(5.19) Just as I would be careful of a wound
When in a jostling and unruly crowd,
So should I always guard the wound of my mind
When among those who might provoke delusions.

(5.20) If I am careful of a physical wound
Out of fear of even the slightest pain,
Why do I not protect the wound of my mind
Out of fear of being crushed by the mountains of hell?

(5.21) If I always practise in this way,
Then, whether I am among harmful beings
Or with people I find attractive,
Neither my steadfastness nor my vows will decline.

This is a very special piece of advice that is so relevant to our living and working in the land of the jostling and unruly.  This advice we have to take to heart.  If we do we will succeed.  We will accomplish so much in the society in which we’re working.  What is the advice?

There are many people or situations that might provoke our delusions.  There are many people already in our lives who provoke attachment.  How many car accidents happen due to some guy looking at an attractive woman on the street?  And not all attachment is sexual.  Attachment to people is thinking that they are causes of our happiness.  If we check, no matter who we engage with our first thought is “how can this person help me accomplish my objectives.”  In actual fact, we are constantly on the look out for how to use people for our own purposes, and we view everyone through this lens.  When we find people who can help us fulfill our proposes, almost instantly attachment develops within our mind.

There are also many people who might provoke impatience, anger, and so on.  There are not only extreme cases like this, we can be bothered by the person who sits next to us at work who just never stops talking, preventing us from working; or the little old lady who drives really slowly blocking traffic.  Some people we just find terribly arrogant, others very presumptuous.  Pretty much everybody bothers us in one way or the other.

We need to identify where we are weak to the attacks of the delusions, and at such times be particularly mindful.  We need to examine our life and try identify those situation where we are particularly susceptible to generating delusions.  If we were to walk in a dangerous neighborhood at night, we would be on high alert.  Yet we think nothing of walking into a shopping mall or into a conference room at work.  We need to become alert to dangerous situations for our mind, not just our body.

Shantideva says we should regard our mind as an open wound.  It’s exposed—therefore I cannot, dare not, leave it unprotected.   If we feel this way about our mind then we’ll be concerned for it. We’ll take care so that no harm will come to us.  If I don’t protect my mind I will be hurt, seriously hurt.  We need to think not only about short term hurt, but the long term hurt in the future which is far greater.

When people hurt themselves, such as breaking a bone, they put casts or special braces on so as to protect their injury from becoming worse.  We need to do the same with our delusions.  For example, I have long suffered from jealousy about how I perceive my father loving my brother more.  This is a sore and sensitive point for me.  Likewise, I often worry about how he judges me and the decisions I make in life.  It does not take much for me to become heavily deluded about these things.  My mind is already badly injured in this way and the “break” hasn’t fully healed yet (not even close, actually).  I need to put on the mental cast of alertness to be mindful of when my mind starts going down the roads of inappropriate attention which lead quickly to delusions.

People who have bad backs know if they twist just wrong or lift something too heavy, they can quickly hurt their back, and back pain can sometimes last for days.  As a result, they are very careful.  We need to be the same with our mind.  At our current state of spiritual development, there are some things we can handle easily without generating delusions, there are some things which are currently way beyond our capacity and then there are those things in the middle which could go either way.  For these things in particular, we need to guard our alertness.  They are the things which might just be too heavy for us, so we need to be careful.

When we have been sick a long time, our body is weak and we have not yet regained all of our strength.  If we push it too hard, too quickly, we could quickly relapse into our illness or set back our recovery by days or even weeks.  Instead, we move slowly, gradually regaining our strength and capacity.  In the same way, when we are coming off of a long period in which our mind was heavily under the influence of delusions, we should be mindful to not push things too hard or too quickly.  Our mind is weak and fragile, and it might not take much to reactivate our delusions quite strongly.  We see this in particular with people who suffer from depression.  When we are depressed, we think “nothing goes our way, everything is hard.”  When just the slightest thing goes wrong, even though in and of itself it is of no great significance, it nonetheless deflates our spirits and we become down and despondent.

Next time you are sick or injured, look and see how your mind naturally has great wisdom of self-preservation guiding you in your recovery.  Then take that as an analogy for how you should be with respect to your delusions.

Now Shantideva enters into an explanation of skillful means, and how a Bodhisattva should behave.

