5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Knowing when and how to help

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

We all know the story of the guy who saved the fish by putting him in a nearby pond, but then that fish ate all the other fish in the pond, and when the owners of the pond found out what happened they killed the fish that was saved.  The moral of the story is it is not enough to just be compassionate, we need to have wisdom knowing whether our help is actually helpful and beneficial.  When we look at most of the challenges in the world today, how to respond to them often turns to this question of when and how to help so that our help doesn’t make things worse.

If we look at the debate between conservatives and liberals in the U.S., this is the fundamental question.  When we look at the debate on how to respond to the Eurozone crisis, this is the fundamental question.  When we look at the debates about how to raise responsible children, this is the fundamental question.  Therefore, understanding the nature of the problem and having an answer to this question is very important.

Imagine you are confronted with somebody who has a big problem because they have made wrong choices (be it Greece, a rebellious teenager, or people failing to succeed in the modern world).  How should we help this person?  One extreme is creating a moral hazard.  If we just solve the other person’s problems for them, then they never face the consequences of their wrong choices and are therefore never forced to learn to make correct choices.  If we always clean up their mess, they face no consequences and will know we will always be there to clean up their mess, so they will continue to make wrong choices again and again.  The other extreme is letting them drown.  If the harmful consequences of their wrong decisions are so severe that experiencing them actually decreases their capacity to be able to solve their own problems even if they choose to do so, then letting them drown and face the music condemns them.  They will likely give up trying because they know even if they did, they will still fail, and they will fall farther and farther down (blaming you along the way).

So what is the middle way?  It is show solidarity for capacity building.  This proceeds in several steps.

First, you need to distinguish between problems within their control versus problems outside of their control.  Ultimately, of course, from a karmic perspective everything that happens to us is the karmic result of our past actions, so you could say that everything is within our control.  But conventionally speaking, this is not the case in the short run.  In the short run, certain karmic seeds have already ripened and there is nothing we can do about it.  These are things that are outside of our control.  For example, if we have been born into a poor and dysfunctional family, karmically this is of course the result of our past actions, but for purposes of our life that karma has already ripened, and now we have to deal with it.  For problems outside of somebody’s control, as bodhisattvas there is no fault in doing whatever we can to mitigate against whatever external problems the person is facing all while holding them responsible for what they do have control over.  While the external circumstance is something they might not have control over, we should help the other person not use that external circumstance as an excuse to not try for the things they do have control over.

For the things that are within the control of the other person, the next step is to identify whether the other person is trying their best to dig themselves out of the hole they have fallen into.  How will we know if they are trying their best?  Usually, we just know.  We can tell.  There is no magic formula here, just go with your gut instinct and request wisdom blessings to know.

If the other person is trying their best, then you focus your help on equipping them with the tools and capacity to solve their own problems.  This is the classic, give a man a baguette you feed him for a day; teach a man to bake his own baguette’s, you feed him for life.  For a country, this may mean helping them rebuild their administrative and institutional capacity; for an unemployed person, this may mean retraining them in employable skills; for a struggling teenager, this may mean getting them a tutor.  But while they are retraining, yes, it is necessary to also feed them baguettes!  You can’t just teach him how to bake if he starves while he is learning to do so, you also need to feed him while he is learning.  Teaching people to stand on their own two feet, and indeed to enter into a virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating personal growth is the final goal.  How far should we go with this?  All the way to taking them to enlightenment.

If the other person is not trying their best, then things become more complicated.  The first thing you need to do is stop making excuses for them.  You need to refuse to assent to their narrative that all of their problems are because of other people or some external circumstance.  You need to help them identify which areas they do have control over, and you need to make very clear that they are responsible for those areas and if they fail in those areas, they have nobody to blame but themselves.  If you doing this fairly and with skill, inside they will know you are right even if externally they would never admit it to you.

The second thing you need to do is give them a warning.  You say, “look, I will stand by you to help you develop the skills and capacity you need to dig yourself out of your hold, but you need to do all the work – I can’t do it for you.  But if you choose to not do so, this is what the natural consequence of what your bad choice will be…”  Then you just explain to them how the world works and what will happen to them naturally in the world if they don’t do what they need to do.  For the country, this could mean them going bankrupt.  For the unemployed worker, this could mean them finding themselves on the street.  For the rebellious teenager, this could mean failing to graduate with all of the consequences.  You give them one more chance – saying next time you are not going to bail them out if, after your explaining to them the consequences, they continue to make the wrong choices.

