5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Reliance on Dorje Shugden: Taking personal responsibility for removing the faults we perceive in others.

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

Normally we explain what to do in the meditation session first, but I wanted to explain how we rely upon Dorje Shugden in the meditation break first because this is where we first gain experience of him and see how useful he is.  Then, we naturally want to deepen our practice of him in the meditation session.

I would like to explain two key practices for the meditation break:  taking personal responsibility to remove the faults we perceive in others and viewing our life as a training ground for becoming the Buddha we need to become.  I will explain these over the next two posts.

Taking personal responsibility for removing the faults you perceive in others

Normally, we think it is the responsibility of others to remove the faults we perceive in them, but if we think about this carefully, we will realize that actually we are uniquely responsible for all the faults we perceive in others.  At a simple level, we can say that the world we experience is the world we pay attention to.  If we pay 90% of our attention on the 10% of faults in the other person, then it will seem to us that the person is 90% faulty.  This is how we will experience the other person.  Our teacher explain that this is how we make ‘enemies’, ‘friends’, ‘sangha’ and even ‘Buddhas.’  In the same way, we ‘make’ faulty people.

We can also understand this by considering emptiness.  If we consider emptiness according to Sutra, we understand that everything is just a dream-like projection of our mind. Where does this faulty person come from?  Our own projections of mind.  There is no other person other than emptiness. Are we responsible for the faults in the people of our dreams?  If yes, then we are likewise responsible for the faults in the people of the dream of our gross mind.  If we consider karma and emptiness together, we realize that others are mere appearances arising from our own karma. We engaged in actions in the past which are now creating the appearance of a ‘faulty’ person.  So it is our own past faulty actions which created this appearance of a faulty person.

If we consider emptiness according to Tantra, we understand that these faulty people are actually different aspects, or parts, of our own mind.  We consider our right and left hands to be aspects or parts of our body.  In the same way, when we understand emptiness according to Tantra, we realize that others are merely aspects or parts of our mind.  Just as Ryan is an appearance in my mind, so too is the ‘faulty’ person.  Both are equally appearances to my mind inside my mind.  They are different aspects of my mind.  So this is the ‘Ryan’ part of me and that is the ‘faulty’ part of me.  When we meditate deeply on these things we will come to the clear realization that there is no ‘other person’ other than the one created by my mind, so we are uniquely responsible for all the faults we perceive in others.

So how do we actually remove the faults we perceive in others?  There are several things we can do.  First, we should make a distinction between the person and their delusion.  Just as a cancer patient is not their cancer, so too somebody sick with delusions is not their delusions. By making a separation between the person and their delusions, we no longer see faulty people, rather we see pure people sick with delusions.  We see faulty delusions, but pure beings.

Second, we need to develop a mind of patient acceptance that can transform everything.  The mind of patient acceptance is a special wisdom that has the power to transform anything into the spiritual path.  This wisdom enables the person to ‘accept’ everything without resistance because the bodhisattva can ‘use’ everything.  When we have this mind, what would otherwise be a fault is considered to us to be perfect because it gives us a great opportunity to further train our mind.  If we can learn to use whatever others do for our spiritual development, then their otherwise ‘faulty’ actions for us will be perfect.

Third, it is also very helpful to create a space of 100% freedom and non-judgment of others, and in that space, set a good example.  A bodhisattva does not try or need to change others.  When people feel controlled or judged, they become defensive.  If they are defensive, then it blocks them from changing because they are engaging in a process of self-justification.  For change to take place, it has to take place from the side of the person.  Internal change can only come from the inside.  So in the space of not controlling or judging others, we set a good example.  This will naturally inspire people to change from their own side.

Fourth, Venerable Tharchin once explained to me that we need to “own other’s faults as your own.”  Since the faults of others are projections of our own mind, the only reason why others appear to have any faults is because we possess those faults ourself.  So we find these faults in ourselves and purge them like bad blood.  We take the time to find where we have these same faults, and then we use the Dharma to eliminate them from ourself with a bodhichitta intention to be able to help the other person, and anyone else, who appears to have this fault.  If we practice like this, there are many different benefits.  We will gain the realizations we need to be able to help the other person overcome their problem because we have personal experience of having done that.  We will show the perfect example for the other person of somebody striving to overcome and eventually becoming free from what troubles them the most.  Our example often helps much more than our words.  The problem will actually disappear in the other person because it is coming from our own mind anyways.  And at the very least, we ourselves will have one less fault.

Finally, we can adopt a pure view of others as emanations of Dorje Shugden.  I will explain this is greater detail in the next post.

 

Reliance on Dorje Shugden: The nature and function of Dorje Shugden

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

In this post, I will explain the nature and function of Dorje Shugden.  In the subsequent posts I will explain how to rely upon him outside of formal meditation and then I will explain how to rely upon him during the formal meditation session.

What is the nature and function of Dorje Shugden?  In short, his nature is the same as our Spiritual Guide, but in particular he is by nature the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri.  Manjushri assumes two forms, Je Tsongkhapa to lead us along the path and Dorje Shugden to arrange the conditions for our practice of the path.  His function is to arrange all the outer, inner and secret conditions necessary for our swiftest possible enlightenment.

To understand this in more detail, we can consider the meaning of the invitation prayer to Dorje Shugden that we recite every day in the context of our Heart Jewel practice.  The Sadhana begins by saying, “HUM, I have the clarity of the Yidam.”  With HUM we dissolve everything into the clear light Dharmakaya and recall that the definitive nature of Dorje Shugden is the Truth Body of our Spiritual Guide.  ‘I have the clarity of the Yidam’ means we engage in our Dorje Shugden practice self-generated as our personal deity.  We do this for two reasons.  First, it is more effective.  Heruka is much closer to Dorje Shugden than we are, so by requesting Dorje Shugden as Heruka we tap into their close karmic connection.  It is not that different than knowing somebody who knows somebody very powerful.  We may not know the powerful person ourselves, but if we know somebody who does know them, if they ask the powerful person to fulfill our wishes it is far more likely we will get the response we want.  The second reason why we do this is the practice of Dorje Shugden can be engaged in for the sake of ourself or for the sake of others.  When we eventually become Buddha Heruka our work is not finished – we will still need to lead all other beings to enlightenment.  At that time, we will need powerful allies such as Dorje Shugden who can help us help living beings.  Training in the practice of Dorje Shugden while maintaining divine pride of being the deity is a very powerful method for having Dorje Shugden accomplish his function for all those that we love.

Next the sadhana says, “Before me in the center of red and black fire and wind.”  Here, we imagine that encircling all the living beings we are visualizing around us is a large protection circle of Dorje Shugden made out of five-colored wisdom fires.  It is like a giant sphere which completely envelopes all of these beings and the entire universe.  I like to imagine that all living beings are now inside of the protection circle and everything that happens to them is perfect for their swiftest possible enlightenment.

