3. Tantra

Engaging in the actions of Heruka

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

After the meditation on the self-generation, there are a number of practices we engage in.  From my perspective, it seems the main purpose of these practices is to gain some experience with engaging in the actions of a Buddha.  This serves a couple of different purposes.

First, by engaging in the actions of a Buddha now, we create the causes for the Buddhas to engage in those actions for us, which will then help accelerate our path to enlightenment.  As we advance further along the path, we can then engage in the actions of a Buddha in a more qualified way and thus create even better causes for the Buddhas to engage in these actions towards us.  This creates a virtuous circle, like a train picking up momentum along the track.

Second, by engaging in the actions of a Buddha now, we realize how incredible it is to be a Buddha.  This then greatly increases our desire to become one, making our bodhichitta more intense and qualified.  This then increases the power and effectiveness of all of our spiritual practices.

Third, we create the reliquary of our future enlightenment.  In Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Shantideva discusses how as a Bodhisattva we create the reliquary of a Buddha which continues to provide benefit to living beings even after we have passed into nirvana.  This is actually a very important concept to understand.  Basically, the actions we engage in as a bodhisattva set in motion a self-perpetuating series of actions that continue forever after our enlightenment.  There are a couple of analogies that can help us understand how this works.  Imagine an infinite ocean, and on one end I create a giant tsunami sized wave.  This was one action, but the wave will keep going in all directions long after the initial action.  This is how I understand “the great wave” of Je Tsongkhapa’s deeds.  Alternatively, in space there is no friction.  So if I have a rocket ship in space and for a period of time it expends energy/fuel pushing the rocket in a certain direction, then the rocket will keep going forever in that direction long after the thrusters have fired.  It is the same with our actions as a bodhisattva.  While a tantric bodhisattva, we engage in the actions of a Buddha – namely we train in liberating beings, bestowing blessings, making offerings, engaging in prayers, etc.  These actions are like the making of the initial wave or the firing of the thrusters in the rocket in space.  The effects of these actions will continue to provide benefit to living beings forever, even after I have already attained enlightenment.

With this understanding, what then are some of the main actions we engage in as a Buddha?

  1. Mantra recitation – these are special prayers and requests we make on behalf of all living beings, requesting that the function of the mantra be accomplished for the benefit of others.
  2. Torma offerings.  A torma offering is a mind that is happy to offer everything one has, to use all of the resources at one’s disposal, for the sole purpose of gaining Dharma realizations.  So by making torma offerings, we are creating the causes so all resources within our pure land are used for one single purpose – gaining Dharma realizations for living beings.
  3. Tsog offerings.  To make progress along the path, we need to be rich in merit.  Rich societies can accomplish their wishes more easily than poor ones.  When we make Tsog offerings, we are infusing our pure land with an extreme abundance of merit and inner wealth so that all beings within our pure land can easily fulfill all of their spiritual wishes for realizations.
  4. Great Mother practice.  Here we remove all obstructions for all of the beings in our pure land and create the echo of the Heart Sutra within our pure land which will resonate forever teaching the perfection of wisdom to all beings.
  5. Dorje Shugden practice.  Dorje Shugden’s retinue is like both the army of the pure land providing protection and security so people can focus on their practice and they are also our spiritual trainers like training officers at boot camp helping forge people into highly qualified “special forces” bodhisattvas.  So by engaging in this practice, we provide those services to all of the beings in our pure land.
  6. Dedication.  We should engage in our dedication practice while maintaining divine pride, viewing each dedication as a special prayer we make on behalf of all of the beings in our pure land, wishing that these prayers ripen for each and every being.

Your turn:  What are some enlightened actions you can engage in today?  What would Heruka do if he was living your life?

Conquering Death

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Even though we don’t realize it, our biggest problem is we are trapped in a hallucenagenic cycle of ritual sacrifice where we are the offering put up for repeated slaughter.  We are caught in a dream that we believe to be real in which we are uncontrolledly and repeatedly dying, going through an intermediate state and then being reborn once again in another contaminated dream.  In short, we are trapped in a cycle of uncontrolled death, thrown from one contaminated dream to another, each one ending in us dying, often in very painful ways.  Most of the dreams we are thrown into are frankly too horrible for words, but through some miracle we have been born into a relatively mild dream of our present human life with access to a method to break free.

In Buddhism, this cycle of uncontrolled rebirth is called samsara.  Buddhism itself is a method for conquering uncontrolled death, breaking free from this cycle and intentionally choosing to take rebirth awoken from these contaminated dream worlds.  What makes a dream world a contaminated dream world is we do not realize it is a dream world – we think it is real.  When we escape from the cycle of samsara we do not leave dream worlds for real worlds, because there are no real worlds, rather we leave contaminated dream worlds that we think are real to pure dream worlds which we understand to be created by our mind in accordance with the laws of karma.  Since we have been born, we cannot escape death, but we can escape death’s hold over us.  We can, once and for all, break free from this cycle and emerge as a deathless being.  And not just any deathless being, it is possible for us to emerge on the other side as what Jesus called “a fisherman of men” capable of eventually (or instantaneously depending upon your perspective…) extracting each and every being from the deadly ocean of samsara and releasing them into eternal freedom.

In short, we are trapped in a cycle of death called samsara.  Buddhism is a method for conquring death.  When we do so, we will be capable of helping all others also find their way to everlasting freedom.

So the question is how do we conquer death in this way?  The answer is we use our entire life to train to purify the cycle of death, intermediate state and rebirth.  In short, we use our life to burrow an escape route out that we take at death.

To do so, we must build a series of way points, or stages that we must go through during the death process.  In our daily practice we construct these way points, familiarize ourselves thoroughly with them, train in passing from one to the other, and we do this every day of our life.  If we do so, there is a very good chance that we will break free at the end of this life.  If we fail to build for ourselves the way out, there will be no way out for us – ever.  So our choice is actually stark – either we intentionally do what it takes to build an escape route or we remain forever trapped.  There is no third alternative.

So what are these way points that we must build?  (Note, I will explain this in the context of Kadampa Buddhism.  By doing so, I in no way mean to imply that only Kadampa Buddhism has an escape tunnel.  Many other pure spiritual traditions and religions do so as well, but I am not familiar with how those work.  The tunnel I am trying to dig for myself is a Kadampa one because that is the one I know and the one I seem to have the most karmic connection with).

