Author: Kadampa Ryan

Our outer job, our inner job, our real job

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Every moment of every day we engage in action.  Since we currently have a precious human life, our goal should be to engage in the most karmically beneficial actions we can.  The highest actions we can engage in are those which function to transform ourselves into the gateway through which all beings can attain enlightenment (transform our root mind into a Buddha’s pure land).

Since we live in a modern world, we must work.  Even if we don’t have a formal job, we all ‘work’ in the world in some form or another.  This work is our outer job.  The more we help others, the more virtuous our outer job is.  We can make our outer job, even the most mundane of outer jobs, into a virtuous job by viewing our work through the lens of how what we do helps others.  Our outer job also enables us to maintain the material conditions of our practice and they enable us to create good conditions for others (such as providing for our family).  

There is no contradiction between pursuing a normal career and dedicating 100% of one’s life to the practice of Dharma.  If we are to gain the realizations the people of this modern world need, then we must externally adopt lives similar to theirs – and that means working, having a family, etc.  Learning how to live their lives as the spiritual path will give us the wisdom we need to be able to help the people in this world find meaning and happiness in their lives.  Our inner job is to do precisely this.

Each outer situation will induce within us a different set of delusions – sometimes attachment, sometimes anger or frustration, sometimes despondency, sometimes jealousy, etc.  Our inner job is to learn how to relate to each one of these outer situations in the least deluded and the most wise/virtuous way possible. 

If we rely completely upon the Dharma Protector, he will arrange things so that every moment of our lives is emanated by him for our practice.  Through relying upon him, everything that happens to us, the good and the bad, is exactly what we need to take the next step in our spiritual journey.  We can view what happens to us as the spiritual exercises or homework that our personal Dharma trainer gives us so that we can advance to the next level of our spiritual training. 

The sole objective of the Protector is to transform us into the Buddha we need to become.  He knows the beings with whom we have the karma to lead them to enlightenment.  He knows what wisdom they will need on their spiritual journey.  Knowing this, he gives us now the problems and life experiences that they will have in the future so that we can gain now the wisdom realizations we need to later be able to explain to them how to transform their lives into the path.  Viewed in this way, we realize how every life event is not only exactly what we need for our own training, but it is also perfect for giving us the ability to help others in similar situations in the future.  This recognition alone gives great meaning and purpose to every moment of our life.  Living our life in this way is our inner job.

Our real job, then, as Modern Kadampas is to unite our outer and inner job so that every moment and every action, both outer and inner, takes us in a singular direction towards our final spiritual goal – the enlightenment of all.  The method by which we can unite completely these two goals is externally we continually strive to help as many people as our karma allows and internally we continually strive to respond to the events of our life with as much wisdom and virtue as our realizations allow.  In short, as the Old Kadampas would say, we “harm our delusions as much as possible and help others as much as possible.” 

By continuing to ambitiously pursue both our outer and inner careers in this way they will eventually unite into one.  When we experience our life in this way, we will have the immense satisfaction which comes from fulfilling our life’s purpose and not wasting a single moment along the way.

You don’t have to beat yourself up to change

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

The entire spiritual path is a process of abandoning our faults and cultivating our good qualities.  The approach we take to doing this determines whether our spiritual path is a “joyful” one or a miserable one.  Due to conditioning from our childhood and society, we have a bad habit of beating ourselves up and making ourselves feel bad about ourselves due to our faults, believing this is the way to get ourselves to change.  Such an approach is completely self-defeating.  Instead, we need to motivate ourselves positively by feeling good about aspiring to doing things right and living up to higher principles of wisdom.  In short, we need to “identify with becoming better,” and live out that narrative.  Likewise, with others in our life, we need to stop trying to change others by making them feel bad about themselves and instead we should see them as “becoming better,” and we should encourage them to continue in that sense by helping them feel good about themselves for the fact that they are getting better.

One of the main obstacles to people embarking upon and progressing along the spiritual path is they don’t have a healthy way of relating to their own faults.  Our parents quite often used “guilt trips” or made us feel bad about ourselves as a means of getting us to change.  It is not their fault that they did this, since that is how all of society is programmed.  We often get such negative reinforcement in school, at work, amongst our friends, etc.  So when we start on the spiritual path and we learn what the correct and perfect ways of doing things are, we realize how far we are from that ideal.  It is almost as if the more Dharma we learn, the more we realize we are a total failure, and we beat ourselves up more and more.  This is a very common “Dharma neurosis.”  We even think if only we beat ourselves up enough, then we will get ourselves to change.