The Sadhana then says, ‘on a lotus and sun trampeling demons and obstructors is a terrifying lion powerful and alert.’  The function of Dorje Shugden’s lion is to dispel all fear.  It is a bit like in the movie Narnia, when people were in the presence of Aslan, they knew they were safe and they had nothing to fear.  If ever we are in a situation where we are afraid, we can remember the protection circle of Dorje Shugden and we can remember his lion and strongly believe that we are protected and that we receive his blessings which pacify all of our fears.

The sadhana then says, “upon this sits the Great King Dorje Shugden, the supreme heart jewel of Dharma protectors.”  Dorje Shugden is the principal deity of the visualization.  There are a couple of different analogies we can consider to get a feeling for who he is.  He is our karma manager.  Rich people give their money to money managers to manage their money in an optimal way.  In the same way, Dorje Shugden is the supreme karma manager.  He will manage our karma in an optimal way for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  He is our personal spiritual trainer.  When people want to get their bodies in shape, they go to a personal physical trainer who gives them the specific exercises they need to get in the peak of physical health.  In the same way, Dorje Shugden is our personal spiritual trainer who gives us the specific exercises we need to put ourselves in the peak of spiritual health, full enlightenment.  He is our spiritual father.  Our father protects us from danger and provides us with everything we need.  In the same way, Dorje Shugden is our spiritual father who will protect us from all danger and provide for us everything we need to accomplish our spiritual goals.  He is the director of our spiritual life.  When people make movies or plays, there is a director who organises and puts together all the appearances.  In the same way, Dorje Shugden is the director of our spiritual life, who will create a play of appearances around us for the rest of our life that are perfect for our spiritual path.  In a future post, I will explain how he has the power to help us not just in this life and right now, but in all our past and future lives as well.  Yes, we can go back within our past and transform what happened into a cause of our enlightenment!

The sadhana then says, “his body is clothed in the garments of a monk.”  This symbolizes his power to assist us with our practice of moral discipline.  We all have bad habits we are trying to abandon, such as smoking, getting angry at people and so forth; and vows we are trying to keep, such as our refuge, pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows, but we are not very successful in doing so.  Dorje Shugden can give us the strength and wisdom we need to abandon these bad habits.  Whenever we feel tempted to break our moral discipline, we can recall Dorje Shugden in front of us dressed in the garments of a monk and request his special blessings to give us the strength to keep our moral discipline.

Next, the sadhana says, “on his head he wears a round and yellow hat.”  This symbolizes his ability to help us gain the correct view of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality.  He helps us understand how all things are like a dream, and how if we change our actions, we can change our karma and that will change the dream that appears to our mind.  In this way, we can become the architect of our own destiny, and cause this world of suffering to cease and the pure world of the Buddhas to arise.  If ever we have difficulty understanding emptiness, we can recall his hat and request that he bless our mind to be able to gain a correct understanding of emptiness.  We then imagine we receive his blessings and return to our Dharma book (or the teaching we are receiving) and try again.  If we still don’t understand, we once again request blessings and repeat the cycle.  We can continue like this for as long as it takes.  Eventually, through the power of his blessings, we will understand.

The sadhana then says, “his hands hold a sword and a heart of compassion.”  This symbolizes his ability to help us engage in lamrim meditation, in particular the union of the vast and profound path.  The vast path is all of the lamrim meditations for developing a good heart, leading up to bodhichitta, the wish to lead all beings to enlightenment.  The profound path refers to the wisdom realizing emptiness, that everything is like a dream.  Just as we did with trying to understand emptiness, when we are having difficulty with our lamrim practice, we can recall this function of Dorje Shugden, request his blessings, receive his blessings and then try again.  Practicing in this way dramatically increases the power of our lamrim meditation.

After this, the sadhana says, “to his followers he shows an expression of delight, but to demons and obstructors he displays a wrathful manner.”  This symbolizes Dorje Shugden’s ability to love and care for us while destroying our delusions.  We need to make a distinction between ourselves and our delusions.  Just as a cancer patient is not his cancer, we are not the cancer of our delusions.  Many people fear Dorje Shugden because they know he can be quite wrathful, but this fear only arises because they identify with their delusions.  So when their delusions are challenged, they feel like they are being challenged.  Whenever we have a delusion arise strongly in our mind, we can immediately remember Dorje Shugden and request his blessings to be able to happily accept our difficult circumstances understanding that what is bad for our delusions is good for us.

 

Reliance on Dorje Shugden: Preliminary practice of the Guru Yoga of Je Tsongkhapa

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

Within the Kadampa tradition we are advised to practice the sadhana Heart Jewel as our daily practice.  If we are a Tantric practitioner, we engage in the Tantric version of this practice known as the Yoga of Buddha Heruka.  In either case, the sadhana beings with the Guru Yoga of Je Tsongkhapa.  I will explain things from the perspective of Heart Jewel since it is a common practice.

In general, the practice of Heart Jewel is the method for practicing the entire path to enlightenment.  There are three main parts – affectionately called a ‘Heart Jewel Sandwich.’  The first part is the Je Tsongkhapa part – the function of this part of the practice is to be able to draw closer to Je Tsongkhapa and receive his external and internal guidance to be able to realize his Dharma of Lamrim, lojong and Vajrayana Mahamudra.  The second part is our Meditation on Lamrim, Lojong and Vajrayana Mahamudra.  We do this in the middle of the practice.  And the final part is the Dorje Shugden part – this creates the causes to be able to receive Dorje Shugden’s care and protection for being able to gain the realization of Lamrim, Lojong and Vajrayana Mahamudra.  This series of posts is primarily about how to rely upon Dorje Shugden, but I will nonetheless give a brief explanation of how to engage in the first two parts of the Heart Jewel sandwich.

To actually engage in the Je Tsongkhapa part, we do as follows:

  1. Refuge and bodhichitta – here you are establishing your motivation for engaging in the practice.  “With the wish to become a Buddha so I can help all the beings around me attain the same state, I will now engage sincerely in the paractice of Heart Jewel, trying to generate the minds indicated by the words.”
  2. Prayer of the seven limbs and the mandala.  This accomplishes two main functions:  Accumulate merit – merit is positive spiritual energy.  It is like gasoline in your spiritual car.  Purify negativities – negative karma prevents us from engaging in spiritual practices and is the substantial cause of all our suffering.  It is like lots of traffic and debris on the roads.
  3. Migtsema prayer and prayer of the stages of the path.  These two enable you to receive the blessings of all the Buddhas.  Blessings are like spark plugs which ignite the gas of your merit to push you along the road to enlightenment.  The migtsema prayer draws you closer to JTK, and enables you to receive the blessings of the wisdom, compassion and spiritual power of all the Buddhas.  The prayer of the stages of the path is a special prayer for requesting the realizations of the lamrim.
  4. At this point in the sadhana we typically engage in meditation on lamrim.  Usually people use the book the New Meditation Handbook and cycle through the 21 lamrim meditations explained there, one each day.  For more information, we can also attend classes on the Lamrim at our local Dharma centers.
  5. After our meditation, we recite the dedication prayer from the Je Tsongkhapa part of Heart Jewel.

