4. Practicing in Daily Life

Our Vows Are Promises We Can Train In:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Their practice is, when confronted with a tendency to break or neglect the promises, reminding ourself why we made these promises and working through the delusions and negative karma that prevent us from keeping them.

Their primary function is to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our spiritual path until we attain the final goal. The level of the promise – from refuge, to pratimoksha, to bodhisattva, to our tantric vows – determines the speed with which we complete the path, like water moving through an increasingly narrow hose. Their secondary function is to help us overcome all gross distractions, which is the basic foundation of training in concentration. This in turn enables us to successfully meditate on the Dharma and in particular on the wisdom realizing emptiness that purifies our mind of all delusions and their imprints, thus taking us to the cities of liberation and enlightenment.

Our refuge promises are essentially to (1) to make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, (2) to make effort to put the Dharma into practice, and (3) to make effort to turn to the Sangha for help. Our pratimoksha promise is essentially to refrain from harming living beings, both ourself and others. Our bodhisattva promise essentially is to not stop until we become a Buddha, in particular through the practice of the six perfections. Our tantric promise is essentially to maintain pure view of ourself, others, our environment, and our activities out of compassion for all living beings. More details can be found in Joyful Path, the Bodhisattva Vow, Universal Compassion, and Tantric Grounds and Paths.

Our most important vow is our heart commitment to Dorje Shugden. This maintains the uninterrupted continuum of our finding the uncommon Kadampa path of the Ganden Oral Lineage instructions, the quickest path to enlightenment of them all.

Within the scope of the heart commitment, I would say there are both common and uncommon promises. The common promises are to (1) cherish the Kadam Dharma, (2) to practice the Kadam Dharma purely without mixing it with other traditions, (3) to share the Kadam Dharma purely without mixing it with other traditions, and (4) to make effort to cause the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish throughout the world.

There are two uncommon promises within our heart commitment to Dorje Shugden. The first is to make the promise to attend every major Kadampa festival (Spring, Summer, and Fall) either in person or on-line between now and at least 2099 (but really, for as long as they last). This functions to preserve the NKT globally for generations to come.

The second uncommon promise of our heart commitment is to keep the Kadampa moral discipline of the Internal Rules of the NKT. These are required if we want to be a Resident Teacher or a center administrator, but are also available to any practitioner. VGL has said they are our most important moral discipline. They are the pinnacle of our Kadampa moral discipline and are taken on the foundation of all the other promises.

None of these promises are imposed upon us from the outside, but are taken freely by the practitioner based upon a clear wisdom that understands benefits of keeping these promises and the dangers of breaking them. All of these promises are worked with gradually and have many levels. When we break them, we can purify the downfall and restore them within our mind. We can do this daily.

We are so lucky to even know of these things, much less have the opportunity to train in them. I would say they are true wishfulfilling jewels.

On Putting the Meaning of Dharma into our Own Words:

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Sometimes people get very nervous when they hear or read Dharma being expressed in ways not explicitly articulated by VGL. Often people will say things like, “where does VGL say that,” or “you are creating confusion,” or worse they will make accusations that you are inventing your own lineage.

I understand these concerns, there are many legitimate issues that need to be navigated carefully. As modern Kadampas we need to 100% ground everything we do in what VGL has taught us. His words are perfect and were meticulously selected, so putting things a different way can lead to confusion, especially if we are wrong in how we put it. And we certainly are not qualified to create our own lineage and don’t want anybody to rely upon us over the one and only Guru of our lineage for all time – Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka.

But it is an extreme to think the meaning of Dharma can only be expressed with VGL’s exact words or formulations. It is an extreme to be a Dharma parrot. For example, he didn’t speak French or Spanish or Mandarin, yet our books are all translated into these languages. Translating Dharma has been an essential component of how the lineage gets passed on through the generations, such as the great Tibetan translators who went to India, learned Sanskrit, and sent the Dharma back.

Translating Dharma is not just from one world language to another, but occurs at a micro level all the time – for example, how we would explain the Dharma to a transgender scholar from Harvard might be different than to a die hard so-called football hooligan from Manchester. How we explain it to a grandmother might be different than to a young monk. We each live in a different linguistic circle where ideas and meanings are coded in different words, so it is entirely normal that the meaning of Dharma will be expressed differently in different contexts. Not only is this not something to be feared, it should be embraced as how we make the Dharma available to all the myriad different types of being in this world.

Indeed, VGL warns about this in Clear Light of Bliss where he explains “In the teachings on the four reliances, Buddha gives further guidelines for arriving at an unmistaken understanding of the teachings. He says: Do not rely upon the person, but upon the Dharma. Do not rely upon the words, but upon the meaning. Do not rely upon the interpretative meaning, but upon the definitive meaning. Do not rely upon consciousness, but upon wisdom.” He goes on to say, “If we understand these four reliances and use them to evaluate the truth of the teachings we receive, we will be following an unmistaken path. There will be no danger of our adopting false views or falling under the influence of misleading Teachers. We will be able to discriminate correctly between what is to be accepted and what is to be rejected, and we will thereby be protected against faults such as sectarianism.”

In other words, what matters is not the exact words we use, but whether the meanings our words transmit are pure Dharma. The meaning is unchanging all the way back to Buddha, but how that meaning gets expressed will vary over time and from one micro-cultural corner to another.

VGL explained when he first taught Modern Buddhism at a Summer Festival that our job is to “attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and modern life.” He went on to explain he has given us the pure Kadam Dharma, but we know modern life. Our job therefore is to attain this union. This is how we make the Dharma available to everyone in this world and pass it on to future generations. The Dharma is not just the words he uses, it is the meanings he is transmitting. If we get stuck just using his words, fearing any formulation he didn’t explicitly use, we risk not only obstructing the Dharma from spreading far and wide in this world, but also falling into the extreme of sectarianism, or worse having the lineage die prematurely.

Our job is to emulate VGL’s example. A huge part of his example is he took the pure meanings of Je Tsongkhapa as taught in ancient Tibet and then repackaged them in a way that the people of the modern world could accept and understand. Atisha did the same in his time. VGL helped separate what was culturally ancient Tibetan from what is pure Dharma and then presented it in a way that can be understood and practiced by the people of the modern world. We must do the same and continually do so generation after generation – always remaining entirely loyal to the pure meanings of our Spiritual Guide, free from the extremes of inventing our own lineage and restricting ourselves to being a Dharma parrot of his words.

This is true even at the level of our own individual meditations. Listening to Dharma is understanding our guru’s words. Contemplating the Dharma is making that understanding our own – in other words, putting it into our own words that transmit that meaning perfectly within our own mind. Sharing the Dharma is then either sharing our understandings in our own words or – even more advanced – translating those meanings into words that other people can understand based upon where their minds are at.

