(2.18) I offer to those with the nature of compassion
A celestial palace resounding with heavenly praise
And hung with beautiful pearls and jeweled ornaments
Whose infinite radiance illuminates space.

(2.19) Eternally I will offer to the Able Ones
Exquisite jewelled parasols held aloft,
With pleasing shapes, handles of gold,
And rims embellished with beautiful ornaments.

With these two verses, we offer to our Spiritual Guide and all the Buddhas the supreme abode, the celestial mansion of Heruka in Keajra.  Of all the palaces in the universe, none are more sublime nor meaningful than the celestial palace of Heruka.  People all over the world fantastize about living in their dream home, but the celestial mansion of Heruka is the greatest home of all.  If we have wisdom, there is no place we would want to call home more.  By offering this heavenly seat that is the envy of all the Chakravatin kings of the three times, we create the causes to one day take up residence in this most sacred and holy of places.

What makes Heruka’s palace so special?  It is located at the top of Mount Meru, the king of mountains, and the center of the Buddhist cosmos.  Buddhist cosmology is incredibly vast.  The universe as we know it is known as a single world.  There are the one thousand worlds, which correspond to 1,000 such universes.  The two thousand worlds are 1,000 one thousand worlds, in other words one million universes.  And the three thousand worlds are 1,000 of the two thousand worlds, in other words one billion universes.  In reality, there are countless different world systems, but they are referred to as the three thousand worlds.  This is not different than modern scientific cosmological theories that we live in an n-dimensional multi-verse.  While of course it is just mental imputation and not meant to be a geographical description, in order to visualize and conceive of the three thousand worlds, we say that they are located on four continents surrounding Mount Meru.  Around each continent are two sub-continents.  These continents can be thought of in modern scientific terms as universal clusters.  Just as there are superclusters of galaxies, so too there are superclusters of universes.  These superclusters are the four continents.  Mount Meru itself is actually a successive progression of pure lands corresponding with the different deities and spiritual traditions the world over, including the Land of the 33 Heavens, Tara’s pure land, and one can say the Christian heaven.  On the top of Mount Meru is Heruka’s celestial mansion.  This entire collection of the four continents and Mount Meru collectively is Keajra, or Heruka’s pure land.  According to Vajrayogini practice, Keajra has a different conventional appearance, but the meaning is exactly the same.

Heruka’s palace physically is square in shape, with four doors in each of the cardinal directions.  Inside, it is simultaneously as vast as the universe, yet still feels as cozy as Grandma’s home.  For those who have had the good fortune to visit a Kadampa temple, such as the one in the Ulverston, New York or Brazil, the physical aspect is quite similar.  We can find a complete description of his palace in Essence of Vajrayana and we can find images of it on-line.  Everything within the temple is made of wisdom light that radiates translucently from within.  It is sublime beyond description.

Just as certain functions are accomplished in the major buildings of the world, so too certain functions are accomplished in Heruka’s celestial mansion.  The two main functions are first, beings who enter it continuously receive flawless explanations of Dharma individually tailored to their specific needs and circumstance.  Second, the body mandala deities of Heruka bless and heal the subtle bodies of all beings, enabling all of their inner winds and drops to flow without obstruction into their central channel at their heart.  This enables them to effortlessly generate the mind of clear light bliss and emptiness.  With this concentration, they can quickly purify all of the contaminated karmic obstructions on their mind.  When the two obstructions have been completely purified, they attain enlightenment.

Venerable Tharchin explains that the location of mind is at the object of cognition.  The meaning is our mind literally goes to its object.  If we think of the moon, our mind literally goes there.  Because we naturally impute our “I” onto our mind, wherever our mind goes, our “I” goes with it.  If we can absorb 100% of our mind into our object, we will literally feel as if we are transported to its location (which is ultimately within our mind anyways).  If the object of our cognition is Heruka’s celestial mansion, our mind literally goes there.  If we can absorb 100% of our mind there, our “I” will naturally follow and it will quite literally feel as if we have gone to the pure land.  This is the experience of many Tantric meditators.

Understanding this, we should make a point of going to Heruka’s holy temple as often as possible.  When we go into meditation, we should feel as if we are leaving this world and actually transporting ourself into his home.  Once there, we can then ask questions directly of Heruka that he reveal to us what we should do to resolve particular problems in our lives or practice.  Religious people around the world go on great pilgrimages to visit the holy sites of this world to seek inspiration and advice, but the experienced Tantric meditator does so daily.  The celestial mansion becomes our refuge, our home, our Dharma center, our temple.  We can receive perfectly reliable teachings and heal ourselves there.  Kadam Bjorn explains that all physical illness comes from delusions, and all delusions come from imbalances or blockages within our subtle body.  By healing and restoring balance to our subtle body through the blessings of the body mandala deities, our delusions will gradually subside and with them our body will become healed.  There is actually no limit to how far this process can go.  While our ordinary human bodies may die, our personal experience will be of gradually appropriating the immortal body of an enlightened being.  All of this we can do inside Heruka’s abode.

When we die, we want to do so inside Heruka’s celestial mansion.  The friends and relatives we leave behind might see us in our hospital bed, but within our mind we are in Heruka’s palace, surrounded by the Heroes and Heroines singing vajra songs, showering us with pure offerings and providing eloquent explanations of Dharma.  Ideally, we would want to die within the definitive palace of Heruka, the clear light Dharmakaya.  But if our practice is not yet sufficiently developed for that, it suffices to believe with faith that we are in the living presence of our Guru Heruka, and he will lead us through the death process to rejoin him for eternity.  This is our good fortune.  In order to make this our reality at the time of our death, we are well advised to train in this way every time we go to sleep.