For more detailed information, we can read in the book Heart Jewel which provides an extensive commentary.  Geshe-la has said that this is his most important book.  It is available for sale at www.tharpa.com.

We should also take advantage of the opportunity to attend courses on Heart Jewel at our local Kadampa center, and we should make many requests that our local teacher grant the empowerments of Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden.  What is an empowerment?  An empowerment in general is establishing a very close connection with a particular enlightened being.  The closer our karma with a given enlightened being, the more ‘bandwidth’ they have for being able to help us.  It is a bit like making a connection with a very special friend.  When we meet somebody very powerful and we have a close connection with them, we can more easily call upon them and ask them for help.

An empowerment is like receiving a personal deity within our mental continuum.  We can all appreciate the qualities of the different Buddhas, and think how wonderful it would be to know them and be able to call upon them.  But how much more wonderful would it be to have a personal emanation of a Buddha who is available for us 24/7.  During the empowerment, we receive our own personal emanation of Dorje Shugden into our mental continuum.  We will be able to develop a personal relationship with this Dorje Shugden and he will care for us.  Geshe-la once told a very senior teacher about the Dorje Shugden empowerment, “people need this empowerment, they need this protection.”

 

Reliance on Dorje Shugden: Introduction to series

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

In this series of posts I will explain my understanding of how to rely upon Dorje Shugden, our Dharma protector.  All of Dharma essentially has one purpose:  to bring the mind under control.  Delusions are that which make our mind uncontrolled.  For me personally, I overcome about 90% of my delusions “merely by remembering” Dorje Shugden.  In this series of posts I will explain how.

Our ability to rely upon Dorje Shugden depends primarily upon one thing:  are we a worldly being or a spiritual being.  If we are a worldly being, reliance on Dorje Shugden will not work.  If we are a spiritual being, reliance on Dorje Shugden will change everything for us – we will never be the same again.  All fear, all anxiety, all grasping will vanish.  Our mind will become smooth, balanced, flexible and peaceful all of the time.

There is one question we need to ask ourself :  what kind of being do I want to be, a worldly being or a spiritual being?  A worldly being is somebody who is primarily concerned with securing happiness in this life.  Their actions are aimed at securing worldly happiness in this life.  A spiritual being is somebody who is primarily concerned with securing happiness of future lives.  Their actions are aimed at laying the foundation for happiness in future lives, up to the supreme happiness of full enlightenment.

It is important to understand whether our life is a worldly one or a spiritual one does not depend on what activities we do, rather it depends on what mind we do these activities with.  Sometimes we think that our families, jobs, vacations and so forth are necessarily ‘worldly’, but this is not the case.  They are only worldly if we engage in them with a worldly mind.  If we engage in these same activities with a spiritual mind, then they become spiritual activities and part of our spiritual life.  What does it mean to live our life with a spiritual mind?  It means what we are looking to get out of a situation is different.  For example, I have a close friend who is a very successful businessman.  He views everything through the lens of the business opportunity.  We went to Magic Mountain together once (Magic Mountain is an amusement park with very big roller coasters, etc.).  For my friend, because he looked at things through the glasses of a businessman, what he took home from his trip to Magic Mountain was lessons in business.

For a worldly being, what they are looking to get out of a situation is external happiness in this life.  Their actions are aimed at improving their reputation, increasing their resources, receiving praise and experiencing pleasure (and avoiding the opposite of these things).  For a spiritual being, what they are looking to get out of a situation is opportunities to train their mind and create good causes.  They view situations from the perspective of the opportunity they afford the person to train their mind and create good causes for the future.  To be a spiritual being doesn’t mean we don’t care about this life, rather it means we also care about future lives.  We include future lives in our calculations for how we use today and how we use this life.

Before we can actually become a spiritual being, we have to have at least some belief in future lives.  Without such belief, it is difficult to view your life as a preparation for them.  So how can we develop some conviction, or at least some virtuous doubt, about the existence of future lives?  The definitive reason which establishes everything in the Dharma is emptiness.  Emptiness explains that all phenomena, ourselves included, are mere karmic appearance of mind.  ‘Mere’ means they are like appearances in a dream, and ‘karmic appearance’ means that these appearances arise from karma.  This life and all its appearances are just a mere karmic appearance of mind that was triggered by a previous mind.  The quality of our mind determines the quality of the karma activated.  Every karmic seed has a certain duration, and when it exhausts itself the appearance supported by that karma will cease.  It is just like during a dream.  The nature of the mind is a formless continuum, it is like a giant container in which new karmic appearances are projected.  Think back to 2 hours ago.  What is appearing to our mind now is completely different.  What used to appear no longer appears at all, yet the nature of our mind itself is still there.  In the same way, when the appearances of this life and this body cease, the nature of our mind itself will still be there, equal and unchanged, just as the sky remains even as the clouds change.

If none of these ideas work for us, then it is useful to consider even if we are not sure, it is nonetheless better to live our life as if there are future lives.  Why?  If there are future lives, but we assume there are not, then we won’t be prepared for them and our future will be uncertain.  It is like somebody denying that there is a tomorrow.  If there are not future lives, but you assume there are, then you will at least be able to have the happiest possible life because a spiritual outlook on life is simply a happier way to relate to the world.  Why is this so?

Why is it a good idea to adopt a spiritual way of life?  Doing so can make every moment of our life deeply meaningful.  Our lives are as meaningful as the goals towards which we work.  If our goal is to lead each and every living being to the complete freedom of full enlightenment, then since this is the most meaningful goal, our life in pursuit of this goal will be felt to be full of great meaning.  We can find a true happiness from a different source – the cultivation of pure minds.  External happiness, if we check, is really just a temporary reduction of our discomfort.   Even if it does provide us with temporary moments of happiness, we have no control over it and so our happiness is uncertain.  We feel we can’t be happy without our external objects.  In Buddhism, we have identified a different source of happiness – a peaceful mind.  If our mind is peaceful, we are happy, regardless of what our external circumstances are.  The cause of a peaceful mind is to mix our mind with virtue, such as love, compassion, etc.  When we engage in the actions of mixing our mind with virtue, we plant the karmic seeds on our mind which will ripen in the form of the experience of inner peace.  Understanding this, we have an infinite source of happiness just waiting to be tapped.  When our mind is at peace, we can then enjoy all external things, not just the ones we like.

We are all going to die, and the only things we can take with us are the causes we have created for ourself.  Everything else we have we need to leave behind.  The only riches we can take with us into our future lives are the karmic causes we have created for ourself.   When we think about this carefully, we realize that only they matter.  The rest of this life is not guaranteed to happen, but our future lives are, and they are very long.  Now is the time to assemble provisions for our future lives.  We do not know when we are going to die.

