5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

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.

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Looking forward in life – always!

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Our life loses its meaning and becomes increasingly depressing to the extent that we are always looking backwards at what happened before, good or bad.  We cannot drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror!  Of course we need to learn from our past, but if we have nothing we are looking forward to, no destination we are heading towards, our life becomes one empty of meaning.  We can liken it to old people who feel as if they have nothing left to look forward to, who feel their best times are all behind them.  How sad.

In contrast, the more we are forward looking in our outlook, the more our life has meaning and purpose.  We become more willing to accept difficulties and hardships because we see how overcoming them serves a larger purpose and they are simply the mountains we must climb to reach our final destination.   Being forward looking gives us something we are working towards, it gives our life direction.  We feel like we are building towards something great.  We feel forever young.  We can let go of worrying about the past or being nostalgic for it, but rather use it as the foundation for where we are going.  When we have a future we are building towards, we know how to use whatever life throws at us.  When you have direction in your life, you know clearly in which way you need to pivot when life’s curve balls come our way.  Gen Lekma once said, “Dorje Shugden wastes nothing of our life,” in other words, he knows how to use everything that happens to us as building towards the final goal.

The most valuable side effect of realizing the truth of countless future lives is we are able to always be forward looking in our thinking, no matter what our age.  The more forward looking we are, the younger we feel.  The paradox of old age then becomes the older we get, the more we look forward to our future lives, the more pure our intentions become, the happier we become, the younger we feel.  We feel like we are on the cusp of our next great adventure, like setting off for college for the first time.  We take stock of what we have learned from our past to prepare ourselves for the adventures to come.

One of the central differences between the way economists and politicians look at problems is how they reason.  An economist thinks things through to their logical end conclusion, and then works backwards to figure out how to get there.  A politician is always just focused on putting our fires and uses short-term ad hoc solutions which enables them to live another day.  But if we are always pursuing short-term solutions to everything, we are in reality just deferring our biggest challenges to later.  At some point, these challenges catch up to us and overwhelm us.  When we know our final destination, we know what we need to do and we stop sacrificing the long-term on the alter of short-term crisis management.  The more far forward we can see, the more effective we are at understanding what needs to be done and what direction we need to go.

Along the same lines, the difference in the different scopes of being, initial, intermediate and great, is how far forward they think.  An ordinary small scope being can’t see beyond this life.  A special small scope being sees beyond this life but can’t see beyond samsara.  An intermediate scope being sees beyond samsara, but can’t see beyond themselves.  A great scope being sees beyond themselves to the final result of full enlightenment for all.

The tantric practitioner goes one step further by envisioning not only what the final result looks like but how we practically get everyone there.  We must first build our pure land so that beings may take rebirth there and complete the path.  We then extend the limits of the pure land until it encompasses the entire universe and all living beings.  This is a cosmic project which will take lifetimes to accomplish, but adopting it as our purpose enables us to be as far forward thinking as possible, and therefore it gives us the greatest meaning and joy throughout our life.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where because you were looking backwards, you got stuck; but when you started looking forward, you became free.

“Bringing life into the path” through reliance

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

Samsara is uncontrolled rebirth.  The main point of virtually all of our Dharma practices is to gain control of our mind so that we can gain control over the process of death and rebirth.  Our main practice in Tantra is to bring death, intermediate state and rebirth into the path through the three bringings in Generation Stage and through the various mixings of completion stage.  But our ability to do any of these depends upon sufficient preparation.  Luna Kadampa said our ability to go to the pure land at the time of our death depends upon our ability to bring the pure land into our living reality every day.  In short, in order to do the three bringings at the time of death we need to first “bring life into the path.”  We can call this the fourth bringing!

Our job in life is to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.  Virtually all of us still grasp at a gap between our Dharma lives and our normal lives, like they are two separate things.  This dicotomy must eventually fade away to where our normal life is our Dharma life and our Dharma life is our normal life.  Our normal life can take any aspect, from the lowest beggar to the highest king, from the ordained person in solitary retreat to the working parent.  Regardless of our external circumstance and vocation, our task is always the same – to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.

We all know “the path begins with strong reliance,” but at a deeper level we can say not only does the path begin with strong reliance, the entire path is strong reliance.  The Guru is the synthesis of all Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha.  Many people misunderstand this to mean the appearing form of Venerable Geshe-la that we normally see is the synthesiss of all Buddhas, Dharma and Sangha.  Despite our best efforts, the Spiritual Guide that we normally see appears to be an ordinary being (though wise, cute and cuddly, to be sure).  It would be wrong to say that this ordinary form that we normally see is the synthesis of all three jewels.  Rather, what we need to do is first gain a complete understanding of all of the Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha, and then we just “name” that entire collection “my Guru” or “my spiritual Guide.”  We take the entire collection of the three jewels as they are appearing in our life, and we think this entire collection is “my Guru.”  Once we have some experience of conceiving of the collection of all three jewels in our life as that which is guiding us to enlightenment (our Guru), then we start to delve deeper and we begin tracing the source of all of the three jewels in our life, and we find the source to be Venerable Geshe-la.  Then, we will see all of the three jewels emanating from him and we will understand him to be the projector of the three jewels into our mind (karmically appearing world).  He will be, for us, the synthesis of all three jewels.