(2.15) To the Able Ones, the supreme objects of offering,
I offer all the beautiful, scented flowers –
Mandaras, upalas, lotuses, and so forth –
And exquisite garlands, finely arranged.

(2.16) I offer them vast and fragrant clouds
Of supreme incense that steal the mind;
And I offer delicacies of the gods,
Together with a variety of food and drink.

(2.17) I also offer jewelled lamps
Arranged on golden lotuses;
And on polished ground sprinkled with scent
And scattered with beautiful flower petals,

In our Tantric practices, we transform the five objects of desire (forms, smells, sounds, tastes and objects of touch) into five different types of offering goddess, which then make exquisite offerings to all the Buddhas and by extension to all living beings.  Whether an object is contaminated or an object is pure depends entirely upon the mind.  Nothing is intrinsically samsaric and nothing is intrinsically pure.  But by offering completely purified five objects of desire, we create powerful causes to be able to experience all things in this way.  Then, we can bestow the same experience upon others.

When an artist creates a piece of art, they pour everything they have into making something beautiful which inspires those who see it.  Who is not inspired and lifted emotionally by the ceilings in the Sistine Chapel?  We should be the same with our offerings.  Our goal is to create unsurpassed objects of beauty that inspire and lift emotionally all living beings.  In the early days of the tradition, when there would be an empowerment, the offering table would be filled with all sorts bags of chips, cans of Coke, and a whole lot of different types of English cookies.  Of course, it was nice to see all of these offerings being made.  But now, the offering tables for the empowerments are true works of art that naturally fill the heart with joy.  Go on YouTube and look for the videos of the Asian Festival in Hong Kong in 2014.  See the arrangement of offerings that were made for the Vajraygoini table.  One cannot help but be left in awe.

Some might object thinking it is a waste to spend so much money on making beautiful offerings, when that same money could be going to helping the poor, etc.  Helping the poor is of course good, and we should do that too, but making beautiful temples and offering is far more beneficial.  Why?  Geshe-la explains that beholding an image of a Buddha, even with an angry mind, plants non-contaminated karmic seeds on the mind of those who behold it which will ripen in the future in the form of them finding the path to enlightenment.  Every year at Kadampa temples around the world, thousands of school children and retired tourists come through, see the temple, look at all the Buddhas, and leave with pure karma on their mind.  Gen-la Losang once asked his students, “who is more important, those who come to the center and stay or those who come to the center and leave?”  He said the latter are more important for the simple reason that there are more of them.  He said we shouldn’t grasp at trying to get them to come back, but rather aim that if it is their last time to ever step foot in a Dharma center they leave thinking, “those Buddhists ain’t half bad!”  If seeing an image of a Buddha even with a mind of anger creates the causes for them to find the path in the future, imagine what will happen if they leave with a happy and peaceful mind, inspired by the beauty and loving-kindness they found?  Making our Dharma centers pleasant and filled with beautiful offerings should be seen in this larger context.  We may not get busloads of school children coming through, but we do get quite a number of new people who come only once.

Just as when we make offerings we should not be miserly and Spartan, so too we should not overdo it.  When making offerings at our center, our aim should be beautiful, but not ostentatious.  Inspiring, but not gaudy.  Abundant, but not gluttonous.  Different countries will have different cultural norms and expectations in this sense, so we should aim to be tactful and act within the norms and conventions of the culture we find ourselves.  We invest in well-crafted shrine cabinets as a sign of our respect for the Buddhas they house, but they should not seem indulgent and excessively ornate.

In the same way, we should make the floors, seats and images on the wall pleasant and comfortable.  I remember when we first started the center in Geneva we had these very uncomfortable folding chairs.  Some people saw no need to waste money buying more expensive chairs.  But that is sacrificing a larger virtue on the altar of a smaller one.  If people do not come back to the center because it is simply too uncomfortable for them to do so, then we may have saved some money and felt like we were not being indulgent by buying comfortable chairs, but have we really done the more beneficial thing if as a result many people do not return?  All of our investments in comfort and a pleasant environment in our centers should follow a similar logic.

Within our minds, though, we can go all out and fill the universe with the most sublime offerings imaginable.  We can imagine that from every pore of our body comes another body, and from every pore of those bodies come yet more bodies, and all of these bodies make endless offerings to all the holy beings without limit.  Within our own mind, we can never overdo it!

(2.12) I dry their bodies with matchless cloths
That are immaculately clean and scented.
Then I offer to the holy beings
Fragrant garments in magnificent colours.

(2.13) With various excellent raiments, fine and smooth,
And a multitude of supreme ornaments,
I adorn Arya Samantabhadra,
Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, and all the others.

(2.14) Just like polishing pure, refined gold,
I anoint the radiant bodies of all the Able Ones
With supreme perfumes whose fragrance pervades
Every part of the three thousand worlds.

I remember when I first read these descriptions in Meaningful to Behold.  It actually made me quite upset and threw me into all sorts of confusion.  I thought to myself, “surely the point of becoming a Buddha is to serve others, not to transform others into their doting slaves like out of some movie of ancient Rome.  Surely a Buddha has no need for such things, so what is the point of doing this?” And we all know stories of religious cults where the followers shower the “guru” with luxurious gifts, the finest silks and cars, and erotic concubines.  Is that what Buddhism is all about?  If so, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.