We can learn to be happy all the time, regardless of our external circumstances.  Normally, we are happy when things go well, but unhappy when things go badly.  When we are a spiritual being, all situations, good or bad, equally provide us with an opportunity to train our mind and create good causes for the future, so we are equally happy with whatever happens.  In this way, we can develop a real equanimity with respect to whatever happens in our life.

We have the power to free all the beings we know and love from this world of suffering.  We have the opportunity to become a fully enlightened Buddha who has the power to lead each and every living being to full enlightenment.  So eventually we can save everyone we know and love.  We can understand this at a deeper level by understanding that we are dreaming a world of suffering.  By purifying our own mind, we dream a different dream, a pure dream, and thereby free all these beings.

With this background in mind, in this series of posts I will explain a special practice we can do to make the most out of our precious human life, namely rely surrendering our life completely to the protection and guidance of the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden.

Activating our inner Spiritual Guide: Working for our local Dharma center

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

We want pure seeds on our mind so that the Spiritual Guide has a lot of material to work with.  One of the most effective methods for planting such seeds is working to fulfil the wishes of our Spiritual Guide.  But we may wonder how we can do that when we aren’t with him every day.  The answer is simple, we work to fulfil the wishes our Spiritual Guide has for our local center.

Many Dharma practitioners work very hard to try overcome their delusions, but they do not enjoy much success.  Why?  The main reasons are because we lack sufficient merit and we haven’t purified.  We can solve both problems by doing work for our local center.  I used to study under a particular teacher.  When somebody would come to her with a personal problem, she would give them a job to do for the center and hardly even talk to them about their specific problem.  Then, after they were done with their task, she would sit them down to have a talk, and very often the problem would simply be gone, either externally or internally being considered a problem.  Miraculous!

How does work for the center accumulate merit?  All such merit is necessarily non-contaminated because the final goal of the center is the enlightenment of others.  The merit we accumulate from helping our centers grows exponentially as the generations continue.  If each student helps 10 people in their life, then each of those 10 people helps 10 people, after 2 generations the karma is multiplied by 100, after 3 generations the karma is multiplied by 1000, and so forth – so it grows exponentially. The merit continues to accumulate for as long as the center – or the effects of the center – exists, which theoretically is forever.    The conclusion is the merit we accumulate is non-contaminated and it grows expontentially for eternity.  Where else can you accumulate such merit?  We need to really see this as an incredible opportunity.  If we think deeply about this, we should even be willing to pay to be able to do such work at our local center!

What kind of karma in particular does working for a center create?  It creates the karma of causing the Dharma to flourish, the effect of which is it flourishes in our own mind.  The center is like an internship for being a bodhisattva.  Everybody wants to get a good internship so that they can gain the skills they need for a good job.  The same thing applies to working for our local center.  The questions is what do you want to do/to accomplish with your life.  Working for our local center also create the causes for finding the Dharma in our future lives.  We create the causes of having a supportive and authentic spiritual community and friends in our future lives.  We create the tendencies to make the most of our spiritual opportunities.  We create the causes for being able to receive pure spiritual teachings.  We create the causes to have the necessary conditions to engage in practice, retreat, etc.  We create a conduit between the ordinary world and the pure world of the Buddhas.  The center is like an exit in the matrix, or an Embassy for all the Buddhas.  It is like a beacon or transporter.

There are several things you can do to fully seize the opportunity you now have to work for the center.  Through our local centersr, we can fulfil our vajra commitment to others.  If our superior intention is authentic, we will naturally be motivated to do as much as we can.  It is up to us to decide what we are going to do with this opportunity.  Only we can decide for ourselves to make the most of it.  We can do as much or as little as we wish.  If we do as much, we create opportunities to do more; if we do as little, we burn up the merit giving rise to this opportunity and as a result almost never get it again.  We need to meditate again and again upon dying full of regrets.  Imagine that you arrive at your deathbed and your spiritual guide shows you what all you could have accomplished if only you had been motivated enough.  You could have accomplished all spiritual goals and lead countless others to the same state.  You could have caused your local center to flourish and enabled countless people to make contact with the Dharma – actually engaging in a Bodhisattva’s actions.  But instead we listened to and followed our laziness and attachment and anger, and accomplished nothing.  We have used up all the Dharma karma and now will fall into the lower realms where we will remain for aeons once again saving up our spiritual pennies.  We use this meditation to arrive at the conclusion that we will not let this happen to us.

We need to realize that this moment is the one in which we can fulfil our spiritual destiny. We wouldn’t go to school for years and years only to at the last minute not finish.  We wouldn’t run for political office our whole career and win the election to the presidency and then not show up for the job.  We have worked very hard in the past to create for ourself this spiritual opportunity, we can’t throw it away now when we are so close.  The only thing standing in our way is the strength and purity of our motivation.  If we work on that, then we will have everything.

We need to appreciate the high stakes for the success of our practice and the center.  If we don’t attain enlightenment, everyone we know and love will fall into samsara and be lost for as long as it takes us to get out.  All the people who are depending upon our future students are also depending upon us, and so forth.  There are literally countless beings whose fate depends upon our actions in this life.  Our local center is like an Embassy for all the Buddhas in our area.  It is our job to make it happen for the people of our area.  If we don’t make it happen, it won’t happen for them at all.  When we see others on the street, we should think, ‘this person is depending upon me.’  We need to ask ourselves the question, “what am I doing for the people of my region?”

We need to cherish our local Dharma center as our most precious endowment.  It is an outpost of the Buddhas in the wilderness of our mind.  Through our Dharma center we can accomplish everything.    Geshe-la has put everything at our feet.  We simply need to pick it up and use it.  We can accomplish with our local center what Geshe-la has accomplished with Manjushri center.  And we will have it much easier than he did because he has already written all the books and practices, established the study programmes, etc.  We just need to use it.  Venerable Tharchin says he views every person who walks into the center as the future savior of all.  This is true.  This is a very literal statement.  We need to adopt this view, and cherish others accordingly.

Activating the inner Spiritual Guide: The art of making requests to enlightened beings

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

I have explained the following before in the series on cultivating a true self-confidence, but it is so important I wanted to explain all of this again.  If we can master this, then the rest of the path becomes easy.

What is the most important question – the question if answered would answer all your other questions?  When we were kids, we would ask each other questions like:  if you had three wishes, what would you wish for.  Eventually we figured out that the best thing we could wish for was more wishes.  In that way, we could accomplish all our wishes.  Along exactly the same lines, the most important question we can ask is:  “what do I need to do to be able to make internal requests to you and receive perfectly reliable responses every time?”  I have had this question in my heart for years, saving it for whenever I would have a meeting with Geshe-la, but he answered the question during an ITTP without my ever asking it!