But please don’t misunderstand. Of course VGL’s words are unbelievably precious and what we need to ground all of our Dharma understandings in. We should absolutely memorize his words. At one point, he suggested we memorize all of Joyful Path and Modern Buddhism. I would absolutely love to do that. Becoming familiar with and memorizing his words is the essential foundation for the wisdom arising from listening (or reading). Without that, we can’t even get to the next wisdom, namely the wisdom arising from contemplation. My only point is we should not stop at just memorizing his words, we need to go deeper still and then also put his words into our own words without losing the meaning at all. Then, we need to learn how to put these meanings into words others can understand, again without losing the meaning at all. So everything we are normally saying, and then further. It’s not either/or, it’s both.

Yes, I agree, we need to be very careful. There are many pitfalls, traps, and dangers here. But these risks cut in both ways – both the risk of transmitting wrong understandings, creating confusion, or inventing our own lineage and of becoming a Dharma parrot, obstructing the Dharma from spreading far and wide, becoming sectarian, or causing the lineage to die prematurely. As with all things, our job is to try find the middle way.

On Making Effort to Receive Buddha’s Blessings and Sangha’s Help:

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

While it is of course true that our Guru’s mind (the synthesis of all Buddha’s minds) is constantly bestowing blessings on the minds of all living beings every day just as the sun is always shining above the clouds, from our side there is much we can and indeed have to do to be able to actually RECEIVE blessings. The fact that Buddha’s blessings are always available and s/he is always BESTOWING blessings does not mean we are RECEIVING them. We have to create openings in our mind for that light to enter. We have to open the blinds for the light to come in.

It is true all living beings might receive blessings every day, but receiving those blessings has a cause that we ourselves engaged in – perhaps not at that moment, perhaps not even in this life, but at some point in our infinite past lives. The laws of karma are quite clear: if the cause is not created, the effect cannot be experienced. We can consider the story of Angulimala (I think it was him). It was said that you needed some degree of virtue in your mind to ordain and Buddha’s seers couldn’t find any in his dark mind. But Buddha saw he was a fly on dung in the rain circumambuling a stupa. That created a tiny aperture for the light of the blessings to come in, and from that the rest could follow.

In any event, it is clear that there are things we can do – and should do – to receive blessings even more. Our refuge commitment is to MAKE EFFORT to RECEIVE blessings. There are things WE need to do from our side to train in this refuge commitment to be able to receive even more light into our mind. It is not an on/off switch, but a volume knob. The more we do these things, the more we create the causes to actually receive blessings, and the more blessings we receive.

First, our pride blocks blessings from flowing in just as surely as blinds block the sunlight. The degree of our pride determines how closed the blinds are.

Likewise, the greater our faith, the more we melt the snows on the snow mountain of our guru’s mind. More faith = more blessings.

Additionally, we can improve our motivation to align it with the motivation of our guru and our reasons for WANTING (also not a passive thing) to receive blessings. Buddha may bestow blessings equally on all living beings, but surely we RECEIVE more blessings if our motivation is bodhichitta versus some selfish motivation for wanting blessings. If we align the sails of our mind with the pure winds of our guru’s blessings (that always blow in the direction of the city of enlightenment) then the more blessings flow into our mind.

We can also increase how much we receive blessings by considering how our guru, the blessings, and our mind are all equally empty, like the space between three different bottles subsequently broken. When we think Buddhas exist independently of our mind, we create this obstruction as if their mind is there and our mind is here and there is no way for the blessings to flow in. When we realize the emptiness of the three spheres of receiving blessings, we break down these obstructions.

Further, the degree of our concentration when we are engaging in the mental action of receiving blessings will determine how much blessings are able to flow in. We have all engaged in group pujas with the recording and been distracted when the part of the sadhana for receiving blessings occurs. Did we RECEIVE as many blessings as we would have if we weren’t distracted?

So from my perspective, it seems very clear there are many things we need to do from our side to fulfill our refuge commitment to Buddha – reduce our pride, increase our faith, align our motivation with his, remember emptiness, concentrate single-pointedly, etc. It doesn’t just happen automatically or passively. If it seems like it does, this is actually just us burning up our merit from our past actions of doing the things we need to do to receive blessings. There are no effects without a cause.

To go further, I would say there are many disadvantages to thinking receiving blessings is a passive thing. First, we then think there is nothing we need to do to accomplish our refuge commitment to MAKE EFFORT to RECEIVE blessings, so we fail to create those causes. Second, we can fall into despair and discouragement thinking there is nothing we can do about the fact that we are not feelin’ it anymore, like we are a passive experiencer of our fate. Third, we can get into the weird narratives of our guru is upset at us and withholding his blessings, what did I do wrong, is he punishing me or does he no longer love me? There are many other disadvantages of the view that receiving blessings is a passive thing I’m sure we can consider.

All this leads me to think perhaps there are also things we need to do to MAKE EFFORT to RECEIVE Sangha’s help. This too is not a passive thing, even if Sangha from their side do want to help all the time. There are conditions we need to create in our mind – indeed the same conditions as for receiving blessings – for us to actually receive Sangha’s help. The more we create those causes, the more help we might be able to receive.

This is a deep practice, actually. For me, I often try be their spiritual Rambo doing it all on my own, and the more I’m experiencing extreme difficulty in my life, the more I close up and isolate myself to work it all out on my own. This is sometimes appropriate to do, but it can also many times be a big mistake. I think I do this because I have been betrayed in my life many times by the people I have counted on. I put my faith in them, then when it is my time of need, they fail to show up or worse they betray that trust and drive the knife in deeper. Of course I created the causes for them to do that to me, but still it has left me often not making effort to receive Sangha’s help. I’m hurt enough at such times, I couldn’t take finding out that I can’t count on Sangha too. I have to push myself to ask for their help.

There are also all sorts of pride reasons and strange notions about how I can’t show I’m deluded for fear of people losing faith in me or whatever (a very common neurosis amongst so-called “senior practitioners” or “Dharma teachers” – not that I consdier myself either of these things).

In short, like all of our Dharma practices, receiving Buddha’s blessings and receiving Sangha’s help are things we need to do. We need to make effort to do these things. If we fail to do so, we actually haven’t entered Buddhism and the rest of our practice lacks a foundation at best or is a sham at worst – we are practicing performative Buddhism, not Kadampa Buddhism.

But perhaps I am wrong about all this. If so, please explain why. Me asking is me making effort to receive Sangha’s help. 😉

Getting the Most out of Attending the Kadampa Festivals Online

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

It’s festival time!  Perhaps in the past we were able to go to the festivals, perhaps even all of them, but for whatever reason this time we are not able to make it.  Fortunately, even if we can’t physically make it to the festival, we can now still attend it online.  What follows are my thoughts on how to make the most of our attending the festival online.  If you haven’t signed up yet, it is not too late.  You can do so right now.

