Author: Kadampa Ryan

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Enjoying ourselves without guilt

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.91) Transient pleasures, such as drinking and playing meaningless games,
Are deceptive.
If I understand the real meaning of a human life,
Such things will have no value for me.

We need to personally look at our worldly concerns for happiness, wealth, reputation, praise and so forth and think about how we can reduce, finally destroy such concerns.  Our attachment to worldly pleasure prevents us from striving for the happiness of future lives, happiness of liberation, happiness of enlightenment. We’re more concerned for temporary, immediate happiness. And so we waste our human life. We waste our precious human life. We are no different from animals.  It matters to us, doesn’t it, that we are able to experience pleasure daily. It’s important to us.  A pure Dharma practitioner is only concerned about what causes they are creating.  What effects they are experiencing is just the context in which they can create causes. 

We distract ourselves with worldly enjoyments. Sometimes Dharma practitioners feel they can’t enjoy themselves as much as they used to or we feel guilty when we do worldly things. We must be skillful – we cannot drop immediately all worldly concerns so that tomorrow we find ourselves with none.  That is unrealistic. We must be skillful with how we approach worldly concerns.  The correct model should be a child outgrowing their toys.  Because we have found better things within our mind, we gradually lose interest in our old things.  They don’t work for us because we have seen through their illusion.  The trick to abandoning any attachment is to realize how it is in fact harmful to us.  How it pretends to be beneficial, but with Dharma wisdom we understand it is harmful.  Then we will naturally not be as interested in it anymore until eventually we abandon it. 

But at the same time, if we’re ever going to stop we have to make effort and try find our happiness from a different source, our enjoyment from a different source – from our pure mind.  If we can do this, then we can enjoy everything.  The more we build up the alternative, the more it becomes effortless to become a spiritual being and to abandon our attachments.  But to get to this point, we need to make an effort.  If we don’t, we will never get there and we will always be struggling with ourselves.  The main point of renunciation is we realize that there is nothing for us in the non-existent dream, and we don’t look for it because we know it is not there.  Rather we look in a different source, the development of pure minds.  This doesn’t mean we don’t still go out to dinner or movies, or play games with our friends or on the computer, it means we try do so emphasizing our pure reasons for doing so and minimizing our worldly reasons for doing so.  Eventually, some activities will fall by the wayside, others will continue.  No problem, very natural.  Again, as Geshe Checkhawa ways, “remain natural while changing your aspiration.

Happy Tara Day: Getting to know our spiritual mother

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days, How to Rely Upon Tara, Tara Days

The eighth of every month is Tara Day.  Geshe-la once said during a commentary to Tara practice that, “we should make our own commentary” based on our experience.  As my offering to her and to help celebrate her day and to deepen my own relationship with her, over the next twelve months, I will provide my own understanding of the practice Liberation from Sorrow.  Nothing I say should be taken as definitive in any way, I am simply sharing my personal experience of this practice.  I hope others might also share their own experience and understandings of the practice in the comments.  Then, we can all learn from each other.

In the introduction to the Sadhana, Geshe-la says:

Tara is a female Buddha, a manifestation of the ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas. Each of the Twenty-one Taras is a manifestation of the principal Tara, Green Tara. Tara is also known as the ‘Mother of the Conquerors’.

The ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas is the wisdom directly realizing the emptiness of all phenomena.  Sometimes we think of emptiness as a state that somehow exists on it’s own – everything is empty – but in reality, it does not exist without a mind realizing it.  Emptiness is also dependent upon the mind realizing it, and so is also empty.  Tara is a being who has imputed her “I” onto the ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas – she is this ultimate wisdom.  She appears in the aspect of the twenty-one Taras, just like a single diamond can have twenty-one facets to it.  All other Buddhas arise from her ultimate wisdom, just as waves arise from an ocean.  In this sense, she is the Mother of all the Buddhas – they literally emerge from her, she gives birth to them all.

Tara is our common mother, our Holy Mother. When we are young we turn to our worldly mother for help. She protects us from immediate dangers, provides us with all our temporal needs, and guides and encourages us in our learning and personal development. In the same way, during our spiritual growth we need to turn to our Holy Mother, Tara, for refuge. She protects us from all internal and external dangers, she provides us with all the necessary conditions for our spiritual training, and she guides us and inspires us with her blessings as we progress along the spiritual path.

Our spiritual life can begin at any point in our life, sometimes when we are young or sometimes when we are older; but in either case, Tara is our spiritual mother.  She cares for us in the earliest stages of our spiritual life, nurturing it to make sure we eventually ripen into an independent, functioning spiritual adult able to sustain our practice on our own for the rest of our life.  This is why it is especially important for new practitioners to take Tara practice as their main deity practice.  Establishing an early relationship with Tara will ensure that we ripen onto the math in a mature and stable way.  All we need to do is put our faith in her and request that she nurture our spiritual life into spiritual adulthood.

In some New Age circles, they talk about us choosing our parents in this life.  Generally speaking, according to the Kadampa teachings at least, we are trapped in samsara, which means we necessarily take uncontrolled rebirth.  We did not “choose” our parents, we we karmically thrown into rebirth as their child.  It is true that we may have generated attachment for our mother as she was engaging in intercourse with our father, but that is quite different from “choosing” our mother.  Despite this, through reliance upon Tara in this life, we can choose to have her as our spiritual mother in all of our future lives.  The paths of future lives are very uncertain and samsara’s distractions and deceptions are endless, but our spiritual mother can care for us and guide us to the spiritual path, help us enter it, and then once again ripen us into spiritual adulthood.  People buy insurance policies all the time to protect themselves against eventualities.  Reliance upon Tara is like a spiritual insurance policy for making sure we once again find and enter the path in all of our future lives until we attain enlightenment.  Every day, I pray, “May Guru Tara be my eternal mother in all my future lives.” 

Tara’ means ‘Rescuer’. She is so called because she rescues us from the eight outer fears (the fears of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, bondage and evil spirits), and from the eight inner fears (the fears of pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, wrong views, attachment, miserliness and deluded doubts). Temporarily Tara saves us from the dangers of rebirth in the three lower realms, and ultimately she saves us from the dangers of samsara and solitary peace.

There is a close relationship between the eight outer fears and the eight inner fears – indeed, the eight inner fears create the eight outer fears.  The eight outer fears are not just literal lions, elephants, snakes, and so forth.  Rather, these animals are symbolic of types of outer circumstances which give rise to fear.  Through relying upon Tara, we pacify the eight inner fears, and as a result we no longer fear the eight outer fears.

For example, pride is a mind that thinks we are better than we actually are, or that takes some characteristic we have about ourselves and generates a feeling of superiority over others due to this trait.  Lion-like outer fears are situations that call our exalted view of ourselves into question.  We fear others criticizing us or discovering that we are a fraud.  We try exert our domination or superiority over others and feel threatened by those who challenge our authority or position.  All of the outer things we fear as threats to our status, reputation, or position are fearful to us only because we have the inner fear of pride.

