Father of all beings, a Chakravatin (Universal) King and the principal deity of the body mandala (essentially the supreme spiritual doctor for all beings).  Therefore, to become a good principal deity you need to cultivate within yourself all of the skills of being an enlightened father, leader and doctor.  So in our work, our main focus should be on cultivating these skills within ourselves.  The substantive knowledge we acquire is transient and generally is only useful in our present job, but the skills we build within ourselves we take with ourselves from job to job (or assignment to assignment).  The more skills we acquire in our present job the more successful we will be in all of our future jobs and the more we build up to being a good principal deity of our future pure land.
  2. Do not just report, be an agent of change.  Many many jobs have a reporting dimension where we are to report to our supervisors what is going on so that they can make informed and intelligent decisions about what to do.  This is a very important function, and one we should strive to do diligently, thoroughly and objectively.  We should provide for our supervisors the quality of information we would want if we were the ones having to make the decisions.  Providing reporting is good, but providing quality analysis is better.  We are hired to not just report what is going on, but we need to also provide the analytical insights which help the person understand the dynamics at play in the situation.  Analysis is good, practical recommendations are better.  We should never just come to our supervisors with a problem, we need to come to them with a solution to that problem.  We were hired to lighten the work load of our supervisors, not add to it.  Coming to them with just problems adds to their work load and runs counter to their purpose in hiring us.  Coming with the solution lightens their load.  But a bodhisattva goes beyond all of that.  The distinguishng characteristic of a bodhisattva is superior intention, or the assumption of personal responsibility for the solution to the problems you have identified and analyzed.  You should ask only from your boss permission to implement yourself the solution you have identified to the problems you have analyzed from having objectively investigated the situation you are to report on.  Your work has certain policy priorities, your job is to actualize those priorities.  Reporting is good, analyzing is better, recommending adds value, solving problems yourself is fulfilling.  Do not just be a reporting officer, be an action officer.  Do not just be an action officer, be an activist.  Do not just call on others to change things, become an agent of change yourself.
  3. First do exceedingly well whatever you have been assigned, then go beyond that.  Some people don’t like the work they have been assigned, so they do everything they can to avoid it.  But you have been hired to do that task, so if you avoid it you are not doing your job and will certainly never succeed in a professional context.  One of the commitments of training the mind is to not pass your burden onto others.  You need to assume first and foremost responsibility for what you have been assigned.  As my Grandma says, ‘a job worth doing is a job worth doing well.’  So you need to do what you have been assigned, and you need to do it well.  Other people do their jobs but are unwilling to go beyond their job descriptions with the ever so useful retort “not my job.”  This is a laziness and professionally self-defeating.  As bodhisattvas, our goal is to become the solution to all of the problems of all living beings for all of their lives.  So we should constantly seek to expand the envelope of the problems we seek to solve.  We should work outwards in concentric circles, first solve the problems for which we have been hired, then solve the situations which create the problems for which we have been hired, and so forth working outwards.  This will both be seen as us doing our job and going beyond our job.  It is the willingness and ability to do the extra that will enable us to progress professionally as well as personally as we assume more and more responsibility.
  4. Head straight for the biggest problems your work has to face, both in the short-term and more importantlyin  the long-term.  Often we want to avoid the biggest problems because we are either lazy or we lack confidence in our ability to tackle such problems.  But we will never build our pure land if we indulge ourselves in our laziness and we will never grow in capacity if we do not force ourselves to rise to the occasion.  A bodhisattva plunges straight into the biggest problems because that is where he or she can add the most value.  Again, it is an issue of assuming personal responsibility for the biggest problems in our world.  Being a first responder to crises is very noble and valuable, working to avert long-run problems is more subtle and often goes unrecognized (noone ever sees or appreciates the solution to problems which never materialized) but it is a higher purpose.  If you think long-term about things you will gain the skills now to be able to effectively respond to the problems of tomorrow when they come.  Then, even if the problem is not averted (best outcome) you are best prepared to rise to the challenge when the problem does manifest in the future.
  5. Seek  to do the work that looks most interesting to you, not what you think you need to do to get ahead.  If you find it interesting, you will enjoy it.  If you enjoy it, you will do it well.  If you do it well, you will succeed.  In this way, you will both enjoy your professional life and succeed at it.  Doing what you think you need to do to get ahead is a deceptive strategy.  First, you are likely to not enjoy the job itself (and so you will do a bad job and impress nobody, so you will likely not get the career boost you are hoping for).  Second, even if you do a good job, the career boost you were hoping for might not come at which point you will be disappointed.  Third, even if the career boost comes, it will boost you further in a direction of doing something you don’t want to do because you now possess greater skills and experiences in a field or domain you do not like.
  6. Be flexible and willing to do whatever the situation requires.  Nobody likes people who are rigid as they just create more work for everyone else.  Everybody appreciates somebody who never complains and is willing to be a team player and do whatever is required.
  7. Serve others in everything that you do – always.  You should never work for your own purposes, but always be seeking to fullfill others’ (virtuous) purposes.  Everything you do, you should do for others.  We are here to serve, we should be a servant to others.  Service to others is the highest calling and the real purpose of both our professional and spiritual lives.