Quite distraught, I then wrote Gen Lekma, my teacher at the time.  She replied, quite simply, the Buddhas form there side have no need of these things, but we do have a need to offer such things.  Buddhas receive our offerings with delight not because they are enjoying these objects, but because they know the good karma we are creating for ourselves.  The more spectacularly pure our offering, the more pure karma we create for ourselves, laying the foundation for us going to the pure land ourselves.  We do not want to attain the pure land so that we can enjoy these things for ourselves, rather we wish to get to the pure land because from there we can help everybody.  The more magnificent and pure our offering, the better the karma we create.

From a practical point of view, what do the Buddhas do with our offerings?  They put them to good use for the sake of all living beings.  Since the sole motivation of a Buddha is to help all living beings, if you give something to a Buddha, they will turn around and use it to help everyone.  In this way, an offering to a Buddha is like making an offering to all living beings.  Rich people hire asset managers.  They don’t have time to manage their money themselves, nor do they know how to put their assets to the highest and best use.  So they hand over their money to asset managers and ask them to manage the funds for them.  In the same way, when we offer things to the Buddhas, we do so because we know they will use them for the most beneficial purposes possible.  Warren Buffet gave away virtually all of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.  He was asked, “why did you do that instead of setting up your own philanthropic organization?”  His answer was, “my goal is to bring the greatest benefit possible, so I want to give my money to those who are the best at using it well.”  Too bad he didn’t know about the International Temples Project!

But why anoint the bodies of the holy beings?  The reason is simple:  Our minds are naturally drawn to pure things, and we naturally treat pure things with respect.  By anointing the bodies of the holy beings, we create the causes for others to be drawn to them and to generate faith in them.  With this faith, they then receive instructions and put them into practice.  Further, anointing the bodies of the holy beings with all pure things creates the causes to obtain a pure body ourselves.  A Buddha’s form body pervades all worlds and is able to spontaneously emanate whatever living beings need.  We want all beings to enjoy only pure enjoyments which bestow upon them the realizations of bliss and emptiness.

(2.10) Within this sweetly scented bathing chamber
With a clear and glistening crystal floor,
Majestic pillars ablaze with jewels,
And canopies of radiant pearls spread aloft;

(2.11) With many jewelled vases filled to the brim
With scented waters that steal the mind,
And to the accompaniment of music and song,
I offer ablution to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Venerable Tharchin explains that the location of mind is at the object of cognition.  If the objects of our mind are those within the pure land, then quite literally our mind goes to the pure land.  He also said, wherever our mind goes, our “I” naturally goes with it because we naturally impute our “I” onto our mind.  When the objects of our cognition are in the pure land, part of us quite literally goes there.  Finally, he says whenever we engage in actions in a location, we create karma with that location, creating the causes to go back there again in the future.  Finally, Geshe-la explains that whatever we give we create the cause to receive.

If we put all of this together, we can realize the almost infinite power of offering ablution in the way described by Shantideva.  When we do so, we quite literally go to the pure land, and make special cleansing offerings to all of the Buddhas.  This creates the karma for us to actually go there in the future, and have our mind and body cleansed of all impurities.  To be cleansed here does not mean an ordinary cleaning with soap and water, but rather refers to a deep spiritual cleansing that purifies our mind of all contaminated karmic imprints and that purifies our bodies of being contaminated samsaric bodies.

We should spend all of our time in the pure land.  There is no reason for us to ever have to spend time in samsara.  Even if we are acting to help the beings within samsara, we ourselves need never go.  Within our mind, we can still see ourselves in the pure land, but we see we have sent an emanation body into the world of contaminated appearances.  This emanation body then serves and helps others while we abide in the pure land.  The more we imagine we are in the pure land and the more actions we engage in there (including sending emanations into this world from there), the more karma we create there.  We can think of things in terms of karmic gravity.  The law of gravity says that a larger mass will attract a smaller mass, and so the more mass is added in one place, the more everything around it will be drawn to it.  Right now, virtually all of our karma is created in this world.  As a result, the center of our karmic gravity is within samsara.  If instead, we can day after day, month after month, year after year, life after life, continue to create more and more karma in the pure land, then eventually our karmic center of gravity will shift to the pure land.  Then, we will naturally and effortlessly be drawn there.  As our mass is added there, those who are karmically close to us will be pulled into our new karmic orbit.  In short, we will draw them to join us in the pure land.

The pure land is indescribably beautiful.  Obviously I have not gone there myself, but I have had a couple of very special dreams where, as least as far as I am concerned, I went to the pure land.  There was this indescribably beautiful garden surrounded on all sides by a building that had an open but covered walking area all around it, not unlike what one sometimes finds in a garden cloister in an old European monastery.  All of the objects there, buildings, plants, even the sky, were all made out of a wisdom light, yet nothing felt ephemeral, rather everything had a unchanging vajra-like solidity and stability to it.  Not a material solidity, but solid nonetheless.  Everything glowed from within of by inner radiance that pulsated, giving rise to a profound feeling of deep inner peace and contentment, that was so peaceful it was blissful.  It was unlike anything I have ever experienced, and just a few moments of it so far surpassed any pleasant experience I have had in samsara that what is offered in samsara literally falls away into petty insignificance.  The allure is gone, I know nothing here can compare.  Once you have tasted something like this, there is no going back.  It is not that we suddenly become infinitely picky like a rich person who only accepts the finest of everything, rather it is the things of samsara simply no longer do it for us.  It is like going into a glittery mall, filled with all the finest luxury goods, yet you feel as if “there is nothing here for me, nothing of interest to me.”  The spell is gone, and with it the grasping at these things.