Then, if they nonetheless make the wrong choice, you need to then not bail them out fully.  You bail them out only enough so that their capacity is not permanently destroyed by the consequences, but nothing more.  You don’t need to punish them, the world will do that for you naturally.  When they face the consequences of their bad choices, they will kick and scream and blame you, but this is just how the world works and the only way they will learn is by getting burned.  Again, I am not saying let them drown, but I am saying only prevent them from doing so completely.  Throughout this time, you should make clear that your offer of helping them dig themselves out always stands.

Allowing them to sufer the consequences of their wrong choices will often mean you yourself will have to experience some negative consequences, such as them blaming you or seeing them sufer or perhaps when they fall, they bring you down with them.  These consequences you just need to accept as the price of you helping the other person by not helping them (unless doing so destroys your capacity permanently, at which point the calculation is different).

If, despite facing the negative consequences of their wrong choices, the person still does not decide to start trying their best to dig themselves out, then there is little else you can do than pray for them.  You should continue to protect them from such extreme consequences that their facing them would permanently destroy their capacity to ever dig themselves out, but it may mean you having to watch them waste their life.  You should never stop requsting Dorje Shugden to arrage whatever conditions are perfect for them to attain enlightenment.  Request him to bless their minds so that whatever they are experiencing becomes a cause of their enlightenment.  Your offer to help them grow in capacity should always stand, but it might not be until future lives that you can execute on it.  During all of this time, you should request wisdom blessings to try better understand how you can break through to the other person, but nonetheless accept that at present there are things also beyond your control.  You can explain the way, but they must make the journey themselves.

Your turn:  Share some wisdom you have learned about knowing when and how to help others.

Change is inevitable – don’t resist, rather learn to adapt

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Most of the problems and frustrations we have in our life come as a result of our attitude towards change.  The cycle is usually some change happens, we become upset about the things we lost in the change and we develop aversion towards some of the new things that have come about as a result of the change.  Then, usually after some drama and a fair amount of time, we come to let go of what we have lost, we come to accept our new inconveniences, and we even come to discover some new good things in our changed environment.  Just when we get comfortable and happy with our new situation, some new change will come about and the whole cycle starts over again.  This cycle occurs with basically everything:  our friends, our jobs, our kids, our surroundings, our enjoyments, etc.

For our family, this cycle primarily plays itself out in the form of being sent to new postings.  Every two to three years, we will be sent someplace new in the world and have to start our lives all over again.  But this cycle started long before I became a diplomat.  In the last 21 years, I have moved a total of 18 times!  Not always to different cities or countries, but to different homes or contexts.  I never seem to remain…

In reality, this is the natural state of affairs in samsara.  Everything is constantly changing.  This is a fact of life, whether we accept/like it or not.  Some people use all of their energy trying to resist this inevitable change.  They do everything they can to keep everything the same.  When we approach life this way, we begin to fear everything, view everything as a threat, and we increasingly enscone ourselves in an artificially static world.  It eventually grows harder and harder to hold back the tide of change, our mental strain grows and grows, we become increasingly grumpy, dissatisfied and picky.  We get stuck in our habits and can’t imagine life any other way.  The radius of our world gets smaller and smaller, the information and new perspectives we become exposed to narrower and narrower, until eventually we find ourselves in a single chair in an informational echo chamber of things confirming what we already believe.  We become completely stuck, enmeshed in what is for all practical purposes a karmic straight jacket.  To do anything out of our normal routines becomes inconceivably hard.  But even then, like it or not, change comes – and for us, it becomes all the more traumatic and wrenching. This is no way to live a life!

Since change is inevitable, instead of resisting it, we need to learn to embrace and adapt to it.  We should view each major change in our life as if we have died and been reborn in a new life.  We take from our old life the lessons we have learned, and we enter our new life with a mind eager to discover what is around the corner.  Each new change will force us to grow in some way, to change ourselves, to learn how to be equally happy in any and all circumstances.  The reality is all worlds, all lives are equally empty.  So no matter what new world or circumstance we find ourselves in, we have an absolutely equal chance of being perfectly happy.  This is simply a fact.  Our job as a Kadampa in this ever-changing world is to gain the ability to be equally happy everywhere.  Each new world is an opportunity to expand the envelope of our capacity to transform new and different circumstances into something we consider to be “ideal.”  As we tell our kids, “every situation is equally good, just in different ways.”

This is also where reliance upon Dorje Shugden becomes so important.  Through relying upon him, we can know with absolute certainty that whatever changes have happened in our life are exactly what we need.  We can know that our new circumstance is exactly perfect.  Knowing this, our only remaining task is to realize how and why.  If we don’t know, we just request wisdom blessings from him that he reveal to us how and why our circumstances are indeed perfect.  We might not get an answer right away, but before the end, it will all fall into place and we will realize how amazingly skilful he is in shepparding us to enlightenment.