So here was Geshe-la’s answer:  “It is important to develop a good heart, a Buddhist intention, a beneficial intention, day and night, even during our sleep.  We will perceive a special idea, a mental image or plan as our intention is maintained.  Through blessings, imprints, receiving teachings and so forth, a special understanding or idea will develop.  Then our teachings will be perfect.  If we follow the writings alone, we will maintain just an intellectual understanding.  It is most important that we improve our motivation.”

After this advice was given, the ITTP then discussed this in great detail about what it means and how we practice it.

  1. First we dissolve everything into the Dharmakaya.  This eliminates all the interference from our ordinary mind.  We talked about this in an earlier post.
  2. We then align our motivation with that of the Spiritual Guide.  We also talked about this in an earlier post, but just to review some of the main points.  Our Spiritual Guide’s final intention for everyone is for us all to attain union with the Dharmakaya.  We generate a specific beneficial motivation with respect to the specific request we have for specific people by asking ourselves the question:  “what does Geshe-la want for this person/these people?”  ‘A good heart’ means a bodhichitta motivation, we wish to guide these people to enlightenment.  ‘A Buddhist intention’ means we are thinking about their future lives, not just this life alone.  Pure love, by definition, is love that works for the happiness of others in their future lives.  ‘A beneficial intention’ means we are seeking to benefit the other person, without any self-concern.  ‘Day and night’ means that we have a spontaneous realization of this pure motivation, we are never separate from it.  So we train consistently in the Lamrim until all of our wishes are pure.  ‘Even during sleep’ means we should try to carry this intention even into our sleep, and by doing so we can often receive signs and indications in our dreams.  We can fall alseep in the Dharmakaya posing a question according to this method, and during our sleep we will likely receive a response.  This gives new meaning to the saying ‘go sleep on it.’
  3. With strong faith that he is there and that he has the power to respond, we make our request.
  4. We then wait with our ordinary mind inactive, maintaining our pure motivation and faith for wanting a response to our request.
  5. Through this, a special image or plan will appear to our mind which will be the perfectly reliable answer to our request.  This is Geshe-la’s personal advice for us.
  6. This likewise works when invoking the Buddhas to accomplish their function for ourselves or for others.

How does this work?  We can understand this by an analogy.  Dissolving everything into the Dharmakaya is like having a clear space within which to project an image.  Aligning our motivation with that of the Spiritual Guide is like aligning the crystals of our karma with the direction of the light of our Spiritual Guide.  The crystals themselves are our own karmic potentialities which when a special light is shined through them they project, like a hologram, the future experiences they hold or what is possible.  These are created through our practice, study, etc.  We will talk in later posts how we can plant good seeds which can then be blessed.  The more faith we have that our Spiritual Guide is there the more it opens the curtains in our mind by purifying the obstructions of his presence being manifest in our mind.  The more faith we have that he has the power to respond to our request, the greater the power is the source of light.  Our request creates the cause for him to actually shine the light through our karmic potentialities.  The special idea that arises is the reflection of the light through the crystals that reflects the constellation of our karma.  This is our perfect response individually tailored to our karma.

There are some things we can consider about how to increase the power of this method.  First, the scope of the ‘special idea’ will correspond with the scope of our aspiration.  If our aspiration is worldly, the idea can be at a maximum worldly, if our scope is initial scope, the idea will correspond, etc.  Second, the purer the quality of the imprints we create, the clearer the will be the special idea, mental image or plan.  We will talk in the next post about how to create pure seeds.  Third, the quantity of imprints determines how much material the spiritual guide has to work with in shaping the plan.  Fourth, the less the ordinary mind is functioning, the clearer is the space within which the special idea is projected. The more I get my ordinary self out of the way, the clearer I will perceive the image because there will be less distortion.  The more willing I am to follow whatever is revealed, the more readily the special image will develop.  Fifth, the more familiarity I have with engaging in this practice, the easier it will get.  Sixth, the more faith that we have in the practice, the more rapidly will the special idea come.  Seventh, the longer we can maintain/sustain the motivation, the more complete and dynamic (in time, nuance, flexibility, etc.) the special idea will be.  Finally, eighth, the aspect of the Spiritual Guide to which you direct the request (Tara, Dorje Shugden, etc.) determines the nature or type of special idea or plan that emerges.

You can engage in this practice with all of your Dharma activities:  when preparing your teachings, when deciding what to meditate on, when making plans for the center or for your life, when thinking about how to help somebody, when posing any question, when doing sadhanas, when doing analytical meditation to generate object of placement meditation, when deciding what to do or say, when studying or contemplating, and when listening to teachings.

Through this practice, we can move beyond the books, from which we can only gain an intellectual understanding, to being personally guided, or taken by the hand, from where we are now to the final goal.  Likewise, we can know how to do the same for others (lead them by the hand to enlightenment).  Through mastering this technique, we can receive perfect inner guidance from our spiritual guide at any moment, and always know what to do.  With this ability, we will have nothing to fear and have infinite self-confidence.

Since much of this depends on faith, I want to just say a few words about faith in the Dharma.  Westerners have a natural resistance to faith because they associate faith with blind faith.  When we use the term faith in a Buddhist sense, we have a completely different understanding.  Blind faith is faith without a valid reason.  Believing faith is faith with a valid reason.  It is easiest way to understand believing faith by likening it to the scientific method.   In the scientific method, scientists have hypotheses which they then test.  A hypothesis is developed when they take all available information and come up with the most logical conclusion given that information.  Then they test that conclusion through experiments.  When they conduct their experiments, they then acquire new information with which they refine their hypotheses.  This is the type of faith we have in the Dharma.  Dharma is an inner science.

Believing faith is the strongest type of faith.  How do we develop believing faith?  There are several different methods we can use.  First, we can use the logical reasoning contained within the Lamrim to convince ourselves by weight of argument.  Second, we can be a good scientist and suspend our doubts about whether it works or not, and experiment with the instructions by putting them into practice purely.  From this we can see if they work.  Third, we can choose to believe.  Faith is a choice to believe.  What do we choose to believe?  That which is most beneficial to believe.  So we simply investigate whether it is beneficial to think in a particular way, and then we choose to do so.  Fourth, if you have previously gained conviction that your spiritual guide is a Buddha, and therefore completely reliable, then you can use the perfect logical syllogism which says, ‘the spiritual guide is omniscient and therefore completely reliable, he says X, therefore X is true.’  This is not blind faith because it is based on the valid reason that the spiritual guide is completely reliable.  You then use your powers of reasoning to fully understand from your own side.