Each one of us has a great responsibility now for helping Buddhadharma to flourish.  To do so we know we have to go out into the world and be very much part of society, giving people the opportunity to meet the Buddhadharma, the Kadam Dharma.  To do this, no doubt that we need strength of mind, stability of practice, a lot of courage.  In one sense what we’re doing is very unusual.  If we look throughout history, what we’re doing now is quite extraordinary.  We are taking a set of spiritual instructions that has been in India and Tibet for thousands of years, and we are trying to bring it into the modern world and integrate it into our modern lives.  This has never been done before, and we have been tasked with doing it!

If we are to succeed, then there’s no duobt we need to be able to protect our mind, guard our practice.  In particular, we need many different types of skillful behavior; we need to maintain strength of mind, stability, courage, etc.  With this chapter in particular, there is a lot of advice that is of particular relevance.  If we are to succeed in our work, we must follow this advice.  It is absolutely essential.  Please take this advice right to heart.  It is important for us all—if we are to succeed, it’s quite necessary to take this advice to heart.  Otherwise we’ll blow it!

(5.18) Therefore, I will guard my mind well
And protect it from what is inappropriate.
Without the discipline of guarding the mind,
What is the use of many other disciplines?

What is inappropriate?  Shantideva is primarily referring to protecting our mind from inappropriate attention.  Inappropriate attention is synonymous with exaggeration in a way that produces delusion.

With inappropriate attention, we exaggerate the apparent qualities of an object.  This is something we do all the time.  First we exaggerate the objects attractiveness or repulsiveness.  We think the object is actually attractive or unattractive from its own side.  Then we exaggerate its ability to be a source of happiness or suffering.  We project all sorts of hopes or fears onto the object and relate to the object as if it actually had these powers.  On this basis we generate attachment or aversion.  And we always exaggerate how much it exists.  We think the object actually exists as an independent thing.  On this basis we generate ignorance.

Shantideva is encouraging us to guard our mind well.  We do this by binding our mind to the pillar of virtue.  If we are to protect our mind from all that is inappropriate, all exaggeration, then we won’t allow our mind to go out to an object of attachment to pull it in. We won’t allow our mind to go out to an object of attachment or be pushed away from an object of aversion.  We will stay within and recognize that an object being attractive or unattractive is an appearance of mind.  In other words, there’s nothing to go out to.  We feel it is just a pleasant or attractive appearance.  Just an unpleasant our unattractive appearance.  Just a karmic appearance to mind.  In this way we can protect our mind, guard our mind, keep control over our mind, and thereby keep a very peaceful mind.

As soon as we go out to an object, there’s naturally an exaggeration taking place.  We know in dependence upon that delusion will naturally arise.  All stemming from that inappropriate attention.  Even though we may know intellectually about inappropriate attention, we need to look deeply within our own mind to discriminate the different types and levels of inappropriate attention in order to protect our mind from it.  If we don’t, we will fail in all other disciplines.

In particular, we need to do this with strong attachment and strong anger.  There might be certain objects we have particularly strong attachment towards or certain people we have particularly strong aversion towards.  It is certain there is strong exaggeration present in our mind.  If we are not reacting to situations as they actually are, we are certain to make mistakes and make things worse.  Bringing things down a notch always helps.

To keep it simple:  there is no delusion without exaggeration.  So if you find your mind is unpeaceful or disturbed about something, your first task is to identify how you are exaggerating things.  This alone will help bring you under control and give you the space to then apply other opponents.  Ultimately, if there is no exaggeration in our mind, there is no delusion.  Our mother was right, “stop exaggerating!”

(5.17) Even those who wish to find happiness and avoid suffering
Will wander without meaning or purpose
If they do not practise training the mind,
The supreme and principal Dharma.

To find the happiness that we seek, the freedom that we seek, we have to train our mind in wisdom.  If we wish for true happiness, real freedom, then we have to train our mind in wisdom.   There is actually no other way.  Our mind is unhappy because it is unpeaceful.  It is unpeaceful because delusions have taken over.  Wisdom opposes all delusions, making our mind peaceful and calm.

Delusions take control of our mind and then cause us to say or do things which we later regret.  It only takes a few moments of anger, for example, to destroy even a lifetime’s worth of our closest relationships.  It is only by learning to gain control of our mind, even in the most difficult and provocative of situations, that we can have any hope of being happy just in this life, much less in lifetimes to come.

This is hard too, because it is difficult enough to accept that our freedom and happiness depend upon our mind.  We may know this, but have we yet accepted it?  We still grasp at our freedom and happiness depending upon our bank account, whether we are getting along with our family, how we are advancing in our career.  We are convinced these things determine our happiness and work unquestioningly towards their accomplishment.  But no matter how much money we have in the bank, no matter how many people love us, and no matter how successful we are in our career, we still remain ill at ease.  Yet, even when we are staring into the abyss of poverty, in the middle of huge conflicts with our loved ones and we have lost our job, if our mind is calm and peaceful, free from delusions, we are happy.  This doesn’t mean we don’t try improve our external circumstance, it just means we don’t look to it to make us happier.