  1. Initial refuge.  To get out we must turn to one who has already gotten out and who has come back to get us (a Buddha).  We must make effort to put into practice the methods s/he teaches (the Dharma).  And we intentionally come under the influence of a good circle of friends seeking to do the same thing we are (Sangha).  Initial refuge is the opening of the escape tunnel, we must find it and go through it.
  2. Correct motivation.  Everything that appears is karmically created.  Our motivation, or intention, is the most important ingredient in whatever karma we create.  To conquer death, we must have the intention to do so in all our actions.  This intention will define the nature of the karma we create from our training, which will ripen later as an actual path out.  At a minimum, we can intend to get to a pure land so that we can continue with our training.  We can also intend to once and for all escape completely for ourselves, or we can intend to become a fully enlightened Buddha capable of freeing all others.  Any one of these three intentions will be sufficient, but obviously the latter is the highest.  It is called bodhichitta.
  3. Purify negative obstructions and delusions.  Since beginningless time, we have engaged in countless negative actions which serve as “iron chains” binding us in samsara.  We must break these chains through the practice of purification.  A prisoner may wish to escape from prison, but will be unable to do so if they do not break the chains binding them in.  There are several different methods for purifying our negative karma, such as the 35 confession Buddhas and Vajrasattva.  But the best method for purifying all of the negative karma towards each and every being is to generate a motivation of bodhichitta, wishing to become a Buddha so that you can save them from samsara as well.  This corrects for all of the harm you have ever done towards them, and thus is the supreme method of purification.  We must also pacify and ultimately abandon our delusions.  Delusions function to activate our contaminated and negative karma.  If we die with a deluded state of mind, it will activate contaminated karma and we will be thrown once again into an uncontrolled contaminated rebirth.  So we must train in keeping our mind free from delusions, most importantly through an anvil-like mind of patient acceptance, the supreme good heart of bodhichitta and the wisdom realizing the ultimate truth of emptiness.
  4. Accumulate sufficient merit.  Just as a rocket needs tremendous fuel to escape from the Earth’s gravity, so too we need tremendous mental fuel to escape from samsara’s gravitational pull.  We accumulate such fuel, or merit, through our virtuous actions.  There are countless things we can do to accumulate merit explained in the lamrim teachings.  One of the most effective methods is making mandala offerings to our Spiritual Guide with a bodhichitta motivation.  When we make a mandala offering, we are essentially offering a promise to do whatever it takes to transform the entire universe and all of the beings within it into a pure land.  When we offer it to our spiritual guide (normally in the context of our daily meditation practice) we create the same karma as offering it to each of the countless Buddhas.  And by doing it with a bodhichitta motivation, we multiply the merit by the number of beings for whose benefit we make the offering, in this case countless living beings!
  5. Receive blessings.  Just as a spark lights the fuel of a rocket, blessings light the fuel of our merit.  Buddha’s have the power to bless our mind, which basically means they have the power to activate our virtuous karmic potentialities.  The escape tunnel is built according to the following cycle:  we create a certain level of the karma necessary for its existence through the various practices, we then receive blessings activating that level of karma, then on the basis of experiencing this level we create the karma to experience an even higher or more robust level of the tunnel’s existence, and so on.  We continue in this way until the entire tunnel is complete, both in terms of the full length of the tunnel and it being sufficiently strong and consolidated that it won’t collapse along the way when we take it at the time of death.
  6. Dissolving the guru into and mixing his mind inseparably with our root mind.  If we want to get some place, we can walk ourselves or we can get into a taxi.  The taxi is faster and the driver knows where he is going.  It is exactly the same with getting out of samsara.  Mixing our root mind inseparably with our guru’s mind is like hopping into a spiritual taxi which then takes us to the pure land.  When we understand this deeply, we not only generate great confidence that we can indeed get out, but we also develop a great desire to ourselves become a spiritual taxi for others in the future!
  7. Purify uncontrolled contaminated death.  We do this through the practices of bringing death into the path of the Truth Body according to generation stage and through the mahamudra meditations of completion stage.  How to do this is explained in detail in the Tantric teachings.  But the short version is we train in maintaining the continuum of our mindfulness and alertness of our realization of emptiness as we go through the eight dissolutions of the inner energy winds up to and including the final dissolution after which we emerge into the clear light emptiness or Truth Body.  This final meditation on the clear light emptiness, which is explained in detail in the Mahamudra teachings, is the most important method for purifying the sway of death itself.
  8. Purify uncontrolled contaminated intermediate state.  We do this through the practices of bringing the intermediate state into the path of the Enjoyment Body according to generation stage and through the meditations on illusory body according to completion stage.  Again, these meditations are explained in detail in the tantric teachings.  But the short version is motivated by bodhichitta, we train in manifesting our subtle winds in the form of the seed letters of Buddhas while maintaining the continuum of our realization of emptiness.
  9. Purify uncontrolled contaminated rebirth.  We do this through the practices of bringing rebirth into the path of the Emanation Body according to generation stage and through training in the union of clear light and illusory body according to completion stage (all explained in detail in the tantric teachings).  The short version is we train in transforming ourselves into the pure land, including all the Buddhas who inhabit the pure land.  A pure land is a realm we emanate so that beings can take rebirth in and complete their spiritual training.  Meditating on the self-generation with a bodhichitta motivation is the principal method for creating the substantial causes necessary to take rebirth outside of samsara.  The importance of this meditation cannot be overstated.
  10. Engaging in the actions of a Buddha.  The way stations up until now (the 9 above) take us into and through the tunnel, but this final way station takes us outside of the tunnel and irreversibly delivers us to the other side.  After we conquer death, our work of liberating others begins.  We will do so through sending countless emanations into the realms of samsara to lead and assist all beings along the path from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  To anchor this as our final outcome and to reinforce our bodhichitta motivation for making the journey we train in actually engaging in the actions of a Buddha.  During the meditation session we do this through the practices of mantra recitation, making offerings, purifying migrators, etc.  During the meditation break we do this through engaging in virtuous actions towards them, most notably by giving teachings and good advice.

Every single day of our life, we should train in each of these 10 way stations.  By doing so, we will gradually build within our mental continuum a reliable escape tunnel from the cycle of uncontrolled death.  At the time of death, we will then feel like we are on the cusp of an incredible journey to the pure land.  We will then effortless proceed through each of these same ten stages.  We will become a conqueror of death!

Your turn:  What is something practical you can do today to prepare yourself for (and indeed conquer) death?

Our vows as the keys to our future happiness

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Normally we relate to our vows as things that restricts or constrains our freedom and happiness.  But this is only because we are confused about what makes us unfree and what makes us unhappy.  We normally think freedom is the ability to do whatever we want without constraint and we think happiness is worldly pleasure.  As a result, we view any constraints as making us unfree and anything that deprives us of worldly pleasure as a cause of our unhappiness.

The reality is what makes us unfree is our delusions.  Delusions function to render the mind uncontrolled.  We have no choice but to do what our mind tells us to do.  If our mind is uncontrolled due to delusions, then we are uncontrolled in all that we do, and as a result we are unfree.  The ability to indulge all of our delusions unconstrained is not the peak of freedom it is the quick path to total slavery to the demons of our delusions.  The more we pacify and abandon our delusions, the more we bring our mind under control, and as such the more true freedom we create for ourselves.  We free ourselves from the iron chains of our delusions.

The reality is what makes us happy is a peaceful mind.  If our mind is unpeaceful, even if we have the greatest worldly pleasures we will still be unhappy and unsatisfied.  But if our mind is peaceful, even if we are deprived of any worldly pleasures, we will still be happy and fully contented.  Having a peaceful mind does not mean we need to abandon our worldly pleasures, rather having a peaceful mind is what enables us to enjoy them!  Wordly pleasures themselves are the natural karmic result of good karma, so it is actually clearly impossible to follow the path to enlightenment and not experience an increase in worldly pleasure.  But what we abandon is our attachment to these worldly pleasures, mistakenly thinking that they are themselves the causes of our happiness.  No.  The question is not our encountering worldly enjoyments, the question is whether or not our mind is peaceful and so therefore capable of enjoying them.

Moral discipline is for all practical purposes choosing to turn away from wrong paths that lead to suffering and instead to apply effort to choose to follow correct paths that lead to happiness.  Due to countless aeons of being under the influence of our delusions, virtually all of our natural tendencies are to follow our deluded ways of being.  If left unthethered, we normally fall apart and become increasingly unhinged.  With the practice of moral discipline, when deluded tendencies arise we us our wisdom to recognize how following that deluded tendency leads to suffering and how instead applying effort to follow the opposite virtuous tendency leads to happiness.  On the basis of seeing the difference in costs and benefits, we then make the decision to follow the correct path.  The strength of this decision depends upon the clarity of our wisdom and the strength of our spiritual will power.

