6. Special series

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Keep your daily practice alive

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

Sometimes our family or partner may create obstacles to our doing our meditation practice, feeling we should be spending time with them instead.  There are several solutions to this problem.  First, wake up earlier and do your practice when everyone else is asleep.  The reason why we are exhausted at the end of each day is because our delusions tire us out.  We will be far more rested sleeping seven hours and meditating one hour than sleeping eight hours for the simple reason that we won’t be carrying around as heavy of a burden of delusions throughout the day.

Second, we should ask ourselves, “what does my partner/family want from me?”  Then, show with your actions, not your words, that the more you practice the more you become what they want from you.  They want you to be a good spouse, parent or whatever.  Show them that when you do your practice, you are able to be a better spouse, parent, etc.  When they make the connection between your practice and what they want from you, then you doing your practice will become a priority for them.  Then, those who created obstacles to your practice will go from being an obstacle to your practice to becoming the Dharma police making sure you did your practice that day!  Third, you should save up all of your relationship capital for one purpose alone – the ability to do your practice.  Ask for nothing else other than time to do your practice.  Let the rest of your family choose where you go out to dinner, what movies you watch, what you do on the weekends.  If the only thing you ask for is the time to do your practice, your family will come to understand that it is important to you and they will come to respect it.

Outside of our formal meditation session, we should try make effort to practice Dharma all day long.  Make a list of all of the routine things you do every day, such as getting ready in the morning, transporting your body from one place to another, eating, going to the bathroom, going to bed, sleeping, etc.  Then, make it a habit to always do the same mental practice every time you engage in this daily activity.  For me, when I am getting ready in the morning, I mentally engage in purification practice.  When I am transporting my body around, I recite either the “single pointed request” or the “Eight lines of praise to the Father.”  When I am eating, I imagine I am making offerings to my Spiritual Guide at my heart.  When I am going to the bathroom I imagine I am dispelling delusions and impurities from my body.  When I go to bed, I usually read my Dharma books, and as I go to sleep I contemplate what I just read and then engage in the yoga of sleeping.  The point is make it routine.  When it is routine, we remember to practice; when it is not, we don’t.  Every time we practice Dharma we create the cause to encounter it again in the future.  Where do we encounter it?  Usually in a Dharma center.

Christians, Jews and Muslims all have a tradition of keeping the Sabbath.  The Sabbath is a special day set aside for receiving spiritual teachings, remembering their meaning and making a special point to put them into practice.  Some people criticize saying people are spiritual on Sunday, but then act like a jerk the rest of the week.  But isn’t it better to set one day aside for spiritual practice than none at all?  Again, some is always better than none.  While as Kadampas we do not have a tradition of the Sabbath, I see no reason why we cannot also make this a tradition of our own.  Even if we do not go to the center on this day, we can mentally dedicate at least one day a week to primarily focusing on our spiritual trainings, or at least focus more so than we usually do on other days.  We should likewise come to view our gompa area in our home as our personal Dharma center.  It does not matter if we do not have a special room for our meditation practice, even a small corner of our bedroom can be mentally transformed into a holy place.  Just this one mental recognition alone enables us to have a daily relationship with our Dharma center.

Many years ago when the New York Temple was being finished, Geshe-la gave Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments at a hotel nearby.  During that festival, I met a guy named Jerry.  Jerry had spent the last several years in a nearby Federal prison, and he had many years left to go on his sentence.  For most people, prison is hell on earth.  For him, his prison cell was Milarepa’s cave.  Somebody, at some point, made an offering of Ocean of Nectar to the prison.  For those not familiar with this book, Ocean of Nectar is by far the hardest and least accessible of all of Geshe-la’s books.  But Jerry was seized by the book.  He studied it thoroughly, memorized the root text and the condensed meaning, and spent many hours each day mixing his mind with and meditating on its meaning.  He told me, “there is no prison.”  Somehow, he found out that Geshe-la was giving Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments, and he worked really hard to be a model inmate to earn a furlough to be able to attend the empowerments.  At the end of the festival, with a copy of Joyful Path of Good Fortune, Meaningful to Behold and Essence of Vajrayana in hand, he eagerly looked forward to going to back to spending 20+ hours a day in his prison cell so he could put his newly acquired Dharma into practice.  Prior to coming to that Festival, Jerry had never stepped foot in a Dharma center, but I think we would all agree he had spent more time in a “Dharma center” than most of us.  If Jerry could view his cell as his center, surely we can do the same with our meditation corner at home.