The final, fundamental reason for all that we do

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

All of our experiences arise from our karma.  What creates karma is ultimately our mental actions, and of these it is our mental intention that is the most important.  All of our actions ultimately arise from our mental intentions.  Our mental intention is primarily about ‘why’ we do things.  For each of our actrions, we may have many reasons why we do them.  The more spiritually mature our “why” is, the more spiritually beneficial our action will be. 

The most spiritually advanced “why” for all of our actions is bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha so that we can lead all beings to enlightenment.  Our job as an aspiring bodhisattva is to make bodhichitta our final, fundamental reason for all that we do.  If we can do this, then every moment of our entire life will become part of our path to enlightenment.

Practically speaking, bodhichitta is about improving our personal qualities so that we can be of better service to others.  We need to train ourselves to be able to help others even more.  The best way to help anybody is to help them along the spiritual path because only this can help them in this and all of their future lives.  But to be able to help others along the spiritual path requires tremendous skill, wisdom and social ability. 

How can we acquire this skill, wisdom and social ability?  By living our normal lives with a bodhichitta motivation.  The fundamental reason “why” we do everything we do should be to train ourselves.  If we wish to gain wisdom from a situation, that is what we will find.  If we wish to improve our social skills in a situation, that is what we will do.  We acquire this skill, wisdom and social ability with the intention of later putting it to use in helping guide people along the spiritual path.  If this is our intention for what we do, then the karma we will create will ripen in the future in the form of opportunities to use these skills and wisdoms to help people along the path. 

For me, for example, my job is to be a diplomat.  From an ordinary perspective, the final result of the diplomatic path is to become an Ambassador.  But what is a spiritual guide in this world?  Conventionally, they are an Ambassador for all of the Buddhas.  They have come into this world, but they are not of this world.  They come into this world to represent their country, namely the Pure Land.  So when I do my work, I try have this be my fundamental reason why I do everything I do.  I am acquiring the skills of being an effective Ambassador so that I may one day become an Ambassador of all of the Buddhas.  Seeing these connections enables me to simultaneously do a really good job at my work and at the same time make my work part of my bodhisattva path. 

We can do the same with any job, viewing it as a training opportunity to acquire the skills we will need to be an effective spiritual guide in the future.

Emptiness and responsibility, part 4

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Ultimate stages of the path

In this final post of this series, I will try explain how I practice in the meditation break what I consider to be the most profound part of emptiness, namely how all phenomena are by nature mind.

First, what does it mean to say that all phenomena are mere karmic appearances “of mind”?  “Of mind” means that the conventional nature of all phenomena is mind.  The term “by nature” in a Dharma context roughly means “made of”, or “substance.”  In other words, all conventional objects are “made of” or are comprised of the “substance” of mind.  The nature of a gold coin is the gold, and its aspect is that of a coin.  In the final view of emptiness, we go one step further saying that objects are not just by nature mind, they are by nature our very subtle mind of great bliss.  It even goes one step further, by saying the ultimate nature of all objects is the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss.  The emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss is like the gold of the gold coin of all phenomena.  Put in other terms, the emtpiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss is like the Play Dough that gets shaped in the apsect of each and every object.  Just as you cannot separate the coin from the gold or the object from its underlying Play Dough, so too you cannot separate any object from its ultimate nature of the emptiness of our mind of great bliss. 