At this point, it is useful to discuss the relationship between faith and wisdom.  This is best done through the faith wisdom cycle:  It starts with believing faith – we believe in the good qualities of the Dharma, for example, we believe that the spiritual guide is a Buddha.  Believing faith naturally leads to admiring faith – where we think, fantastic, how great.  We appreciate the good qualities of the observed object.  Admiring faith naturally evolves into wishing faith – the wish to acquire the good qualities of the spiritual guide ourself.  Wishing faith naturally leads to joyous effort – where we put the instructions into practice.  When we put the instructions into practice, we gain personal experience of their truth, which is wisdom.  We know the truth of the instruction from our own side.   This wisdom then functions as our next valid reason informing a now stronger believing faith, and so the cycle continues until we attain enlightenment.  This cycle is how we gain realizations, and all our practices should be organized into this cycle.

Everything in this series of posts is ultimately an extension of this advice.  This is the core of our reliance.

Cultivating healthy relationships: How to make peace instead of retaliate

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

When somebody harms us our first reaction is to retaliate.  We usually do this out of anger, with the wish to get the person back or teach them a lesson not to do this to us again in the future.  But in general, retaliation only makes the situation worse.  To understand this we need to examine who really benefits and who is really harmed when someone acts towards us in a way that would normally harm us.  If we check, we realize we actually benefit.  We have now paid off a long-standing karmic debt.  If we practice patience, our inner qualities are improved.  The other person loses – they create the causes to experience suffering in the future, and were miserable in the experience because they got angry.  It was our fault they did what they did to us anyway, since we created the cause for them to do it to us.  So actually it is we who should feel sorry towards the other person.

But non-retaliation does not mean that we become everyone’s favourite doormat, or that there aren’t circumstances where we need to be firm.  Here we make a distinction between wrathful actions and angry actions.  Anger is necessarily an uncontrolled deluded mind, whereas wrathful actions are engaged in with total control, knowing exactly what we are doing.  Anger is necessarily motivated by self-cherishing, whereas wrathful actions are necessarily motivated by compassion and the wish to help the other person.  We need to be honest with ourselves and check if it is sincerely for the sake of the other person that we are wrathful with them or are we just using Dharma to rationalize the conclusions of our self-cherishing and angry mind.  Anger is directed towards the another person, whereas wrathful actions are necessarily directed towards delusions.  Anger is directed towards anyone who harms us, whereas wrathful actions are generally directed towards those who have sufficient faith in us.  So we need to check how much faith the person has in us.  Anger is necessarily a reckless action, whereas wrathful actions require tremendous skill.  In general, they almost always backfire unless you have extreme skill.

How to resolve conflicts with others

What follows is some step-by-step advice we can follow for resolving conflicts with others:

  1. Face up to your own mistakes and faults.  The first step is admitting that you have done something wrong.  Normally we blame the other person for all conflicts, and then we come up with a million reasons justifying why we are faultless and they are to blame.  This just causes things to degenerate into a blame game, increasing defensiveness and the problems.  It is totally useless to do this because it leaves the solution to the problem in the court of the other person.  It is much better to take the responsibility all into our court, so that the solution is all in our court.  It is particularly useful to look at ourself from the perspective of the other person.  Try see yourself the way the other person sees you.  This will help you identify where you have made mistakes and will make your facing up to your faults more effective with the other person.  The key to wisdom is being able to view the world from the perspective of others.  By facing up to your own faults, and apologizing for what you have done wrong creates the space for the other person to do the same.  The key here is you need to be sincere.  It doesn’t work to just say, ‘it was all me’, when you don’t really believe that.  The key here is not to expect anything in return.  We can get mighty upset when we apologize for what we did wrong, and then the other person doesn’t reciprocate.  We should do the right thing, regardless of what the other person does.
  2. We need to relate to the other person’s pure intentions.  Nobody is evil in their own mind, even Stalin, Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden thought they were good.  So you need to put yourself into the mind of the other person and understand what their good intentions are, and relate to that.  A good example is those family members who care so much about you that they smother and control you because they cannot stand to see you suffer.  Of course, their controlling behaviour makes things worse, but it is coming from a good place.  Likewise, we all know people who want all the right things but they use all the wrong means to attain them.  By relating to the person’s pure potential, it functions to draw it out, and shows them that you understand their position.
  3. Start first by establishing common ground.  When we are in a conflict we tend to focus so much on the differences that we lose sight of the much more significant commonalities.  In most conflict situations, it is inappropriate attention to focus on the minor differences and neglect the vast swaths of commonality.  It is from the space of common ground that differences can be resolved.
  4. In working through the differences try the following approach:  For those issues which are not important, or you are wrong, graciously practice accepting defeat and offering the victory.  There are so many things that we fight for that are really irrelevant.  For those issues that are important and that there are differences on, stand your ground without getting angry and clarify your intention.

These steps will help lay the groundwork for de-escalating the conflict in your life.  The other person will see you are trying to make things better and you are trying to act constructively.  It is much harder to act unreasonably in response to somebody who is being reasonable and constructive.  This helps not only you, but it also helps them.

Finally, if we want to eliminate even the possibility of being harmed, we need to surrender our lives and our karma completely to our Dharma protector Dorje Shugden.  We get angry because we wish things were different than they are.  When we rely on Dorje Shugden, everything is perfect for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  The situation may be uncomfortable and even painful, but we will know it is good for us.  We will know it is by working through this emotional challenge that we will grow spiritually and move closer to enlightenment.  We will gain the realizations we need to help others in the future who are suffering from similar problems.  In short, our difficulties will have a clear spiritual purpose.  If we genuinely feel that things are indeed “perfect”, then there is no basis for us wishing things were different than they are.  Therefore, there will be no basis for an angry response to arise in our mind when we are harmed.  Conflict may still occur, but we will not experience that conflict as a problem.  Through our not adding fuel to the fires of anger in the world, gradually the relationships around us will become increasingly harmonious, peaceful and rewarding.

Cultivating healthy relationships: How to resolve conflicts in our relationships

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Cultivating healthy relationships with others


For most people, conflict is the main problem they have in their relationships.  There is virtually no one who does not have conflict in their relationships.  In this post I will try explain what are the causes of conflict in our relationships, how to overcome our own anger and how to resolve conflicts with others

What are the causes of conflict in our relationships

Self-cherishing is the root cause of all problems in our relationships.  It is because we are pursuing our own interests, often at the expense of others, that our relationships have difficulties and conflict.  From self-cherishing comes attachment – where we view other people as a cause of our happiness.  They are there to make us happy.  From self-cherishing also comes anger – the mind that things that other people are the cause of our suffering.

So how does attachment cause problems in our relationships:  mostly through our expectations of others.  We expect so many things of others, and then when they don’t live up to our expectations of them, we feel like they have failed us, and we are unhappy or angry.  We have expectations that others treat us in a certain way, for example talking to us in a certain way or treating us with respect. We have expectations that others do or not do certain things for us, for example our parents paying for our university or our partner bringing us flowers on Valentine’s day.  We have expectations that others behave in a particular way, for example of wanting our kids to go to bed. But others did not ask us to have these expectations of them, so it is mighty unfair to judge them when they don’t live up to them.