But the reality is such an approach not only makes us miserable and feel bad about ourselves, but it actually blocks our change.  When we feel bad about ourselves, we feel like we cannot do anything right.  Changing ourselve is the hardest thing we will ever do in life, and when we feel like we can’t do anything right we destroy our own confidence in our ability to change and we destroy our capacity to do so by beating ourselves up.  Guilt is anger towards ourselves.  Anger seeks to harm the object of our anger.  When the object of our anger is ourselves, we harm ourselves and therefore undermine our own capacity to change.  When we then try to change, but fail to do so, we really then feel like a total failure and lose all hope.  We then beat ourselves up even more in a vicious cycle.  There is no bottom to this pit or end to this process.   It ends in suicide.

Instead, we need to motivate ourselves by “feeling good about getting better.”  We need to let go of identifying with our faults and with being a failure, and instead choose to identify with “somebody getting better with effort.”  We should take the time to identify and rejoice in our little successes, and to see how, even though we still have a long way to do, we are heading in the right direction.  Our bad habits are just that – bad habits, they are not intrinsic parts of ourselves.  We are not our faults, we are rather somebody shedding all that isn’t us.  When we identify with “getting better” we enter into a virtuous cycle of feeling good about ourselves, which increases our confidence and capacity, which then enables us to change ourselves even more.  It is not arrogance to identify with getting better because we are honestly acknowledging our faults, but are at the same time confident in our ability to overcome them with effort.

We also need to be very careful that we don’t try change others by making them feel bad about themselves.  This is an easy trap to fall into, especially with those in our family or those who work for us.  Because we do this to ourselves, we do it to others.  I have a terrible habit of doing this with those I love.  The fundamental reason why is because I have aversion to being around people with faults.  But how can one be a bodhisattva, somone committed to help all beings overcome all of their faults, if we can’t stand being around people who have faults?!?  It is a total contradiction.  Because it bothers me that they have faults, I get upset at them for having them.  I focus only on what they do wrong because that is what bothers me.  Because I focus only on what they do wrong, they too see within themselves only what they do wrong.  Because I don’t like that in them, they don’t like it in themselves.  Because I am, even if only mentally, beating them up about their faults, they too then start beating themselves up about their faults.  They then enter into the guilt traps described above.  They become worse, I get more frustrated and we all feed off of each other in a negative way.  It is very unhealthy and most unhelpful.

When instead I see them as “somebody getting better” and I help them see that in themselves, then they can identifywith  themselves as “somebody getting better” and feel good about themselves.

So both with ourselves and with those around us, we need to stop beating ourselves or others up over our faults, but rather identify with “getting better.”  This one simple change will transform our spiritual path from one of self-flaggelation to one of moving from joy to joy.

A master narrative for your spiritual life

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

The purpose of this blog is to share my experience of practicing the Kadampa instructions in the context of my formal Dharma practice, my personal life and my professional life in the hopes that it may prove helpful to others seeking to transform their modern lives into the path to enlightenment.  At a personal level, doing this blog helps me crystalize my own thoughts about the Dharma by putting it into writing and it helps me bring my bodhichitta (the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of all) alive.  How so?  At a practical level, the bodhisattva path is the improving of oneself for the benefit of others, in particular the process of gaining Dharma realizations so that we can help others do the same.  By doing this blog, I can view each moment of my normal modern life as an opportunity to gain spiritual realizations which I can then share with those who read this blog.  It gives purpose to each moment of my life:  I must learn how to transform each moment so that I can help others in similar situations do the same. 

 

The starting point of transforming every moment of our life into the path is to have a unifying narrative that binds every aspect of our life together into a common purpose, or more specifically, project.  In this way, everything we do is directed at and contributes to this singular purpose/project.  If we can accomplish this, then not a single moment of our life will be wasted.  For me, this singular project is “to build my pure land.”  At a very profound level, the project is to transform myself into my pure land.  What is a pure land?  A pure land is a realm emanated by a Buddha within which living beings can take rebirth and enter, progress along and complete the path to enlightenment.  Quite simply, it can be thought of as a bodhisattva’s training camp.  For maximum benefit, this pure land must pervade the entire universe and function to lead all beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment. 