Ignorance has two types, conventional ignorance of not knowing what to do and ultimate ignorance of not knowing how things truly exist.  People’s lives are plagued by the elephant of insecurity and uncertainty.  We don’t know what the day will bring, and we have no idea what karma will ripen.  To try control against these fears, we try gain control and reduce uncertainty, and we fear anything that could increase our insecurity or uncertainty.  All of our outer fears associated with insecurity and uncertainty come from the inner fear of conventional ignorance.  If we knew clearly what objects are to be abandoned and what objects are to be attained, we would not fear an uncertain world because we would always know what to do and how to respond.  We would have confidence in the laws of karma that if we responded wisely to whatever arises, our karmic circumstance would definitely get better, so we would fear nothing.  Further, ultimately, the only reason why we fear anything is because we still grasp at things existing from their own side, independently of our mind as causes of our happiness or suffering.  But if we understood that everything depends upon how we look at it and everything can be transformed into a cause of our enlightenment, we would quite literally have nothing to fear at all.  Thus, eliminating the inner fear of ignorance removes all of our outer fears.

All of the other outer fears are likewise born from the inner fears of anger, jealousy, wrong views, attachment, miserliness, and deluded doubts.  We can think about all of the things that give rise to our anger, jealousy, wrong views, attachment, miserliness, and deluded doubts.  Normally we view these things as our “problems” because they give rise to feelings in our mind.  But if we eliminated these delusions from our mind, then we would no longer have outer fears.

If we rely upon Mother Tara sincerely and with strong faith, she will protect us from all obstacles and fulfil all our wishes. Since she is a wisdom Buddha, and since she is a manifestation of the completely purified wind element, Tara is able to help us very quickly. If we recite the twenty-one verses of praise, we shall receive inconceivable benefits. These praises are very powerful because they are Sutra, the actual words of Buddha. It is good to recite them as often as we can.

The power of any Buddha to help us depends almost entirely upon the strength of our faith.  Faith is like electricity for our spiritual life.  The entire modern world would come to a screeching halt without electricity, in the same way our spiritual life is inert without the electricity of faith.  Faith can also be likened to our sails, and the Buddhas blessings to winds filling our sails.  If our sails are raised and aligned with the pure winds of the Buddhas, we will be blown swiftly towards enlightenment.  Tara is the completely purified wind element, which means the winds of her blessings are particularly powerful and swift.  Through generating faith in her, we will enjoy all of the benefits and protections explained in the sadhana.  Through faith in her, we will come to feel her presence in our life and enjoy her protection, which will increase our faith further in her in a self-fulfilling cycle of enlightenment.

Happy Heruka and Vajrayogini Month: May the Dakinis Forever Dance in your Subtle Body

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

Every January is Heruka and Vajrayogini Month when the blessings of the Dakas and Dakinis are particularly powerful.  Traditionally, Kadampa practitioners do long retreats related to their Heruka and Vajrayogini practice during this month to take advantage of these special blessings.  If we can, it is a good idea to do retreat during this month, but even if we are not able to, there are many other things we can do to increase our familiarity with our highest yoga tantra practices.

Why do we need to practice Tantra?

Buddha’s instructions can be divided into two categories, Sutra and Tantra.  Sutra teachings are primarily about learning how to control, meditate with, and purify our gross levels of mind.  Tantra is primarily about learning how to do these things with our subtle and very subtle levels of mind.  Our gross minds arise from our subtle minds, and our subtle minds arise from our very subtle mind.  Purifying our gross mind is not enough because if our subtle and very subtle minds remain contaminated and out of control, they will push up into our gross levels of mind in the form of new delusions.  In other words, no matter how hard we try, our delusions will just keep coming back, like weeds not pulled out by the roots.

Tantra is said to be the quick path.  If we practice Sutra alone, it is said it could take tens of thousands of lifetimes before we attain enlightenment, but with Tantra, we can attain enlightenment in this one short human life.  While our human life may seem long compared to thousands of lifetimes, it is like attaining enlightenment in an instant. Why is Tantra so powerful and so quick?  This is primarily because with one single meditation – the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss – we can purify ALL our contaminated karma directly and simultaneously.  If we imagine all the plants and trees on earth are our different contaminated karmic seeds, practicing according to Sutra is like pulling them all out one at a time.  But with Tantra, we can get inside of the center of the earth and with one meditation uproot all our contaminated karma simultaneously.

In the Sutra teachings, it explains the odds of attaining a precious human rebirth in which we find the Dharma and are interested in practicing it are likened to that of a blind turtle who normally lives on the bottom of the ocean the size of this world rising to the surface only once in every 100,000 years putting its neck through the middle of a golden yoke floating on the surface.  The earth is 510 trillion square meters, and we only get one shot every 100,000 years!  The odds are infinitesimally small.   While no similar analogy is given, the Tantric teachings are only taught by the fourth, eleventh, and the last of the 1,000 Buddhas of this fortunate aeon.  Buddha Shakyamuni was the fourth.  From this, we can perhaps say the odds of us finding the tantric path are one in 170,000 trillion!  Yet this is our present circumstance. 

Normally, we can say our gross minds are the minds we normally have during the waking state, our subtle minds are our dreams and subtle meditational states, and our very subtle mind is manifest during death and our very subtle meditational states.  Ultimately, all our contaminated karma is stored on our very subtle mind.  It is like a repository of all the karma we have previously accumulated that has not yet ripened.  We learn how to control our gross mind by identifying our delusions and applying opponents.  We learn how to control our subtle levels of mind through generation stage practice of highest yoga tantra.  And we learn how to control our very subtle levels of mind through completion stage practice.  There are more technical explanations, but this is close enough for our present purposes. 

In generation stage practice, through faith and imagination, we create our gross deity body and the pure land where we hope to take rebirth.  Once we take rebirth in a pure land, we never again take a samsaric rebirth and can complete our spiritual training.  From a practical point of view, it is as if we have escaped samsara, but technically speaking we have not since we still have self-grasping and contaminated karmic imprints on our mind.  But once we get to the pure land, we can receive teachings directly from the Heroes and Heroines and we can swiftly complete our spiritual training.  The main function of generation stage is to create the necessary causes for us to attain the pure land.  It is said that if we sincerely practice the generation stage of Vajrayogini, we can be guaranteed to attain pure Dakini Land within seven lifetimes, even if we are reborn in the fires of the deepest hell.  Why is this?  Because our practice of Heruka and Vajrayogini places uncontaminated karmic potentialities on our mind that can never be destroyed.  We may need to exhaust a good deal of negative karma before these seeds can ripen (which rebirth in the lower realms will do), but eventually these seeds will ripen and we will be met by the Dakinis who will guide us to the pure land.  Of course, it is better to not have to wait seven lifetimes through even more qualified practice in this lifetime, but the point is even if we do have to wait seven lifetimes before we get to the pure land, compared to beginningless time, we are almost there.