Here Shantideva is saying that my freedom and happiness does not just depend totally on my mind, but real freedom, real happiness, depends upon realizing ultimate truth.  Do we realize this?  Have we accepted this?  The whole world, and all of our lives, are filled with all sorts of drama.  Why?  Because we think this is all real.  We think all of this matters.  In reality, it is just the dance of karmic appearances with nothing behind them.  Nothing is actually happening.  Nobody is actually there thinking anything about us.  We have never gone anywhere.  Yet it all seems so real, it all seems so important.  As a result, we overreact to what appears and make everything worse.  We are like somebody drowning, panicking, and flailing about, but in actual fact we are in 3 feet of water and if we could just calm down we would realize we could stand without trouble.  Nothing is as bad as it seems, because in reality the things that seem to exist don’t.  We of course still need to respond conventionally to what appears, but the sting of everything falls away.  Knowing nothing is wrong (because nothing is happening) we are able to calm down, look at the situation in a peaceful way, and then respond with wisdom and compassion instead of ignorance and anger.

The test for whether we really understand the importance of ultimate truth is how often each day are we training in ultimate truth?  If we are honest, we are still turning to other things as the source of our happiness.

That’s our responsibility then as bodhisattvas: with a deeply compassionate mind of Bodhichitta, we need to train in wisdom.  To make spiritual progress we have to oppose at deeper and deeper levels the obstructions in our mind.  We do this by training in the spiritual paths that are the opponents to our delusions.  When delusions arise, we need to make an active effort to recall our virtues and recall our wisdom and use them to bring our mind back to a clear, peaceful, constructive, happy space.  Hanging on to our anger, going over again and again all of the perceived faults against us and plotting our revenge are all minds that destroy our peace now and will take us to the lower realms later.

We need to know clearly what we need to abandon and what in our mind we need to cultivate.  If we don’t clearly know these things, how can we heal our own mind?  Once we have this knowledge we can actually set about the process of transforming our mind.  We can begin the process of healing.

(5.15) Rebirth as a first form realm god and so on,
Which results from the mental action of clear concentration,
Does not come from actions of body or speech
But from actions of mind.

(5.16) Buddha, the All Knowing One, has said
That reciting mantras and prayers, and enduring spiritual hardships,
Even for a long time,
Are to no avail if the mind is distracted elsewhere.

Geshe-la has often warned us about the distracted mind during pujas or while we are engaging in our practice.  When Geshe-la first opened the temple at Manjushri he gave teachings on Lamrim, but in reality he spent three days talking about distraction, calling it the thief which is robbing us of our spiritual life.  He said the sadhanas we have been given have everything we need to attain enlightenment.  The only thing we have to do is apply ourselves fully to doing them with single-pointed concentration.  If we do this one thing, we will attain enlightenment.

One of the many bad habits we have gotten into is distraction.  When we engage in sadhanas, because we are familiar with them, we do them without paying much attention to what we are doing.  Perhaps the feeling arises that we need a new practice because this one has grown boring or dry.  This feeling arises because we relate to our sadhanas as things that do something to us as opposed to things we are supposed to do.  We relate to them as we do any samsaric object.

The key to practicing sadhanas with constant freshness is we should try to generate the minds indicated by the words, not just recite them.  Because the minds indicated by the words have multiple levels, we can engage in the sadhana at multiple levels.  Doing sadhanas is an art form to be perfected.  We need to continuously strive to perfect the quality with which we do our practices.  This is how we advance.  It is not complicated, we just need to be mindful about what we are supposed to be doing, and then we do it.

For me, the most effective way of keeping our sadhana practice alive is to view each recitation of each line of the sadhana as an implicit request to the Spiritual Guide that he generate within our mind the correct mind indicated by the words.  When we rely upon the Spiritual Guide in this way we need to avoid two extremes.  The first is the extreme of relying upon our ordinary mind – we try do the sadhana with our ordinary mind.  This doesn’t work any more than it is possible to clean a dirty room with a dirty rag.  The other extreme is the extreme of doing nothing.  Here we just request the Spiritual Guide to do it all, but then we do nothing from our own side.  We just wait passively with lots of attachment to results that he does something.  The middle way here is to make the requests, but then try from our own side to generate in our hearts the minds indicated by the words to the best of our ability.  Effectively, what we try do is align ourselves with what he is doing/generating within our mind.  With our effort and his blessings, we will definitely move our mind.  Not every meditation will be filled with mind-blowing revelation, but we will feel with every meditation, even the ones where we struggle to simply stay awake, we are moving the ball forward.