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Doing the best we can to approximate a center

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

If there is a center in our area but for other reasons we do not have regular access to it, there are many things we can still do.  First, we should try, if we can, to make it to at least one big festival per year; or every other year, or every fifth year, something, anything, whatever our karma will allow.  Going to a festival when we haven’t been to one for some time functions to put our spiritual train back on the tracks and realigns ourselves with the general flow of the tradition in this world.  We are able to receive oral transmission blessings (vitally important and vastly underappreciated), reconnect with our spiritual friends, have one-on-one meetings with our Dharma teachers, rediscover our love of Dharma, remember why spiritual practice is important, receive profound teachings and of course let go of attachment to a warm shower!  We should never make the mistake of thinking if we can’t do it all we shouldn’t do anything.  A little is always better than nothing.  Likewise, in our local area, we should try make it to the center whenever our karma allows, even if that is only once a year – even if it is just to touch base.  If we have strained relationships with everybody at the center, go when nobody is around, do the offering bowls in the gompa, sit and have a private conversation with Geshe-la’s picture, clean the bathroom and then slip out before anybody even knows you were there if you have to.  The point is make it a priority to keep the link alive.

For whatever reason, many people are unable to keep all of the different commitments of the study programs; and some teachers and center administrators will unskillfully tell such people if they can’t do it all they can’t do anything.  But even if that is the case, we can sometimes still do classes by correspondence.  When we do do classes by correspondence, we should try to make it to the center at least once a year, or even just do a Skype meeting with our teacher for the oral transmission blessings of the condensed meaning of the text.  We can also perhaps do the Special Teacher Training Program through London.  There are also quite a few YouTube videos of excerpts of festival teachings.  Fortunately, there are now a wide variety of Facebook groups for Kadampas, such as Students and Followers of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Kadampa Prayer Request and Kadampa Rejoicing Group.  These groups enable us to maintain daily karmic connection with our Sangha friends around the world, ask Dharma questions, make prayer requests and rejoice in the spiritual practices of fellow Kadampas worldwide.  Social media websites are not inherently good or bad, it is how we use them that determines their meaning in our lives.

The function of training in our refuge vows is to maintain the continuum of our spiritual practice without interruption between now and our eventual enlightenment.  Keeping our vows karmically functions to place a spiritual safety net underneath us so that we do not fall from our precious human life.  What makes our life precious is the opportunity it affords us to practice Dharma.  It is perfectly possible for our spiritual life to die before our physical life does, but keeping our refuge vows protects us from that fate.  Geshe-la has synthesized our refuge commitments into three:  make effort to receive blessings from Buddha, make effort to put the Dharma into practice and make effort to receive help from Sangha.  How to receive blessings will be discussed extensively in later posts.  Here, I will focus on practically what it means to make effort to practice Dharma and to receive help from our Sangha friends in the context of not having regular access to a Dharma center.

Our ultimate refuge is our own practice of Dharma.  Buddha and Sangha are like special helpers.  Broadly speaking, to practice Dharma means to use the Dharma to solve our inner problems of delusions and negative karma.  Every time we put effort into practicing Dharma we create the causes to encounter it again in the future.  This is the most valuable karma we can create for ourselves, because only Dharma can provide us with a lasting solution to our problems.  Our most important Dharma practice is our daily, formal meditation practice.  We should view this as the core activity of our life.  We would scarcely go a day without eating or sleeping, in a similar way we should almost never go a day without engaging in our formal meditation practice.  We almost never neglect to charge our mobile phone for the day, how much more so should we not neglect our daily practice.  In the final analysis, either we organize our meditation practice around our day or we organize our day around our meditation practice.  If we do the former, it is almost impossible to maintain a consistent daily practice; and without a consistent daily practice, progress along the path is nearly impossible.  The Grand Canyon was carved by a small amount of water running consistently over a very long period of time.