At Venerable Geshe-la’s last Summer Festival before he retired, he spoke of how we can view our resident teachers as “temporary emanations”, where when they are on the throne and when they are teaching, we can view it as the living Guru Je Tsongkhapa enters into the teacher, gives the teaching through them like they are a stereo speaker, and then after the teaching, our teacher goes back to being a normal being.  This will enable us to receive the blessings as if we are receiving teachings directly from Je Tsongkhapa without falling into a wierd cult-like extreme out of the sessions.  We relate to our teachers as normal people in normal circumstances.  We had all heard this before.  But then he said something new (or at least new to me) – that we should do the same with Venerable Geshe-la.  This was a pivotal moment in my understanding of the spiritual guide.  My Spiritual Guide is Je Tsongkhapa – the living Je Tsongkhapa.  The appearing form of VGL is simply his tool for projecting the three jewels into my karmically appearing world.  The form of VGL will eventually die, but my guru, the living Je Tsongkhapa, will always be there simply projecting through different forms.  When I conceive of all the three jewels, as appearing in my life, to be my guru, then even when the form of VGL dies, my guru is still with me, helping me, guiding me, blessing me in the aspect of the entire collection of the three jewels as appearing in my life.  Viewed in this way, the Spiritual Guide never dies, he just changes aspect according to the evolution of karma.  This is the real meaning of the Kadampa tradition.  This is the real meaning of our spiritual lineage.  It is the continuum of Je Tsongkhapa in this world.

What is the essence of reliance on the Spiritual Guide?  It is to regard our Spiritual Guide as a perfectlyreliable Buddha and to put their instructions into practice.  When you check this closely, the essence is faith.  But what is the essence of faith?  It is “trusting.”  When we trust, we let go of our fears, we let go of holding ourselves back, and we just “go with it” into the unknown confident in the knowledge that we are entering into a joyful water slide whose end is the ocean of the Dharmkaya.  The Dharma is completely trustworthy and reliable.  It will never deceive us, never lead us down the wrong road.  We may misinterpret or misunderstand the Dharma, but that is not the fault of the Dharma.  The Dharma itself is perfectly reliable.  We can trust it.  The Buddhas and the Sangha, as appearing in our life, are like road signs pointing us in the direction of how to practice the Dharma.  This doesn’t mean they do things perfectly, rather it means we can learn perfectly from everything they do – some show us what to do, and some show us what not to do.  But in doing so, all show us the way.

Eventually, our practice will lead us to the point where we come to the conclusion that it would be far better to have the Spiritual Guide live our life than for our ordinary selves to do so.  When we reach this conclusion, we can then begin “bringing life into the path.”  In the normal three bringings, we dissolve the guru into ourself, then identify with the guru in various aspects like a life boat guiding us through each stage of the death process.  We need to do exactly the same thing when we bring life into the path.  For me, for example, I ask myself the question:  who would make a better U.S. diplomat – ordinary me or my Spiritual Guide?  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if living Guru Je Tsongkhapa were influencing and guiding U.S. diplomacy?  In a similar way, who would make a better father?  Clearly, he would do a better job on both counts than ordinary Ryan!  So I generate the strong wish that he take over, that he enter into me and work through me and my circumstance.

On the basis of that wish, I then dissolve him into me, engage in self-generation, and try to let go and indeed forget ordinary Ryan.  It is like I put my ordinary self in the back seat, I withdraw my ordinary self from the picture and create the space for the guru to arise and act.  The more we forget our ordinary self (and I mean completely forget) and the more we identify with the guru-deity being the actor in our life, at some point we will make a transition where we actually “feel ourselves as being the guru-deity living our life” (every word here has meaning).  It is very subtle, very blissful and very magical.  Eventually, this feeling refines further and further, functioning to gather and purify more and more of our reality into the guru-deity’s body, mind and deeds.  Eventually we merge completely into the clear light Dharmakaya while simultaneously the reliquary we have created as a bodhisattva continues to function to liberate beings in the world.

If we practice in this way, doing the three bringings during our morning meditation, doing the fourth bringing during our daily life, then once again doing the three bringings as we go to sleep, then soon enough our entire life will be one continuum of bringing the pure land into the here and now.  Once we have attained some experience of this, death will have no hold on us – we will have already passed beyond.  Death will be no different than discarding some old clothes or an old car.  Of course we will need new “clothes” and a new “car” (our next life, or our next emanation body), but we will continue as an extension of the transcendental being, the living guru, Je Tsongkhapa.

Happy Je Tsongkhapa Day everyone!

Your turn:  Describe how through relying upon Je Tsongkhapa you can solve the biggest problem you are facing in your life today.

Everything is equally good, just in different ways

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the key to daily happiness is having the right purpose.  If our purpose is to strive to satisfy our desires for wealth, power, pleasure or a good reputation, then some situations we face will seem good and others will seem bad.  If instead our purpose is to train our mind then every situation is equally good, just in different ways.  Since every circumstance we encounter is equally empty and since every circumstance provides an opportunity to oppose delusions and train ourselves in virtuous responses, from the point of view of wishing to train our mind, every situation is equally good.  With such an outlook, we can be happy with anything, anybody, anywhere and anytime.

It may not be immediately obvious to us how every situation is equally useful from the perspective of training our mind, but we at least can know for sure it is.  This is especially true if we have surrendered our karma to Dorje Shugden.  If we have done this, not only is every situation equally good for training our mind, every situation is equally perfect.

So how can we realize how every situation is equally good for training our mind?  There are five things I do (any one of which can work).  First, I ask myself, “what delusions does this situation give me an opportunity to oppose?”  Second, I ask myself, “what virtues does this situation give me an opportunity to practice.”  Third, I ask myself, “what does this situation teach me about the truth of the Dharma.”  Fourth, I ask myself, “what skills does this situation give me an opportunity to build within myself?”  And the fifth thing I do is I request wisdom blessings from Dorje Shugden asking, “please reveal to me how this situation is perfect for training my mind.”  With our reliance on Dorje Shugden, we want to get to the point where we feel within ourselves we have completely surrendered control to him and we say “please do with me what you wish” confident in the knowledge that we are in his care and protection.