Training in virtuous habits requires concentration, because concentration allows us to familiarize ourself with virtue.  To achieve such extraordinary results from a virtue such as conscientiousness requires extraordinary effort.  Effort is not a lot of visible external work.  We can be doing a whole lot of external work, but be doing it with an unhappy mind, and there is no effort.  Effort is enjoying engaging in virtuous actions.  We enjoy engaging in virtuous actions themselves.  Geshe-la said whether we see good results from our activities is not important.  Sometimes we will, sometimes we won’t.  What is meaningful is our joyful effort, because good results will always come in time from such effort.

(5.13) Where is there enough leather
To cover the surface of the Earth?
But just having leather on the soles of one’s feet
Is the same as covering the whole Earth.

(5.14) In the same way, it is not possible
To control all external events;
But, if I simply control my mind,
What need is there to control other things?

I think that we all have this bad habit of wanting to control. On one level we’re all control freaks.  Why?  Because we want everything to be how we want it to be.  This desire arises from our self-grasping and self-cherishing minds.  If we examine closely our thoughts, even our speech and our physical behavior, the truth of this will become apparent.  We need to know these things.  We need to identify these things in our own mind.  To destroy our enemy of delusions, we must first identify them.

This controlling mind is a horrible mind.  Rather than accepting happily whatever happens, we prefer to control.  We mentally grasp at some things being good and others being bad, and as a result we seek to control what happens.  We exhaust ourselves doing this to no avail.  We can take a simple example of just listening to somebody else.  Are we able to happily allow the other person to say what they want, how they want, for as long as they want, and we simply listen and enjoy listening.  There are levels of impatience that we suffer from all the time, in every aspect of our life. Do we genuinely leave people free to do what they wish or do we try control them?

Our mind seeks to control, it wishes to change things, it seeks to push certain things away.  Instead, we need to learn to accept them all.  This will sometimes mean our selfish wishes go unfulfilled, and this can be painful.  But what is bad for our self-cherishing is good for us.  Generally we get too concerned with immediate results.  We do the slightest virtue, and we expect to get our karmic benefits right away.  If they don’t, we are not willing to engage in the virtue.  This comes from worldly concerns.  This is a real training of the mind.  Yes, it is hard work, but the rewards are infinite.  If we have the mind of patient acceptance, it is as if we are in a pure land while still abiding in samsara.  We accept everything, can go anywhere in any situation and are perfectly happy.  We know how to accept everything just as it is without the slightest need to change anything.  We can do this because we know how to use everything that arises to accomplish our spiritual purposes.  Everything gives us a chance to train in some form of virtue or to realize some truth of Dharma, so we can use everything to advance along the path.

This does not mean we do not alleviate harm where we can do so.  Of course if there are things we can do to stop suffering, for ourself or for others, then we should do so for virtuous reasons, such as wanting to protect others from creating bad karma for themselves.  But when we can’t do anything to change the external situation, it doesn’t matter because we know how to accept everything as it is.

It is so difficult for us—to let go of our desire to have any control over others.  Are we ready to let people be as they want to be, do as they want to do—without any wish to control?  We even need to let go of the desire for control over situations.  We do this because we are still suffering from the mind that thinks that our inner wellbeing depends on what is happening in the external world, so to be happy we need to manipulate and force the external to conform to our wishes.  Most anger comes from this, we strongly convince ourselves that some external thing needs to happen, and we try force the world to conform to our vision of things.  This only creates more problems.

A Bodhisattva instead desires only to control their own mind. Shantideva says “if I simply control my own mind, what need is there to control other things?”  When we are free from needing to control other things for ourself, then we will be in a position to help people make the right choices for themselves.  We don’t want them to change for us.  Whatever they do, it is perfect for us.  Rather, we want them to change for them.  We only help people change the things about themselves that they wish to change, not what we wish to change.  For example, we might be with somebody who has huge faults, but doesn’t see any but the smallest.  We help them change what they want to change, and we accept the rest as perfect for our training.

(5.12) It is not possible to subdue unruly beings
Who are as extensive as space;
But simply destroying the mind of anger
Is the same as overcoming all these foes.