 

The two characteristics of a pure land is there is no manifest suffering and everything functions as a cause of one’s enlightenment.  Suffering is ultimately a state of mind that is dispelled by the wisdom knowing how to accept and use painful experiences for our spiritual advancement.  Thus, the difference between living in samsara, or a world of suffering, and living in a pure land is our knowing how to use every experience, painful or otherwise, for spiritual development.  With such wisdom, we will be able to enjoy every experience as fuel pushing us towards enlightenment, and from an experiential point of view, it will be as if we are in a pure land.

 

A modern Kadampa life has three main spheres:  our formal Dharma practice, our personal life and our professional life.  This is true for all Kadampas, not just those who are lay practitioners.  A Resident Teacher living in a center, for example, still has their own family and many friendships and engages in all sorts of professional activities in the running of a center.  If the unifying project of our life is to build our pure land, how then do we accomplish this project in these three spheres?  In our formal Dharma practice, we strive to transform ourselves into the Yidam.  In our personal life, we strive to transform ourselves into the Guru.  And in our professional life, we strive to transform ourselves into the Protector.  In this context, the Yidam, or personal deity, is the supreme spiritual doctor who heals the suble body, speech and mind of all living beings.  The Guru is the supreme spiritual father (or mother as the case may be) and friend of all living beings who leads all living beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  The Protector is the supreme spiritual servant-king who forever and always arranges all the outer and inner conditions so that everything is perfect for the swiftest possible enlightenment of everyone.  Practically speaking, this means in our formal Dhama practice, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spiritual doctor.  In our personal lives, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spirutal father and friend.  And in our professional lives, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spiritual servant-king.  If we can do this, then our entire life will be integrated into our spiritual path, bringing both meaning to every moment and unwavering progress towards the final goal.  Over time, these three spheres will merge into one and we will become the embodiment of guru, Yidam and protector liberating all beings in our pure land.  We will have completed the path.

 

Some people mistakenly believe that certain life contexts, such as being ordained in a center doing formal Dharma activities all of the time, are more conducive to enlightenment than other life contexts.  As a result of this ignorance, they either become dissatisfied with the life that they have or they judge others who are pursuing a way of life different than their own.  The reality is all situations are equally empty, in other words created by mind, and so all situations are equally transformable into the quick path to enlightenment.  This blog will attempt to share my personal expereince of being a Kadampa Working Dad as my quick path to enlightenment.  Hopefully the lessons learned will prove beneficial to all Kadampas, working parents or otherwise.  It is my hope that through sharing this experience others can learn from my mistakes and that I can live up to my bodhichitta wishes.  Enjoy!

Faith, emptiness and Dorje Shugden

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Understanding and realizing emptiness is the gateway to infinite faith.  Why?  Ignorance, at its root, believes that things are outside of our control, they are independent of the mind and have nothing to do with the mind.  They function autonomously.  If this is the case, then our mental requests to Dorje Shugden can accomplish nothing because things operate outside of our (and his) control.  If we grasp at him as being inherently existent, then we too can’t connect with him in any way.

But if everything is projection of mind, then everything arises from mind and our karma.  Whether everything in this world is a condition for falling deeper into samsara or a condition for our enlightenment becomes changeable and entirely dependent upon our mind.  If all is empty, including Dorje Shugden himself, then I can request that he take control literally of the entire universe – everything that happens to every being.  None of it is outside of my mind, therefore I have access to and can influence everything.  By making the request “may everything that appears to every being become a perfect cause of their enlightenment”, then, since the whole world is arising from my karma, Dorje Shugden can enter into and take control of absolutely everything and direct everything towards this end – for myself and for each and every being in my karmic dream. 

If I understand this and have faith that not only he can do this, but he HAS done this (all the attainments I desire arise from merely remembering you), then I will gain the wisdom blessings which reveal to me directly how everything is in fact perfect for the enlightenment of every other living being.  Then, instead of living in and seeing a samsara, I will be abiding in and enjoying a pure land.  For myself, everything will teach to me the truth of Dharma.  For others, everything will be a cause of their enlightenment, as it would be in a pure land.  For myself helping others, I will see directly how their conditions are perfect and so I can share with them my point of view – how I see things.  I explain to them why and how things are perfect.  By sharing this with them, they can come to likewise adopt this point of view, see how their conditions are perfect, they can then accept them, be happy with them, and enjoy them as perfect conditions.  In this way, I can solve all of my own and ohters problems.

Fantastic!