So how does anger create problems in our relationships?  We can get angry about anything and anger always makes the situation worse.  It always escalates the conflict or harm.  Even if we deter the other person from doing what we don’t want with our anger, we just create resentment which provokes other problems, it leaves us miserable and from a spiritual perspective, it destroys all our merit.

How do we overcome our own anger in our relationships?

In the final analysis, it is better to have zero expectations of anyone or anything.  Then we are never disappointed.  Take the example of how we are all taught to manage the expectations of our boss.  If he gives us some project to do and asks us how long do we think it will take to complete it, we always give ourselves a little more time than we will actually need.  Why do we do this?  If we think the project is going to take us 1.5 weeks to complete and we say that, then if we turn it in in 1.5 weeks it will be expected and if it takes longer than 1.5 weeks we are late.  If instead we say 2 weeks, then if we turn it in after 1.5 weeks we are a hero, whereas if we turn it in in 2 weeks it is not a problem.  We manage our boss’ expectations.  But we need to manage our own expectations of others.  If we expect great things – or for that matter, if we expect anything – from others, then we set ourselves up for disappointment.  If they meet our expectations, we are not happy because it was expected.  If they fall short of our expectations, we are unhappy.  Either way we lose.  If instead we expect absolutely nothing from others, then even the smallest thing they do will exceed our expectations and we will be happy and grateful.  Ironically, by expecting nothing of others we can become grateful for everything.

In every situation if we check carefully we will see there are two possibilities:  We can do something about it or we can’t.  If we can do something about it, we should do so.  Then no problem.  No need to make a big drama out of it (which we usually do).  If we can’t do something about it, then we practice patient acceptance.  This is a mind that happily and wholeheartedly accepts difficult situations.  It is not just bear with it, but genuinely welcome the situation.  Since there is nothing you can do about it, you have a choice of either be upset about the unavoidable or transform the experience into something meaningful.  If with two cancer patients, one accepts their illness and the other does not, surely the latter suffers far more.

How do we practice patient acceptance?  We find ways of transforming the situation into an opportunity to increase our own inner qualities. We consider the situation a lesson in the law of karma.  We created the cause to experience whatever is happening to us.  So we are paying off a long-standing debt – like paying off the last mortgage payment.  We can use the situation to increase our determination to treat others as we would want to be treated:  kindly.  It is important to not feel any guilt here.  Guilt differs from regret in two ways:  (1) regret is forward looking, and (2) regret blames our delusions (not ourselves).  We can consider it a lesson in the need to overcome our delusions.  The only reason why we suffer in a situation is because we respond to it in a deluded way, and because motivated by delusions we created the karmic cause to experience this problem.  So we can identify what delusions are present in our mind, and try to overcome them.  We can consider it a lesson in compassion for others.  Others are suffering from far worse, and so instead of thinking about ourselves, we can think about others and generate the compassionate wish to actively dedicate ourselves to helping relieve others of their suffering.

In the next post we will talk about how to not-retaliate, and instead to make peace.

 

Cultivating healthy relationships: Motivation for series

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

The goal of this series of posts is to examine some of the Kadampa tools we have available for making our relationships more healthy, stable and rewarding.  Ever since the publication of Modern Buddhism, the main mission of the tradition has been to attain the union of Kadam Dharma and modern life.  Our modern lives are the field of our practice of the Kadam Dharma.  Just as there is the field of accumulating merit and the field of all living beings, so too there is the field of our practice.  The field of our practice is like our personally emanated training ground/camp to forge us into the Buddha we need to become.  If we wish, our drill sergeant can be Dorje Shugden.  Part of our modern life is our modern relationships with other modern people.  Conventionally, we can’t accomplish anything, spiritual or worldly, if we don’t know how to maintain good relationships with everyone.  Ultimately, we cannot attain enlightenment until we realize the emptiness of all other beings and our relationships with them.  We see them all as the dance of the fabric of our mind.

Will part of our motivation for wanting to fix our relationships be worldly?  Of course it will.  This is normal.  When we all come into the Dharma, one of the main reasons is because our relationships are so bad and we are seeking some solutions.  Learning these methods for worldly reasons is not bad.  Seeking the solution to our worldly problems with spiritual means is better than seeking solutions to our worldly problems with worldly means.  We don’t stop doing the right thing if our motivation is less than perfect.  We will want to do so for both worldly and spiritual reasons in the beginning, but over time the spiritual reasons will gradually purify the worldly ones until eventually our motivation is entirely spiritual.

There are no quick fix solutions to problems with our relationships, but there are proven methods for gradually breaking free from all dysfunctional patterns in our relationships.  I want to make this series of posts very relevant to our actual modern life situations.  If all of this remains academic information, there is actually little value.  We need to dig deep into our actual situations, and try come up with more healthy ways to deal with them.  As you read through these posts, I encourage you to try think of them directly in the context of your relationships.  Mentally try these ideas to see how they might work.  Please also feel free to post questions in the comments section and I will try answer them.  If we do this, we will also be able to learn from other’s situations as well.  This is why the Facebook groups are so important.  They enable us all to learn from one another and keep the Dharma relevant to our lives.  We should not expect that just because we read a few posts on a blog that we are going to be able to fix all our problems in our relationships.  Our goal should be to gain some valuable tools, and to get yourself started on a fresh way of approaching our situation.

This series of posts will have three main parts:  The first is “what is a healthy relationship”, the second is “how to resolve conflict in our relationships”, and the third is “how to bring out the best in others and ourselves.”

Before we begin with the topic, it is worthwhile going back to basics.  We all want happiness all of the time.  We mistakenly think our happiness depends upon external things, and as a result certain external things are seen as causes of our happiness and other external things are seen as causes of our suffering.  We will then develop attachment for the former and aversion for the latter.  But the reality is our happiness is a state of mind, it is an internal feeling.  Since its effect is internal, its cause must be so also.  The cause of happiness is inner peace.  When our mind is at peace, we will feel happy even in the worst of external conditions.  When our peace of mind has been disturbed, we will feel unhappy even in the best of external conditions.  From this, we can see that the essential condition for happiness is inner peace.  This then raises the question, “what is the cause of inner peace?”  Delusions, by definition, function to destroy our inner peace.  We know a particular mind is a delusion if it functions to destroy our inner peace.  In other words, any mind that destroys our inner peace is, by definition, what we call a delusion.  In the same way, virtuous states of mind, by definition cause our mind to become more peaceful.  We know a state of mind is a virtuous one if it functions to make our mind more peaceful.  All of Dharma practice, therefore, is training our mind to abandon its delusions and train our mind to cultivate virtuous states of mind.  The more we do this, the more peaceful our mind will become in all circumstances, and the happier we will be all of the time.