Overcoming Guilt About Not Being Able to Attend Physically

First, we need to dispel the guilt of not being able to go physically.  In the past (perhaps even sometimes now), our Resident Teachers and fellow Sangha would sometimes apply some pressure to try get people to go to festivals, and then make people feel guilty if they were not able to do so.  Such hard-pressure tactics are ultimately counter-productive in the long-run and fortunately slowly people are abandoning them.  But even when they do happen, the person using them is usually well-intended.  Our teachers and Sangha friends know the value of going to the festival and they want us to experience the same thing.  They just sometimes use less than skillful means to try encourage us to do so.  That’s OK, nobody is perfect.

But ultimately, we each have different karma.  For some, it is money problems.  For others, it is inability to get off work or family obligations.  It could be due to sickness or old age – or just the sheer physical distance needed to travel there.  It could be due to inner obstructions.  If somebody else misunderstands our karma and makes us feel guilty about not being able to go, that is their problem, not ours.  Guilt closes our mind to be able to receive blessings.  It ignorantly grasps at the view that just because we can’t physically make it to the festival, we can’t still fully participate in the festival.  We then feel bad about ourselves, give up, and don’t bother to attend virtually. 

This is completely wrong. Sometimes we really want to go, but for whatever karmic reason we are not able to do so.  We need to accept that this will happen.  Mentally, we should always maintain the wish to go physically, never thinking it is unimportant.  If we have a sincere wish, but karmically it is not possible, then we can accept not going physically with a clear conscience.  Maintaining the wish to attend physically while attending online basically takes maximum advantage of the opportunity we have to go given our karma.  Gen Tharchin explains that if we take full advantage of the spiritual opportunities we have, it creates the causes for better opportunities in the future; but if we squander the opportunities we have, we burn up the karma that created them and it will be difficult to find similar opportunities in the future.

Make the Determination to Attend Every Festival – For the Rest of Your Life

Geshe-la has said that gathering together at the festivals is the method for maintaining the tradition for generations to come.  This is what he asked us to do – to make a commitment to attend every festival for the rest of our lives.  

In this sense, I’m so grateful for COVID because it enabled the NKT to make the decision to make the festivals available online from anywhere in the world.  I have very difficult karma when it comes to being able to attend the festivals physically.  But being able to attend them digitally was like a huge gush of fresh air to be able to attend all the festivals as I had done in the past.  I was worried that they wouldn’t continue with the policy after COVID, but I think the NKT administrators realized there are just many people who don’t have the karma to be able to physically make it to the festivals but in their speech and minds they really wanted to be there.  COVID-era festivals proved it is possible to transform our personal environment of our home or local center into the festival experience.  So now they are letting it continue.  How wonderful!

Venerable Geshe-la says attending the festivals is the method for carrying forward the lineage for future generations.  How does this work?  Gen Tharchin says every time we engage in a spiritual practice with others, we create the karmic causes to do the same thing again with the same people in the future.  When we interact with each other as Sangha, we create karmic bonds together around common activities.  The festivals bring together the global sangha into one family, one community, one gathering, to receive the same teachings.  This keeps us all on the same page, both in terms of the teachings but also our karma together.  This is equally true whether we attend the festival physically or online.

We need to have deep appreciation for the value of our tradition so we want to keep it alive for future generations.  If we have this wish and we recall how Venerable Geshe-la said the method for doing so is making the commitment to attend all the festivals for the rest of our life, then we will naturally want to make this determination ourselves.  We are pure, 100% Kadampa teachings, without being mixed with anything.  We are the pure deal, the undilluted form, or rather we are a distinct flavor.  The Kadampa teachings include the Ganden Oral Lineage, through which we can attain enlightenment in one lifetime, even three years!  That’s what we are!  That is our instruction.  That is our uncommon characteristic.  Geshe-la’s presentation of the Ganden Oral Lineage already appears directly to millions in this world, and in the future it will appear to billions.  He has made this precious gem from the heart of Je Tsonkghapa available to all the people of the modern world.  Online festivals will emerge as one of the primary methods for doing so for generations to come.

Attending the Festival is Primarily a State of Mind

If we are unable to go physically, we have to keep in mind “being at a festival,” like all things, depends upon our mind.  It is perfectly possible to be physically at the festival, but mentally not; likewise it is possible to mentally be there while physically not being able to go.  Attending a festival is a state of mind, it is a mental recognition.  If we adopt the state of mind of “being at the festival” then we will experience whatever happens to us during festival time as “our festival.” 

During the empowerments, the teacher always encourages us to develop the recognitions that we are in the pure land receiving the empowerment directly from the guru deity.  We can do this from anywhere, including in our imagination.  The same is true during the teachings.  We can “tune in” from anywhere in the world.  If we have faith and a good motivation, it is definite our mind will be blessed exactly as if we were at the festival physically.

Anybody who has been to a festival knows that everyone’s experience is highly personalized.  If we adopt the mental recognition of being at a festival, then our daily life during this time will become our festival.  The only difference between those who are physically there and those who are not will be what appears.  They will see Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Center (or wherever else in the world the festival is taking place), we will see wherever we are at, but both will be receiving constant teachings through whatever is appearing.  Different things will happen to us during festival time, and these will be our special, personalized teachings.  Different delusions will arise during festival time and different lessons will be learned.  This is equally part of the content of our festival, not just the actual teachings.  Dakas and Dakinis can enter into the bodies of all those around us and we can find ourselves surrounded by Sangha through adopting this view.  Each thing everyone does will become part of our teachings.  Buddhas can teach through anything.  If we view everything as our teachings, everything will teach us.  In this way, we can all attend festival teachings and enjoy the full festival experience no matter where we are in the world.

To help strengthen this recognition, every day during the festival we can make special requests and dedications that Dorje Shugden arrange everything that happens to us during festival time, transforming whatever does happen to us into our personal festival.  His job is to arrange all the outer and inner conditions for our practice; of these two, inner conditions are by far the most important.  He can help protect our inner “festival mind,” and enter into whatever appears (work, family, whatever) so that it becomes our powerful teachings and festival experience.  I like to imagine vast protection circles around me and everywhere I go I try to strongly believe that everything that happens inside the protection circle is part of my festival.

Ultimately, the festival is not happening in England or wherever the festival venue happens to be, rather it is happening in the pure land.  Gen Tharchin explains that the location of the mind is at the object of cognition.  If we think of the moon, our mind goes to the moon.  In the same way, if we think of the pure land, our mind actually goes there.  Since the festival is happening in the pure land anyways, we can mentally imagine (both in and out of meditation) that we are in the pure land with all our vajra brothers and sisters.  If we maintain this recognition, we will go there and be with them. 

Why are festivals spiritually powerful?  If each one of us is a candle, we each have a little bit of light.  But if we all put our candles together, then we make a blazing sun that we all benefit from.  When we come together at festival time, it is like the entire Kadampa family bringing their candles together into a single light.  We don’t have to physically be at the festival venue to add our candle.  Since the festival is actually taking place in the pure land, we can join them all there.  Quite simply:  mentally adopt this recognition and it will be true.