The reality is this:  the world is filled with those who would do us harm.  Conventionally speaking and paranoia aside, our viewing some people as out to harm us in some way is often correct.  The mind of anger is the wish to harm those who harm us in some way, regardless of whether that person harmed us in the past, is harming us now or is plotting to harm us in the future.  On this surface, this can seem an entirely rational reaction.  We harm those who harm us to teach them a lesson to not harm us (or to harm those we love).  We think if we inflict some pain on them for harming us, then they will stop doing so.  We might even tell ourselves that we are helping them in this way because we are acting to deter them from engaging in future non-virtue.

But Geshe-la is very clear:  there are no external enemies.  The only enemies we fight are our delusions.  Geshe-la famously said, “love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies.”  Ultimately, somebody only becomes our “enemy” when we impute “enemy” upon them.  Love wishes others to be free from all suffering and to know only true happiness.  Somebody who wishes to harm us can either be an object of our anger, at which point we will label them “enemy,” or they can be an object of our love, at which point we label them “mother sentient being.”  In this way, love quite literally destroys all “enemies.”  Nobody will appear to us as an enemy, though they may still appear to us as somebody who wishes to harm us.

Either way, we still need to respond appropriately to their wishing to harm us, but if we act out of anger, we feed their wish to harm us; if we act out of love, we gradually undermine it.    Even in conventional circles, we are advised to “kill ‘em with kindness.”  If somebody is consistently out to undermine us, but we make an effort to be kind to them and considerate of their interests, quite often their hostility will melt and they will come to see us as a friend.

Ultimately, whether another’s actions help us or harm us depends entirely on how we respond to their harm.  If we respond with delusion, then we will create negative karma for ourselves and set ourselves up to be harmed again in the future.  If instead we respond with wisdom or compassion, then their harming us can be in fact be a blessing, pushing us along the path.  Even if their intention is to harm us, we nonetheless receive benefit.  No one actually has the power to harm us, only we harm ourselves by allowing delusions to rule our reactions.

This doesn’t mean we should naively let others harm us, but it does mean we pursue a long-term solution that can transform this person from an “enemy” into a “friend.”  If somebody is out to harm us, it is entirely appropriate to thwart their efforts.  If somebody has a tendency to act in an unruly way, it is entirely compassionate to make it harder for them to do so.  Our acting in this way is not driven by anger, but rather by compassion wishing to protect the person from creating bad karma for themselves.  Being kind and having no enemies does not mean we become a doormat nor does it mean we never fight.  Sometimes we have to fight, even kill, if necessary.  The Lamrim teachings explain it is possible to engage in physical or verbal actions such as killing and lying if we are not motivated by delusion, but instead by compassion.  For example, in one of his previous lives Buddha Shakyamuni killed somebody who was about to kill everybody else on the boat they were on.  Normally, killing is non-virtuous, but in this context because his act of killing was actually an act of protecting others, it was the virtuous thing to do.

From a long-term perspective, if we destroy our mind of anger we will stop harming others.  If we stop harming others, we will stop creating the karma to be harmed ourselves.  Once our past karma of having harmed others is either exhausted or purified, we will only have virtuous karma on our mind and nobody will even seek to harm us.  In this way, destroying the mind of anger destroys all our foes, even if it takes some time before this is our karmic reality.

(5.11) The killing of fish and other creatures
Has not been eradicated anywhere,
For completing the perfection of moral discipline is said to be
Attaining a mind that has abandoned non-virtue.

I used to work in academia, and as a Professor it is easy to map out ideal solutions to problems and take righteous stands.  When I came into government, one of the first things my boss told me was, “all decisions of governance involve trade-offs.  All we can do is the least bad thing possible.”  For as long as we remain in samsara, we cannot avoid harming others.  Our mere existence in this world inflicts untold harm on those around us.  For example, walking outside kills insects and scratching our arm kills tiny living beings on our skin.  If we check, every single decision we face in samsara is one of not choosing between “good” and “bad” rather our choices are always between “bad” and “even worse.”

We might mistakenly think, “perhaps I should avoid any and all responsibility, because then I won’t have to make such choices.”  But if we assume no responsibility we have no means of helping anybody.  Not helping those we could otherwise help if we had assumed responsibility is also hurting them.  We might then think, “perhaps it is best to die because then we will do no harm.”  But when we die we are reborn somewhere else in samsara inflicting different harm.  Realizing this, we may become despondent thinking it is impossible for us to practice moral discipline because no matter what we do we will inflict harm on others.  Seeing it is impossible to fulfill our moral discipline we then give up trying.  But this is completely wrong.