Our spiritual will power itself depends upon the strength of our true self-confidence and the depth of our previous experience in exercising it.  True self-confidence primarily arises from the ability to tell ourselves what we are going to do, and then following through with what we set out to do.  If everytime we make a commitment to ourselves, we know we are not going to follow it, then our making the commitment has no power within our mind to change our behavior and we will lose all confidence in our ability to change ourselves.  If instead, everytime we make a commitment to ourselves, we make a point of following through with our determination, we will grow in self-confidence and eventually reach the point where we know we can bring about any change in ourselves that we desire.  This is true self-confidence.  Spiritual will power is like a muscle.  And like any muscle, the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.  In the beginning, we start with small things like brushing our teeth every day or apologizing when we get angry at others.  But over time, we gradually build up the strength of our experience to be able to make harder and larger commitments.

Moral discipline is the cause of higher rebirth.  Higher rebirth is the cause of having the outer, and indeed inner, conditions for happiness.  There are many different levels of rebirth we can take, from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  Our ability to move from the lower to the higher states depends primarily upon our practice of moral disicpline.  It is not enough to just attain a higher rebirth, we need to attain precious higher rebirths.  What makes a particular rebirth precious is whether we can use it to follow spirtual paths which lead to the supreme happinesses of liberation and enlightenment, for both ourselves and for others.  So basically, it is not enough to have any higher rebirth, we want one in which we are following a spiritual path.

The main cause of attaining precious higher rebirths is the practice of our spiritual moral discipline, or in particular our spiritual vows and commitments.  There are literally hundreds of different vows and commitments within Kadampa Buddhism.  I will later post a study guide to all of them, but complete explanations of these vows and commitments can be found in the various Kadampa books.  But to simplify matters, we can say that there are five levels of Kadampa vows:  the refuge vows, the pratimoksha vows, the bodhisattva vows, the trantric vows, and the uncommon vows of Mother Tantra.

The essential practice of each of these vows can be understood in terms of what wrong path the vows abandon and what correct path the vows follow.  The refuge vows abandon turning to worldly objects for our happiness and protection from suffering and instead turn to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  We make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, make effort to put the Dharma into practice and make effort to turn to the Sangha for help.  The pratimoksha vows abandon harming ourselves or others and instead start doing what our wisdom tells us is good for us.  Our bodhisattva vows abandon selfishly working for the self that we normally see and instead start working (eventually solely) for the welfare of others.  Our tantric vows abandon ordinary appearances and conceptions and instead choose to generate pure appearances and assent to pure conceptions.  Our uncommon vows of Mother Tantra abandon the contaminated happinesses of samsara and instead choose to experience all things equally as manifestations of the union of bliss and clear light emptiness.

Engaging in normal virtuous actions creates the causes for a higher rebirth.  Practicing our refuge vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the Buddhist path.  Practicing our pratimoksha vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice at least the path that leads to permanent liberation.  Practicing our bodhisattva vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the path that leads to full enlightenment.  Practicing our tantric vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the tantric quick path to enlightenment.  Practicing our uncommon vows of Mother Tantra creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the tantric quick paths of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  In so doing, through our practice of the different levels of vows and commitments, we can create the causes to maintain the continuum of our practice in life after life without interrruption:   for our higher rebirth, our Buddhist path, our path to liberation, our path to enlightenment, our tantric quick path to enlightenment, and out tantric quick path to enlightenment as Heruka or Vajrayogini.

Seen in this way, we can really understand how our vows and commitments are the keys to our future happiness and we can realize their central importance in our spiritual development.  What we do with this understanding is up to us…

Your turn:  Describe how your practice of moral discipline has set you free from some destructive habit or dysfunctional situation.

Spiritual Gravity: the theory of everything

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life, 3. Tantra, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I once watched Stephen Hawking’s The Story of Everything.  In it, he explained how gravity is the fundamental force driving the evolution of everything.  The law of gravity states that matter attracts matter according to the relative mass of the objects.  In other words, the apple falls to the earth because the earth has a larger mass relative to the apple, though both the apple and the earth each exert some pull.  The entire universe, from the big bang to the big crunch and everything in between is governed by the laws of gravity.  There are similar concepts in the social sciences, such as political gravity, economic gravity, and the theory of the transition of great powers.  The fundamental point about gravity is understanding it’s dynamic process.  A bigger mass attracts a smaller mass, and as a result the bigger mass gets even bigger, thus attracting in yet another smaller mass in a continuous cycle.  This continues indefinitely resulting in a cycle of creation.  But creation and destruction are simply two different perspectives on the same process.  Schumpter coined the phrase “creative destruction.” Buddha called it subtle impermanence.

The exact same process occurs at a spiritual level.  There is the physical level to reality, the verbal level to reality and the mental level of reality.  Emptiness explains that the physical and verbal arise from the mental – everything is created by the mind.  But emptiness is just a fact of how things work, and the union of karma and emptiness is the supreme view according to Sutra, and the union of the Chittamatrin and Madhyamika-Prasangika schools the supreme view according to Tantra.  But even these are just facts governing the mental plane.  The inner core of the mental plane is the spiritual.  The spiritual unites and harmonizes the bodily, verbal and mental planes (hence the deities of the body mandala).  All spiritual paths have reliance upon the Spiritual Guide as the core of the spiritual path.  A spiritual guide is like a star in the universe, or more accurately a super black hole at the core of a Galaxy cluster.  At the core of reliance upon the Spiritual Guide we have faith, the essence of spiritual life.  Qualified faith is a trusting based upon a valid reason.  It is not blind.  The core valid reason in Kadampa Buddhism is the fact of emptiness according to the Tantra-Prasangika view.  From this, all other valid reasons emerge.

Faith then has three levels:  believing faith, admiring faith and wishing faith.  First we develop a believing faith in wisdom (virtuous intelligence).  Then we develop an admiring faith, marveling at the beauty of wisdom.  From this arises wishing faith, the wish to embody in ourselves the beautiful wisdom we admire.  To embody this wisdom, we must attain the perfection of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom.  We perfect these types of action through generating bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of all.  The core of bodhichitta then strives to become not just any Buddha, but to become one with our Spiritual Guide.  To voluntarily wish to unite with the Spiritual sun of the Spiritual Guide, to surf the laws of spiritual gravity towards the center.  So we wish to unite with the guru.  We accomplish this primarily through the practice of guru yoga, where we mix our mind inseparably with that of our guru.  First we come into contact with his outer emanation body, or the Spiritual Guide we meet in this world.  Then we come into contact with his inner Emanation bodies, or the Buddhas he introduces us to.