Stay in Contact with your Fellow Online Sangha Friends During the Festival

During the festival, it is a good idea to try stay in close contact with your fellow online sangha friends, just as you would attending the festival physically.  Organize calls with your friends, eat meals “together” via Zoom, discuss the teachings in the various Facebook groups, etc. 

In many ways, we can say that the online Dharma community – on Facebook groups, blogs, podcasts, etc. – is like a year-long festival.  Each time we forge a bond with one another through our interactions online, we are bringing sanghas from around the world in closer karmic proximity to one another.  Sharing the pure Kadam Dharma with each other online now makes the pure Kadam Dharma appear in our future.  This is how we find each other again and again in our future lives.  The conversations we have and the bonds we create with each other on Facebook and other platforms are the threads pulling the Kadampa world together into the emerging digital society.  Our online friendships matter for the future of the living beings in our world.  The whole world is moving increasingly into a digital society where people spend more and more of their lives inside the worlds created by technology.

Geshe-la said we need to go to where the people are. The people are moving into the digital world, so as Kadampas we need to go there too.  That’s why I think the Kadampa digital presence is so important.  We need to make our exchanges together feel like a Kadampa community. We are a digital community of Kadampas.  It is the exact same karmic process as attending the festivals physically.  For those of us who find most of our sangha online, attending the festival together online brings us much closer to one another throughout the year.

Rejoice in Those Able to be There Physically

We can recall all the thousands of people who are physically at the festival and rejoice in their incredible good fortune for being able to be there.  Sometimes if we can’t go to the festival we try rationalize it by saying it is not that important.  We should never think like this because it functions to destroy the karma to have the opportunity to go in the future.  Instead, we should recall how incredibly important it is to go physically (without generating attachment to being able to go) and rejoice for those who are there.  This rejoicing will not only create a vast amount of merit, it will also help create the karmic causes for us to be able to go ourselves again physically in the future (perhaps in future lives, we do not know).  At a practical level, this rejoicing will remind us to maintain the “mind of being at a festival,” thus bringing us back to this important recognition.

We can also ask a friend who is able to go physically to dissolve us into their heart and bring us into the temple with them.  If they do, part of us will actually be there.  We should also feel ourselves to be there in their heart.  When they maintain this recognition, there may be points in the teaching where they think, “ah, this is for my friend back home.”  This is your special advice.  We can also ask them to write us, telling us what is happening and what they are learning, and what messages, if any, they are specifically receiving for us.  Even if they are not able to do so each day during the festival, we can take them to lunch or coffee upon their return and ask them about what they learned.

Organize Viewing Parties at your Local Center

If there are other Sangha friends in your community who are also unable to go, you can organize a “viewing party” at your local center.  Everyone can get together watch the videos, meditate on their meanings, and then discuss it afterwards – just like we would if we were at the festival itself. 

I take great inspiration from the Mormans as a model for how things will likely develop for us.  Every year the Mormons have a “General Council,” which is like their Summer Festival.  There are tens of millions of Mormons around the world now and obviously not all of them are able to make the pilgrimage to Salt Lake City.  As a result, in Mormon temples and prayer halls around the world, they organize “viewing parties” where they watch the videos of the spiritual gathering, then discuss what was taught afterwards.  There is no reason why we can’t do the same.  I would suspect in the future, as we grow in number, we will increasingly do things as the Mormons do. 

Make your Online Festival a Personal Retreat

If we can, take a few days off from work during the festival to be able to attend it like a personal retreat.  If that is not possible and you can’t take off work, make the weekends or your days off special retreat time.  Create retreat boundaries just like you would if you were physically at the festival.

Now that Venerable Geshe-la has passed, how does he continue to appear in this world? As the teacher of every festival. Some people in the future may lament wishing they were able to attend teachings directly with Geshe-la, but I say we all have this opportunity every year for the Spring, Summer, and Fall international festivals.  What appears to our eyes may be this Gen-la or that one, but for us we see it is Venerable Geshe-la teaching the festival through everyone and everything related to the festival (not just the teachings).  This is equally true whether we are physically at the festival or attending it online.

Conclusion 

Attending festivals is one of the most important things we can do for our spiritual life.  The benefits of being at a festival are truly limitless.  But the karma is not always there for us to physically go.  We need to accept this and make the most of it.  By making the most of it, while always maintaining the wish to be able to go again in the future, we create the karmic causes to be able to attend physically later. 

Festival time is a special time regardless of whether we can physically make it to the festival venue itself.  Fortunately, through the power of faith and emptiness, no matter where we may find ourselves in the world, we can all attend the festival with our vajra brothers and sisters every year – just in a different way.  In this way, we can make and keep our commitment to Venerable Geshe-la to attend every festival for the rest of our lives. 

Enjoy!

Practicing from the Heart: “Please Reverse this Sad Situation”

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

I have spent the vast majority of my Dharma career being a Kadampa Vulcan, stuck in my head or intellectualizing or abstracting myself from all that I was experiencing. The Dharma just gave me powerful tools for doing that.

For me, one of the most important clarifications Venerable Geshe-la provides in Mirror of Dharma is when he explains the purpose of contemplation is to have the Dharma touch our heart, and it is only when it has touched our heart that we have found our object of meditation. For somebody who for decades viewed the goal of contemplation as arriving at clear intellectual understandings of the Dharma and the interconnections between the teachings, this was a revolution in my practice. This doesn’t mean we don’t also need to come to correct understandings intellectually, it means that is just the beginning. Our contemplation is not complete – we have not actually found our object of meditation – until we feel it in our heart. He then implored us, “please reverse this sad situation.” Mic drop…

When I was telling my story of all that had happened to myself and my family to a therapist, the therapist said, “wow, that’s a lot. But the way you describe it, it is as if you are talking about it in the abstract or what happened to somebody else.” This was a pivotal moment for me because she was exactly right. I think it is my defense or coping mechanism for dealing with all the hurt I have encountered in my life. I guess it is a trauma response not that different than what I’ve heard sometimes happens when people are being raped – their mind goes some place else because it is too traumatic to be where they are.

But something unexpected, but perhaps entirely predictable, happened when I started trying to reverse this sad situation. I became filled with rage. Rage at my father for hating my mom more than he loved us and for all the different ways he judged both me and my family over the years. Rage at my mother for not being able to emotionally hold it together as we were growing up and for her committing suicide the day before my wedding. Rage at others close to me for things I’d rather not discuss publicly.

But anger is the worst of all delusions, so repress, repress, repress. No wait, can’t do that. I need to acknowledge and accept the existence of delusions in my mind, take the time to see them for what they are and examine where they come from (thank you Gen Wangden for pointing me to the right place, you have a real skill for that).