I have only had one or two experiences like this, but I can still remember them as if they were yesterday.  But it was enough to give me a “taste” of what the pure land is like.  Once tasted, you know there is no point working towards anything else.  It is not a clamoring after the greatest and most blissful samsaric object, rather it is seeking to return to the deep inner peace that lacks nothing.  Attachment actually prevents us from enjoying things.  Needing nothing enables us to deeply enjoy everything.

The descriptions Shantideva gives when he makes offerings are not mere fantasy, he is describing a world – a plane of existence – that actually exists.  We can marvel not only at the poetry of his words, but imagine the pure world it describes.  Doing so, and offering the things of that world, creates the causes for such things to become our living reality.

It is entirely normal when we first hear about the practice of offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide as his servant that a wide variety of objections will arise within our mind.  We first might wonder if this means we need to leave our family and our jobs and go live next to the Spiritual Guide and bring him food, clean his room, etc.  Sure, some might do exactly that, but only if it is their wish.  Generally speaking, though, the Spiritual Guide works for all living beings without exception, including for our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors and so forth.  How else can the Spiritual Guide help these people close to us other than through us?  We don’t need to go anywhere or abandon anyone, all we need to do is take up his work as our own in our homes, work environments, our local centers, neighborhoods, communities and so forth.  We merely need ask ourselves, “what would our Spiritual Guide want me to do here?” And then we do exactly that.

We might wonder, if I offer myself to him as his servant, what if he wants to do something with me that I don’t want?  It is entirely possible that he will want to do things with you that your delusions will not want.  He will want you to put others first, but our delusions will want to put ourselves first.  He will want you to let go of your attachments, but our delusions will want to grasp at them.  He will want you to be generous and give, whereas our miserliness will want to horde everything for ourself.  And this is precisely the crux of it all:  what our delusions want and what our Spiritual Guide wants are necessarily opposite.  But, what your delusions want is to eventually put you in the deepest hell where you can never escape.  They will not stop, ever.  All delusions are deceptive.  They promise us happiness if we listen to them, but they trick us and leave us only to suffer.  What they want is harmful for us, what our Spiritual Guide wants for us is everlasting freedom.  It is only because we are under the hypnotic spell of our delusions that we are completely confused about what is in fact good for us.

Our Spiritual Guide, ultimately, wants to forge us into a Buddha.  If we understood what Buddhahood was, we would want nothing else for ourself.    Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide will mean we have to go against the grain and advice of our delusions, but that is a good thing.  We might think we are not ready to take on such a big commitment and we can’t guarantee that our delusions will not, from time to time, get the better of us.  We might worry, I don’t want to create the negative karma of stealing from the Spiritual Guide, and since I can’t guarantee that I will not ever use myself for myself again, it is better that I wait until I am ready before I offer myself.  But this is the wrong way of thinking.  Our Spiritual Guide knows our delusions will deceive us.  If they didn’t, we would already be a Buddha.  As long as we don’t abandon the wish to one day become an extension of him, an “instrument of his peace,” then we never actually break our commitment and there is no problem.  We might occasionally forget we have offered ourself, but that is quite different than mentally saying, “I don’t want to offer myself to my Spiritual Guide anymore, I would like to take myself back and use me for my own selfish purposes.” It doesn’t matter whether we succeed all of the time, in fact we will fail most of the time.  What matters is that we have chosen our final destination, and we never give up striving to go in this direction.

We might also quite naturally object that it sounds very sect-like like to offer ourself as a servant to the Spiritual Guide.  Normally we say the test as to whether something is a sect or not is a group is a sect if it tries to take control of you, whereas a pure lineage will try to give you control of yourself.  Now Shantideva is saying that we need to surrender control completely to the Spiritual Guide.  It sure sounds sect-like.  The answer to this objection is in order to surrender control to the Spiritual Guide, we first need to gain control of ourselves.  We are currently slaves to our delusions.  They control us completely.  We think we are free, but in reality we are in bondage.  Our delusions will never offer us to the Spiritual Guide.  The only way we can do that is to first gain our freedom from them.  Once we have gained our freedom, we then need to decide what we do with it and how we can use it in the best way.  So we examine all the different things we can do with ourselves, and we realize that offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide is the best.  So with whatever control over ourselves we have gained, we offer ourself.

Offering ourselves to the Spiritual Guide doesn’t then deprive us of our feeling of having freedom and control over ourself.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  The more we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide, the more we feel like we are gaining control over ourselves and becoming more free.  At present, the cycle of samsara is our delusions take control of us, cause us to engage in all sorts of negative and deluded actions, and this creates the karma that binds us further to Samsara.  But when we gain some freedom from our delusions, and then we use that freedom to offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide, we feel like we become even more free.  We can then use that freedom to offer ourself again, and so on in a virtuous circle.  Offering ourself to our Spiritual Guide enables us to easily overcome all of our delusions because that is his function.