Of course, none of this will work if in our root desires we do not value training our mind more than we value our pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure and a good reputation.  This only works if our deepest desire is to train our mind.  So how do we develop this desire?  For me, there are several thoughts which work to help me stay centered in this desire or purpose.  First, I consider how the only thing I can take with me from life to life is the karma I create and the habits of mind I cultivate.  Everything else I have to leave behind.  Second, I consider how happiness depends entirely upon whether my mind is peaceful, not whether I have satisfied my worldly desires.  The less my mind is deluded and the more my mind is virtuous, the more my mind is peaceful and thus the happier I will be.  Third, I remind myself I am working for a purpose larger than myself.  My Spiritual Guide is seeking to forge me into the Buddha I need to become to be able to benefit the beings with whom I have the karma to lead to enlightenment.  The situations he is giving me now are designed to cultivate within me the realizations I need to be able to help these beings.  Knowing that the happiness of countless others in the future depends upon me gaining these realizations now, for their sake I need to learn what needs to be learned and gain experience with what needs to be experienced.

Sometimes it will take a long time before we have reached the point where we are equally happy with every situation, but it seems clear to me if we work in this direction we will get there.  And once we are equally happy with the situation we are currently in, it will be time to move on to the next situation and the next spiritual assignment.

Your turn:  Explain how some “obstacle” in your life is actually “equally good, just in a different way.”

The middle way of career ambition

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is not easy for a Kadampa to get career ambition correct.  But it is very important that we try if we are to thrive as a tradition in this modern world.  In my view, there are two extremes when it comes to career ambition.  First, is the extreme of not living up to our full professional potential.  Second, is the extreme of becoming attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  The middle way is pursuing your career fully as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to forge you into the Buddha you need to become.

Before we encounter the Dharma, many of us have a well-developed sense of career ambition.  I wanted to be a high-powered engineer, then lawyer, then banker.  We then encounter the Dharma, learn about abandoning worldly concerns, learn how the only thing that matters is gaining realizations, and then we start to think that pursuing a career is inherently mundane.  We look around us at the various examples in the Sangha and see that “to be committed to the spiritual path is to do the minimum amount of normal work as possible so that we can do retreats, etc.”  We come from a historically monastic tradition, so as a tradition we have few examples of professional Kadampas.  This is something new we are learning as a tradition.  There is a cultural bias within the Kadampa community that looks down on those pursuing a normal career, as if doing so is necessarily somebody preoccupied with worldly concerns and not really committed to their practice.  For others, some of us are naturally lazy, not really wanting to do much or accomplish much.  With such a mind, when we encounter the Dharma it provides us the perfect excuse for not pursuing our professional careers!  We now (mis)use the Dharma as our pretext for being lazy and doing nothing.

It is a big problem if, as a tradition, we shun professional life.  We will then evolve into and be perceived as a collection of losers and misfits who only pursue their spiritual lives with full vigor because we have nothing better we are able to do or accomplish with our lives.  Competent, intelligent and professionally capable people will then shun the tradition or certainly not feel at home amongst us.  We will have little chance to thrive and succeed for the long-term if we are a collection of societal “rejects” and “losers”.  People will conclude the Kadampa path is only for those with no life.  And once people start to develop a “life” they will then falsely feel they need to choose between their spiritual life and their newly emerging normal life.  We will become a tradition of people living far below their professional potential, implicitly grasping at professional life as inherently worldly.  Such ignorance is rooted in the unsaid belief that the Dharma cannot be practiced in certain circumstances or ways of life.

The other extreme is to become attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  We pursue worldly goals of wealth, power, reputation for their own sake.  We allow ourselves to become distracted with the concerns of this life.  We start to mistakenly believe our happiness depends upon worldly success in our career.  We allow ourselves to start engaging in negativity in the name of getting ahead.  We start to value our own happiness above that of our colleagues, clients or competitiors.  There is no doubt that the professional, working life is dominated by worldly mentalities.  We can very easily get swept away by such mentalities and come to possess them ourselves.  We start to view every professional setback as an obstacle or a problem, becoming despondent when we don’t achieve what we want.  Later in life, when we are no longer rising in our careers and we start to have to take old people jobs, we become depressed as if our best days are behind us.  When we retire, we feel as if our life has been robbed of all meaning since the only thing we have ever known is our professional careers.  We become sad, depressed individuals, frustrated with our dwindling potential, staring into an increasingly steep descent into irrelevance.

The middle way is to view our professional lives as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to help us develop the skills we will need to become the Buddha we need to become.  We must live up to our full professional potential.  Why?  Because it is in doing so that we will develop the skills we need.  Operating at a higher professional level requires a higher level skill set – working with people, being able to communicate effectively orally and in writing, analytical skills, managerial skills, problem solving skills, creativity, innovation, managing risk, inspiring others, transforming setbacks into opportunities, etc.  We need these skills to be able to help the tradition flourish and to be most effective at helping people.  As a tradition, we also need to gain the realizations for how to maintain a 100% kadampa life in the context of any professional life, from the highest king to the lowest beggar.  To run centers and to enable the tradition to flourish, we need to know how to get things done in this world.  We need the world’s best and brightest not only helping the tradition flourish but occupying the world’s most important and powerful positions so such power and wealth is being used with compassionate, bodhisattva intentions.  And yes, there is a financial component to this.  We need the wealth and resources necessary for the tradition to flourish at a material level.  We do not pursue material development for its own sake, but because we realize there is a material foundation and infrastructure required for the tradition in this world.