In the context of our relationships, we have countless opportunities to do this.  Some relationships generate delusions in us, such as attachment and anger; and some relationships generate virtuous state of mind in us, such as love and caring.  Most relationships have a mixture of both.  If we want to make our relationships healthy, stable and meaningful, we seek to abandon all deluded reactions on our part in our relationships and instead cultivate only virtuous responses to whatever may arise.  By learning how to do this, and by transforming any adversities that come our way, we will position our mind in a space where no matter what happens in our relationships, good or bad, it will function to generate virtuous states of mind in us.  In this space, even if there are problems in our relationship, they won’t be “problems” for us – they will be just another opportunity to practice abandoning harming others and learning to cherish them fully.

We have no control over what other’s do, so our main focus should be on getting our own actions correct.  We waste so much time thinking about what others need to do to change, and we fail to look at what we need to do.  We need to reverse this.  We need to redefine the problem.  Normally we define our problems in our relationships in external terms:  what others are doing, whether we are with somebody or not, and so forth.  Here we make an important distinction between situations and problems.  The situation is what it is, but whether it is a problem or not depends upon our mind.  It is our mind that makes our situation a problem.  Geshe-la says we should distinguish the outer problem from the inner problem.  He uses the example of a car that has broken down.  Normally, we say, “I have a problem.”  But this is not correct, the car has a problem.  Whether we have a problem depends on how our mind relates to the outer problem.  If our reaction is deluded, then we have an inner problem.  If our reaction is virtuous, then we have no inner problem, and we remain happy.  Our focus here will be to redefine our problem to be how our mind relates to the situation, not the situation itself.  The advantage of this is it puts you in total control of your own experience.  Geshe-la gives the example of imagine we had to cross a large, rocky surface.  What would make more sense, covering the entire surface with leather or just covering our feet.  It is certainly more efficient to just cover our feet.  In the same way, when we are confronted with the endless series of outer problems we call samsara, we have a choice:  either try make the external conditions exactly as we want them all of the time (good luck with that!) or we learn to make our mind react virtuously to whatever arises.  Surely a more effective strategy.

Whether we are happy or not in a situation depends 100% on our mind, and actually has nothing to do with the external situation.  It is our belief that we have no choice about our emotional response to the world we experience that leaves us the constant victim, and creates all our problems.  When we accept that it all depends upon our mind then we take things completely into the domain of something that we have total control over, namely our reaction to events, a solution becomes possible.  As long as we condition the solution to our problems on what others do, then our freedom will always be arbitrary, fragile, and outside our control. True happiness is inner peace, the ability to remain calm and positive regardless of our external situation.

The main focus of this series of posts is give us the internal tools we need to learn how to interact in our relationships in a more beneficial way.  We will explore more beneficial ways of looking at the situations we face, and we will find ways of being able to grow internally from every situation, regardless of whether it is good or bad externally.  If we can do this, then even if we remain in a difficult situation, for us it is good and we grow from it.  Our external sitaution may not have changed, but its status as a ‘problem’ for us has changed.  The extent to which we are happy depends upon the degree to which we have beneficial, healthy states of mind.

Cultivating true self-confidence: How to fully seize the opportunity you now have (final post in series)

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Cultivating a true self-confidence

In this series of posts, I have done my best to explain my understanding of how we generate a reliable basis for generating self-confidence and then how we actually practice cultivating self-confidence.  In this last post, I will try explain what helps me overcome my laziness and indeed light a fire in my heart.

The first thing to do is to meditate again and again upon dying full of regrets.  Imagine that you arrive at your deathbed and your spiritual guide shows you what all you could have accomplished if only you had been motivated enough.  You could have accomplished all spiritual goals and lead countless others to the same state.  You could have caused your local center to flourish and enabled countless people to make contact with the Dharma – actually engaging in a Bodhisattva’s actions.  But instead you listened to and followed your laziness and attachment and anger, and accomplished nothing.  You have used up all the Dharma karma and now will fall into the lower realms where you will remain for aeons once again saving up your spiritual pennies.  Use this meditation to arrive at the conclusion that you will not let this happen to you.

Second, we need to realize that this moment is the one in which we can fulfil our spiritual destiny.  We wouldn’t go to school for years and years only to at the last minute not finish.  We wouldn’t run for political office our whole career and win the election to presidency and then not show up for the job.  Allow yourself to really feel this epic opportunity.  Meditate again and again on the opportunity you now have and that you have everything in front of you to accomplish everything.  The only thing you have to do is pick up what Geshe-la has given you.  The only thing standing in your way is the strength and purity of your motivation.  If you work on that, then you will have everything.

Third, we should appreciate the high stakes for the success of your practice, our local center and our tradition.  If you don’t attain enlightenment, everyone you know and love will fall into samsara and be lost for as long as it takes you to get out.  All the people who are depending upon your future students are also depending upon you, and so forth.  There are literally countless beings whose fate depends upon your actions in this life.  Our local Dharma centers are like an Embassy for all the Buddhas in our area.  It is our job to make it happen for the people of our respective areas.  If we don’t make it happen, it won’t happen for them at all.  When you see others you should think, ‘this person is depending upon me.’

On this basis, we should cherish our local Dharma center.  Through our local Dharma center we can accomplish everything.   Geshe-la has put everything at our feet.  We simply need to pick it up and use it.  We can accomplish with our local center what Geshe-la has accomplished with Manjushri center.  And we will have it much easier than he did because he has already written all the books and practices, established the study programmes, etc.  We just need to use it.  Venerable Tharchin says every person who walks into the center he views as the future saviour of all.  This is true.  This is a very literal statement.  We need to adopt this view, and cherish others accordingly.  The karma we accumulate working for the center continues to accumulate for as long as the center exists.

At a personal level, we need to quit hedging and holding ourself back.   Normally we have one foot in our practice and one foot in samsara – hedging our bets. What are we hedging on samsara for.  We already know enough Dharma to know it is a dead end and has no prospect for giving us anything.  Do something different with your life.  Really make a decision to go for it with all you’ve got.  Burn all the bridges to samsara and never look back.

With our relationship to our tradition, we need to allow ourself to be influenced by the three jewels and especially Shantideva.  We need to be careful about what we allow to influence us, so we need to check carefully that these things are of quality and value.  But once we have done that, then we need to make the decision to allow them to influence us.  Allow them to change us.  Yes, this will mean changes which are sometimes difficult, but this is a small price to pay for unspeakably fantastic goals.  In particular, you need to allow yourself to be influenced by Shantideva.  He pulls no punches and if you allow yourself to be influenced by him nothing will ever be the same.  You will leave behind your meaningless worldly life and embark upon a spiritual journey beyond your wildest dreams.

The choice is yours.

 

I dedicate any merit I may have collected from doing this series of posts so that all Kadampas may generate a vajra-like confidence in themselves, their practice, their tradition and our larger purpose.  Our tradition has been reborn into the modern world.  We have been reborn into our vajra family.  Now let us go do what we came here for.