In completion stage we learn how to control and purify the channels, drops, and winds of our subtle body.  Just as oceans have currents that power the whole ocean, so too does our mind.  These are our inner energy winds.  Particularly strong currents tend to flow in tight densities, like rivers moving through the oceans.  This is like our channels.  The water that moves through these currents is like our drops.  The currents then create waves on the surface of the ocean that are like the different conceptual minds that arise and phenomena that appear in our mind.  As long as our winds are moving uncontrolledly, the waves of our conceptual thoughts will continue to arise.  But if we can learn to completely still our inner winds, the waves gradually cease, and the ocean of our mind becomes clearer and clearer until eventually, we realize the clear light nature of our mind.  With this clear light, we then meditate on the emptiness of all phenomena, which is easy because we directly see the absence of all of the waves we normally see.  This meditation on the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss swiftly purifies our mind of all delusions and their imprints.  In Guide to Dakini Land, Geshe-la explains if we attain the direct realization of our very subtle mind of great bliss (meaning clear light), we can attain enlightenment in six short months! 

How does Tantra work?

All our minds are mounted upon inner energy winds.  These winds are what enable our mind to move to objects.  Our mind is likened to eyes without legs, and our winds are likened to legs without eyes, but together they can move to and know any object.  If our winds are impure, then the minds mounted on those winds will likewise be impure.  Therefore, the entire goal of tantric practice is to purify our winds.  We primarily purify our inner winds by either mixing them with mantra or by bringing them into our central channel, in particular at the level of our heart.

When we bring our inner winds into our central channel, our mind becomes increasingly subtle until eventually, we reach our very subtle mind of great bliss.  It is with this mind that we then meditate on emptiness and quickly attain enlightenment.  Thus, the whole goal of tantric practice is to generate the subjective mind of great bliss.  The way we do that is by bringing our winds into our central channel through completion stage practices. 

The problem is at present our winds are scattered everywhere outside of our central channel.  These winds get stuck outside of our central channel due to damage to the channels of our subtle body.  Every time we generate a delusion or accumulate contaminated karma, we do psychic damage to our subtle body.  It has taken quite a beating since beginningless time.  Imagine a city with a web of freeways running through it.  Our winds are like cars on the roads.  When we generate deluded or negative minds, we damage the roads, which slows down traffic.  Sometimes, the roads get so bad that traffic can no longer pass through, and blockages start to form.  These blockages eventually can turn into physical diseases, such as cancer.  Kadam Bjorn explained that all physical sickness comes from the sickness of delusions, and all delusions come from blockages within our subtle body.  To get the traffic flowing again, we need to repair the roads. 

How?  Through receiving the blessings of the Heroes and Heroines (or Dakas and Dakinis) of Heruka and Vajrayogini’s retinue.  Venerable Tharchin explains that the specific bodhichitta we generate as a bodhisattva shapes the type of Buddha we become.  For example, Avalokiteshvara specifically wanted to help living beings generate compassion, and so he became the Buddha of compassion.  The Heroes and Heroines of Heruka and Vajrayogini’s retinue are specialized enlightened beings who attained enlightenment for the specific purpose of healing certain aspects of our subtle body.  In this sense, they are all Medicine Buddhas.  In our body mandala practice, we imagine these deities enter into our channels, drops, and winds and heal them completely so that our winds can flow unobstructedly into our central channel at our heart. 

In the same way, we imagine Heruka and Vajrayogini themselves enter into our indestructible drop inside our heart chakra, blessing and purifying it so that the winds can flow inside.  Inside our indestructible drop is our indestructible wind, which is like our root wind from which all other winds arise.  We imagine that a very subtle emanation of Heruka in the aspect of his seed letter HUM mixes inseparably with our root wind, which then reabsorbs all our winds back into their source.  When this happens, all the gross conceptual thoughts and appearances which normally are mounted on these winds subside into clear light emptiness.  Our winds and conceptions become completely still, and the clear light mind manifests.  We then use this mind to meditate on emptiness and attain enlightenment very quickly.

From this explanation, we can see that without the blessings of the deities of Heruka and Vajrayogini’s mandala, it is almost impossible to attain enlightenment, but with their blessings, we can do so quickly and nearly effortlessly.  It is during Heruka and Vajrayogini month that these deities are particularly powerful at bestowing their blessings.  Our sincere practice during this time enables us to make very rapid progress along the tantric path.  This is why Heruka and Vajrayogini month is so important.

How can we take advantage of this month?

If we have the karma to do an intensive retreat on Heruka and Vajrayogini during January, we should.  We can do so at our Kadampa temples, retreat centers, our local centers, or even at home.  There is no place not pervaded by Heruka, so we can do our retreat anywhere.  Even if we are not able to physically be with others engaging in similar retreats, we can recall that thousands of Kadampas all over the world are also focusing on their Heruka and Vajrayogini practice this month, and collectively all of our practices are strengthening the practice of everyone else in the same way many bristles come together to form a brush.

Many of the major Kadampa centers organize close retreats of both Heruka and Vajrayogini during January.  But we are not limited to doing close retreats, we can also do any sort of retreat to familiarize ourselves with the practice.  What is retreat?  A retreat is just extensive meditation over a period of time without our normal distractions.  What is meditation?  It is familiarizing ourselves with virtue.  When we do so, our mind becomes more peaceful and controlled and we become happier and happier as a result.  But this does not mean retreats are all rainbows and unicorns!  Quite the opposite.  Going on retreat is like diving into the deeper recesses of our mind where we discover all sorts of powerful monsters lurking about.  These powerful deluded currents are always there, but it is in a retreat that we can bring them to the surface and eventually subdue them.  This is not always pleasant, but it is always therapeutic. 

If due to our karmic circumstances, such as our job or family responsibilities, we are not able to do a formal retreat, there are still many other ways we can take advantage of this month.  For example, instead of our normal Heart Jewel practice, perhaps we can do a more extensive Heruka or Vajrayogini sadhana.  Geshe-la has given us a wide spectrum of tantric practices that take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours.  We can choose the level that our schedule allows and do the practice every day for this month.  Perhaps we can even wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal (by perhaps going to bed 30 minutes earlier) to do a more extensive practice than we normally do.  Most of us have a commitment to practice Dorje Shugden every day, we can just add this onto the end of our tantric practice before the dedication, even if we do it in abbreviated form by just visualizing Dorje Shugden and reciting the “all the attainments I desire arise from merely remembering you…” prayer. 

We can also make a point of taking advantage of the two tsog days during January, namely January 10th and January 25th, which are Vajrayogini and Heruka Day respectively.  If we have done our close retreat, these days make excellent opportunities to do self-initiation where we can renew our vows and the blessings of the empowerments.  At a minimum, we can do the Tsog offering in the context of our tantric practice for the month. 