Dorje Shugden, our Dhama protector, knows what skills and realizations we need to become the Buddhas we need to become.  We should trust that if he has arranged for us to have certain professional skills and potential that he has done so because it is in developing those skills and living up to that potential that we will gain the realizations and skills we need.  To not live up to our fullest possible professional intention is to waste the conditions he has given us and to deny the fruit of our past virtuous deeds.  We do not seek these things for their own sake, but rather by having them we can help more people.  If we view things through the lens of eventually we need all of the skills and qualities of a modern Kadampa Spiritual Guide, then we will view our professional circumstance as part of our spiritual training.  We will simultaneously live up to our professional potential and our spiritual potential as part of the same continuum.  All contradictions between our so called worldly life and our spiritual life will dissolve away and we will become inspiring examples to all.

Reliance on Dorje Shugden in the context of our careers also enables us to let go of worrying about what happens.  From an ordinary perspective, certain things will be a setback for our career and others will be good; but from a spiritual perspective when we know Dorje Shugden is arranging everything, good or bad, everything that happens to us will be a spiritual boon!  Both success and setbacks in our career give us opportunities to develop spiritually, so we will be able to take in stride (indeed joyful stride) whatever happens in our career.  This takes the stress out of career progression and enables us to focus on the journey.

While I don’t know enough about the Mormon and Jewish communities, and I am sure there are things not worth emulating, we can nonetheless take inspiration from these communities.  Both are minority religious groups who are nonetheless very successsful professsionally.  They possess disproportionate power and wealth relative to their numbers in the world.  Culturally, they value hard work, discipline, and living up to their full professional potential.  Externally, we should be just as professionally successful as they are, but internally our motivations are 100% Kadampa.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where have fallen into one of the extremes of career ambition and what you learned from that.

Please make dedications for Paul Ashton

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

He is a close Sangha friend of mine who was just diagnosed with cancer.

For details, please read:  http://realkadampa.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/prayers-for-paul-ashton/

The Kadampa “Assignments Officer”

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

In the State Department, we rotate jobs every 2-3 years throughout our career.  The rationale behind this is simple:  the end goal they are after is forging us into Ambassadors, but an Ambassador needs to be good at everything.  Normally, after spending 2-3 years in a given job, you have learned probably 80-90% of everything there is to learn about the job.  Of course, you could always go deeper and become more of an expert, but the rate of learning shows diminishing returns.  So it becomes time to move on and gain a new 80-90% set of skills doing something else.  In short, moving around all of the time helps us avoid getting stuck in a rut.

An additional rationale for moving people around all of the time is to avoid the mistake of false universal assumptions.  Very often, when we are in one place (or situation) for a long time we get assimilated into the view of that place.  There are two dangers to this.  First, we can start to mistakenly think that everybody must view things in the same way as they do where you are at; and second, you can start to believe that the view of this area is superior to all others and therefore lose your appreciation for multiple perspectives.  In short, moving around all of the time helps us avoid being narrow-minded.

Within the human resources department, there is somebody called your “assignments officer.”  Their job is to match the needs of the Department with your career development objectives all in the optic of a long-term plan of helping you cultivate all of the skills you will need to operate effectively at the highest levels.

When you think about it, this is exactly the same as what happens within the Kadampa family.  The long-term goal is to train people up to become Ambassadors for all of the Buddhas (fully qualified Kadampa Spiritual Guides).  We are all moved around again and again.  Gen Lekma once said, “be wary of the day you get too comfortable, because that is the day Venerable Geshe-la will move you!”  A lot of people looking at this process, particularly as it relates to Resident Teachers, from the outside mistakenly view these constant moves as “punishments” or view VGL as “vindictive.”  Not at all!  He is rather telling us it is time to move on to our next assignment.  Sometimes we embrace this, sometimes we resist.  Sometimes he asks us to go somewhere, sometimes he fires us.  But the goal is always the same – it is time for us to move on so we can build new skills and realize new things.

For most Kadampas, however, we dont’ receive emails from VGL telling us where to go next.  So are we deprived of having an enlightened assignments officer?  No.  Rather, our assignments officer is the Dharma Protector, Dorje Shugden.  His long term goal is to forge us int the Buddha we need to become, he knows what realizations we need to gain and in what order, and his job is to arrange all the outer and inner conditions we need to gain those realizations.  Of course, we have to do our spiritual assignments, but Dorje Shugden arranges for us the assignments we need to take the next step on our spiritual path.  Sometimes our moving on will be joyful and sometimes it will be traumatic, but in both cases it will be what we need to continue our spiritual growth.

Your turn:  Describe a major career or life change you have gone through and what did you learn from making that change?

Kadampa reflections on recent events in world

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Several people have contacted me recently asking for my thoughts on the recent turmoil in the world since I work for the State Department.  Before I provide my thoughts, I want to be very clear that I am providing my personal thoughts as a Kadampa not as official U.S. position on the crisis.  In no way should anything I say be misconstrued as U.S. policy, rather these are my own personal spiritual lessons I draw from recent events.  Our goal as Kadampas is to use all world events to realize how the Dharma is the truth.

First, we need to make a very clear distinction between legitimate freedom of expression and illegitimate expression.  In a free society, one can fully defend the legal right of the person who made the video to do so; yet at the same time as a human being we can condemn unequivocally the content of his message with our own free speech.  He has the right to say what he thinks, and I have to respect that right, but we also have the right to robustly disagree with his message and intentions with our speech.  In fact, the best response to bad free speech is not to restrict his speech, but rather for the rest of us to drown out his bad speech with our virtuous speech disagreeing with his insulting message. 