And the deepest irony is this:  we are not who we think we are.  We think we are the self we normally see, the self of our self-grasping.  In reality, we are our Buddha nature, our pure potential.  This is who we really are, it is only our self-grasping that has created this false identity and convinced us that we are it.  Our Buddha nature is inseparable from the Spiritual Guide.  In fact, we can say that our Spiritual Guide is our own pure potential fully ripened.  We just don’t realize yet that is who we are.  So when we offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide what we are actually doing is offering ourself to our true selves.  We do not lose ourselves, but actually discover who we truly are.

(2.8) Eternally I will offer all my bodies
To the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Out of respect, I will become your servant;
Please accept me, O Supreme Heroes.

(2.9) Being completely under your care,
I will benefit living beings with no fear of samsara.
I will purify my previous evils
And in future I will commit no more.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide as his servant is our supreme practice.  What are the benefits of this practice?  When we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide, all our actions function to create non-contaminated karma.  There are three types of karma, positive, negative and pure.  Pure karma and non-contaminated karma are synonymous.  Positive karma ripens in the form of pleasant experiences and an upper rebirth, negative karma ripens in the form of unpleasant experiences and lower rebirth.  Pure karma ripens in the form of blissful experiences and a pure rebirth outside of samsara, in the pure land, as a liberated being or even as a fully enlightened being.  Because the spiritual guide’s final goal is the enlightenment of all living beings, by working towards the fulfillment of his goals everything we do accumulates non-contaminated karma.  This is true even if we are cleaning the toilet or taking out the trash.

When we offer ourself in this way, we purify massive amounts of negativity, specifically with respect to the Spiritual Guide.  When we offer ourselves as a servant to the Spritual Guide, our delusions will fight back with a vengence.  As we work through these delusions we plow through all the obstructions that prevent us from uniting inseparably with him.  With the Spiritual Guide’s blessings, we can accomplish everything.  What prevents us from being able to receive the help of the Buddhas is the negative karma we have with the Spiritual Guide.  It is not unlike having interference which prevents us from picking up a wifi or mobile phone network signal.  But once this negative karma is cleared, the blessings flow endlessly.

When we offer ourselves as a servant to the Spiritual Guide, we feel ourselves to be an extension of his body.  It feels as if we are like a limb of his body – our body, speech and mind are his.  St. Francis said, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”  The Spiritual Guide enters into us and acts through us to help all those around us.  All our actions naturally become his actions working through us.  So it is as if he does all the work and we get all the merit.  It is as if we ourselves are directly engaging in the actions of an enlightened being. This is an essential basis for a qualified feeling of divine pride in our Tantric practice.  For an imputation to be valid, the name, aspect, nature and function must all be in alignment.  It is not hard to generate an image of ourself as the deity nor to remember that this appearance arises from bliss and emptiness, but we will only “feel” like we are the deity when we feel like we are accomplishing the function of the deity, namely feeling like we are ripening and liberating all living beings.  Offering ourself as a servant to the Spiritual Guide is the supreme method for generating this feeling.

We need to put ourselves in total alignment with him.  When we do, all of his power naturally flows through us.  We receive perfect inner guidance and always know what to do, and all our actions have infinite power behind them.  It is like we connect into a spiritual nuclear reactor and we can do anything.  We generate infinite self-confidence, because our Spiritual Guide can do anything and we are now an extension of him, so we too can do anything.

When we offer ourself in this way, we come under the protection of the Spiritual Guide now and in all our future lives, so we can guarantee the continuum of our Dharma practice between now and our eventual enlightenment.  Dharma practitioners don’t fear death, they fear losing the path.  If we die and lose the path, we will wander aimlessly in samsara for incalculably long periods of time.  If we can maintain the continuum of our Dharma practice, it is just a question of time (and effort) before we escape.  If a mother’s children were lost, she would never stop until they are refound and rejoined with her.  In the same way, when we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide we become like their child, and they will always find us wherever we may be in our future lives and they bring us back to our Spiritual home.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide completely destroys our self-cherishing and our self-grasping.  It destroys our self-cherishing because we no longer can use ourselves for ourselves, but need to use ourselves in the accomplishment of the goals of the Spiritual Guide.  If we give something to somebody, and then take it back and use it for our own purposes, it is a form of stealing.  In the same way, when we have offered ourself to the Spiritual Guide and then we subsequently restake a claim over ourselves and use ourselves for our own selfish purposes, it is as if we are stealing from all the Buddhas and ultimately from all living beings.  Our self-cherishing will naturally rebel against this, feeling like we are depriving ourselves of our freedom.  But our wisdom knows better and realizes that offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide is the very path to freedom.  A bloody battle between our self-cherishing and our wisdom will ensue.  We then do the work of again and again realizing how our self-cherishing is deceiving us, and that the best thing we can possibly do with our life is offer it up to the Spiritual Guide.  Eventually, the strength of our wisdom begins to surpass the strength of our self-cherishing, and we begin to know real freedom.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide destroys our self-grasping because we see ourselves to be a reflection of the mind of the Spiritual Guide and have no independent self-existence.  We become and feel ourselves to be part of a larger whole.  Self-grasping is quite simply thinking we are our ordinary body and mind.  When we offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide, we are no longer our ordinary body and mind.  They are now extensions or emanations of the body and mind of the Spiritual Guide.  They are like waves on the ocean of his body and mind.