If none of the above are possible, we can also perhaps recite more mantras than our normal daily commitment.  During the empowerment, we promised to recite our mantras a certain number of times every day.  During Heruka and Vajrayogini month, we can perhaps double our normal mantra commitment or agree to do a full mala of mantras every day. 

All of us can throughout the month try to remember Heruka and Vajrayogini throughout the meditation break.  Perhaps we have gradually lost our practice of six-session guru yoga where we self-generate and recall our vows six times every day.  Heruka and Vajrayogini months are an excellent opportunity to start again.  The trick to remembering is to connect it to things we do every day.  We all wake up, eat several times, go to the bathroom, and go to sleep every day.  If we make a point of doing our six-session guru yoga practice every time we do these daily activities, it will not be long before it becomes our habit.  As we walk about or drive, we can recite our mantras.  Normally our mind wanders to all sorts of irrelevant things, but during this special month, we can perhaps instead use this time to recite mantras.  We can also recall the three main recognitions of the yoga of daily activities, namely to view all phenomena as empty, all emptiness as the nature of our mind of great bliss, and the bliss and emptiness of all things as our truth body, Dharmakaya.  Or we can view everything we see as comprised of atom-sized offering goddesses, so instead of seeing samsara, we see the pure land.  Or we can simply throughout this month recall the benefits of our tantric practice or read our tantric books before we go to bed.  The point is – do something more than you usually do. 

If we practice in this way during Heruka and Vajrayogini month, there is a good chance we will be able to carry some of our new habits or understandings into the rest of the year.  Then our practice is better all year.  If we practice in this way, year after year, our familiarity with Heruka and Vajrayogini practice will grow and grow until eventually, we feel as if we are always in their presence and we never forget them.  In the end, we will attain union with them and become a Heruka or Vajrayogini ourselves. 

All of this depends upon a wish, and the wish depends upon understanding the benefits of this practice.  If we contemplate deeply how our tantric practice is the quick path to enlightenment and we consider how long living beings will have to suffer waiting for us to attain enlightenment, we will be very motivated to practice.  From this, everything else naturally comes.

Enjoy!

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Worldly concerns are the root of our anger

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

Now Shantideva introduces once again worldly concerns with the phrase:

(6.90) Praise, fame, and good reputation
Will not increase my merit or extend my life,
Nor will they give me strength, freedom from illness,
Or any form of physical pleasure.

We’ve seen already we can easily become angry when faced with the threat of losing our reputation, wealth and so forth.  I would say that the more we seek happiness, wealth, praise, reputation, and the more we try to avoid suffering, poverty, criticism, bad reputation, the more we will suffer from anger, and the more we will find ourselves retaliating.  In many ways, our worldly concerns are at the root of all of our anger.  Therefore, it is of utmost importance that as Dharma practitioners we make effort to destroy such worldly concerns.  

We will never achieve the goals of spiritual training as long as we possess such worldly concerns. In Joyful Path, Geshe-la explains the difference between pure and impure Dharma practice is identified by looking at which life we are practicing for:  this life or our future lives.  Of course Dharma will help us be happy in this life, and there is nothing wrong with that, but for our Dharma practice to be spiritual practice, our motivation must be at least the happiness of future lives.  But even among those who practice only for the sake of this life, there are two types:  those who use the Dharma to oppose their delusions in this life to be happy in this life and those who use the Dharma to secure their worldly desires, such as fame, a good reputation, high status, and even wealth. 

When people quite literally put you on a throne, prostrate at your feet, and are encouraged to view you as an emanation of a Buddha, it is very hard for our pride to not sneak in and corrupt the whole process.  We can even start to do so for seemingly virtuous reasons, thinking it is good that others view us as Buddhas because then they receive greater blessings, but in reality it is our pride that is enjoying it.  Getting sucked into this vortex is extremely dangerous because then the Dharma teacher starts to pretend that they don’t have any delusions or faults.  When they do that with others, it creates a cult-like atmosphere in the Dharma center.  When they do that with themselves, it leads to repression and eventual meltdown of our spiritual life. 

Our whole lives can get wrapped up in our worldly concerns that any threat to them becomes a “justified” cause of anger.  Again, our worldly concerns can hijack our Dharma understanding to justify our grasping at these things – we need wealth and high status so we can spread the Dharma, etc. – but in our heart, it is just worldly concerns leading to ordinary anger. 

Results come from pure Dharma activities.  Pure Dharma activities are when we have a spontaneous realization of ‘it doesn’t matter’ for everything, and the only thing that matters to us is creating good causes for future lives.  I’m not saying that we do not need wealth and a good reputation, but that problems come for ourself, others, and our tradition when our concern for these things is a worldly concern.  We must begin to sort this out right now. We must make strong effort to destroy any worldly concerns that we have so that things can be unblocked and can grow.

New Year’s for a Kadampa

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

New Year’s Day is of course preceded by New Year’s Eve.  The evening before is usually when friends get together to celebrate the coming of the new year.  Sometimes Kadampas become a social cynic, looking down on parties like this, finding them meaningless and inherently samsaric.  They mistakenly think it is somehow a fault to enjoy life and enjoy cultural traditions.  This is wrong.

If we are invited to a New Year’s party, we should go without thinking it is inherently meaningless.  Geshe-la wants us to attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and modern life.  New Year’s Eve parties are part of modern life, so our job is to bring the Dharma into them.  Venerable Tharchin said that our ability to help others depends upon two things:  the depth of our Dharma realizations and the strength of our karmic connections with living beings.  Doing things with friends as friends helps build those karmic bonds.  Even if we are unable to discuss any Dharma, at the very least, we can view such evenings as the time to cultivate our close karmic bonds with people.  Later, in dependence upon these bonds, we will be able to help them.

One question that often comes up at most New Year’s Eve parties is what to do about the fact that most everyone else is drinking or consuming other intoxicants.  Most of us have Pratimoksha vows, so this can create a problem or some awkward moments for ourself or for the person who is throwing the party.  Best, of course, is if you have an open and accepting relationship with your friends where you can say, “you can do whatever you want, but I am not going to.”  It’s important that we don’t adopt a judgmental attitude towards others who might drink, etc.  We each make our own choices and it is not up to us to judge anyone else.  We might even make ourselves the annual “designated driver.”  Somebody has to be, so it might as well be the Buddhist!

If we are at a party where we can’t be open about being a Buddhist, which can happen depending upon our karmic circumstance, what I usually do is drink orange juice or coke for most of the night, but then at midnight when they pass around the glasses of Champagne I just take one, and without a fuss when it comes time, I just put it to my lips like I am drinking but I am not actually doing so.  If we don’t make an issue out of it, nobody will notice.  Why is this important?  Because when we say we don’t drink, they will ask why.  Then we say because we are a Buddhist.  Implicitly, others can take our answer to mean we are saying we think it is immoral to drink, so others might feel judged. When they do, they then reject Buddhism, and create the karma of doing so. We may feel “right,” but we have in fact harmed those around us. What is the most moral thing to do depends largely upon our circumstance. It goes without saying that others are far more likely to feel judged by us if in fact we are judging everyone around us! We all need to get off our high horse and just love others with an accepting attitude.