So where did the rage come from? Even deeper hurt. But letting that out of the bottle, especially when I’ve been repressing it for 50 years, well, hurts. Overwhelmingly so. When I came back to India, everything that I had been repressing came flooding into my mind and it was overwhelming – more than I could handle. It became urgent to not feel such things. But the turning point for me was when Jim Travis told me, “feel it, brother.” This gave me permission to allow myself to feel the hurt I had been abstracting myself from. I then spent a week on retreat putting myself back together from a near total emotional meltdown.

Along the way, a dear friend told me when we allow our feelings to somatically pass through us – accepting them wholeheartedly instead of pushing them down or rejecting them – it unlocks the wisdom we need to heal our hurt. This was definitely my experience at the time and has been on a few other occasions since, but the Vulcan habits run deep and it is easy to slip into my old ways.

Enlightenment is not just the completely purified aggregate of discrmination, seeing all phenomena individually as manifestations of their emptiness. It is also the completely purified aggregate of feeling that according to Sutra is essentially the supreme good heart of compassion and bodhichitta and according to Tantra is the mind that genuinely feels great bliss when encountering anything (I would say compassion and bodhichitta are the substantial causes of the mind of great bliss. Opps, I did it again, another intellectualization when I’m trying to speak from my heart…).

To reverse our sad situation, we need to learn to practice from our heart. When we first embrace this way of practice, the truth is we don’t become more Zen or more kind-hearted, we become much more emotionally volatile. Again, like Spock when his human side comes to the surface and he has to battle the powerful emotions he had previously been repressing.

But here we discover a different problem: Culturally, within our tradition, we create little space for each other to be deluded or emotionally troubled. This is especially true for the so-called “senior practitioners.” There is so much pervasive pretension within our tradition, with people emotionally pretending to be all put together to supposedly show a good example. This leads to all sorts of “conflict averse” behaviors where people just pretend to be OK with what is going on when in fact they are not and there is very little ability to actually discuss these things with each other without being accused of being deluded or being a trouble maker or disturbing the harmony of the center or whatever. It is because I love my tradition that I point such things out. It is not a criticism, it is a diagnosis.

The truth is there is a great deal to which modern Kadampas use the precious Dharma Venerable Geshe-la has given us to repress and pretend, not accept and dismantle. I would say “please reverse this sad situation” is true not just at the level of our individual practice, but also at the level of us as a spiritual community.

So to all those who have known me for many years, I’m sorry if I have been a bit more emotional of late, even angry. Sorry for pushing conversations to put squarely on the table what I perceive is going on, even if it is uncomfortable to hear said out loud and it is easier to just pretend that all is OK both within myself and within us as a spiritual tradition. But you know what? Sorry, not sorry. This is where I am at in my heart. This is me practicing from my heart. This is me trying to reverse my sad situation.

Realizing Non-Dual Karma and Emptiness:

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

Gross and subtle ordinary appearances and conceptions can be understood from the side of the object and from the side of the mind realizing it.

Overcoming gross ordinary appearances essentially means a direct realization of emptiness in meditative equipoise on emptiness. At such times we perceive directly the mere absence of all the things we normally see. We have attained the first union of non-dual appearance and emptiness – the union of the appearance of clear light and its emptiness. We see the clear light as non-dual with its emptiness. We see the clear light as a manifestation of its emptiness. This is essentially the first profundity. From a sutra perspective, this is realized with a gross mind. From a tantra perspective, this is realized with our very subtle mind of great bliss. In Mirror of Dharma, VGL differentiates the union of non-dual clear light and emptiness and non-dual bliss and emptiness as two different examples of the union of appearance and emptiness. But it is still just the first profundity, just at a deeper level.

But to “complete the practice of clear light” we need to purify our obstructions to omniscience. Just as the conventional nature of the mind is so clear it can know objects, the clear light is to empty it can appear subtle conventional objects as non-dual with emptiness. In Eight Steps to Happiness, VGL explains that subtle conventional truths are not conventional truths, but ultimate truths. They are various things appearing directly as emptiness. An omniscient mind perceives “only emptiness” but it appears in myriad ways, of which the appearance of clear light is merely one. The non-dual appearance of myself as the deity, my car, my computer, my phone, Donald Trump, etc., are others. They are these various things appearing directly as emptiness or, from another angle, only emptiness appearing as various things.

In other words, to directly overcome subtle dualistic appearance – attain a realization of non-dual emptiness and subtle conventional truths (seeing subtle conventional truths directly as ultimate truths, only emptinesses), we need to train in the second, third, and fourth profundities, both in meditation and outside of meditation. We do it inside of meditation by meditating on non-dual profundity and clarity, for example with our self-generation meditation; and we do it outside of meditation by training in subsequent attainment, in particular according to the instructions of training in the meditation break explained in Tantric Grounds and Paths in the section on Isolated Body. This process of realizing the second, third, and fourth profundities itself occurs at two levels: at the level of our gross mind (Sutra) and at the level of our subtle and very subtle minds (Tantra).

I would also add even this explanation is not sufficient. We need to realize Nagarjuna’s intention according to the Ganden Oral Lineage. VGL explained this in his oral commentary to Mirror of Dharma and through the Gen-la’s in Arizona. The difference between the explanation from the perspective of the four profundities and from the perspective of Nagarjuna’s intention is we realize not only the union of appearance and emptiness (four profundities), but the union of karma and emptiness (Nagarjuna’s intention). We realize not just the union of appearance and emptiness, but the union of KARMIC appearance and emptiness. This is like the difference between realizing a static picture (four profundities of the non-dual Toyota and emptiness) and a dynamic karmic movie (seeing the Toyota driving down the street as the unfolding of karma inseparable from emptiness, seeing it as a manifestation of emptiness, seeing it as only emptiness appearing as a karmic unfolding appearing in this way). Realizing non-dual karma and emptiness is even deeper than the mere realization of non-dual appearance and emptiness of the four profundities according to highest yoga tantra. I think only when we realize non-dual karma and emptiness with our very subtle mind of great bliss do we actually remove the last traces of obstructions to omniscience and realize Nagarjuna’s (and Buddha’s) ultimate intention and attain full enlightenment.

Accepting We Live in Degenerate Times

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

From a spiritual perspective, we as modern day Kadampas live in increasing times. That means spiritually things are getting better and better. But the world we live in is one of degenerating times, meaning things will continue to get worse and worse and will likely continue to do so until Maitreya comes. This is a difficult nut for people to swallow.

We tend to think it is good to be “optimistic” and believe that things will get better, but this is a trap for two reasons. First, it grasps onto things getting better externally as a necessary precondition for our happiness. This too shall pass. Brighter days lie ahead. Tomorrow will be better. OK, if that is the case, then I can accept my present circumstances. But what happens if tomorrow isn’t better? What do we do if each day things get worse externally? If we are always basing our happiness on things getting better externally, we remain attached.