It will sometimes be hard, it will sometimes take longer than we would like, but through embracing this task of learning to be equally happy in every new situation we find ourselves in, we will develop the ability to always be happy.  From this, an enormous confidence comes which knows we will be able to take this ability with us in life after life.  It is not enough to just be happy in this life, we need to learn how to be happy in every life, life after life.  Learning to embrace and adapt to change is, therefore, not only the key to happiness in this life, but to happiness in all our future lives.

Your turn:  Describe some change that you have resisted.  How did you eventually learn to adapt to it?

Guru Yoga as our main practice

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

There are so many instructions on the Kadampa path it is very easy to lose sight of what is important or how it all fits together.  I believe it was Kenneth Galbraith, one of history’s most famous economists, that said there is no concept too complex that cannot be explained in two words; and that there are no two words you cannot give a discourse on for two hours!  So if we are to look at all of the Kadampa path and need to reduce it down to two words, those two words would be “guru yoga.”  All of the path can be understood as one single practice, namely guru yoga, and everything else is in support of that.

The logic is simple:  the guru is already an enlightened being, so instead of reinventing the wheel and going through the laborious process of building from scratch within ourselves every quality of a Buddha we simply import the final product within our mental continuum.  We simply replace the basis of our self from being the ordinary, deluded being we currently are with the enlightened body, speech and mind of the guru.  There is one activity on the path:  changing the basis of imputation for our I from our ordinary self to that of the guru.

Here, guru does not merely mean the external appearing form of our Spiritual Guide, rather, here guru means all of the different levels of the guru.  There is the external spiritual guide who teaches us, writes books, grants empowerments, etc.  The practice with the external spiritual guide is to learn and to emulate.  The external spiritual guide introduces us to the internal spiritual guide who has many many levels and aspects.  One meaning of a “Buddhist” is “an inner being.”  So it follows that a Buddha is a being that lives within the realm of our mind.  The guru, by definition, is the synthesis of all of these Buddhas.

First we are usually introduced to Je Tsongkhapa, who we understand is the same mental continuum of Buddha Shakyamuni.  We are introduced to his three principal qualities:  wisdom, compassion and spiritual power which assume the forms of Manjushri, Avalokitehshvara and Vajrapani respectively.  We are also introduced to his Sangha.  The principal function of Sangha is to arrange the conditions for our practice.  The inner sangha assumes the form of Dorje Shugden and his retinue.  While by nature Dorje Shugden is the wisdom Buddha Manjushri, he accomplishes the function of inner Sangha within our mind.  This is why he appears with the Sangha jewel in the field of merit.

Through learning from and relying upon these inner emanations we are eventually introduced to the Guru in the aspect of the Yidam, which in the context of the Kadampa tradition assumes the form of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  The Yidam is like our ultimate role model.  The Yidam is like our new car!  Our main practice is to let go of our old, ordinary car of our body and mind and instead to hop into and identify with our new spiritual all-performance vehicle of the Yidam.  We basically adopt the body and mind of the Yidam as our own.  But then we go even deeper.  Just as we went inside our ordinary mind and met certain Buddhas, when we go inside the Yidam’s mind, we discover new Buddhas assuming different aspects and we start the whole process over again.  These Buddhas assume the form of the seed letters of the principal and supporting deities (the body mandala) of the Yidam.  We then do the same thing of coming to identify with the seed letters, in particular the nada. What is inside the nada?  The Dharmakaya, the final nature of the guru, the ocean where all enlightened waters find their final destination.

All throughout this process of admiring, emulating and finally identifying with the different levels and aspects of the guru we need positive mental energy (merit) we need to remove obstructions (purification) and we need to the strength to make these transitions (blessings).  These three are our preparatory practices.  We need to have the motivation to become the guru, in all of his forms, so that we can then liberate all beings – this is bodhichitta.  We need to realize that our self does not inherently adhere to our ordinary body and mind, these are the meditations on the emptiness of the self, body and mind.

Viewed in this way, we come to understand that in reality the entire path is guru yoga, and all of the other practices support that main practice.

Your turn:  Take some difficult situation in your life, now view it as an emanation of your guru for your practice.  How does your mind change towards your difficult situation when you view it in this way?