Just as we should not let the fact that we are not able to give everything to everybody diminish in any way our wish to do so, so too we should not let the fact that we are unable to “do no harm” diminish in any way our wish to abandon all non-virtue.  Yes, we can’t at present “do no harm,” but we can still wish to do none.  This wish will then naturally drive us to find a way to fulfill that wish.  The only way is to get out of samsara and become a Buddha.

It is very important if we are to observe moral discipline and experience good results that we train in developing a heartfelt mental intention/desire to abandon all faults.  Geshe-la has said that when training in moral discipline our intention must be a sincere intention.  We want to abandon our faults, not we want to continue engaging in them, but think we shouldn’t.  There is a huge difference between these two.  If in our heart we still wish to engage in non-virtue, but stop ourselves because we think we “shouldn’t” then all we will do is repress our non-virtuous desires, where they will grow like a cancer until eventually they overwhelm us.  Instead, we need to get to the point where we don’t want to engage in non-virtue because we see doing so only makes things worse.

We must feel it’s harming ourselves to go against our moral discipline.  It is like banging our head against the wall and creating the causes for our own suffering.  We naturally don’t want to do this, so we naturally want to change our behavior.   If we have this kind of wisdom, seeing how our faults harm us, then eventually we will achieve a mind that actually strongly wishes to abandon non-virtue.  From this, all of our actions of body, speech, and mind will become pure.  Moral discipline is not just looking like we’re behaving ourselves, but we are behaving ourselves.  And we are doing so because we want to.

Geshe-la says our vows and commitments are like an inner spiritual guide that always gives us good advice.  My parents were divorced and I didn’t see my father much as I was growing up, but his constant lectures and advice sunk in.  Even now, when I am confronted with some situation, I find myself internally debating with him about what to do.  Sometimes I don’t want to follow his advice, but I still hear him in the back of my mind telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing.  And even if I don’t want to admit it at the time, he is usually right.  Of course, all of this conversation is just taking place in my own head and he knows nothing about our constant “talks.”  In the same way, the Spiritual Guide is like our internal father who explains to us what is to be attained and what is to be abandoned.  His advice is born from the wisdom knowing what is best for us, not some external set of rules we must obey for fear of some externally imposed punishment if we do not.  While my father of this life may sometimes be wrong, my spiritual father is always right.  It is only my ignorant rebellion against his advice that convinces me otherwise.  We need to learn to activate his voice within our mind, allow ourselves to hear his advice and take the time to reflect on the reasons why he is right.  He will never lead us astray.  His wisdom is born from compassion.

(5.10) The completion of the perfection of giving is said to be
The thought wishing to give everything to all living beings,
Together with the merit that results from that giving;
Therefore, it depends only on mind.

Normally we think of giving as a physical action that transfers ownership of some object from ourself to others.  In reality, though, it is a change in mental imputation that transfers ownership, not any physical moving of objects.  Mentally we can give everything away right now by simply imputing “this belongs to others” on everything we own, indeed everything we encounter.

We need to stop thinking “mine”, feeling anything belongs to me to keep, to enjoy.  We need to feel like nothing is ours.  This is a training of mind, so we have to let go of this thought “mine”.  Perhaps we are unaware, but if we check we will find we are still imputing “mine” on many, many things.  If we check we’re still thinking this with respect to our clothes, body, friends, time, life, etc.  We need to look for and know that mind.  We need to ask ourselves the question, “what do I still consider to be mine?  Why am I still trying to hold on to this?  What good does it do me to have this attitude?”  We need to make a distinction between possession and ownership.  It is entirely possible for you to remain in possession of things, but you understand these belong to others, so you take care of their things for them and use these things for their benefit.

We must train in the thought to give everything, absolutely everything, to all living beings—even the merit we accumulate. We do this so that others can experience the good results of our virtues.  We must train the mind to give up everything.  If we don’t train in this mind now, then when we die, things will be ripped away from us. The perfect result of training in giving, we will find in the mind.

We need to train continuously in the mind of giving.  Venerable Tharchin says it does not matter how much we give, rather it matters how often we generate the mind of giving.  It is better to give a little quite often than it is a lot only a few times.  Why?  Because it is the mental intention we are training in, not the sum we give.  Sometimes we think our giving is so small, it is not worth doing.  But there is no act of giving too small.  Surely giving nothing is worse than giving at least something.