Attachment is an object to be abandoned, even attachment to the hope of things getting better. Perhaps the last few hundred years have been increasing times, but now we are in degenerate times. Tomorrow will be worse than today and this will continue to be the case for likely a very long time. If we don’t shed this attachment to things getting better externally, we will suffer more and more from it, life will beat us down further and further, we will grow more and more depressed. This path leads to suicidal hopelessness.

The second reason why this is a trap is it is a form of self-torture. When we tell ourselves things are going to get better externally and they don’t, then we get crushed, our hopes drained, and our life becomes one of constant disappointment. Where does the disappointment come from? It comes from our unrealistic expectations about the external world. The truth is actually staring us right in the face. We are all doomed – we will all get sick, get old (if we are lucky), and die. And this process is going to repeat itself again and again. Life in samsara is one of perpetual, self-replicating doom. It is not going to get better, indeed it is on track to get much, much worse. We are enjoying but a brief relatively pleasant furlough in the human world.

These are hard truths to accept. Shattering, actually. But that doesn’t make them any less true. Until we come to grips with them, we remain on samsaric paths. Accepting them is when the path to liberation begins. This isn’t fire and brimstone manipulation. Buddha is very clear – we are in degenerate times. We better get used to it. Letting go of hope that this world will get better and that our external situation will get better is the starting point of the path to liberation. You should know sufferings.

So how can we happily accept these hard truths? How can accepting these truths not crush us and trigger a mental breakdown? How can we hear these things and not become suicidally hopeless?

First, we need to internalize these truths gradually. Start with the small stuff. Gain some experience of transforming slight adversities into the path of spiritual growth. When we can do that, we get a taste that it is possible. If we can do it with the small stuff, we gain the confidence and capacity to do it with slightly bigger stuff, and so on until eventually we can do it with any adversity. Venerable Geshe-la explains in How to Solve our Human Problems that there is no adversity so great that it cannot be transformed into the path. Indeed, with experience, the more things go badly externally the more we are propelled along the spiritual path internally. Instead of being beaten down by samsara, we become ejected by it – literally expelled out of it.

Second, we do not abandon hope, we simply change both its object and its expected timeline. Yes, we need to give up hope completely in samsara. It will never get better, it is irreparably broken. Doing more samsara will never create less samsara. Doubling down on samsaric methods will just double our suffering in it. But that doesn’t mean we are hopeless. Quite the opposite, we have a pure potential that can never be harmed by samsara no matter how awful it gets. We can reliably place our hope in our pure potential. We can reliably place our faith in the Dharma we have been taught as the method for ripening this potential. From the mud emerges the beautiful lotus. But we need to be realistic about how long this is going to take. It could take aeons. But that’s OK because we know with a pure potential and perfectly reliable methods the final outcome is assured. This is the mind of definite emergence and it is a joyful mind that knows we are bound for freedom and the only thing that can stop us is giving up trying. If we never give up, not only are we assured of getting out, we will eventually be able to lead everyone else to freedom. We can and will empty samsara. Buddha is also very clear about this. And it may happen much quicker than that – we have, after all, found the Ganden Oral Lineage through which it is possible to attain enlightenment in one short life. Maybe we won’t make it in this life, but if we give it our all, we will be able to pick up where we left off in our last life and it won’t be long before we find ourselves scaling Mount Meru in Keajra and eventually centering ourselves within the HUM at Guru Heruka’s heart inside his celestial mansion.

Third, we should remember that our samsaric world we normally see does not actually exist – at all. It is just a deluded hallucination. We are trippin’, as they say. It’s a bad trip, but it is not real. It is a bad dream, but it is not real. No matter what happens in the dream, it can never hurt us unless we believe it is real. We need to get to the point with our samsara that it becomes like a movie that is so bad, so absurd, it is funny. Samsara makes me laugh. The sky is never harmed, no matter how violent the storm raging in it. Be the sky. When we connect with the emptiness of an appearance, we purify the karma giving rise to it and it gradually subsides back into emptiness. By realizing the emptiness of our mind itself, we can cause all appearances to our mind to likewise subside into emptiness. We quite literally end the dream in such a way that it never arises again. You should attain cessations.

Fourth, we should trust in Dorje Shugden. One of my former students was a guy named Taro. Some of you may know him. He suffered terribly from psychotic minds, even towards the three jewels, and lived for close to a decade in a psychiatric hospital. His body may have been in the human realm, but his mind was often in hell. But he had vajra-like faith in Dorje Shugden. After he heard Gen Tharchin teach that we design our own enlightenment based upon the specific bodhichitta we generate, Taro said he wished to become a Buddha for extremely degenerate times – when everyone has a mind like he had now. His faith in Dorje Shugden enabled him to look at his torturous mind and view it as giving him the opportunity to gain the realizations he needed to fulfill his specific bodhichitta wish. He also once told me, “stop telling your spiritual guide how big your problems are and start telling your problems how big your spiritual guide is.” His bodhichitta later evolved into wishing to become part of Dorje Shugden’s mandala. He has since passed away, but I have no doubt he is now part of Dorje Shugden’s vast assembled retinue. Perhaps he always was, actually. He bought for the center in Geneva a temple-sized Dorje Shugden statue. It’s bigger than our Buddha Shayamuni statue was! It was (and is) glorious, as was he. Indeed, it is wrong for me to say he was one of my students. He was rather one of my teachers – really, he was a teacher of us all. When they write the biographies of the early modern Kadampas, he will be listed as one of our modern Kadampa Mahasiddhas. Of this I have no doubt. If faith in Dorje Shugden can transform Taro’s tormented mind into a cause of enlightenment, then it can easily do so for the rest of us.

As a practical matter, accepting that samsara is hopeless and our lives within it are doomed does not mean we don’t still try make things better where possible. We still need to live our modern lives exactly as normal – working, exercising, taking care of our families, saving for retirement, caring for the sick, contributing to society, etc. If we can make our lives better, there is no fault in doing so. We just don’t place our hope in these things and we accept it when our life falls apart – as it will, many times.

And the ultimate irony is it is by accepting that we live in degenerate times, that samsara is irreparably broken, and indeed that we (or at least who we currently think we are) are doomed that we can actually be happy not just in our future lives, but in this life. It’s simple expectations management. If we expect (and accept) that things will go badly, then when it does we are not surprised or disappointed. But if it winds up going better than the worst we expected, we are pleasantly surprised. Either way, we keep our inner peace. By placing our hope in our pure potential and expanding our timeline, we get the same benefits of a hopeful mind but in something that actually will come to fruition. Samsara is doomed, but we are not. It’s good that samsara is doomed because then we can let go of chasing its rainbows and false promises. We stop wasting our time on what has no hope of working and we joyfully plunge into the divine pool of the clear light. We develop not only the joyful mind of definite emergence, we know that – in the end – we will guide all those that we love who currently suffer so to permanent freedom from all suffering. And nothing can stop us as long as we never give up trying. The final outcome is assured. So then, like Taro, we can happily accept our present adversity as forging us into the Buddha we need to become. We can then, as Gen Tharchin explained, take our place in Geshe-la’s holy mandala.