At a very practical level, when we offer ourself to the Spritual Guide, we naturally become just like him.  We become like him, his wishes become our wishes, his choices becomes our choices, his behavior becomes our behavior.  The more from our own side we try bring our own behavior into alignment with his, the more we feel him enter into us and work through us.  Christians sometimes wear wrist bands that say, “What would Jesus do?” and they use that as their guide for how they should behave themselves.  Mormons believe that it is by working to become like God that we are reunited with him.  It is exactly the same with the practice of offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide.

CHAPTER 2

Purifying Negativity

What follows now in Shantideva’s guide is an extensive explanation of the preparatory practices for being able to take the bodhisattva vows.  Specifically this chapter will look at offerings, prostrations, going for refuge and purification.  Then, in the next chapter we will look at the remaining limbs.  All of these should be specifically understood in the context of preparing ourselves to take the bodhisattva vows.

(2.1) To maintain this precious mind of bodhichitta,
I make excellent offerings to the oceans of good qualities –
The Buddhas, the stainless jewel of the holy Dharma,
And the assembly of Bodhisattvas.

(2.2) However many flowers and fruits there are,
And all the different types of medicine;
All the jewels there are in the world,
And all the pure, refreshing waters;

(2.3) Mountains of jewels, forest groves,
And quiet and joyful places;
Heavenly trees adorned with flowers,
And trees whose branches hang with delicious fruits;

(2.4) Scents that come from the celestial realms,
Incense, wish-granting trees, and jewelled trees;
Harvests that need no cultivation,
And all ornaments that are suitable to be offered; 

(2.5) Lakes and pools adorned with lotuses,
And the beautiful call of wild geese;
Everything that is unowned
Throughout all worlds as extensive as space –

(2.6) Holding these in my mind, I offer them well
To the supreme beings, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
O Compassionate Ones, holy objects of offering,
Think of me kindly and accept what I offer.

(2.7) Lacking merit, I am destitute
And have nothing else that I can offer;
Therefore, O Protectors, who think of the welfare of others,
Please accept these for my sake.

First, we need to ask why do we make offerings?  We make offerings in order to accumulate merit.  Merit is sometimes known as positive mental energy, virtuous karma or even good luck.  We can also think of it as our inner wealth, or spiritual gasoline.  With merit, we can fulfill all our wishes.  Ultimately, to attain enlightenment we need to complete two collections:  the collection of merit, which is the cause of a Buddha’s form body; and the collection of wisdom, which is the cause of a Buddha’s mind.

The mind of bodhichitta is the most virtuous mind that exists.  To generate it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual energy, or merit.  Our mind is the substantial cause of bodhichitta, but the circumstantial causes are an abundance of merit, the clearing away of all negative karmic obstacles and a rain of powerful blessings.  To launch a rocket into space requires a tremendous amount of high quality fuel.  In the same way to lift our mind up to bodhichitta requires a tremendous amount of high quality merit.  We accumulate that merit through making offerings.

Essentially here we are offering a mandala.  A mandala offering is an offering of the entire universe and all the beings within it imagined as completely pure.  The main idea is we mentally offer the final result of our practice, promising that we will continue to work until this final goal is achieved.  Because we are offering the eventual enlightenment of all living beings, there can be no higher offering and thus no greater way of accumulating merit.  There are many stories of people who gained profound realizations through mandala offerings, and it is one of the great preliminary guides for engaging in Vajrayana Mahamudra retreat.

For the practice of offering to be qualified, there needs to be some sense of actually giving away what we offer.  Normally when we encounter pleasant objects, such as those described above, we want to enjoy them for ourselves.  When we make offerings, our mind wishes to give away these things to the Buddhas, we would rather give them away to the Buddhas than have these things for ourself.

There are many different ways we can do this.  We could do so thinking, “by giving these things away, I can accumulate great merit, with which I can gain realizations and fulfill all my virtuous wishes.”  We can think, “I would gladly give these things away so that I may gain realizations because I see clearly that realizations are worth far more than these things.”  Alternatively, we can think, “I give these things to the Buddhas because I know they will use them in the most beneficial way for the enlightenment of all beings.”  The point is, our practice of offering should be accompanied with a definite feeling of gladly giving these things away.

We might object saying, “how can I give something away that I do not myself own?”  But these things are appearing to our mind, and since all things are nothing but mere appearance, we can say we “own” the appearance, even if conventionally speaking we are not the owner.  Regardless, we can mentally imagine we do own it, and generate the mind that thinks we would gladly give it away for the sake of merit and realizations.

When we offer a mandala, we can also use it as a powerful method for overcoming our delusions.  For example, imagine we have strong attachment to alcohol or to an attractive person.  When we offer the mandala, we can also “offer up” our object of attachment.  We give it away, we let it go, and we request the Buddhas to bless our mind to be able to once and for all let go of our attachment to these objects.  Likewise, if there are certain objects that give rise to great anger, jealousy, and so forth, we can offer these as well requesting to be freed from our delusions with respect to these objects.  Ultimately, to generate a qualified bodhichitta we need to realize we need to leave all of samsara behind.  We can take nothing in samsara with us.

Finally, offering mandalas is a powerful method for attaining the pure land at the time of our death.  When we offer a mandala, we are offering the entire universe as having been completely purified.  If we offer a pure land, we create the causes to be born into one.

(1.35 continued) Even when Bodhisattvas are faced with great adversity,
Negativity does not arise; rather, their virtues naturally increase.