Amongst the Buddhas he introduces us to, there are three in particular that are the synthesis of all the others.  These three deities are Guru, Yidam and Protector.  (Note, there is a trinity in many different religions).  Within the context of Kadampa Buddhism, Guru is Je Tsongkhapa, Yidam is Heruka/Vajrayogini, and Protector is Dorje Shugden.  There are other Spiritual Guides also rotating around our Spiritual Guide, such as the Dalai Lama or Lama Yeshe, etc.  These in turn are all students of Trijang Rinpoche.  The “fued” between Kadampas and the followers of the Dalai Lama is actually inter-vajra-familial dispute viewed from the wrong perspective, where we agree on who the Guru is, but have slight differences on who the Yidam is and especially who the Protector is.  This is why resolving within ourselves the apparent contradictions about the Kadampa view versus the Dalai Lama’s view is so important.  Of course different people will resolve this differently – some will resolve it in the direction of Venerable Geshe-la, some will resolve it in the direction of the Dalai Lama, and some will try stay on the fence forever!  Actually beyond all of those are those who seek to resolve both views simultaneously.  My resolution is they are right for them, we are right for us, and neither one of us is right for the other.  Anyways, I digress.  Back to Spiritual gravity.

So the root is guru yoga, ultimately as guru, yidam and protector.  The synthesis of these three is actually the real guru.  This in tern synthesizes down from Protector into Yidam, then Yidam into indestructible drop, then indestructible drop into the seed letter.  From the seed letter into the nada.  From the nada into the 8 dissolutions.  From the 8 dissolutions into the clear light (the other side of the black hole of black near attainment just before the clear light on the other side).  The clear light is not just emptiness, but the union of the mind of great bliss realizing the truth of emptiness directly with our very subtle mind.  This is the Dharmakaya (or Truth Body) Spiritual Guide.  The guru yoga/self-generation as the Dharmakaya takes us straight into perfect union with the Spiritual Guide (who himself is the synthesis of all the Buddhas).  This is our final destination (for now at least…).  Sadhana practices are then the methods for accomplishing these unions.  Offering to the Spiritual Guide, Tantric Self-Initiation and Melodious Drum condense into the Yoga of Buddha Heruka, which is my daily practice.

So how can we accelerate this process of spiritual gravity?  By increasing our own spiritual mass.  We do this by gaining realizations ourselves for the sake of others.  The more realizations we gain, the more we attract other spiritual mass, drawing others closer to us.  This is Sangha.  From Sangha’s emerge teachers.  Amongst teachers emerge Resident Teachers.  Amongst Resident Teachers emerge National Spiritual Directors.  From amongst those emerge General Spiritual Directors.  Each of these three words has great meaning.  General means they are a generalist – they have sufficiently mastered and synthesized all of the different Dharma practices that they are a generalist (or equally balanced towards all expertises).  Director means they are a manager of others and their activities.  And Spiritual qualifies both General and Director.  The subject matter that they are a generalist towards and the group of human beings they are a Director for are others of the same spiritual tradition.  We are now entering the Facebook generation, so it only seems fitting that the model of Spiritual Guide in this world is transitioning from a unitary entity to a social network of potential, actual and former General Spiritual Directors and their students.  But all retain the same root guru, namely Venerable Geshe-la, who arises from Trijang Rinpoche all the way back in the lineage to Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara.

Buddha Shakyamuni is the fourth of the thousand Buddhas of this fortunate aeon.  This does not mean there will only be one thousand Buddhas in this aeon.  Rather, this means there will be one thousand “founder Buddhas” in this aeon.  A founding Buddha is one that arises from a time in which there were no Buddhas in this world, then one came and established the Dharma, this Dharma flourished for a period, then it dissipated and finally disappeared for a long long time until a new founder Buddha comes.  A thousand of these will come in this fortunate aeon.  An aeon is about the time of a big bang cycle or the lifespan of earth, depending on your perspective.  But there will also be non-fortunate aeons, and clusters of such aeons, etc.

The transition of birth, ageing, sickness, death, intermediate state, and rebirth into a new life is a process/cycle we must master and transcend.  Enlightenment is the permanent and irreversible transcending of this process/cycle.  Are there steps after that?  Probably, but that will probably be for after we attain enlightenment…

We master birth, ageing, sickness and death through the Sutra practices, and we master death, intermediate state and rebirth with our Tantric practices.  The union of Sutra and Tantra, then unties and purifies this entire cycle of birth, ageing, sickness, death, intermediate state and rebirth.  When this process is completely purified for the first time, we ourselves are reborn into the pure land.  A state from which we will never fall again.  But it is not enough to just attain the pure land for ourselves, we then need to build our own pure land which will function like a giant sun in the spiritual cosmos, drawing in more and more beings.  One meaning for Chakrasambara is the gathering and purifying of all phenomena into the Dharmakaya.  We seek to become that.  From there, we spontaneously liberate all beings continuously until they are all completely purified.

In the process of moving towards this state of continuously liberating others (like a limitless self-regenerating spiritual fusion reaction), we will leave behind a legacy of our deeds as a bodhisattva.  This legacy of deeds can take bodily, verbal and mental forms.  Bodily in terms of our students and their descendents, verbal in terms of our written and spoken words, and mental in terms of the specific realizations we have attained for the sake of others.  Even after we have passed into enlightenment, these legacies continue to spotaneously liberate all beings.  This legacy is our spiritual reliquary.

A reliquary is something that exists in the world that continues to provide benefit long after the person who left the reliquary has passed on.  Reliquaries can also take digital form.  The blogs and virtual community which are arising are such a digital form.  This is the virtual sangha.  From this will emerge virtual teachers, virtual resident teachers, etc., just like occured in the physical world (but perhaps with different names).  Just as Venerable Geshe-la now tweets and has a Facebook page, soon so too will all of the General Spiritual Directors (past, present and future).  It will be how they emanate themselves into the virtual world, much in the same way Buddhas emanate themselves into countless other worlds.

So from our practical perspective, our task is to increase our spiritual mass by gaining more realizations.  This will draw people to us, who we help unite in families (biological or spiritual), creating a self-accumulating process of growing spiritual mass.  We keep doing that until we unite with the biggest spiritual mass near us, the Spiritual Guide, etc.  In this way the entire cycle repeats itself in an endless process of spiritual accumulation until all has been united in the perfect harmony of endless spiritual creative destruction.

Within the Kadampa Tradition, we have certain days which form the Kadampa calendar.  They are Tsog Days, Heruka and Vajrayogini Month, NKT Day, Buddha’s Enlightenment Day, Turning the Wheel of Dharma Day, Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day, Je Tsongkhapa Day, then International Temples Day.  I believe it is Venerable Geshe-la’s intention that we view International Temples Day as our spiritually most holy day.  It is our Christmas Day where we give the world the gift of Kadampa Temples, much like we give our normal family presents.  What are international Kadampa Temples?  They are spiritual centers of gravity.  Around temples orbit main centers, around main centers orbit branch centers, around branch centers orbit students, around students orbit their families and loved ones endlessly until eventually all spiritual beings are gathered and dissolved into complete purity.  The temples themselves rotate around Manjushri center, the mother center of the Kadampa Tradition.  That in turn revolves around the legacy Venerable Geshe-la is leaving for us to serve as cutodians of the lineage.  On top of Mount Meru is a Kadampa Buddhist Temple.  This is the real mother center where our Spiritual Guide resides.  International Temples Day is ultimately a giant family reunion of all temples into this varja temple on top of Mount Meru.  It is here that we do Tantric empowerments.

This post is posted on International Temples Day.  Today is a ten million multiplying day, so the spiritual power of all that we do is multiplied by ten million times (like a karmic pulsar).  I dedicate any merit accumulated from writing this post to the rapid accumulation of spiritual mass inside the minds of all Kadampas and ultimately all living beings.

Your turn:  Describe what are the major sources of spiritual gravity in your life, and what you are doing to stay close to them.