As times become ever more impure,
Your power and blessings ever increase,
And you care for us quickly, as swift as thought;
O Chakrasambara Father and Mother, to you I prostrate.

On Accepting Deluded People – Including Ourself – in Kadampa Communities

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

It’s odd how as Kadampas we sometimes (oftentimes?) feel a reluctance to admit we are hurting or deluded, even to Sangha. Strangely, this problem seems to grow worse the more years we are in the Dharma.

I think this comes from three things. First, our pride in wanting to pretend we are this great practitioner, perhaps even for seemingly “good reasons” like we are a teacher or senior practitioner and we want to set a good example.

Second, is attachment to being accepted by Sangha and feeling that if they knew how messed up we still are inside, they will no longer accept us, love us, or look up to us.

And third a collective delusion within the Kadampa community that does not really accept fellow Kadampas who are still deluded, sometimes heavily. There is in part a culture of victim blaming – you’re still suffering or deluded because you are a bad practitioner. We even blame people who take things as victim blaming – saying it is their fault they are taking things this way; which sadly, is a perverse form of gaslighting fellow Sangha as we deflect blame because we can’t admit Kadampa communities or ourselves still have a lot of work to do. Or it comes from a misunderstanding of faith, projecting onto our objects of refuge that they need to be perfect from their own side, and then we lose faith in them when they seem to still be deluded. This destroys our own faith and puts unrealistic pressure on our more senior practitioners.

For the first one, if we have pride, we don’t have refuge, it is as simple as that. We are just pretending to be a practitioner. Kadam Morten once said the best example is the one who shows the journey, not the end result. We need to peacefully accept it is perfectly OK to be where we are at and we grow from there.

For the second, attachment to what Sangha thinks of us or attachment to them accepting and loving us is still attachment and an object to be abandoned. Dharma communities are not social clubs, they should be healing clinics – with doctors, medicine, nurses, and we are all patients – and it is up to us to make them so.

For the third, we need to remember the essence of the Kadampa way of life is a mind of “everybody welcome.” This is not just a rule for who we accept into our centers, but how we position ourselves towards everybody in our life. If we have aversion to being around deluded people, our so-called bodhichitta is nothing but a sick joke. We are suffering because we are still in samsara. Our delusions are our mental sickness, like a broken leg or cancer, not a personal failing. We also need to make sure to not confuse projecting expectations of perfection onto the three jewels with faith. Pure view does not expect the three jewels to appear perfect from their own side, rather it is viewing and relating to the three jewels in a perfect way. Venerable Geshe-la taught that we should view our teachers as Sangha jewels, not Buddha jewels. For ourselves as fellow Sangha, we should view ourselves as loving nurses, not finger-waggers. Gen Tharchin said our primary refuge should be in the Dharma, not the person. If we put our primary refuge in the person, when they do something stupid, we lose everything; but if we put it primarily in the Dharma, when they do something stupid, we learn powerful lessons.

Once again, best to have the mind of a beginner. Best to have an open heart, including towards ourself.

How to Help our Non-Dharma Loved Ones

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Once we start loving others, we will begin to find their suffering unbearable and the desire to help protect them from their suffering will naturally arise.

Our first instinct will be to jump in to rescue them by offering all sorts of Dharma advice about how they can change their mind. But this usually proves counter-productive. They can find our Dharma advice as blaming them for their troubles, giving a pass to all those harming them, or not understanding their external problems. Our advice can also sometimes come across as proselytizing or cult-like. This in turn causes them to reject the Dharma – advice they needed – and us.

So how can we help? There are six steps I have found helpful and can be used in almost any situation.

The first thing we need to do is become at peace with them suffering – we need to accept they are suffering and it does not disturb our peace of mind. It is important to make the distinction between attachment to our loved ones not suffering and compassion. Both find the suffering of others unbearable, but the former believes they need to be free from suffering for us to be happy. The latter is able to peacefully accept they are suffering without it diminishing in any way our desire to help. If we are attached to them not suffering, we then start trying to control them so they get better so we don’t suffer from them suffering. If we have compassion, our happiness or peace of mind does not depend upon them not suffering. So, like a good doctor, we can offer advice without needing them to follow it. We leave them free to make their own choices and to ignore our advice if they wish.

The second thing we need to do is find within ourself the delusions the other person appears to be suffering from in their problem. Mind is the creator of all. This means the others we perceive are nothing more than reflections of our own mind and karma. They appear to have these delusions because we still have the same delusions within our own mind. We can view them as a mirror of Dharma revealing back to us what still needs to be healed within our own mind. They are helping us “train in the first difficulty,” namely identifying our own delusions.

By removing their same delusions within our own mind three magical things happen. First, we then naturally show the best possible example to others of somebody who lives free from the delusions that trouble them. Second, by removing their delusions from our own mind, we will gain the wisdom to know how to do so, thus enabling us to offer better advice based upon personal experience. Third, their delusions will actually start to dis-appear because ultimately they are coming from our mind anyways. This is a special spiritual technology for helping others – it is a scientific method that will work for any who try it for long enough. At a minimum, by abandoing the delusions within our mind, we will become that much closer to enlightenment, the only real way we can provide lasting benefit to them.

The third step is we need to check, “what are they asking of me?” It’s quite possible they are asking for nothing from us, they don’t want us involved at all. If they are not asking, offering any advice or help is almost invariably counter-productive. They reject what we have to say and us. This does not help them, indeed it creates the conditions for them to create the karma of rejecting Dharma and us. If they are asking for something, we need to check, “do they just want me to compassionately listen or do they also want advice?” If we are not sure, we can simply ask. I would say 80% of the time, people just want us to listen and understand. Providing them a safe environment in which they can verbalize their struggles often gives them the space they need to process their difficulties and find their own solutions. It is particularly helpful to share back with them what we have heard and understood from their story, showing that we get it and their feelings about it are normal. In sharing back with them, try not to implicitly give them advice – remember, they are not asking for that. And if they don’t think we understand their problem, they will assume all of our advice is misplaced. So check in with them to see, “am I understanding your situation correctly?”

Fourth, if they are also asking for advice, after you have listened empathetically to their struggles and repeated back to them what you heard to demonstrate you understood their situation, we should first provide them practical advice for how to address the external dimensions of their problem. Remember, for them, their outer problem is their problem. They don’t know yet about the difference between the outer problem and the inner problem. There are almost always external things we can change which can make the external situation less bad or even a little better. Sometimes Dharma practitioners wrongly think there is some fault in also providing practical advice, as if we should only give Dharma advice. That’s ridiculous and the opposite of what Geshe-la encourages us to do. We help in every way we can, both practically and spiritually, depending upon the capacity of the other person.