Likewise, the people in the Muslim world who were offended by this video have every right to protest the content of this video, but they have no right whatsoever to express themselves through violence.  If we are to be consistent, we need to equally defend the right of the people in these newly freed societies to protest whatever they want, but at the same time say that we unequivocally condemn their expressing themselves though violence.  As Kadampas, the bottom line is the same:  divisive and hurtful speech is morally wrong and should be condemned.  Individually, we should refrain from it always seeing how destructive it is. 

One of the main problems here is false generalizations.  In the Muslim world, some are falsely coming to the conclusion that all Americans or Westerners have insulting attitudes towards Islam and Muslims.  And some in the West falsely generalize that all Muslims are fanatics who take to rioting when their religion is insulted.  Both attitudes are wrong.  It is a very small minority in the West who hold such intolerant and insulting attitudes towards other religions, and it is a very small minority of Muslims who take to violence when their religion is insulted.  The majority in the West are ashamed to have such bigots in our midst who insult other religions, and the majority in the Muslim world are ashamed to have people who resort to violence when insulted.   It is like Terry Jones, the lunatic who wanted to burn the Korans, yes, he has the right to do it, but we can all vocally say we disagree fundamentally with his actions.  If one person does something stupid and thousands, in fact millions, express their disagreement with what the person said or did, then it is more difficult for others to falsely generalize that all Americans think like he does.  Likewise, if a few fanatics resort to violence and thousands, in fact millions, peacefully protest, then it is more difficult for people in the West to falsely generalize that all Muslims are terrorist fanatics.

As Kadampas, we can appreciate how an understanding of emptiness is the antidote to all of these problems.  When we grasp at inherent existence, we grasp at there being only one valid point of view – there is one inherently true perspective on things.  Therefore, we become threatened when people think differently than us because either they are right or I am right, but we both can’t be right.  Most religious wars have been fought due to this ignorance, with zealots violently defending that they have a monopoly on the truth and any who disagree must be destroyed.  Ridiculous!  When we realize emptiness, we can very comfortably respect other religions as being valid for those who follow that religion.  Islam doesn’t teach violence, ignorant people misunderstand Islam to commit violence.  Likewise, Christianity doesn’t teach hate, ignorant people misunderstand it and become hateful.  Islam and Christianity alike are religions of peace and love.  Islam works for some people to become more virtuous and Christianity works for others to become more virtuous.  As Kadampas, we can celebrate and respect any system of thought that encourages people to become more virtuous and condemn any system of thought that encourages people to become hateful and violent.  We don’t need everybody to follow the same point of view because our understanding of emptiness opens our mind to multiple points of view existing harmoniously and simultaneously.

I think we need to make a distinction between understanding delusion and agreeing with it.  We can understand why delusion is arising without condoning it or agreeing with it.  I think we need to view the situation from a broader perspective.  This video is not the cause of the recent violence, it is merely the match that lit the fire.  There are large swaths of the world that have been living under oppression for decades (and in some cases centuries).  These people are now freeing themselves from such oppression.  It is a historical fact that the West has a long history of crusades and support for oppressive dictators.  It is very understandable why those who have been the victims of such oppression will be angry at those who have oppressed them and at those who have backed their oppressors.  Our historical fear of Muslims and their radicalization are two halves of the same dynamic – namely that extremists on both sides feed off of one another and use the existence of the other to justify their own positions.  We have been wrong to support oppressors (even George Bush realized this) and they have been wrong to resort to violence in opposition to that oppression. 

Ghandi showed the way.  He appealed to the virtuous values of his oppressor while exhorting his followers to renounce giving those oppressors further cause to oppress them by resorting to violence.  Such an approach brings out the best of both sides.  So I can simultaneously understand why some people in the Muslim world are angry with the West while at the same time unequivocally condemn any violent expression.  I can appeal to the virtuous qualities embedded within the views of both sides as the answer to the wrong actions of both sides.  It is our mutual fear of the other which has driven both sides to wrong actions, and it is only through both sides applying effort to mutually understand and respect one another that peace can be found.  Ignorance and hatred bring conflict.  Love, wisdom and respect for others bring inner peace, and inner peace brings outer peace.  As Kadampas, recent events can teach us clearly that ignorance and hatred are the sources of all problems and wisdom and love are the sources of all good. 

Finally, as Kadampas we should never underestimate the power of prayer.  From our own side, we need to oppose our own deluded reactions or views on recent events, but for others we should pray that they find wisdom and love in their hearts.  Holy beings have the power to bless the minds of others to move in virtuous directions.  Our prayers will be as effective as our faith is strong, as our realization of the emptiness of ourselves, others and the Buddhas is complete, and as our motivation is pure.  Sometimes we think we pray only as a last resort when nothing else will work.  The reality is we should pray as our first resort because it is, in the end, the power of our prayers that enable the other things we might do to actually work.  In particular, we should pray to Dorje Shugden that he bless the minds of everyone on the planet that recent events become powerful causes of enlightenment for all those observing or participating in them.  Finally, we can pray that all those who have died as a result of recent events take rebirth in the pure land of their choice.

Once again, all of the above are my personal views and should be interpreted as such.

Conclusions of retreat, summer 2012

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

On July 23rd of this year, my family went to the U.S. for six weeks.  While of course I am sad to see them go and I miss them, I decided to really try use my Summer for retreat.  When I was in Geneva, I had the great good fortune to have a large chunk of my summer off where I could focus on the Dharma, go to Manjushri and the Summer Festival, etc.  This was really precious time for me, and it is one of the main reasons why I switched to teaching as a career at that time.  The last couple of summers were difficult in that respect, but this year I had a great opportunity.  I remember what Venerable Tharchin said:  if you have an opportunity to focus on your Dharma practice and you seize the opportunity, you create the causes to have even better opportunities to practice in the future.  But if you have a good opportunity and you squander it, you burn up the karma on your mind to have any time to practice and you will face more and more obstacles in your practice.  Principally for this reason, I made this summer my retreat.