Continue reading →

The importance of reconnecting with Sangha

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I just got back from the Summer Festival.  I have been going to Summer Festivals every year since 1995, but due to all of the karmic changes in my life over the last few years, for the first time I wasn’t able to make it in 2010 and 2011.  I tried to go to Brazil, had bought my ticket, taken my vacation time, but stupidly didn’t bother to check whether or not I needed a visa until it was too late.  So this is the longest I have gone without being at a festival and reconnecting with my global spiritual family.  It was so nice to be able to go to the festival, reconnect with old friends and receive live teachings.

It is amazing how at a festival Dorje Shugden manages for you to have a personalized festival meeting up with everyone you need to and having the conversations you need to have.  Some of the highlights for me were as follows:

  1. I was able to meet Venerable Tharchin, who I consider to be my main teacher for more than a decade now.  Normally when I meet with him, I just babble on and never listen.  So this time I said I was going to talk little so that I can listen more.  In fact, I even told him that in the meeting as a joke, but I made a new mistake this time!  I didn’t walk into the meeting with a question in my heart.  So when I told him I want to listen, I stopped talking and then he just stared at me in silence…  It was a very powerful teaching in and of itself, namely whenever we go for refuge, be it a meeting with your teacher, a live teaching or in your prayers, we should always have a question in our heart.  How can we receive answers if we don’t have questions?
  2. I was able to meet with one of my old teachers.  She is now the Resident Teacher at Manjushri.  I haven’t really spoken with her much in a few years, and like me, she has been in a period of karmic flux over the last few years.  It was very nice to speak with her.  She started out the meeting by saying we don’t really give advice any more, rather we share our experience and people take from it what they want.  For about the next hour, she then proceeded to tell an elaborate tale about jealousy, how attachment to what other people think of you prevents the flourishing of the Dharma, and how her job now is to just love people.  She had an amazing ability to see deeply into the hearts of others, see what their core problem is, and bring it to the surface so that we can work through it.  Even though she was just “telling a story” for me, it functioned as a very powerful teaching about something deep in my heart.  Amazing!  It was really great to see her again.
  3. I was able to have good, long conversations with two very dear friends from my time when I was in Paris about 14 years ago.  We have seen each other at various festivals over the years, but never really had the opportunity to have a real deep conversation about how each was doing and what we have been working on in our practice.  One friend has basically spent the last decade in hell, but through sincere reliance has managed to change himself completely.  He said what enabled him to change was realizing that “identifying our delusions is itself a spiritual practice, and even if we spend our whole life doing just that, it is a well used spiritual life.”  Because he didn’t realize this before, the more he would study Dharma the more he would see his faults, and therefore the more he would beat himself up over being inadequate.  So far from making him happier, he would feel worse and worse about himself robbing him of any joy.  But when he realized becoming aware of our faults is itself a spiritual training he was able to accept where he was at and therefore create the space to change himself as opposed to beat himself up.  With another friend, I was able to realize I have had all sorts of jealousy, competitiveness and insecurity towards him, but through talking we were able to both have a good laugh at our respective delusions and reestablish that vajra brother bond.
  4. I was able to spend a good deal of time with my fellow Kadampa in the blogosphere, Vide Kadampa, author of the blog “Daily Lamrim” (in the links section).  It was truly amazing how much we have in common in terms of our outlook and approach to the Dharma.  We discussed the benefits and potential pitfalls of doing a blog (also subject of a future post), but mostly we talked about starting on the Tantric path.  He has laid a fantastic foundation of Lamrim, and we discussed how to integrate our lamrim practice into our Tantric practice.  He too is a Kadampa Working Dad, and somebody I cherish very much as a close Dharma friend.

I have much more I will write about my experience at the Summer Festival, but an additional resolution I have made is to make my blog postings shorter and more readable.  So I will sign off here for now.  The main point is the virtual world is great for being able to maintain your connection with your global Sangha family, but it is no substitute for reconnecting with your spiritual family live.  While sometimes our karma may not allow it, in our heart we should always maintain the wish to be with them and to reconnect with them every opportunity we get.  In my view, this is vital for our continued spiritual progress and has the added benefit of creating the causes to meet once again our spiritual tradition in all our future lives between now and our eventual enlightenment!

Reflections on Completion Stage/Mahamudra

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra
The meditation on the Dharmakaya is the making still the waters of the ocean of our root mind of great bliss.  Every object is like a wave on the ocean arising from karma and delusion.  Delusion activiates contaminated seeds which create waves which reflect the appearance of contaminated objects.  As I make still my mind, the waves pacify, the contaminated appearances cease, the mind becomes increasingly clear until it is clear light.
 
When you allow the waves of contaminated appearance to subside, you are able to abide directly with your guru and you realize that he is literally behind and the real nature of everything. 
 
The most important possession of anybody is their mind.  It controls everything and enables them to do anything.  Yet, this is the possession we completely neglect, to our peril.  We must care for our mind, keep it clean, powerful and well functioning so it can take us to where we want to go.  We need to care for our mind like a car enthusiast would, like those guys who wash their car and care for every detail obsessively.  Right now, my mind is dark, dirty and uncontrolled.  I need to give it light, clean it up and get it in good working order.  If I do everything but this, which is what I and others typically do, then I won’t be able to do anything.  But if I do do this, I will be able to accomplish anything.  Our mind is like a wild horse that we have no choice but to ride.  We must bring it under control and become the one in charge.  
 
The above discussion is correct, but not fully correct.  It grasps at us as having two different minds in us.  In reality, we have one mind.  It is the same mind.  But it is currently completely out of control and we are identifying with and following one of the illusions being kicked up by the fact that our mind is uncontrolled, contaminated and distorted.  We grasp at ourselves as being an illusory wave.  We need to see past this illusion, realize it is not who we really are, and instead stay focused upon the pure ocean.  We bring the ocean of our mind under control, allow it to become still.  As we do so, the illusory contaminated reflections which we remain imprisoned within (samsara) will subside and we will be left with the purity and clarity of the Dharmkaya.  The conventional guru is a focal point of purity within our mind that we can more easily identify and identify with.  By drawing closer to it and coming under its influence we come to center ourselves within a point of calm.  Within the space or perspective of the guru, everything is harmonious and symmetric.  Everything is clear.  We know what to abandon and what to attain, we know what is deceptive and what is reliable.  By acting from and abiding within this space, we are able to very quickly pacify the uncontrolled waters of our mind.  Once sufficiently pacified, we eventually leave this conventional guru behind and pacify and dissolve even it and come to abide in the complete tranquility, purity and stillness within.  
 
When dissolving everything into the DK, it is important that it not be something abstract.  You are not meditating on the abstract idea of all phenomena dissolving into B&E, but rather on the first hand, living experience of this happening right where you are with the appearances around you.  It should feel as your first hand experience with respect to the actual world around you.  Then, likewise, when you generate the pure world, you should also experience these appearances as your first hand, living reality.

Reflections on the big picture of the Kadampa path

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra
Build your pure land magnificently.  If samsara is the mental world created by our self-cherishing and self-grasping, our pure land is the world created by our wisdom and compassion.  We built by accident our samsara.  We will need to build intentionally our pure land.  The only way to do that is to generate it within our mind out of compassion again and again and again.  Each time we mentally generate our pure land, we are creating the karma for this world to be our living reality.  We need to build this world so that we can invite all beings to be reborn there so we can swiftly and easily lead them to freedom.  
 