Staying focused exclusively on the Dharma, as revealed through your life

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

As Kadampa’s who realize we have a precious human life, it is relatively obvious that we should focus 100% of our attention and effort on practicing the Dharma.  If we truly realized how we have been trapped in the self-imposed insane asylum of our delusion-created samsara since beginningless time and that by some miracle of miracles we have found the doorway out, not only for ourselves but for all of our fellow patients, and we realized that we could lose at any moment this opportunity to get out through either become distracted by the shiny things inside samsara or by simply dying unexpectedly, we would realize it is really foolish to do anything other than concentrate on practicing Dharma 100% of the time.  If we genuinely realize the truth of our circumstance, this is the only sensible conclusion one can draw.

Our biggest problem is grasping at a fixed conception of what it practically means to concentrate on practicing Dharma 100% of the time.  We have such a narrow conception that this only means renouncing our friends, family, jobs and normal lives and instead moving into a center, becoming ordained and doing pujas, attending classes and working for the center all day.  Then, when we realize that practically we can’t live such a life due to the other karmic constraints we face (such as responsibility to our family, student loan debt to repay, retirement to plan for, etc.), we start to become frustrated with our life, we start to view our family, friends, finances and jobs as obstacles to our spiritual life, and paradoxically, the more we meditate on our precious human life and our impending death, the more miserable, neurotic, stressed out and frustrated we become.

Just to be clear, there is of course nothing wrong with somebody who dedicates their life to formal practice in a center.  Such practitioners are to be praised and appreciated, their lives rejoiced in.  But we shouldn’t mistakenly think that this is the only way to concentrate on practicing Dhama 100% of the time.  Since every life is equally empty, every life can equally be transformed into 100% Dharma practice.  In every situation, we should always remain focused exclusively on the Dharma, but as revealed through our life. 

Every life situation, one way or the other, reveals the truth of the Dharma.  This is true for the lives of the lowest beggar to the highest king.  If we trust that this is true and we keep our mental attention focused exclusively on how this is true, we will quite naturally discover in every moment a hidden gem that reveals to us the truth and meaning of the Dharma.  We will come to understand how the life we have, with all of its challenges and constraints, is actually a “gift from the Gods” (or more specifically, a gift from our Dharma Protector), and is, for us, the most perfectly tailored spiritual life we could possibly imagine.  Instead of being frustrated and discouraged, we will be inspired and energized to probe deeper into the mystery and magic that is our life.

If we only relate to our life on its most surface levels, we will quickly become bored and feel as if our life is empty of meaning.  We need to get fully involved in every activity of our life, no matter how mundane or no matter how challenging.  Life is to be lived fully – only in doing so can we derive the maximum spiritual benefit from the opportunities we have been given and that we have created for ourselves.  So paradoxically, it is by fully engaging yourself in your personal and professional lives – while maintaining laser-like focus on how the Dharma is revealed through your life –  that you can discover the deeper spritiual lessons your life has to offer.  You then wake up each day like a joyful adventurer who can’t wait to see what’s in store for today.  With this approach, you can be both 100% engaged in your family and professional lives while remaining 100% engaged in your Dharma practice.

To really take this to the next level, we must also move beyond the simple mechanical and work-horse like aspects of getting on with what needs to be done.  We need to develop a deep sense of marvel at the magical beauty of the life our Dharma Protector has created for us.  As an economist by training, I have rececently come to realize I have a very poorly developed sense of appreciation of beauty.  I arrogantly dismiss such sentiments as a waste of time.  I couldn’t be more wrong.  Instead of always being in such a hurry (which I always am), I need to learn to take the time to appreciate the beauty, elegance and sheer genius of the conditions that have been arranged for me.  I can’t imagine cities more beautiful than Paris and Rome.  But is we develop a sense of appreciation of the spiritual beauty that is our life, we will discover that we are actually abiding in the most spectacular city of enlightenment – right where we are in the life that we have.  I don’t believe we can truly reach the pure land in this life before we die without developing the mind of a spiritual artist – someone who can transform their life into spiritual art.

Cultivating these perspectives takes time and effort, but doing so brings a great joy and satisfaction.  Our life becomes a fully experienced Joyful Path of Good Fortune!

Your turn:  Describe how some major condition in your life can be viewed as Dorje Shugden’s greatest gift to your practice.

Increasing your spiritual gravity

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The dynamic of the physical universe is largely governed by the law of gravity.  The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational pull on other masses.  The same is true of the economy (economic gravity) and politics (political gravity).  Likewise, spiritual progress and development is largely governed by the law of spiritual gravity.  When you think of the great spiritual masters of this world, such as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, Ghandi, etc., you can see that these beings have tremendous spiritual gravity which pulls the beings of this world in a virtuous direction.  Even those these beings have long ago passed away (physically, at least) their legacy in this world (or as Shantideva would call it, their reliquary) still remains drawing beings into the orbit of these great masters, pulling them in towards enlightenment.