In the fifth step, if they are open to it, you can begin to provide some advice on how they can address their inner problem – the delusions that are arising in their mind in relationship to the situation. You can do this according to the teachings on “training in the three difficulties” from the book Universal Compassion. First, help them identify the delusions within their mind. Since at present we lack the ability to read others minds, we need to be very skillful at this stage. If you did the second stage above well, you can simply share your own experience how when you find yourself in situations like theirs, your mind starts generating this or that delusion, suggesting perhaps something like that may also be happening in their mind. Pause to see if they relate to that. If they do, then you can move to the second of the three difficulties – applying the opponents to reduce the delusions. Help them accept it is normal that they have these delusions so they avoid falling into the extreme of beating themselves up or self-hatred. Delusions are not us, they are clouds in the sky of their mind. We are the sky itself. From the space of their pure potential, help them realize this difficult situation gives them an opportunity to grow internally in some way. Almost all good Dharma advice has this as its common denominator – remember, bodhichitta is the quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma. Share your own stories about how you have dealt with similar inner difficulties and ways of thinking that have proven helpful for shifting your point of view. The external situation is still what it is, but instead of it being a problem, it is an opportunity to develop ourselves into a better person. Err on the side of giving them too little advice than too much that they can’t process. Very often, less is more. Finally, you can move to the third difficulty – applying the antidote of the wisdom realizing emptiness. Most people aren’t ready to view everything as a creation of their mind, but most people can accept that their opinion about the situation depends upon how their mind relates to it. That’s a good enough start.

When offering advice, especially to non-Dharma loved ones, it is very important to express yourself in language that they can accept and understand. Avoid Dharma jargon. Dharma words may mean something to you, but if they don’t have prior exposure to the Dharma teachings, it will mean almost nothing to them. Use analogies, examples, and wisdom that they can relate to based upon their life experience. The great Dharma translators are not just those in the past who went to India to bring back the Dharma to Tibet, they are every day Dharma practitioners who are able to transmit the essential meaning of the Dharma in ways people of the modern world can relate to and understand.

It is also quite important when giving advice that you have no personal need whatsoever for them to follow your advice. Leave them completely free to take it or leave it, without the slightest trace of emotional penalty if they don’t. If they feel manipulated into following your advice, they will most certainly rebel against it, defeating the whole purpose of offering advice in the first place. If they find your advice helpful, great; if not, that’s OK too – you can just empathize with their struggles and let them know you are there for them if they need you.

Sixth, finally, you can pray for them. Buddhas accomplish virtually all of their virtuous deeds through the power of their prayers and dedications. Since we are training to become Buddhas ourselves, we should do the same. We are spiritual people, so of course prayer is actually our principal method for helping others. We may not yet be Buddhas ourselves, but we know the Buddhas and if we make pure prayers with deep faith free from any attachment, they can definitely help. Generally speaking, we don’t emphasize making prayers that people’s external problems go away. We can, but it is very easy for that to lead to all sorts of attachment and aversion, grasping at the external situation as the real problem. Instead, we should direct the bulk of our prayers to helping them overcome their inner problem. We can pray that they find strength, compassion, and wisdom. Above all, people need wisdom. I have found the most effective prayer is to Dorje Shugden, “please bless their mind so that this situation becomes a powerful cause of their enlightenment.” Dorje Shugden wastes nothing. It may not be immediately obvious how he will do so, but we can be certain he is on the job. If we have unshakeable faith in Dorje Shugden we can be certain he is working to accomplish our pure prayer – if not in this life, in future lives. We can also pray that their situation becomes a cause of our own enlightenment so that we can one day help our loved ones perfectly.

We can use these six steps with virtually anybody – our kids, our family members, our friends, our students, our co-workers, and even sometimes somebody we see crying alone on a bench. At first, we might not be very good at it, but with practice and familiarity, it will get easier and flow more naturally.

Geshe-la says it is not enough to know the Dharma, we need skillful means. The above is what I have personally found useful as I have tried to help those I love in my life. I don’t pretend to have mastered the method or that it always works – or that it is the only way to help – but it is hard-won experience that I hope others find helpful.

Training in Being an Emanation: Meet People at the Gate

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

If we look at the flow of all living beings with Dharma wisdom, we will notice at any given moment, they are either moving deeper into samsara or they are moving out.

Geshe-la tells the story of the person who stood in a doorway and asked “am I going in or going out?” The other person correctly answered, “it depends upon your intention.” In many ways, this describes the situation of pretty much everyone every moment of every day. They stand in front of a choice – do they go deeper into samsara or do they head out?

Most people are completely unaware of the fact that this is the choice they face. They may not have even ever heard of samsara or nirvana, much less know the directions in or out. But that doesn’t change the fact that at each moment they have to choose between moving deeper into samsara or heading out. How they choose to act determines which direction their mind heads. Sadly, most people are like zombies heading straight for the cliff into the lower realms.

When we engage with others, we should not just meet them where they are at, but specifically we should meet them at the points in their mind where they face this choice of going deeper into samsara or heading towards the exit. This is where we need to meet them – at the gate. What form that takes will vary from moment to moment and person to person, but all beings are always standing at this gate. We just need to see it and meet people there.

When we stand at the gate, we of course should stand on the side of inside heading in the direction of enlightenment. We cannot force people to make the choice to head in our direction, they have to make that decision themselves. But we can position ourselves in such a way that it seems perfectly doable and sensible to take a step in our direction – we can’t be so far from where they are at that heading in our direction seems out of reach.

We adopt a posture of invitation, welcoming others to join us, but in no way manipulating or controlling them to do so. We don’t tell them what they should do, we simply embody the better choice in how we ourselves think, speak, and behave. We show an understanding of the difficult circmstances they are in and choices they have to make. We cast no judgment nor impose any emotional penalty if they make a choice to head deeper into samsara. They might not know any better or see any viable alternative.

If they move deeper into samsara, that’s OK, we just pivot with them, standing at the new gate they find themselves. Our door always remains open, no matter how far they may stray. We don’t join them, we remain on our side of the gate, but we show our compassion can expand to wherever they might find themselves.

If they ask for our advice or ask where we are headed, we can of course explain to them in a way that they can accept or understand. With some people, we can explain with Dharma words directly, but with most people we need to be skillful to explain things in a way they can relate to.

Je Phabongkhapa explained merely seeing a pure Heruka practitioner is a cause of enlightenment for others. A pure HYT practitioner is the real liberating by seeing, hearing, or wearing. We don’t need to say or do anything in particular, often our silence and stillness is our most effective way of being. We just need to be present as Heruka in their life, even if they have no idea what we are doing.

A Buddha is like a magic cystal that always spontaneously appears to each and every being every day in exactly the most appropriate way to inspire others to head towards them – towards enlightenment, out of samsara. We often don’t see them, but they are always there if we look. They are like a compass that always points towards the city of enlightenment. These are their emanations. They always stand inside the gate, inviting us to join them. If we wish to become a Buddha ourselves and have emanations that serve a similar function, we can start to train how to do so today. How? Meet people at the gate.