The entire kadampa path can be reduced down to four main ideas:
 
1.  Surrender yourself completely to your spiritual guide so that he is the source of your every action.
 
2.  Serve others joyfully.  Our every action should be aimed at serving others in some way.
 
3.  Improve yourself diligently.  We need to humbly acknowledge where we are and the faults in our mind, then strive diligently and persistently to overcome them and improve ourselves until the task is complete.
 
4.  Build your pure land magnificently.  Our main task is to build our pure land.  It is generated through pure mental action, primarily self-generation.  We build this pure land to invite all beings to take rebirth there so that they can complete their path.
 
 
 
Here is the bottom line:  The world is a reflection of your mind.  The world is a mess.  Therefore, you can conclude with certainty that your mind too is a mess.  Until you get your mind sorted out, you will never solve any of your external problems.  They will keep reasserting themselves, just in different forms and contexts.  Further, given that everything is empty and the only thing there is to do is wake up, the only currency worth trading in is Dharma realizations.  Only Dharma realizations have any real value because only they can tame the wild beast of our mind which creates this wild beast of our samsaric lives.  Only they will calm the waters of your mind, thereby leading to the cessation of these samsaric hallucinations we are trapped in.  In America, people organize their lives around the maximization of wealth.  Everything they do is geared towards this goal.  In the same way, we need to organize our lives around the maximization of our spiritual realizations.  This is the wealth that we pursue.  If you are clear on what your real bottom line is in life, then you will naturally view all situations through that lens.  You will see how whatever happens (including twins!!!) is useful in gaining more realizations, and so you will happily accept whatever happens and you will view your whole life as your spiritual trainin ground.  Then, there are no problems.  Everything else naturally falls into place.
 
As I enter this new phase of my life, it seems to me the entire Kadampa path can be reduced into four key things we need to do:
 
1.  Surrender yourself completely to your spiritual guide at your heart.  As St. Francis said, ‘Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.’  We want to have all of our actions be the Spiritual Guide working through us.  To do this, we need to align our intentions with his, make perfectly still our ordinary mind, have deep faith that he is our real nature and, with an understanding of emptiness, request him to work through us.
 
2.  Serve others joyfully.  Dorje Shugden arranges for us to be doing things for others all day long (either at work or at home).  One way or another, all day we are doing things for others.  But if internally, our intention is to do these things to work for ourselves (for our own sake), then all of this time we spend doing things for others is spiritually wasted.  Instead, we need to have the wish to serve others because we love them and want to help them (and because we know we create great karma for ourselves if we do).  So we spend all day doing stuff for others, but internally we are training in serving them joyfully.  Our capacity to do more than an ordinary being grows out of this mind.  Without this mind, we will never be able to accomplish anything more than our life than ‘just get through the day.’
 
3.  Improve yourself persistently.  Nothing can be accomplished without effort, but with effort everything is possible.  We still have faults within ourselves.  We need to humbly acknowledge them and persistently work to try train our mind in new habits.  It does not matter how long it takes, what matters is that we never give up.  It is also not enough to just overcome our faults, but we need to actively cultivate our qualities.   Often we focus on the former, but it is by doing the latter that our faults naturally fall away, almost as a byproduct.
 
As far as the external world is concerned, I need to maintain the faithful recognition that everything that arises is emanated by Dorje Shugden as part of my training.  He emanates the situations that will challenge me, push me to work hard to train my mind.  
 
What matters on the path is that you are always moving forward.  
 
1.  From an absolute perspective, one could say that the task is to abandon every last trace of delusions, and by doing so you will calm completely the waters of your mind, revealing the DK.  Abandon the two obstructions. 
 
2.  From a practical perspective, there is moving forward and moving backwards relative to where you are at.  We stop moving backwards by abandoning acting more deluded than is our norm, relative to where we are at.  We move forward by generating minds more virtuous than our norm, relative to where we are at.  From this perspective, what constitutes delusion and virtue is relative to where we are at.  What is still deluded from the perspective of an advanced practitioner might be very virtuous from the perspective of a highly deluded person.  
 
3.  One of the problems many practitioners have is they compare themselves against a standard of perfection, and then are always frustrated and disappointed and feel like they are failing.  They then get into all sorts of self-destructive guilt trips which distract and slow them down.
 
4.  If instead, we understand this relativistic perspective, then what matters equally for every practitioner is whether they are moving forward relative to where they are at.  If you are moving forward relative to where you are at, then be happy (not complacent) with your practice.  
 
5.  The relevant test is ‘am I being more virtuous and less deluded than I was before.’  We compare against ourselves, not some absolute standard.  The full scope of the path gives us an idea of direction, like always knowing where North is.  We always try head North, but we accept where we are in our journey.
 
6.  At the same time, we need to be aware that we cannot afford to be complacent.  We are in extreme danger and we have no time to waste.  We do not know when we are going to die and we have many trap doors of negative karma on our mind which can take us to the lower realms.  This is why it is very important to always be in the company of your spiritual guide as you make your journey, and to mentally feel you are relying upon him and following his instructions.  You take refuge in him.  If you are always with him in life, he will be with you at the time of your death.  He can then take you by the hand and help you once again find the path in your next life.  It will be like somebody traveling, they stumble, and the guide is there to pick them back up.  Or, even better, like a long journey where you go to sleep each night and begin again your journey when you wake up.  
 
7.  For Kadampas, the path we follow is becoming Heruka.  JTK is our guide, guiding us on how to do it.  DS arranges the conditions for our practice, like our spiritual trainer.  DS arranges what we need to do.  JTK guides us in how we do it.  Heruka is the beacon towards which we are heading.  
 
Our self grasping ignorance projects this false self and makes us believe it is who we are.  We then try to use this self to do things, we try to gain control using this self.  But this is the ultimate deception.  My more we use this self, the more we feed the uncontrolled storm.  We cannot take control of our mind with the self of our self-grasping.  We can only take control of our mind with our true self.  The real nature of our true self is the guru.  It feels like we submit ourselves, surrender ourselves, completely to the guru because we are coming from the space of the self of our self-grasping.  But the reality is it is by submitting ourselves, surrendering ourselves to the guru and allowing him to take control that we are actually breaking free from the false self of our self-grasping and realizing who we really are.  It is when we are centered in the space of having submitted or surrendered ourselves completely to the guru that we understand our false self was never us.
 
Muslims are of the view that Islam is God’s final word on earth, his final revelation.  One could easily turn this around and say it was his final attempt to explain for those who still didn’t get it.  But this likewise grasps at things in a linear way.  In reality, Holy beings explain the teachings in many different ways and contexts according to the capacities of different living beings.  It appears to me that Buddhism, in particular Kadampa Buddhism with JTK’s view of the middle way, is like the peak of the mountain, and Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and others are like the faces of the mountain.  From the perspective of Kadampa Buddhism, all of the other religions make sense and are seen to be appropriate vehiciles for elevating different beings of different capacities and karmic dispositions.  But they all, in the longer view, function to draw people into the bosum of Kadampa Buddhism.  As a Kadampa Buddhist with bodhichitta, I should be extremely grateful for all of these other religions and the role they play in the world.  They are out there drawing beings towards purity.  These religions connect with people where they are at, and speak to them in a language they can understand, and encourage them to head in the direction of virtue.  In this sense, I can embrace and be grateful for their work and their existence.  It is sad, though, to see how these vehicles get distorted and corrupted by worldly and ignorant beings who misuse the teachings for worldly aims.  When people see this happening, they reject the religion entirely, throw the baby out with the bathwater, instead of make the more subtle distinction of authentic versus worldly uses and interpretations of spiritual teachings.
 