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Why Dharma centers are important

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

Practical steps for making manifest a center in our life

Dharma centers are important, very important.  But they arise only in dependence upon many different causes and conditions and they take on a variety of different forms.  If for whatever reason we do not have regular access to one we should take it as a sign that our job is to create the causes and conditions for one to appear in a way that we are able to easily and happily partake of it.

The primary cause for the appearance of a Dharma center in our life is the strong wish for it to do so.  If we don’t have this wish, even if we physically live in one, a “Dharma center” will not appear in our life.  To help us develop this wish, we can consider what Geshe-la has said about Dharma centers.

To begin, I would like to tell you that everybody should recognize how important Dharma centers are.  Teachers, managers and students should recognize that Dharma centers are extremely important for ourselves, our families and the general public.  Without Dharma centers, it is very difficult to maintain a pure spiritual life.  It is close to impossible to maintain a Bodhisattva’s way of life.  Without maintaining a Buddhist way of life, it is difficult to make progress on the spiritual path which gives us the real meaning of our human life.  …  With a connection to a Dharma center, we have the possibility to improve ourselves thanks to the Dharma.  Without Dharma centers, a meaningful life is difficult to find for ourselves, our family and others.  First, we must enjoy being in a Dharma center.  Then, everyone else, such as our parents, the other members of our family and our friends, will understand that we are happy, then they will rejoice for us and create a link with us.

Sometimes those who do not have regular access to a Dharma center can fall into the extreme of thinking Dharma centers are not important.  This is wrong.  As Geshe-la says, we must all recognize the importance of Dharma centers while we accept that our presently not having regular access to one is exactly perfect for our spiritual development.  Why?  Because of the opportunities not having one gives us to create the causes to have one appear in our life.

If we don’t have a Dharma center in our area, do what it takes to set one up.  Find other people in the area who are also interested in setting up a center and work with them to make it happen.  Contact the NKT office and ask them if they know of anybody else in our area who has expressed similar interest.  Write Geshe-la requesting a teacher be sent.  Invite the nearest National Spiritual Director to come give a public talk.  Start doing pujas together, even if it is just two of you (or even if you are alone).  Imagine that all of the people of your city are doing the pujas with you, making the strong request for a Dharma center to appear in your city.  Geshe-la has said his vision is for there to eventually be a Kadampa temple in every major city of the world.  This happening in our city may very well depend upon our personal wish.

There was a woman in Santa Barbara whose name was Lea.  She was all alone in her wish to establish a center, but she nurtured it and did everything it took to make it happen.  Through her unwavering wish and unending hard work, a center was eventually established in Santa Barbara.  Then Geshe-la came and did a California tour, and he wrote part of Essence of Vajrayana at this center.  Because that center was established, the Dharma came to Southern California.  From that center, eventually Los Angeles opened up as a “branch” of Santa Barbara.  Now there is a thriving spiritual community in the greater L.A. area, and this is just the beginning.  If the center in Santa Barbara did not exist, I would not be in the Dharma today.  If Lea had not had her initial wish, none of what currently exists and none of what is to come in Southern California would be.  It is said that the merit we accumulate from helping our Dharma center continues to grow for as long as the center exists.  The story of Lea and the Dharma in Southern California shows us how.

 

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Dispelling wrong views

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

Dispelling wrong views about spiritual life when access to a center is difficult

It goes without saying that regular access to a Dharma center is good thing.  Geshe-la would not have worked so hard to establish Dharma centers around the world, nor implore us to help contribute to their development, if they were not supremely sacred objects in this world.  When explaining how one can nonetheless make spiritual progress without regular access to a center, there is a danger that some will misunderstand what is being said to mean Dharma centers are not important and we don’t need to make effort to make them part of our life.  Some people who do have regular access to a center think it is good if people think it is “bad” to not have regular access because then they will be motivated to overcome their “obstacles.”  Sometimes this is motivated by a genuine belief that regular access to a center is a necessary condition for spiritual progress, sometimes it is motivated by a perhaps unacknowledged attachment to people coming to the center.  Regardless of the reasons, some people are reluctant to explain how one can still make progress without regular access to a center.  I would say if one truly is compassionately motivated to help people gain regular access to a center they need to help people transform life without such access.  Why?  Because transforming our life in this way creates the karmic causes to one day have regular access.  And in the meantime, it enables people to get on with their spiritual life without grasping at “phantom obstacles” to their practice.