But, as per my karma right now, my retreat had to be a non-conventional one.  Normally, when we do retreat, we want to cease all of our normal activities, go into solitude and focus on training our mind.  But I had to work and deal with my normal business during this time.  One of the biggest things my new life has taught me is that everything depends upon your mind.  If I adopt a “mind of retreat,” then I can transform any set of appearances into an experience of doing retreat.  And if we lack such a mind of retreat, even if externally we have all of the conditions of a retreat, we are not actually doing retreat at all.  So I view whatever appears to my mind once I “go into retreat” as the conditions that Dorje Shugden has arranged for me to train my mind with.  Different experiences at work, etc., then become emanted appearances during my retreat.  With such a view, we then naturally “take the bait” and work on training our mind in whatever way seems the most approrpiate given the circumstances.  In this way, our normal life becomes our retreat.  So anyways, this is what I tried to do this summer!

So what are my main conclusions:

  1. It is so very important to reconnect with Sangha, especially at the international festivals.  I had the fantastic good fortune to be able to go to the first half of the second week of the Summer Festival.  Gen-la Dekyong gave the Je Tsongkhapa empowerment and a commentary to the practice of the Yoga of Buddha Heruka.  This is exactly my daily practice, so it couldn’t have been more perfect.  But it was also so very important to me to have had the opportunity to reconnect with my Sangha friends.  Without Sangha contact, it is very easy to have our practice gradually decline.  But when we have an opportunity to go to a festival, it recharges us and reorients us to be back in alignment with the tradition.  I realized very clearly from this experience how important it is to do whatever I can to make it to the major festivals (to the extent that my karma reasonably allows).  I am definitely going to try make it to Portugal.
  2. It is likewise very important to always be on a study program of some kind.  From 1994 until 2010 I was on a study program.  Most of this was by correspondance but also at Manjushri.  But in early 2010 I simply couldn’t keep up with anything so I stopped.  This was a really big deal at the time.  But since then I gradually lost the desire to be on a study program.  But when I went to the Summer Festival and had a great conversation with my “mother” Gen Wangchog of Mexico, I realized how important it is that I restart my correspondance studies.  I then had a meeting with Venerable Tharchin, who I have been doing correspondance with for years, and I committed to restarting, though at a very slow pace.  He said “wonderful.”  So after I got back, almost every night I could, I listened to one of the classes (Heart of Wisdom).  This has really helped me get back to how I was before.  I am going to really try continue during the school year, but at the very least I am going to try use all of my summers in this way.
  3. I recalled how my main (and indeed only) practice should be to rely upon my guru’s mind alone.  I once did a retreat many years ago where I came to this as a monumental conclusion.  This conclusion stayed with me until the end of my time in Geneva.  But like so many other things, gradually I lost this conclusion and this approach to my practice.  Two things this summer helped me recall this conclusion.  First, I watched the TimeLife DVD series on the Bible.  The Bible is basically one incredible story after another of people who relied upon God alone (basically, the same idea).  Second, Gen-la Dekyong’s teachings and example exuded one very clear message:  our main practice should be to rely upon the spiritual guide alone.  These two together helped me recall clearly my conclusion from my retreat from so many years ago.  Since then, I have been rediscovering what it means to do this in every aspect of our practice.
  4. For me, writing is a method of meditation.  Geshe-la defines meditation very broadly by saying meditation is the mixing of our mind with virtue.  With this definition, we can be meditating all of the time in everything we do.  If we can master doing this, we can be just like the practitioners of old who dedicated their whole life to wandering the forest and practicing.  When I write about the Dharma, it forces me to clarify my own thinking and understanding, and in doing so, it helps reveal things to me like a giant contemplation.  I don’t know if my writings are of any benefit to anybody who might read this blog, but I do know that writing for this blog is for me a major part of my “meditation” practice.  I have done a lot of studies in my life, and this has trained my mind to think through writing (theses, dissertations, etc.).  So it is only normal that for me writing will be a spiritual practice.  It is the same for those who are into art, theatre, music or even different sports.  Different people express themselves and understand the world through a different experience and skill set, so it is only normal that the method of spiritual practice that will work the best for us is the one that corresponds with our experience and skill set.  Just as we need Kadampa bloggers, we need Kadampa artists, actors and playrights, musicians and why not sports teams (anybody for a Kadampa World Cup soccer tournament?).  But don’t worry, I will stick to writing…  😉
  5. The NKT has completely reinvented itself around Modern Buddhism.  The feeling I got at the Summer Festival was Modern Buddhism has become the NKT’s main platform upon which it launches itself into the future.  When I first read Modern Buddhism, I realized it was the synthesis of everything that Geshe-la had taught us up until then.  It is his crown jewel.  But it has become so much more than that, it now seems to be the organizing principle around which the tradition will expand in the next era.  In particular, Geshe-la introduced two huge institutional reforms to the NKT.  First, he created a new study program called the Special Teacher Training Program.  The way it works is it takes 37 of the tradition’s best and brightest budding bodhisattvas who wish to become Resident Teachers, and it brings them to Manjushri for a 6 month intensive study of Modern Buddhism taught by none other than Gen-la Dekyong herself.  You just don’t get any better than that.  These 37 spend all day every day together for 6 months going over every word of Modern Buddhism and internalizing deeply its meaning.  They also form powerful karmic connections with one another (the class of 2012), creating a web of an extremely close and supportive Sangha.  These individuals are then sent to the four corners of the world to become Resident Teachers in some center somewhere in the world, yet due to their close connections and modern social media, they can stay very close to each other.  But they will all be teaching Dharma from the perspective of Modern Buddhism.  The second major reform he introduced was the new city program.  He wants to open centers in the busist parts of downtown (where the people are…) and teach Modern Buddhism and some other books as part of a new special program.  The people who go through these would then, quite likely, find themselves joining FP and TTP in traditional centers.  This means that for the most part going forward those who enter into the tradition will do so through the door of Modern Buddhism.  All of this has profound implications:  if we are to align ourselves with the tradition and the tradition itself is aligning itself with the presentation in Modern Buddhim, then it is a good idea for us as practitioners to align our own individual practice and understanding of Dharma according to the presentation in Modern Buddhism.  Everything that came before was the preliminaries…  😉
  6. The biggest external thing that happened this summer was we found out we are going to China for our next assignment.  This has tremendous implications for the trajectory of the lives of everybody in my family.  So we have one more year in Brussels, then we go back to Washington, D.C. for a year when I will be learning Chinese, and then in April 2014 we head off to China.  The kids will probably stay behind in D.C. to finish the school year then go to Spokane until August like they usualy do.  Then they will join me in Chengdu!  Chengdu is the last major city before Tibet.  It is, for all practical purposes, China’s backwater.  This will be an incredible experience.  I obviously have a lot of karma with Tibet given that my Spiritual Guide is Tibetan.  China is also the fastest growing country and the new emerging superpower.  The relationship between the United States and China is probably the most important geo-political relationship the United States has.  I will be able to observe China’s rise and globalization from the perspective of its backwater.  It is an incredible vantage point on the world, when you think about it – it is where Tibet (where Lama Tsongkhapa emerged) interesects China while it is emerging as the next global superpower.  This will also be an incredible opportunity for my kids, because the story of their professional lifetime will be the rise of Asia in general and China in particular.  This will be incredibly valuable experience (especially if they learn some Chinese) for a wide variety of careers.  This assignment also makes it probable that I will do other assignments in Asia, such as Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Kuala Limpour, Bangkok, etc.  This is an area that the NKT is growing quickly in and where some of the tradition’s best teachers are stationed.  As Kadam Morten said, “everything we did in the West is really just the preliminaries for what is to come – Asia!” When we think about the direction the world is going, this makes total sense that this is where the tradition is going.