For the vast majority of us, when we encounter some form of adversity we usually don’t take it very well.  We become angry, frustrated, jealous, worried, stressed-out, etc.  The reason for this is simple:  our wishes are still worldly.  What we want is pleasant experiences, wealth, a good reputation and a life of ease.  Anything that threatens these things is viewed by us as a problem.  We then generate delusions, and usually respond with some form of negativity.  While bad enough, this habit quite literally leads to our own damnation.  If we die with a negative or deluded mind, it will activate negative karma throwing us into a lower rebirth from which it is almost impossible to escape.  This is not some fiction or some religious theory, but the reality of how samsara works.  If we respond to the slight inconveniences of modern life with delusion and negativity, what hope do we have of responding to the trauma of death with wisdom and virtue?  Unless we change, our fate is all but sealed.

But the Bodhisattva, in contrast, feasts on adversity.  Venerable Tharchin once said, “my main practice now is my dying body.”  For the Bodhisattva, every adversity is another opportunity to grow and train in virtue.  The reason they can do this is they have the mind of patient acceptance.  The mind of patient acceptance fully accepts samsara as it is without any resistance.  How can it accept samsara?  Because it has the wisdom that knows how to use every last bit of its sufferings to advance on the path.  For the Bodhisattva, the more negativity and difficulties that ripen, the more the bodhisattva is literally ‘pushed out’ of samsara instead of dragged down into it.  More on this when we get to the Chapter on Patience.

(36) I prostrate to those who have generated
The holy, precious mind of bodhichitta;
And I go for refuge to those sources of happiness
Who bestow bliss even upon those who harm them.

In modern times, external expressions of prostration is just seen as weird and cult-like.  Sometimes students who study under other Tibetan Lamas in India will meet with Geshe-la, and when they do, as per their custom, when they enter the room they prostrate.  Geshe-la tells them, “please, get up, it is not the modern way.”  The modern way is spiritual leaders should not hold themselves up as being anything special, quite the contrary they should assume an unpretentious and humble demeanor that puts others at ease.  I remember my first meeting ever with a “Gen-la.”  I was very nervous and when I came in, I was all respectful with my hands pressed together at my heart, etc.  He said, “oh, please, none of that.  Come in, come in, can I get you a tea?”  Geshe-la has said when we interact with our teachers and spiritual guides, we should act “exactly as normal.”  They are our spiritual friends, not our spiritual masters.  We should view them as “Sangha Jewel,” not “Buddha Jewel.”  This represents a huge departure from how things were done in India and Tibet, but in modern times, this makes all the difference.  Such a “normal” approach to relations prevents the tradition from outwardly appearing as some crazed cult, it makes our teachers much more approachable enabling us to more easily receive benefit from them, and it protects our teachers from feeling like they have to put on some pretentious show of how holy they are.  Everybody can relax and be normal.

But inwardly, if we truly understood the infinite good qualities of the Bodhisattva, we would spontaneously throw ourselves at their feet in awe and humility in the face of their greatness.  It would be like for a Christian who found themselves before the radiance of God himself.  But for the Buddhist, prostration takes on a much deeper meaning.  To prostrate is essentially to humbly request, “help me to become just like you.”  It does not just recognize the greatness of that to which we prostrate, but it seeks guidance to cultivate within ourselves these very same qualities.  It says, “this is what I seek to become.  Please help me to do so.”  If we had even the slightest inkling of a fraction of a Bodhisattva’s good qualities, we would realize they far surpass everything good in samsara put together.  Why settle for the table scraps of a dog when we can feast at the table of spiritual kings?  The choice is ours, our destiny is our own.

This concludes the first chapter of Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, entitled “An Explanation of the Benefits of Bodhichitta”.

While a Bodhisattva does not seek to be praised or honored, they don’t shun it either.  Being held in high esteem enables the Bodhisattva to help others more extensively.  They actively seek to avoid other’s hatred and to live up to other’s faith placed in them.  Being worthy of respect doesn’t entitle us to anything, rather it makes us responsible for everything.

(1.34) Buddha said that whoever generates an evil mind
Towards a Bodhisattva, a supreme benefactor,
Will remain in hell for as many aeons
As the moments for which that evil mind was generated;

The reason why is because anger is a mind that seeks to harm the object of our anger, and since a bodhisattva seeks to help all living beings, to harm a bodhisattva is to indirectly harm all living beings.  The problem is we do not know who is and who is not a Bodhisattva, so it is simply best to not get angry at anyone.

But from the perspective of the Bodhisattva, it is important that they realize the responsibility that comes with being such a person.  Because everything we do is for the sake of all beings, everything others do to us has implications on all living beings.  Thus, we become a karmically supercharged object of other people’s actions.  When people get angry at us, they create incalculably negative karma for themselves.  This is not a warning to them to not get angry at us, it is a warning to us to not act in ways which elicit anger from others.  We seek to spare them from creating such negative karma for themselves by striving to be on good terms with everyone, to apologize whenever our actions result in harm, and to compensate others for any losses we might cause.  Sometimes, of course, a higher virtue may dictate that we say no to somebody’s wrong desires which might make them angry with us, but we should try do so in a skillful way so that they understand our saying no to them is actually an act of love.  If they don’t understand and get angry nonetheless, we should seek blessings to know how to heal the situation, engage in purification practices on their behalf and engage in the practice of taking on their delusions and negative karma upon ourself to try minimize the karmic fallout to them.