Fortunately, most Kadampa centers now host a New Year’s Eve party.  This is ideal.  If our center doesn’t, then ask to host one yourself at the center.  This gives our Sangha friends an alternative to the usual New Year’s parties.  We can get together at the center, have a meal together, do a puja together and just hang out together as friends.  We are people too, not just Dharma practitioners, so it is important to be “exactly as normal.”  If our New Year’s party is a lot of fun, then people will want to come again and again; and perhaps even invite their friends along.  It is not uncommon to do either a Tara practice or an Amitayus practice.   Sometimes centers organize a retreat weekend course over New Year’s weekend.  For several years in Geneva, we would do Tara practice in six sessions at the house of a Sangha member.  The point is, try make it time together with your Sangha family.  Christmas is often with our regular family, New Year’s can be with our spiritual family.

But it is equally worth pointing out there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a quiet evening at home alone, or with a few friends or members of your family. Just because everybody else is making a big deal out of it and going to parties doesn’t mean we should feel any pressure to do the same. I personally have never enjoyed them party scene, even when others are not getting drunk, etc. I much prefer a quiet evening or a solitary retreat. There is nothing wrong with this, and if that is how we prefer to bring in the New Year, we should do so without guilt or hesitation.

What I used to do (and really should start doing again), is around New Years I would take the time to go through all the 250+ vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism and reflect upon how I was doing.  I would try look back on the past year and identify the different ways I broke each vow, and I would try make plans for doing better next year.  If you are really enthusiastic about this, you can make a chart in Excel where you rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how well you did on each vow, and then keep track of this over the years.  Geshe-la advises that we work gradually with our vows over a long period of time, slowly improving the quality with which we keep them.  Keeping track with a self-graded score is a very effective way of doing this.  New Years is a perfect time for reflecting on this.

Ultimately, New Year’s Day itself is no different than any other.  It is very easy to see how its meaning is merely imputed by mind.  But that doesn’t mean it is not meaningful, ultimately everything is imputed by mind.  The good thing about New Year’s Day is everyone agrees it marks the possibility for a new beginning.  It is customary for people to make New Year’s Resolutions, things they plan on doing differently in the coming year.  Unfortunately, it is also quite common for people’s New Year’s Resolutions to not last very long.

But at Kadampas, we can be different.  The teachings on impermanence remind us that “nothing remains for even a moment” and that the entire world is completely recreated anew every moment.  New Year’s Day is a good day for recalling impermanence.  Everything that happened in the previous year, we can just let it go and realize we are moving into a new year and a new beginning.  We should make our New Year’s resolutions spiritual ones.  It is best, though, to make small changes that you make a real effort to keep than large ones that you know won’t last long.  Pick one or two things you are going to do differently this year.  Make it concrete and make sure it is doable.  A former student of mine would pick one thing that she said she was going to make her priority for the coming year, and then throughout the year she would focus on that practice. I think this is perfect. Another Sangha friend of mine would every year ask for special advice about what they should work on in the coming year. This is also perfect.

When you make a determination, make sure you know why you are doing it and the wisdom reasons in favor of the change are solid in your mind.  On that basis, you will be able to keep them.  Making promises that you later break creates terrible karma for ourselves which makes it harder and harder to make promises in the future. We create the habit of never following through, and that makes the practice of moral discipline harder and harder.

Just because we are a Kadampa does not mean we can’t have fun like everyone else on New Year’s Eve.  It is an opportunity to build close karmic bonds with others, especially our spiritual family.  We can reflect upon our behavior over the previous year and make determinations about how we will do better in the year to come.

I pray that all of your pure wishes in the coming year be fulfilled, and that all of the suffering you experience become a powerful cause of your enlightenment.  I pray that all beings may find a qualified spiritual path and thereby find meaning in their life.  I also pray that nobody die tonight from drunk driving, but everyone makes it home safe.  Since that is unlikely to come true, I pray that Avalokiteshvara swiftly take all those who die to the pure land where they may enjoy everlasting joy.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Be careful what you rejoice in

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.86) It is bad enough that you, mind, have no remorse
For the non-virtues you have committed;
But why do you compound it
By being jealous with those who practise virtue?

Rejoicing is probably the easiest virtue we can engage in.  All we need to do is be happy for others, and especially when they create the causes of happiness, namely engage in virtue.  When we rejoice in others virtues, we get a similitude of the karma they create from engaging in the virtue.  Rejoicing in others’ virtue also inspires us to engage in more virtue ourselves because we are seeing it as something good and worthwhile.

But often, when we see others engage in virtue, we start to feel competitive thinking that we are better than that other person or we find a way to criticize the virtue of others as being mixed with worldly concerns or selfish intent or is unskillful, or whatever.  Where do such minds come from?  I think they come from a toxic combination of guilt about our own weak virtues and jealousy of others being better than us.  These two get together and then make us find fault when instead we should be rejoicing. 

(6.87) The thought that wishes for our enemy to suffer
Harms only us, through creating non-virtue;
Understanding this, we should not develop harmful thoughts
Towards anyone, including our enemies.

(6.88) And even if your enemy did suffer as you wish,
How would that benefit you?
If you say, “Well, at least it would give me some satisfaction”,
How can there be a mind lower than that?

(6.89) Such thoughts are like unbearably sharp hooks
Cast by the fishermen of the delusions, such as anger.
Once caught on them, we shall definitely be boiled alive
In the terrifying cauldrons of the guardians of hell.

Harmful thoughts themselves can only bring suffering upon ourself. They can never make us happy even if they come true.  

About a year after 9/11, I was visiting my family in my childhood home.  My brother comes to me and says he has something he wants to show me.  He then begins a video of a U.S. military strike of some base in Afghanistan.  Apparently, the United States has these superfortresses that can basically hover above an area, and they use laser guided targeting to shoot individual people.  So first, a missile came in and destroyed the main building.  Then, people started fleeing out of the wreckage and surrounding buildings, and the video showed the computer locking in on individual people, then shooting them; then it would turn to the next person, shoot them, and so on until all on the scene were dead.  While this was going on, the gunner in the plane could be heard with a crazed sound in his voice of, “got him,” and “take that,” and “woohooo.”  I then looked over at my other brother who was watching with us, and he was also making faces each time somebody would be shot like, “yes!” 