Sometimes we do one act of giving and then think we have done our bit and can go back to taking.  We do a few favors for others and then think, “now they owe me.”  Or perhaps we give to the center and think, “now I don’t have to give again because I have done my part.”  Giving needs to become a mental habit, where when we receive something we immediately think about how we can give it away.  What are the best objects of giving?  The three jewels, because giving to them gives to all living beings.  Giving Dharma means giving Dharma advice where possible and making teachings accessible to others, for example through helping our local Dharma center.  Giving to Buddhas means mentally offering everything we have to the Buddhas, sincerely requesting them to use these things for the enlightenment of all beings.  Giving to Sangha means helping support our teachers, retired monks and nuns, and helping our Sangha friends gain access to teachings when it otherwise would not be possible for them.

One of my old teachers used to say, “we should give until it hurts.”  Only then are we pushing the envelope and actually weakening our miserliness.  Miserliness feels pain and loss when we give.  This is one of the most deceptive of all delusions.  Miserliness convinces us that giving makes us poorer and hoarding makes us richer, when in reality it is the exact opposite.  Our miserliness condemns us to poverty and our generosity will make us rich.  This does not mean we should be foolish in the way we give.  For example, if we have a million dollars and transfer it out of our control, it will be a great act of giving.  But if instead we mentally transfer the money as belonging to others but keep it so that we can give away the interest earned on that money, it can keep on giving indefinitely.  It all depends upon the context, but one thing is clear:  mentally we should give everything away right now.  Afterwards, it is just identifying when is it most beneficial to actually physically transfer control.

Over the next several verses, Shantideva explains how each of the six perfections is an action, or training of the mind, not of the body.  We need to be very clear about what minds we are trying to generate.

(5.9) If completing the perfection of giving
Were eliminating the poverty of living beings,
Since hungry beings still exist,
How could the previous Buddhas have completed that perfection?

Many Christians struggle with the seeming paradox of God being both omnipotent and perfectly good.  If he is omnipotent, then he has absolute power over everything and can accomplish everything.  Yet if that is the case then why hasn’t he ended all suffering, such as poverty.  Surely, if he was perfectly good he would do so.  The doubt therefore arises, how can he both be omnipotent and perfectly good?  If he is omnipotent, he can’t be perfectly good because suffering exists.  If he is perfectly good, then he can’t be omnipotent because if he was he would have already ended suffering long ago.

In the same way, we might generate doubts thinking, how can a Buddha have completed the perfection of giving if poverty still exists?  Nagarjuna says for whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.  Surely, then, a Buddha could emanate everything necessary to end all poverty.  Since poverty still exists, then either a Buddha hasn’t completed the perfection of giving (and thus could not have become a Buddha) or Nagarjuna is wrong and not everything is possible.

Shantideva explains the answers to these paradoxes.  First, giving is not perfected by having given everything to everybody, rather we perfect the mind of giving when we wish, without reservation, to give everything to everybody, including any merit we might accumulate from that act of giving.  In many of the Bodhisattva trainings, we need to set aside useless thoughts thinking there is no point generating virtuous wishes if we are we are unable to fulfill them.  For example, imagine 20 people come to you asking for help, but due to the constraints of having only one body you can only help one of them.  At such times, we could easily imagine wishing 20 people hadn’t come to us because we can’t fulfill all their wishes.  This is completely wrong.  Even though (at present) we lack the ability to help all 20 people simultaneously, we should nonetheless generate the desire wishing we were able to help all of them.  Just like Avalokiteshvara, our heart should burst forth with a burning desire to help everyone even when we can’t (at present) do so.  This burning wish will drive us to seek a means of being able to fulfill this virtuous desire.  The only way being by becoming a Buddha who has such power.  In the same way, we should not dim in any way our desire to give everything to everybody simply because we are unable to do so.  We should cultivate this wish to its fullest, and then seeing we can’t fulfill it, we will naturally feel pushed to find a way to do so – in other words, by becoming a Buddha.  The perfection of giving, therefore, is the mind consumed by the burning wish to give everything to everybody, including the merit that would flow from such giving.  This mind drives us relentlessly to enlightenment.