It is also worth noting that guilt is just anger directed towards ourselves, and if we are a bodhisattva in training, guilt is anger directed towards a bodhisattva with all the negative karmic implications.  Many Dharma practitioners can easily fall into the trap of the more they learn and read of the good qualities of the Bodhisattva, the more they develop self-loathing for all of their shortcomings.  The qualities of the Bodhisattva are ideals we strive for, not standards we judge ourselves a failure against.  When we make mistakes, we should realize the fault lies with our delusions, not ourselves.  Our delusions rob us of control.  They take possession of us and force us to engage in harmful actions.  They fool us into thinking vice is virtue, so we become a willing participant in our own destruction.  When we make a clear distinction between our true self, which is beyond stain, and our delusions we can be utterly ruthless with our delusions while still being loving and compassionate towards ourself.

(1.35) But, for whoever generates a pure mind of faith,
The effects of good fortune will increase even more than that.

Generating faith in a bodhisattva results in infinite virtue for the same reasons, but since the karma that is created is non-contaminated (and thus indestructible) the good results are greater than the bad results.

When we become bodhisattvas and others generate confidence or faith in us they generate infinite virtue.  So we need to make it a priority to become a bodhisattva and help others generate confidence and faith in us.  By doing so, we can enable them to generate infinite, indestructible merit.  This is a real act of kindness.

How do we help others generate faith in us?  Our motivation has to be completely free from self-cherishing – we want them to have faith in us because we know how much we have to share and we want to help them.  People generate confidence in us when we are able to benefit them.  People don’t have faith by virtue of our position, but by virtue of how helpful we are to them.  The best way to help others generate pure faith in us is to generate pure faith in our own spiritual guide and teachers.  This creates the causes for others to have faith in us.

At the same time, we need to be careful to not do anything that causes others to lose their faith in us.  When great spiritual leaders fall, usually as a result of some form of sexual misconduct or other hypocrisy, many people who had faith in us wind up losing their spiritual lives.  Knowingly doing something that could others to lose faith in us is recklessness in the extreme, no different than spiritual manslaughter.

(1.31) If even someone who repays a kindness
Is worthy of some praise,
What can be said of the Bodhisattva who helps others
Regardless of whether or not they help him?

(1.32) If someone regularly, or even just once,
Gives food in a disdainful manner,
Which satisfies a few beings for only half a day,
People honour him or her as virtuous;

(1.33) So what can be said of one who eternally gives
To countless living beings
The everlasting, unsurpassed bliss of the Sugatas,
Fulfilling all their wishes?

A Bodhisattva doesn’t need nor chase after praise or being honored.  But they are nonetheless worthy of the highest praise and the highest honor.  Indeed, there are none more worthy in this world.

In the Middle Ages, the Church placed itself higher than the kings because it viewed all kingdoms as belonging to God.  The nobility went along with this because the Church would then bless their crowns as being ordained by God, and thus beyond reproach.  While such an arrangement reeks of symbiotic corruption, it does reveal why we can validly say the Bodhisattva is more worthy of praise and high honor than even the highest kings.

Samsara is an open air prison built on a foundation of bones and excrement.  What honor is there to be had in ruling over a mountain of dung?  The Bodhisattva, in contrast, seeks to lead all beings to the eternal and supreme happiness that lies beyond.  At most, the leaders of this world, be they in government, business or entertainment, can only make samsara slightly more comfortable and tolerable; but only the Bodhisattva can lead us to lasting freedom.

When we engage in some virtue or repay some kindness, there is part of our mind that seeks some recognition or appreciation for what we have done.  The Bodhisattva seeks none.  When we provide service to others, we usually limit ourselves to our friends, families or those from whom we seek some favor.  The Bodhisattva helps all equally without the slightest desire for anything in return.  People correctly praise and honor those who shelter the homeless, feed the hungry and provide for the needy.  What need is there to say of the praise and honor owed the Bodhisattva who brings all into the shelter of his celestial palace in the pure land, satiates all spiritual hunger with his blessings and provides a path to those in need of permanent freedom?

Most human aspiration comes down to wishing to emulate certain role models.  Trying to play like Michael Jordon, innovate like Steve Jobs, or lead like Jack Kennedy brings out the best in us.  But why stop there?  Surely the Bodhisattva is the greatest role model of all.  Who else dedicates not only this life, but all of their future lives, to patiently help all beings solve all of their problems for all of eternity?  Who else strives to attain every good quality and every necessary ability to realize that goal?  No one is more worthy of being held up as the supreme role model than the courageous bodhisattva who seeks to permanently vanquish the real devils of self-cherishing and self-grasping that have enslaved us all.  It is one thing to declare war on your enemies, it is quite another to declare war on the foundations of samsara itself.

It is frankly impossible to adequately extol the worthiness of a Bodhisattva.  It is quite literally beyond words, thoughts and conceptions.  There is quite simply nothing higher.  In terms of being worthy of praise and honor, a Bodhisattva is even higher than all of the Buddhas.  Just as we prostrate to the new moon and not the full moon, so too we hold highest the Bodhisattva who is the cause of which Buddhahood and all that follow is the effect.

We should consider again and again the many qualities of the Bodhisattva, and in our heart of hearts long day and night to become one ourself.  There is no higher goal, no more noble calling, no more meaningful purpose.