So how do I practice this knowledge in the meditation break?  First, I try train myself where I remember this wisdom every time I look at an object.  For example, I know with certainty that the World Trade Center is no longer in New York.  So when I see an old picture of the NYC skyline, the mere appearance of the World Trade Center buildings instantly reminds me that they are no longer there.  In the same way, I know for certain (intellectually at least) that all phenomena are nothing other than mere karmic appearances of mind, so the very appearance of any object “actually being there” reminds me that in reality nothing is actually there and it is just the emptiness of my very subtle mind assuming the form of (disguised as) the object.  Like any subject, the more I remind myself of the meaning of emptiness, the more familiar I become with this wisdom, and the more deeply I undestand and the more easily I remember it in a virtuous cycle. 

The second way I practice this is I try stop thinking of myself as somehow separate from everything, but rather to consider Ryan as merely a single wave on the ocean of my the emptiness of my very subtle mind of great bliss.  We naturally identify with our mind.  If we see all of reality as being by nature our mind, we start to identify ourselves as being the nature of everything.  Put another way, we see the entire universe as being by nature us.  I cease to be just Ryan and instead I feel as if I am the ocean of everything.  Every single phenomena is a wave on the ocean of my mind.  Samsara is my mind in the aspect of a turbulant, uncontrolled stormy ocean.  The pure land of my self-generation practice is my mind in the aspect of Keajra (Heruka’s pure land).  This is why it is called a “yoga” of self-generation.  In normal yoga, we put our body in certain positions (sometimes strange and uncomfortable positions) and then hold that positition and learn to relax into it.  In the same way, in our self-generation practice, we put all of our mind into the “mental position” or shape of Keajra, and then hold that position and learn to relax into it.    By adopting this ocean view, the duality between ourselves and all phenomena falls away and we experience reality as if all phenomena were inseparably one (and this oneness is ourselves).

On the basis of this experience, all of the vast path of Sutra comes effortlessly.  In says in the Lamrim texts that bodhichitta, or the wish to become a Buddha so as to lead all beings to freedom, is the quintessential butter that comes from churning all of the Dharma.  When I see all phenomena, which includes all other living beings, as waves on the ocean of my very subtle mind, each and every being becomes an aspect or a part or a limb of me.  This doesn’t mean all beings are parts of Ryan, rather it means Ryan is just one aspect or part or limb or wave of the bigger me which is the ocean of my mind.  The same is then true of all other beings – each is a wave, but we are all by nature the same ocean.  There is nothing about the Ryan wave that is more important than any other wave.  So just as I strongly wish for the Ryan wave to never again experience suffering and to attain enlightenment, so too I naturally wish for every other wave to attain the same state.  If all of my body were in acid, but my nose was not, my nose would not be satisfied with this!  I would want all of myself to be free.  Bodhichitta becomes not some distant mind, but it becomes an issue of simple complete self-preservation.  If I am no longer just Ryan, but am instead the ocean of all living beings, since I naturally wish for myself to be free, if I am all living beings then wishing for my true self to be completely free is the same thing as wishing all beings were free, and vice versa.  I naturally then feel a feeling of deep and natural responsibility for the welfare and freedom of everyone. 

This post is already too long, but I will just throw out one last way in which I try practice this.  The practice of pure view is a mental ‘yoga.’  I put my mind in the mental position or shape of viewing myself and all beings as being already Buddhas in the pure land and then I engage in the mental action of believing this to be true.  This mental action actually functions to re-shape the Play Dough of my mind into this new aspect.  Each time I engage in this action, I plant the karma on my mind which when it ripens causes the ocean of my mind to take on the form or aspect of the pure land.  With enough training and enough familiarity, the shape of my mind is gradually transformed from samsara into the pure land.  Both are the same nature of the emptiness of my very subtle mind of great bliss (equality of samsara and nirvana), but one is by nature suffering and the other is by nature great bliss.  Bliss is better!  🙂