As bodhisattvas, our goal is to lead all beings to enlightenment.  Our ability to do so depends largely on the extent of our own spiritual gravity, which in turn depends upon our own spiritual mass.  The question, then, is how do we increase the power of our spiritual gravity?

Strive to gain useful realizations for others.  Everyone has problems they want resolved.  If we have useful answers to these problems, then people will naturally be drawn to us and want to seek our advice.  Our job, then, is to gain realizations that are useful for others.  We can do this by viewing every situation in our life as emanated for us by our Spiritual Trainer, Dorje Shugden, so that we gain the realizations we need to help those beings with whom we have the karma to lead to enlightenment.  If we go through our life with the intention of gaining realizations which will be useful to others in the future, then that is what we will learn, and this intention will also create the karma for us to have opportunities to share these realizations with others in the future.  When, we don’t know.  But at some point, it is inevitable.

Improve the quantity of your quality karmic relationships.  Our ability to help others is largely dependent upon the karmic relationship we have with them.  The quality of our karmic relationships is a function of the strength of the bond, the expected duration of the relationship, the extent of mutual respect and support within the relationship, and how harmonious and healthy the relationship is.  We then should strive to increase the quantity of these quality karmic relationships.  The highest relationship we can have with another living being is a spiritual relationship.  But we need to know how to have healthy non-spiritual relationships before we will be able to have healthy spiritual relationships.  So we should view our non-spiritual personal and professional relationships as part of a continuum of our relationship with the given person that will last countless lifetimes and eventually evolve into a spiritual relationship (perhaps not in this life, but that doesn’t matter).  We manage all of our relationships through the lens of eventually becoming ones of shared enlightenment!

Cultivate smart spiritual power.  The karmic cause of power is protecting others.  Spiritual power is the ability to protect others spiritually.  We protect others spiritually by helping them gain their own spiritual wisdom.  Smart power is the optimal combination of hard and soft power.  Hard power is your actual authority over somebody, such as being a supervisor or a parent, which enables you to compel their compliance (if necessary).  Soft power is the wish of others to emulate or follow you.  Most people exercise their hard power in a way that undermines their soft power by engendering resentment in those controlled.  This arises when we use our power for our own selfish benefit as opposed to using our power to help empower those under our control.  As Hegel said, the categorical imperative is “free will must will freedom.”  We need to use our power to empower others.  When others know we are using our power to help them advance and become more empowered, they will gladly submit to our authority.  Practically speaking, the key to using hard power skillfully is “discreation within a box.”  You give people a box within which they can act freely.  If they use this freedom wisely and responsibly, you expand the size of the box.  If they use this freedom unwisely or irresponsibly, you contract the size of the box.  We increase our soft power by transforming ourselves into an example worth emulating.  The most important component of this is practicing what we preach.  Nothing undermines our example more than hypocracy.  We also need to be respectful, kind, fair, strong, flexible, decisive, light-hearted, not-arrogant, wise, successful, generous, fearless, controlled, organized, focused, have our life together and have a promising future trajectory.  For those over who we have no authority, we can only exercise soft power.  If we try exercise hard power over those who have not voluntarily submitted themselves to our authority, it usually just breeds resentment and rebellion.  True power is the ability to leave all those around us free to make their own choices and yet the choies they make are the right ones.

Create a lasting spiritual legacy.  The most important component of our spiritual legacy is the extent to which we have passed on the lineage to the next generation of practitioners.  We are all, to varying extents, holders of the lineage.  The true lineage is the continuum of authentic spiritual realizations from generation to generation.  So our task is two-fold:  first, download within our own mental continuum the realizations of those spiritually upstream in the lineage; and then second, help those spiritually downstream in the lineage acquire within themselves those realizations.  We do this primarily through our example of how we live our life, but also through our words, writings, and the institutions we leave behind.  Institutions can be formal, such as the internal rules, and informal, such as the spiritual culture of our communities.

The more spiritual mass we acquire, the greater the power of our spiritual gravity, which will then pull in more and more beings who enter into spiritual relationships with us, which will then increase our spiritual mass further in a virtuous cycle.  Eventually we become a vajra-like force of spiritual gravity – one that can never be destroyed and which, like a magic crystal, will eventually have the power to purify the entire universe, gathering and dissolving all beings and worlds into complete purity.

Your turn:  Describe some things you can do to increase your spiritual gravity.

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.