I felt absolutely nauseated.  I was reminded of what Gen Tharchin once said, “when people read the newspaper about battle reports and rejoice in all those killed, they create basically the same karma as if it had been them pulling the trigger.”  We live in incredibly politically polarized times, and feel great joy when we hear about how our political “enemies” suffer some kind of defeat – we want them to suffer in the ways they have caused others to suffer.  Lately, a trend in the media has been to report on how the family of certain government leaders feel ashamed of their children or uncles serving under Trump, and instead of imagining how that must emotionally hurt to the person being written about, we feel self-righteous about how even their families hate them for what they are doing.  When violence breaks out at protests, we become enraged when somebody from our side gets killed, but think they had it coming when somebody from the other side gets hurt. 

At work we take great delight hearing about how those who are creating problems for us or are standing in the way of our wishes face setbacks, and on Facebook we cheer when those we disagree with get “owned.”  So much of modern life is people rejoicing in other’s misery. 

If we are honest we become pleased when a person who has harmed us suffers some misfortune.  We become pleased thinking perhaps they deserve what has come to them.  The karmic consequences of rejoicing in the misfortune of others is as Shantideva explains.  We must avoid this at all costs unless we want to be boiled alive.

Christmas for a Kadampa

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

For those of us who live in the West, or come from Western families, Christmas is often considered the most important holiday of the year.  Ostensibly, Christmas is about the birth of Christ, and for some it is.  For most, however, it is about exchanging gifts, spending time with family and watching football.  Or it’s just about out of control consumerism, depending on your view.  Kadampas can sometimes feel a bit confused during Christmas time.  It used to be our favorite holiday as kids, but now we are Buddhists, so how are we supposed to relate to it?

It’s true, Christmas time has degenerated into a frenzy of buying things we don’t need.  It is easy to criticize Christmas on such grounds.  Of course, as Kadampas, we can be aware of this and realize its meaninglessness.  We can correctly identify the attachment and realize it’s wrong.  But certainly being a Kadampa means more than being a cynic and a scrooge.  Instead, we should rejoice in all the acts of giving.  Giving is a virtue, even if what people are giving is not very meaningful.  There is more giving that occurs in the Christmas season than any other time of the year.  Yes, the motivations for giving might be mixed with worldly concerns, but we can still rejoice in the giving part.  Rejoice in all of it, don’t be a cynic.

Likewise, I think we should celebrate with all our heart the birth of Christ into this world.  Why not?  Our heart commitment is to follow one tradition purely while appreciating and respecting all other traditions.  Instead of getting on our arrogant high horse mocking those who believe in an inherently existent God, why don’t we celebrate the birth of arguably the greatest practitioner of taking and giving to have ever walked the face of the earth?  The entire basis of Christianity is Christ took on all of the sins of all living beings, and by generating faith in him, believing he did so to save us, we open our mind to receive his special blessings which function to take our sins upon him.  He is, in this respect, quite similar to a Buddha of purification.  By generating faith in him, his followers can purify all of their negative karma.

Further, he is a doorway to heaven (his pure land).  If his followers remember him with faith at the time of their death, they will receive his powerful blessings and be transported to the pure land.  In this sense, he is very similar to Avalokiteshvara.  Christ taught extensively on being humble, working for the sake of the poor, and reaching out to those in the greatest of need.  Think of all the people he has inspired with his example.  Sure, there are some people who distort his teachings for political purposes, but that doesn’t make his original intent and meaning wrong.  In many ways, one can say he gave tantric teachings on maintaining pure view, and bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into this world.  Who can read the Sermon on the Mount and not be moved?  Who can read the prayers of his later followers, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, and not be inspired?  Think of Pope Francis.  You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate his positive effect on this world and the church.  All of these things we can rejoice in and be inspired by.  A Bodhisattva seeks to practice all virtue, and there is much in Jesus’ example worth emulating.  Trying to be more “Christ-like” in our behavior is not mixing.  If we can see somebody in our daily lives engaging in virtue and be inspired to be more like them, then why can we not also do so for one of the greatest Saints in the history of the world?  Rejoicing in and copying virtue is an essential component of the Kadampa path.

Geshe-la has said on many occasions that Buddhas appear in this world in Buddhist and non-Buddhist form.  Is it that hard to imagine that Christ too was a Buddha who appeared in a particular form in a particular place in human history for the sake of billions?  Surely all the holy beings get along just fine with one another, since they are ultimately of one nature.  It is only humans who create divisions and problems.  Geshe-la said we do believe in “God,” it is just different people have a different understanding of what that means.  Christians have their understanding, we have ours, but we can all respect and appreciate one another.

Besides celebrating Christ, Christmas is an excellent time for ourself to practice virtue.  Not just giving, but also patience with our loved ones, cherishing others, training in love and so forth.  It is not always easy to spend time with our families.  The members of our family have their fair share of delusions, and it is easy to develop judgmental attitudes towards them for it.  It is not uncommon for some of the worst family fights to happen during the holiday season.  Christmas time gives us an opportunity to counter all of these delusions and bad attitudes, and learn to accept and love everyone just as they are.

When I was a boy, Christmas was both my favorite time of year and my worst time of year.  My favorite time of year because I loved the lights, the songs and of course the presents.  It was the worst time of the year because my mother had an unrealistic expectation that just because it was Christmas, everything was supposed to work out perfectly and nothing was supposed to go wrong.  This created tremendous pressure on everyone in the house, and when the slightest thing would go wrong, she would become very upset and ruin the day for everyone.  This is not uncommon at all.  People’s expectations shoot through the roof during the Christmas season, and especially on Christmas day.  These higher expectations then cause us to be more judgmental, to more easily feel slighted, and to be quicker to anger.  We can view this time as an excellent opportunity to understand the nature of samsara is for things to go wrong, and the best answer to that fact is patient acceptance and a good laugh.

As I have grown older, Christmas has given rise to new delusions for me to overcome.  When I was little, I used to get lots of presents.  Now, I get a tie.  Not the same, and it always leaves me feeling a bit let down.  I give presents to everyone, yet nobody seems to give me any.  As a parent, I cannot help but have hopes and expectations that my kids will like their presents, but then when they don’t I realize my attachment to gratitude and recognition.  During Christmas, even though I am supposed to be giving, I find myself worrying about money and feeling miserly.  I find myself quick to judge my in-laws or other members of my family if they don’t act in the way I want them to.  Since I live abroad, far away from any family, I start to feel jealous of the pictures I see on Facebook of my other family members all together and seeming to have a good time while we are alone and forgotten on the other side of the planet.  When kids open presents, they are often like rabid dogs, going from one thing to the next without appreciating anything and I can’t help but feel I have failed as a parent.  Trying to get good pictures is always a nightmare, and getting the kids to express gratitude to the aunts and grandmas is always a struggle.  The more time we spend with our family, the more we become frustrated with them and secretly we can’t wait until school starts again and we can go back to work.  None of these are uncommon reactions, and these sorts of situations give rise to a pantheon of delusions.  But all of them give us a chance to practice training our mind and cultivating new, more virtuous, habits of mind.