Understanding the three wisdoms and the three lineages

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I am adding this post to the “about this blog” page because I think it helps clarify its nature and purpose.

Some people confuse reliance upon the spiritual guide with fundamentalism.  Venerable Geshe-la explains in Clear Light of Bliss that we should not rely on just the words of Dharma, but rather their meaning.  If we rely on just the words of Dharma, there is a danger that we can become fundamentalist in our understanding of the Dharma.  Fundamentalism arises when we become attached to the literal words of the Dharma at the expense of its meaning.  The literal meaning of the scriptures are correct when interpreted through the lens of how those words are understood by the people who live at the time they were written.  But as cultures change with the flow of time, those same words in a different cultural context produce different meanings.  Our job as practitioners who wish to carry the lineage forward is to gain an understanding of the meaning of the Dharma and carry that forward.  The words that express that meaning will vary from culture to culture and time to time, but the meaning itself is universal and timeless.  Understanding this distinction protects us against the extreme of fundamentalism.

Those who authorize themselves to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma, meaning they test the Dharma they have heard (or read) against their own experience and who develop their own examples, analogies and wordings of the meaning of Dharma, can sometimes be accused by those who remain tightly attached to the literal words of scripture of causing the Dharma to degenerate.  I respectfully disagree.  In fact, I would argue that such a literalist approach in effect causes the degeneration of Dharma because it stunts the growth of the Dharma in the minds of living beings.

To understand this, we must make a distinction between the definitive Dharma and interpretative Dharma.  The definitive Dharma is the inner meaning of the Dharma as understood validly by the minds of superior beings.  It is universal and timeless.  The interpretative Dharma is how the definitive Dharma is expressed in a given cultural-temporal context.  The meaning of the Dharma in ancient Tibet and modern New York City is exactly the same.  But its interpretative presentation can be quite different.  If we fail to make this distinction, there is a risk that we can reject and criticise a perfectly valid interpretative presentation because it doesn’t correspond with our own culturally literalist understanding of the Dharma.  In my view, Venerable Geshe-la’s greatest contribution is he has perfectly transmitted the definitive meaning of the Kadam Dharma into a completely new cultural-temporal context (the modern world).  The book Modern Buddhism is, in my view, the culmination of his efforts.  It is the crown jewel of all of his works.  This doesn’t mean all of the other books are not the transmission of the timeless wisdom of the Kadampa into the modern world, rather it means we can fruitfully interpret all of the other books through the lens of and following the presentation of Modern Buddhism.

This logic also applies at the level of an individual practitioner.  Just as there are those who criticise a modern presentation of the Dharma, there are others who accept the modern presentation of the Dharma but then make the same mistake as the literalists within the context of their own tradition.  These people misinterpret reliance upon the spiritual guide alone as meaning they are not authorized to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma.  When confronted with an insight that is not explicitly in Venerable Geshe-la’s teachings they say, “I don’t remember Venerable Geshe-la ever saying that” and they reject the insight on those grounds alone.  Likewise when they come up with their own insights through their own practice they fail to do anything with them because they are not certain they are reliable because they never heard Geshe-la explicitly say the given idea.  Such an approach to our Dharma practice is safe and good, but it is not good enough.  Taken to an extreme, such an approach can make our Dharma understanding quite rigid, and we develop within ourselves a “parrot like Dharma” not a “heart-felt Dharma.”  A parrot like Dharma is good, but it is not good enough.