When you think of the stories of the great prophets of every religion, one common theme is there complete obedience to the will of God, even when it seemed crazy to do.  We dissolve the guru into our heart, and learn how to communicate with him and surrender ourselves completely to his will.  The more we try to maintain control ourselves, the less he can enter into our lives and take over.  Our feeling of our self is our principle object of abandonment.  When we feel like there is the guru and then there is us, it is the us that is the object of abandonment.  When we hold on to any ‘self’-will we are preventing him from taking over.  Our self is nothing other than a figment of our deluded mind, and any action sourced in our ‘self’ is necessarily deluded, mistaken, misguided and will lead only to a furtherance of samsara.  Internally, we need to completely surrender.  In the beginning, this means primarily learning to obey.  Later it means learning how to let him take over and use us as his Avatar.  Penultimately, there is only him acting and no sense of our old ‘self’ at all.  Finally, the duality between him and us dissolves completely.  It is only him, but he is us and we are him.  This is how we become a Buddha ourselves.
 
 
I have a lot going on, but I need to keep my mind single pointedly focused on my real task.  No matter what is going on, the most important thing is for every moment of every day I apply effort to try send my mind in the direction of enlightenment.  I oppose my tendencies to go in the direction of samsara (my deluded and negative tendencies) and I try generate virtuous minds.  To simplify things, the most important virtue to train in is the wish to serve others, to work for their happiness and to make their lives a little bit easier and better.  I need to generate the mental habit of every moment of every day I am serving others in some way.  Once this becomes my habit, then I can start to focus on improving the quality with which I serve them and the degree of benefit that I am able to bring to them.  Ultimately, the most beneficial thing I can do for anybody is to help them generate Dharma realizations within their own mind because only that will provide them with real happiness, peace and relief that they want.  They can be happy all of the time.  To do this, I need two things:  the internal realizations of how to myself be happy all of the time and to transform anything and to use anything for enlightenment; and two, the people skills to be able to interact with and positively influence everyone I encounter.  In this sense, being a Kadampa diplomat is the ultimate combination.  Internally, I gain realizations through my practice; externally, I gain people skills through being a diplomat.
 
I need to be a karmic philanthropist.  The income I work to earn is a karmic income.  My job is to engage in as many high value virtuous actions as I possibly can.  I want to earn as much virtuous karma as I can so that I can give it away to others.  I give it away to others through dedication.  You take all the logic normally associated with earning income, working, and philantrophy, but you apply them to internal wealth.  

Key thoughts during practice

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Modern Buddhism contains, in effect, the synthesis of the Ganden Oral Lineage.  The Yoga of Buddha Heruka is a method for practicing all of the instructions from Modern Buddhism.  So the goal is to extract the key ideas from Modern Buddhism and integrate them into the practice of the Yoga of Buddha Heruka.  By doing so, I will be able to practice the essence of the Ganden Oral Lineage every day.

Here are the key thoughts I can use towards this end:

  1. Before refuge:  I have a precious human life with which I can completely pacify my mind and build my pure land.  But I may die today, so I do not have a moment to lose.  Since I have not purified, it is just a question of time before I fall into the lower realms.  To protect against this, I must build the foundation of refuge within my mind.  I must make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, to put the Dharma into practice and to receive help from the Sangha.  Then, imagining that I am surrounded by all living beings, with my family, friends and colleagues closest to me, I imagine we all recite the refuge prayer to the three jewels in the space in front of me.
  2. Before bodhichitta.  It is not enough to attain temporary freedom from particular sufferings, but I must attain permanent liberation from the sufferings of all of my countless future lives.  It is not enough to just attain liberation for myself, but I must strive for complete freedom for every aspect of my mind.  I must transform myself into Keajra.  I offer myself to all living beings and will transform myself into Keajra (I will become whatever it is that they need).  I will refrain from harming anyone and will work solely for the benefit of others.  I will patiently accept whatever difficulties arise in the completion of this task.  I will apply unwavering effort until the task is complete.  I will dedicate every moment of my life single-pointedly to the accomplishment of this mission.  I must transform the ocean of my mind into Keajra so that I may lead every being from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  Then, I lead all beings in the bodhichitta prayer and the prayer of the seven limbs and the mandala.
  3. (I add the Migtsema prayer after the mandala)  As I recite the Migstema prayer, imagine that you download into you Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara (fully qualified Sutra and Tantic Spiritual Guide), Avalokitehsvara (the compassion of all of the Buddhas), Manjushri (the wisdom of all of the buddhas) and Vajrapani (the Spiritual Power of all of the Buddhas).  Then, afterwards, with deep faith request the following blessings:  Ma I work solely for the benefit of dream like sentient beings.  May I always know what to do and realize the only thing that needs to change is my mind.  May I have the power to walk away from my samsara and my delusions, in particular my self-cherishing.
  4. After dissolve guru into heart:  May my every thought be yours.  May my every word be yours.  May my every action be you working through me.  May there be no trace whatsover of me and no independent self-will.  I am your Avatar.  Then think, I am going to die now, please lead me to the Pure Land.  Strongly believe you are actually dying, and engage in the three bringings.
  5. For the checking meditation, think as follows:  The ocean of my mind has transformed into Keajra.  I offer all beings the nada (for Completion Stage meditators), and a fully qualified Kadampa Spiritual Guide (JTK at my heart).  I am Heruka Father and Mother, the Spiritual Father of all living beings (recall feeling of being a father).  I am the principal of the body mandala (recall feeling of being the indestructible drop and of being a spiritual doctor).  I balance their inner elements and offer them a banquet of the five objects of desire (great bliss wheel).  I heal their subtle body so that all of their winds may flow effortlessly into their central channel at their heart (Mind, Body and Speech wheels).  I offer them completely pure sense doors so that they may perceive only the Pure Land (commitment wheel).  I have brought them all into a Kadampa Buddhist Temple so that I can teach them all the Kadam Dharma (celestial mansion).  I emanate all of the different Pure Lands for beings of different capacities (Mount Meru).  I watch over the Continents, the completely purified three thousand worlds, the City of Enlightenment.  I protect all living beings so that only purity may enter the Pure Land (the protection circle).  I emanate the charnel grounds so that beings may have a training ground.  Others may view it as samsara, but I emanate countless emanations to help guide beings into my pure view.  Everything is protected and emanated by Dorje Shugden, so everything is perfect for the enlightenment of all beings (Dorje Shugden’s protection circle).  This is all taking place within the ocean of my Dharmakaya mind.
  6. After mantra recitation, do the yoga of inconceivability, then arise out of the Dharmakaya as 2-armed Heruka.  Then think successively:  I am inside my central channel at my heart.  I am inside the indestructible drop.  I am inside the nada.  The earth element dissolves, and I perceive the mirage like appearance.  The water element dissolves, and I perceive the smoke-like appearance.  The fire element dissolves and I perceive the sparkling fire flies-like appearance.  The wind element dissolves and I perceive the candle-flame like appearance.  I perceive white appearance.  Red increase.  Black near attainment.  Clear Light emptiness.  All of the waves of contaminated appearance have completely subsided and I abide in the complete stillnesss and purity of the Dharmakaya.  I experience great bliss and my mind is free from all obstructions in all directions.  All barriers between myself and all things have completely dissolved (feel as if you have merged into all things in the Dharmakaya).
  7. Then arise from the Dhamakaya again as Heruka and do Dorje Shugden.  After all of the attainments I desire…, request:  please protect myself and all beings forever and always so that everything that arises is always perfect for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  Please bless me with the wisdom to realize how you have made it so.