Christmas is also a time in which we can reach out to those who are alone.  Suicide and depression rates are the highest during the holiday season.  People see everyone else happy, but they find themselves alone and unloved.  Why can we not invite these people to our home and let them know we care?  Make them feel part of our family.  There are also plenty of opportunities to volunteer to help out the poor and the needy, such as giving our time at or clothes to homeless shelters.  People in hospitals, especially the old and dying, suffer from great loneliness and sadness during the Christmas season.  We can go spend time with them, hear their stories, and give them our love.

Culturally, many of us are Christian.  People in the West, by and large, live in a Christian culture.  Geshe-la has gone to great lengths to present the Dharma in such a way that we do not have to abandon our culture to understand the Dharma.  Externally, culturally, we can remain Christian; while internally, spiritually we are 100% Kadampa.  There is no contradiction between these two.  On the whole, Christmas time gives us ample opportunities to create virtue, rejoice in goodness and battle our delusions.  For a Kadampa, this is perfect.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: What is wisdom anger?

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

Jealousy, in particular of towards those we dislike, is a common cause of our anger.  Now Shantideva suggests how we can rejoice in their good fortune instead.

(6.84) People become angry when someone benefits their enemy,
But, whether their enemy receives benefit or not,
It is the enemy’s own anger that urges him to attack;
So it is that anger which is to blame, not the benefactor.

We become angry when somebody helps our enemy, even if it is not helping them to harm us.  If somebody is engaging in a virtuous action towards another, we need to rejoice in that person’s action, not become angry at them!  If we see somebody enjoying themselves with our enemy, we become angry at them.  When we see people happy, we need to rejoice in that happiness, not become angry with them.  In any case, the friend of the enemy has done nothing wrong, so there is no reason to have any bad feelings towards him.  And why is the other person viewed as our enemy in the first place?  The person him/herself is our kind mother, it is their present or past delusions which propelled them to harm us at some point.  To get angry with somebody who has helped our kind mother surely makes no sense.  If we are going to direct our frustration towards anything, it should be the anger in our “enemy’s” mind.  Our objective should be to dispel their anger through healing the relationship.

(6.85) Why, by getting angry, do we throw away our merit,
The faith others have in us, and our other good qualities?
Would it not be better to get angry with anger itself,
For it brings no benefit to us or to others?

We hear this a lot in the Dharma teachings – it’s OK to get angry at the delusion of anger.  But what exactly does that mean and how do we practically put it into practice.  Anger views something as a cause of our suffering and then seeks to harm that cause.  Deluded anger views something external (and inherently existent) as a cause of our suffering, exaggerates the harm we have received, and then seeks to harm the object of our anger in some way.  Wisdom anger (anger directed against delusions) views delusions as the cause of our suffering and seeks to harm them as much as possible.  These are very different things.

The first main difference is the object of blame – an inherently existent external object or a delusion.  The second main difference is the method of harming.  Deluded anger typically retaliates through either mentally “hating/greatly disliking” the other person, grasping at them as a real cause of our suffering; verbally, by saying hurtful or divisive words; or even physically, by harming or even killing the other person.  Wisdom anger harms delusions by identifying them clearly, reducing them through applying Dharma opponents, and finally eliminating them altogether with the wisdom realizing emptiness. 

Wisdom anger can be directed at our own delusions or against the delusions of others.  The process is basically the same.  When we direct it against others, we first identify clearly that the reason why our so-called “enemy” harms us is because they are under the influence of their delusions, and thereby we make a distinction between the person (for whom we have compassion) and the sickness of delusion within their mind (which we want to heal).  To apply opponents to others delusions can take many forms.  The most common form is simply setting a good example.  This we can always do regardless of whether the other person is seeking our advice or not.  When we set a good example, we should do so completely free from any attachment to the other person changing and we should avoid making a point of “showing a good example” as some obvious attempt to shame the other person or show them that what they are doing is wrong.  Additionally, we can pray that those who suffer from delusions receive powerful blessings to pacify the delusions in their mind.  Our prayers will be effective in proportion to the closeness of our karmic connection with the other person, the purity of our motivation in praying for them, and the degree of our faith in the Buddha we are praying to. 

Sometimes we are able to apply the opponents to other’s delusions by offering Dharma advice or Dharma teachings.  But we must be careful here.  Giving unsolicited advice almost always backfires.  If the other person is not genuinely asking us for our advice or we are not highly certain that they have sufficient faith that they will be open to receiving our advice, then we should probably refrain from offering it.  When we offer correct advice to somebody who doesn’t want it, all we do is create the conditions for them to engage in the negative action of rejecting wisdom and grasping even more tightly to their wrong views.  We may feel self-righteous for the great advice we have offered, but in truth we have done harm to the other person by doing so. 

In terms of applying the antidote of the wisdom realizing emptiness to other’s delusions, we can again do so through giving wisdom advice that shows people it is how they mentally relate to things that is the problem, or even give teachings on emptiness itself (again, assuming they are open to receiving our advice).  We can likewise meditate on the emptiness of all phenomena ourself.  The other person’s mind is also empty of inherent existence, which means the delusions that appear to us to be arising in their mind are also empty and mere appearances to our mind.  Anytime we meditate on the emptiness of any phenomena, we purify the contaminated karma giving rise to that appearance.  When we meditate on the emptiness of other’s delusions, we purify the contaminated karma for such delusions to appear.  This is a very profound point. 

In my very first meeting with Gen Tharchin, more than 20 years ago, I was explaining all of the different delusions I saw in my then girlfriend.  He looked me straight in the eye, and then said, “the faults she appears to have are actually mirror-like reflections of the faults within your own mind.  If you purge these faults from your own mind they will, like magic, gradually disappear from her.”  He then leaned closer and said, “and never forget, she is an emanation of Vajrayogini (followed by a knowing wink of the eye).”  This is ultimately how Buddhas ripen and liberate us.  They have realized directly the emptiness of all our faults, this realization functions to gradually bless our mind to reduce and finally eliminate all of our faults.  By seeing us as already enlightened beings, they ripen our pure potential and draw out our own good qualities.  By mixing our mind with their minds, we come to adopt their view of us, first seeing the emptiness of our faults and eventually seeing ourselves as fully enlightened beings.  This very brief encounter with the uncomparable Gen Tharchin reveals the very essence of a wisdom Bodhisattva’s way of life.  

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Be happy for others

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.78) Those who are not concerned with others’ happiness
And do not want them to be happy,
Are like someone who stops paying wages to those who work for him,
Who then experiences many problems.

One thing’s for sure – if we’re not concerned with the happiness of others, then we won’t get anything from them other than problems. Sooner or later, problems will come for us.  We may feel, we may say, “I am concerned. I am concerned for others’ happiness. Why else would I be practicing Dharma and doing all that I do.”  Ours is not yet a perfectly altruistic, selfless motivation. It is still to a large extent it is a selfish one. We have a problem of self-cherishing.  This is not an attack, it is a diagnosis, but one that we each individually need to make about ourselves.  The truth is we often help others for our own selfish reasons.