To understand this, it is useful to understand the three wisdom and the three lineages.  The three wisdoms are the wisdom arising from listening, the wisdom arising from contemplation and the wisdom arising from meditation.  These three can be understood as follows.  First we listen to (or read) the Dharma and gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  For example, when we listen to Venerable Geshe-la teach or read his books, we can become very familiar with all that he says and that understanding will give rise to a certain level of wisdom within our mind.  This is very good, but it is not good enough.  We shouldn’t stop there.

Just as there are different cultures and temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner has a different personal mental context and experience set.  Somebody who has spent their whole life in modern America has a different mental context and experience set than somebody who has spent their whole life in modern Brazil or modern China.  Even two people who both spent their whole life in modern America will have two very different mental contexts and experience sets.  Every individual in fact has a unique mental context and experience set.  Just as the great lineage holders like Atisha, Je Tsongkhapa and (I would argue) Venerable Geshe-la took the definitive meaning of the Dharma and expressed it interpretatively in different cultural-temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner must take (their understanding of) the definitive meaning of the Dharma and make it their own as understood through their own individual mental context and experience set.  We do this through our own contemplation of and meditation on the Dharma.

When we contemplate the Dharma we take the wisdom we have gained through listening and we test its validity in the context of our own life experience and understanding.  For example, I am an early middle-aged American economist diplomat father of five.  This is the context of my life experience, so I test the validity of the Dharma in the context of my world and experience.  When I do this, the Dharma becomes true for me.  I will develop my own examples, analogies and interpretative expressions (wordings) which generate within my own mind the actual meaning of the Dharma in my own mind.  I will have transferred what was the wisdom of somebody else (my teachers) into my own wisdom.  The Dharma will be true for me.  This is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  Venerable Tharchin says that our own examples, analogies and reasonings developed through our contemplation of the Dharma are actually more powerful for us because they make the Dharma true for us.  This does not mean they are more powerful for others, though.  Each practitioner must develop their own understandings through contemplating the Dharma they have heard (or read).

The insights we gain from our own contemplation of the Dharma, these insights that make the meaning of the Dharma come alive in our own mind, are our actual objects of placement meditation.  Just as contemplation functions to transform the wisdom arisen from listening into the wisdom arisen from contemplation, so too placement meditation on the wisdom arisen from contemplation transforms the wisdom arisen from contemplation into the wisdom arisen from meditation.  Put in more practical terms when we listen (or read) we gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  When we contemplate we transform this wisdom into our own personal wisdom.  When we meditate we make this personal wisdom, as Venerable Tharchin describes it, “an acquisition of our personality.”  For example, first we generate an undertanding of what is compassion.  Then we generate compassion in our own mind.  Then we become a compassionate person.

Understanding the three wisdoms helps us understand the three lineages of Kadam Dharma.  The true lineage is not the words written on paper or uttered by the guru, rather the true lineage is the continuum of direct realization of the definitive meaning of Dharma from teacher to disciple.  There is probably a technical name for it, but I call the three lineages the outer lineage, the inner lineage and the secret lineage.  The outer lineage is the wisdom arisen from listening (or reading).  I call it the outer lineage because its basis is a manifest object, namely the words on paper or the words of or examples set by our lineage gurus.  The inner lineage is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  I call it the inner lineage because its basis is a hidden object, namely the personal examples, analogies and experiences within the mind of an individual practitioner.  The secret lineage is the wisdom arisen from meditation.  I call it the secret lineage because it is only open to those who gain personal experience of the Dharma and make the realization of it an acquisition of their personality.  The definitive secret lineage is the Dharma as directly realized with our own very subtle mind of great bliss.  This lineage only arises in the minds of qualified highest yoga tantra practitioners.

How do we know whether our understandings or insights gained through contemplation or meditation are reliable?  There is of course the danger when we contemplate or meditate on the Dharma that we can generate wrong understandings and mistake them for being definitive meanings.  So how do we protect ourselves against that?  Like a good scientist testing their hypotheses, there are several tests we can perform.  First, we can ask ourselves, “does this insight or understanding contradict any known instruction?”  If yes, try again.  If no, we can apply the second test, “is this insight or understanding the natural consequence of all known instructions?”  If no, try again.  If yes, we can apply the third test, “Dorje Shugden, if this understanding is reliable may it flourish within my mind, if it is not please reveal to me how it is wrong and what is in fact correct.”  Dorje Shugden is a Dharma protector.  He does not only protect the outer pure lineage of Je Tsongkhapa, but also the inner and secret lineages.  We request him to confirm correct understandings and to sabotage incorrect understandings.  If we replace our own attachment to our own views with a faith in Dorje Shugden, he will ensure we always stay on the correct inner and secret paths.

How does all of this relate to this blog?  This blog can be understood as me putting into my own words my understanding of the Dharma.  It is my interpretative expression of the inner universal meanings I have understood.  It should NEVER be misinterpreted as me attempting to poffer definitive meanings of the Dharma.  The only truly reliable Dharma texts are those provided to us by our lineage gurus.  The meanings gained from contemplating and meditating on those are reliable.  In the spirit of Shantideva, this blog is my putting into my own words what I have understood.  For me, putting the meaning of Dharma into my own words is a method for clarifying, deepening and consolidating my own understandings.  If other people receive some benefit from it, then all the better.  But no reader should ever confuse the words written in this blog as being intended to be offered as definitive, qualified Dharma.  Rather, it is a sharing of my own experience and understanding.

My hope is simple:  If what I write in this blog is wrong, I hope others will help point out the errors of my thinking so that I can improve my understanding.  If other Kadampa practitioners are coming to similar conclusions through their own listening to, contemplating of and meditating on the Dharma, then the blog can provide a platform for the sharing of such experience.