Nagarjuna is still correct because implicit within a correct understanding of emptiness is an understanding of the laws of karma.  Je Tsongkhapa explains that when the wisdom realizing emptiness confirms karma, and our understanding of karma reveals emptiness then our understanding of both emptiness and karma is correct.  The wisdom realizing emptiness does not bestow upon us some magical power with which we can break the laws of nature, rather the wisdom realizing emptiness enables us to harness the laws of karma towards any end we may wish.  One of the laws of karma is if an action is not completed, the effect cannot be experienced.  Poverty is the karmic result of miserliness and wealth is the karmic result of giving.  Even though a Buddha would want to give everything to everybody and thereby end their poverty, if other living beings have not created the karma of giving for themselves, their poverty will not end.  We might then wonder what is the point of becoming a Buddha wishing to free all living beings if living beings themselves still need to do all the work?  The answer is as a Buddha we will be able to be by their side for the rest of eternity, gradually helping guide them to the path of giving.  It may not be a quick fix solution, but who ever said such a solution existed?  (As a side note, from the perspective of a Buddha, once they attain enlightenment they will experience all beings as having always been enlightened, so it will be as if everyone instantaneously attains enlightenment with them.  They do not see things in this way because it is objectively true, rather they see things in this way because this view helps ripen living beings in the swiftest possible way).

(5.6) Buddha, the Able One, says,
“Thus, all fears
And all infinite sufferings
Arise from the mind.”

(5.7) Who purposely creates the weapons
That harm the beings in the hells?
Who creates the blazing iron ground?
From where do the tempting hallucinations arise?

(5.8) The Able One says that all such things
Come only from evil minds.
Thus, there is nothing to fear within the three worlds
That has not come from the mind.

Control over our life comes only when we have control over our mind.  Why?

Because our mind is the creator. We need to try to understand clearly how our mind is the creator of all fears, sufferings, and so forth.  Where do these appearances come from?  The mind itself.  Everything is like objects in a dream.  With the creation of a cause within our mental continuum, there’s also the creation of a potentiality, which will ripen as a mind and its object.

Since the mind and its object are the same nature, if we have an impure mind we will experience all objects as impure.  Why do we perceive and experience things as they do?  Since nothing exists outside the mind, they must be imputed by mind.  If we discriminate in ordinary, harmful ways, that’s how objects will be experienced.  If we regard someone as our enemy, that’s what they will be for us, through the force of discrimination.  At present we have many negative, impure, harmful states of mind.  What will arise from these?  All these states of mind must be bound, subdued, so that we can put an end to the fears and sufferings that arise from them.  All will be bound simply by binding the mind.  Why?   Because they come from mind.

We might object, “but even if I change my mind, my bank account will still be empty and my partner will still have run off with somebody else?  Changing my mind changes nothing.”  It is important we think deeply about this objection and come up with a definite answer to it.  If we don’t, we won’t be convinced of the need to realize emptiness.

There are two answers to this objection.  First, changing our mind can change our opinion about what appears, and therefore our experience of it.  We can view something as a “problem” or as an “opportunity.”  From its own side, the situation is neither, but it becomes these things depending on how we view them.  For example, imagine we have a bad stomach ache.  If we view things from the perspective of unpleasant feelings, this is a bad thing.  If we view things from the perspective of opportunity to purify our negative karma, train in renunciation or generate compassion, then our experience of the stomach ache is a good thing.  It may still be “uncomfortable,” but it ceases to be a “problem.”  The same is true or all things.  By changing our mind, we can change our opinion about what appears, and as a result change our experience of these things.

Second, we can actually change what appears, but with a lag in time.  It is true changing our mind will not give us our job back after we have been fired.  But why did we get fired?  It was the effect of karma.  Karma comes from action, and all action comes from the mind.  Kadam Bjorn said, “if you don’t like your karma, change it.”  By changing our mind, we change our actions, by changing our actions we change our karma.  From a very long-term perspective, if we stop creating negative karma, even if we engage in no purification practice, eventually all of our negative karma will exhaust itself and only positive karmic seeds will remain on our mind and we will know only pleasant experiences.  If all our minds become pure, all of our actions will become pure, and therefore all of our karma will become pure.  From this, eventually all of our experiences will become pure.  There is a lag in time between when we change our mind and it starts changing what appears, but it does eventually happen.  If we understand this, we realize if we change our mind we can change everything.  Nothing else can promise such results.  This is why Geshe-la says there is no solution to human problems other than Dharma.

As we go through our daily lives, we should make Shantideva’s questions our mental habit.  We can look at any object, any situation, any problem and ask ourselves the questions, “where do these things come from?”  “Who created these things?”  When we ask these questions with wisdom, we are eventually led to a clear answer of our own mind.  There is no creator other than mind.  If we remind ourselves of this again and again, day by day our wisdom will grow, and as it does the efficacy of practicing Dharma as the sole solution to our problems will become self-evident.