Seeing this can sometimes lead to a degree of paralysis.  We see that our motivation is mixed, and we then think it is wrong for us to cherish the other person with a mixed motivation, so we hold ourselves back from engaging in virtue!  Clearly that is wrong.  We should still engage in the cherishing action, even if our motivation is mixed, because our motivation is still partly good and the action is still partly virtuous.  Some virtue is better than none.  If we wait until we can do things completely purely, we would have to wait until we attain enlightenment.  But how are we supposed to attain enlightenment if we never start engaging in virtuous actions in the first place because our motivation is mixed?  Clearly that is absurd.  Instead, we can engage in the virtue, but become aware where our motivation is mixed.  Then, we gradually try to purify our motivation so that it is becomes increasingly pure.  As Geshe Chekawa says, we should “remain natural while changing our aspiration.”

(6.79) When my own good qualities are praised,
I want others to rejoice in me;
So why, when others’ good qualities are praised,
Should I not want to rejoice in them?

If I want others to rejoice, then I should join them in rejoicing.

(6.80) Having generated the bodhichitta motivation
Wishing for all living beings to be happy,
Why on Earth do we not rejoice
When others find some happiness for themselves?

(6.81) If I really wish for living beings to become Buddhas,
Who are worshipped throughout all worlds,
Why do I dislike it so
When others receive a little mundane respect now?

(6.82) If someone I was looking after
And providing for in different ways
Were to find his own source of livelihood,
Surely I would be happy, not upset.

(6.83) If I begrudge living beings even this,
How can I wish for them to attain enlightenment?
Where is the bodhichitta in one who is not happy
When others receive something good?

Good question. So when someone experiences some happiness in their generally miserable life, why can’t we be happy about that?  Every day we wish, don’t we, every day we wish for all living beings, all living beings without exception to experience the perfect happiness of enlightenment.  So why can’t we be happy when they find some happiness now?  Perhaps we do not rejoice when we see others’ happiness coming from non-Dharma activities.  But where does the happiness come from? What is the main cause of happiness? Their past virtue.

Rejoicing when other people are happy is one of the best opportunities we have to make a connection with them at such times.  If they sense that we’re unhappy when they’re experiencing happiness, they won’t want to draw very close to us. We can come across as disapproving.  We must be extremely careful. Even if someone has done a negative action, we mustn’t be disapproving. It is very important that we don’t come across as disapproving, judgmental, critical. For a long time people engage in worldly enjoyments for their happiness. We still do. So who are we to judge?

If we really love someone and we see that they’re happy, doesn’t that make us happy?  If we’re not happy, perhaps that’s a sign indicating we need to love them more.  We need to love them as they are, not who we want them to be. Just love them as they are.  We shouldn’t have the attitude of, “if you were a real spiritual practitioner and stopped engaging in worldly enjoyments and so forth, then I’ll really love you.”  We should really love them now! We need to accept and love everyone wherever they are at. We do this with people we are not close to reasonably well, but for those who are closest to us – our families, our work colleagues, our Sangha friends – we expect more, and we get mad at them when they fail to be less than perfect.

It is especially important to be happy for people when they have worked hard at something and accomplished something, even if for us it is something little. For example, when somebody is working hard at something, it is important to really praise them.  If they are really happy about what they have accomplished, and we belittle it, it is devastating for them and it results in discouragement and they don’t try anything.  If we are happy for them, genuinely happy, this will give them encouragement to keep trying.  The only thing we have to do to attain enlightenment is never give up trying.  If people are taking a long time, we need to be patient.  A Bodhisattva works with people over lifetimes and lifetimes.  We go as far with people as we can, and be happy with whatever they have accomplished.  

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Rejoice!

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

Now Shantideva explains how jealousy and envy can also lead to anger. 

(6.76) If someone else develops a mind of joy
Through praising another’s good qualities,
Why, mind, do you not praise him too
And experience the same kind of joy?

Our normal reaction when others experience some sort of good fortune is jealousy or envy.  We think about how the other person doesn’t deserve that good fortune, or we simply wish we were experiencing it but are frustrated that we are not.  It is quite common for some people to work very hard and they never seem to catch a break, whereas others hardly work at all, yet good things just naturally fall into their lap.  This usually leaves us feeling jealous and discouraged, and then we go looking for others to blame for our plight, leading to anger.

We all wish to experience joy, happiness in our lives and whenever there is an opportunity to do so, we take it.  So why not rejoice in others’ good qualities, happiness, and so forth, rejoice when others are being praised?  The only reason for a difference in our reaction is because we are still influenced by the wrong view that our happiness is somehow more important than theirs, or their happiness is somehow not important.  The key to developing a robust practice of rejoicing, therefore, is the meditation on equalizing self and others.  Once we have some experience of considering the happiness of each and every living being as being equally important, then rejoicing will come easily.  Once rejoicing comes easily, we will be able to accumulate merit all of the time – we merely need think of those who are experiencing some good fortune, and we can rejoice.

We should also take an opportunity to share in the happiness experienced by the one who is giving praise.  As we go through our daily life, we will sometimes hear one person praising another.  Our normal reaction when this happens is externally we may nod in apparent agreement, but internally we then quickly going on to point out some fault that we have noticed in the person who is being praised.  There is always a ‘yeah, but’ in our mind.  We see only faults.  But when we see somebody praising another it is a particularly good time to practice rejoicing, because we can rejoice both in the person receiving the praise and the person giving the praise. 

As Dharma practitioners we must rejoice in one another’s good qualities, we must rejoice in one another’s activities, virtuous activities. We need to not just observe, but also admire them and rejoice in them.  We need to admire and rejoice in their skillful means. And then we will be inspired to follow the example others are setting for us.  And as well we must rejoice in the joyful effort of others. Whenever they try, we must make a point of rejoicing in their efforts, and talk to others of the good qualities that we see in them.  And we should also rejoice when others understand things that we don’t.  

The benefits of rejoicing are almost limitless.  First, rejoicing creates the cause to acquire the qualities you rejoice in.

(6.77) I should always rejoice in others’ happiness and virtue.
This joy causes my virtues to increase.
Moreover, it is the cause of delighting the holy beings
And the supreme method for benefiting others.

Rejoicing I think is one of the best ways of accomplishing results.  We’re so concerned with results! If we really want results, rejoice. It is the best way of accomplishing both internal and external results.  Rejoicing creates the causes to acquire what we are rejoicing in.  If a teacher and students are rejoicing a lot, then even if mistakes are being made at their Center, progress is being made, both internal and external.  No doubt that holy beings easily, powerfully can help progress in such a joyful, harmonious environment.