Your turn:  What contemplations do you use to generate a personalized mind of refuge?

Karma is interesting

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life

I woke up at 4 in the morning with a flash of insight, I came and spent the last 2 hours typing it out into this blog, I then categorized it and tried to publish it, but for some reason it failed and I lost everything!  It was, in essence, about how I need to strive for complete freedom of every aspect of my mind (meaning every other living being).  So I need to leave them completely free from their own side to engage in all of the actions that lead to their own enlightenment and how it is a karmic contradiction to try control them in any way.  I also explained, in detail, how there is no contradiction between a Buddha seeing everyone as a Buddha and their compassionate actions of leading all beings to enlightenment (their pure view is their compassionate action).  I guess writing it all out was for my own mental clarification.

When I went to hit publish, I was hit with a couple of other thoughts which I will write now:

  1. Venerable Geshe-la should do a blog.  How cool would it be to have his daily reflections on the Dharma which we all could then contemplate.
  2. The highest profession a being could have in this world is to be a Dharma teacher.  Every profession solves some problem and brings some benefit to others, but only being a Dharma teacher solves all the problems of this and all of our future lives.  As I embark upon my new profession, I must recall that my being a diplomat is simply part of my training for the highest profession of all, namely being a Kadampa Spiritual Guide.  I need to gain the skills of a diplomat, the realizations of how to transform a normal life into retreat and the karmic connections with all the beings of the whole world so that in the future I may lead them all along the paths to enlightenment.  Also, by becoming a model employee for others I create the causes to have model ’employees’ helping me fulfill my bodhichitta wishes for others in the future (like a bunch of Chosang’s helping me).

Your turn:  Explain how through your current job you can create karma which will help you when you become a Kadampa Spiritual Guide in the future.

Key contemplations during daily practice

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

The following are the word for word contemplations I do at various points in my daily practice of the yoga of Buddha Heruka (together with mental image that associates each set of words – a picture is worth a thousand words):

Before I go for refuge at the beginning: First I imagine all living beings around me within the clear light Dharmakaya and I recall that they are all aspects of my mind. I then think: “I have a precious opportunity to fully train my mind (clear light Dharmakaya) and build my pure land (full mandala), thereby solving all of my own and others’ problems. But I may die at any point, and since I have not purified, I will most likely fall into the lower realms (visualize hell). To protect against this, I must build the foundation of refuge within my mind (like a safety net protecting me against a fall). I must make effort to put the Dharma into practice, to receive Buddha’s blessings and to turn to the Sangha for help.” Then I recite the refuge prayer imagining all living beings are reciting it with me.

Before bodhichitta: “It is not enough to just avoid falling into the lower realms once, I must use this life to secure my permanent freedom in all of my future lives (clear light Dharmakaya as liberation) and to build my pure land (the full mandala as enlightenment, the means by which I gather all beings from the deepest hell and lead them to the highest enlightenment in my heart). Then I recite the bodhichitta prayer.

During the next parts of the sadhana, I try to intend to the meaning of the words with full concentration.

I then add the Migstema prayer, and as I am doing it I imagine I am downloading JTK, BSK, VD, Avaolokitehsvara, Manjushri and Vajrapani (and their corresponding skills and realizations of perfect Kadampa Spiritual Guide, Perfect Sutra Spiritual Guide, Perfect Tantric Spiritual Guide, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom and fully developed spiritual power respectively). I specifically request the wisdom to always make the right decisions and to always know what to do and practice. This is not technically part of the sadhana, but I see no harm or fault in adding it here.

After dissolving the guru after the request (O Guru…inseparable from great bliss): I imagine that GSBH comes to my heart and completely takes over. “May my every thought be yours. May my every word be yours. May you act through me to liberate others. I have no independent self-will. I am your Avatar.” I then imagine everything dissolves into the clear light Dharmakaya thinking, “all the waves of contaminted appearance have been completely pacified on the ocean of my mind. This is my Dharmakaya. I am the Dharmakaya.”

I then build the pure land and do a checking meditation of each aspect of the mandala, understanding each aspect to be my helping all living beings in a particular way. I first go outwards and then back inwards, recalling the appearance and its function:
1. Dharmakaya – the ocean of my mind which is the gold of the gold coin of the mandala.
2. The nada – my Enjoyment body, the synthesized version of the entire mandala for superior bodhisattvas.
3. The seed letters of the deities of the mandala – The enjoyment body version of the mandala
4. Myself as Heruka Father and Mother – gather all winds into the indestructible drop where they are completely purified.
5. Deities of the great Bliss will – I balance all the inner elements and purify the five objects of desire.
6. Deities of the mind, speech and body wheels individually – heal the subtle body of all living beings so that the winds can flow effortlessly into the indestructible drop and all faults of body, speech and mind are completely purified.
7. Deities of the commitment wheel – Purify the sense doors of all living beings.
8. The celestial mansion – I gather all beings into a Kadampa Buddhist temple where I teach them all of the Kadam Dharma.
9. Mount Meru – emanate all the different levels of pure land for living beings to take rebirth in, leading up to the highest pure land Keajra (where the celestial mansion and HBM deities are).
10. The continents – the completely purified version of the three thousand worlds that I am emanating for beings to live.
11. The protection circle – everything inside this is completely pure
12. The charnel grounds – training grounds I am emanating for tantric bodhisattvas. It is also like a bridge between samsara and the pure lands.
13. The six realsm of samsara – where I am emanating countless emanations to help beings and lead them inwards.
14. Dorje Shugden’s protection circle and Dorje Shugden – this surrounds everything. I request/recall that everything that is taking place inside of his protection circle is absolutely perfect for the swiftest possible enlightenment of all the beings within it. All of this is taking place inside his pure land, within which everything is emanated and controlled by him.
15. All of this is floating inside of the ocean of the clear light Dharmakaya of my mind. So the appearing mandala is both inside the clear light Dharmakaya and is the coin of the gold coin.

I then do the same checking meditation moving back inwards to my heart. I then contemplate: “Though it (the mandala) appears, it is not other than emptiness (union of two truths). I am leading all beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment (the function of my pure land). I am Heruka (on the basis of the function, I generate Divine Pride). It is the nature of the emptiness of my mind of great bliss (recall bliss and emptiness as the gold of the gold coin of the mandala).

I then recite the different mantras, imagining with each I am accomplishing the actions/functions of Heruka through each mantra, like they are magic words that accomplish different beneficial functions on all living beings:
1. Essence mantra of the father – bestowing the realization of the tantric union of the two truths on all living beings.
2. Close essence mantra of the father – bestowing the five omniscient wisdoms on all living beings.
3. 3-OM mantra – healing the subtle body, speech and mind of all living beings.
4. Individual mantras of the deities of the body mandala – I am purifying and repairing the different channels and drops of the subtle bodies of all living beings.

I then do the Dorje Shugden part, requesting that everything forever and always be under his control for the swiftest possible enlightenment of all beings. I then believe this to be the case and recall that as a result of this conviction for all practical purposes I am inside his pure land and everything that happens to myself and everyone else is emanated by him.

I then do the dedication prayers.