The first and most important thing to realize is all lives are equally empty, so they are all equally transformable into the quick path to enlightenment.  It is perfectly possible for somebody to have regular access to a Dharma center and teachings, yet make no spiritual progress at all; and likewise it is possible for somebody to never set foot in a Dharma center and make rapid progress to enlightenment.  To go one step further, all Dharma centers are equally empty.  Externally, all the trappings of a Dharma center may be present, but the members of the community lack, in Venerable Tharchin’s words, “realizations bound together by mutual love for one another;” and it is likewise possible that none of the external trappings of a center be present, but one nonetheless feels like they live every day in a Dharma center.  Some people, for example, are unable to make it to a Dharma festival.  But if during the time of the festival, the practitioner adopts “a festival mind” then everything that happens to them during festival time will be, for them, their “festival.”  Whether we have regular access to a Dharma center is, in the final analysis, a state of mind.  As soon as we adopt this state of mind, regardless of where we externally might find ourselves, we can validly experience ourselves as “being in a Dharma center.”

The difference between a qualified Dharma practitioner and a qualified Dharma teacher is similar to the difference between somebody who drives to work every day and a taxi driver.  Somebody who drives themselves around might know very well how to get from their home to their work in the city center, and they may even know a few short cuts which enable them to avoid most of the traffic.  But if you ask them how to get to their work starting from someplace else, they wouldn’t know.  An experienced taxi driver, however, knows all of the different routes one can take to get to the city center, regardless of where somebody started out.  They know all the routes, and indeed shortcuts, starting from anywhere to anywhere.  In the same way, a qualified Dharma practitioner will know how to transform the life they have led into the quick path to the City of Enlightenment, and they may even know a few shortcuts along the way; but they do not necessarily know how to transform a life other than their own into the quick path.  A qualified Dharma teacher, in contrast, is like a taxi driver that understands we all have our own unique karmic starting point on the spiritual path and so the route we each take to enlightenment will necessarily be different.  Understanding this, over the span of many years working with a wide variety of different practitioners, they become like a skilled taxi driver who knows how to get from anywhere to the enlightened city center.

Problems arise, though, when a practitioner first makes the transition to becoming a teacher and they mistakenly grasp at there being only one way – the way they just took.  As a result, the advice they give might be perfectly appropriate for somebody who is travelling the path as they have; but perfectly wrong for somebody who is beginning their trip from a different karmic starting point.  It is possible, for example, that abandoning our kids, jobs and families is the right thing to do for one person; this does not mean, however, it is the right thing to do for everybody else.  I have found that most of the Dharma advice people give is, if we check, the rationalizations we ourselves have used to make the spiritual decisions we have made.  Such thinking may be right for us, but we should be careful in assuming it is equally right for everybody else.  In a similar way, when we receive Dharma advice from our teachers or spiritual friends, we should always keep in mind that just because a certain way of doing things worked for others doesn’t necessarily mean that same way will work for us.  It is easy to become attached to what our teachers and spiritual friends think of us, and when we feel they are judging us for making what they consider to be wrong spiritual choices it hurts.  When this happens, people usually fall into one of two extremes, either they assume the teacher is right and start making choices that might not make sense given their individual context; or they assume the teacher is wrong, wind up losing faith and abandoning everything.  The middle way is to understand what the teacher is saying was right for them, but we need to check and see if what they are saying is right for us as well.

In the end, our job is very simple.  We need to do our best to make it to Dharma centers or Dharma teachings when we can, but accept our karma when we can’t.  We need to surrender our life and our karma to Dorje Shugden, our Dharma Protector, requesting that he transform our life into our Dharma teachings and wherever we are into our Dharma center.  Dorje Shugden’s job is to arrange the perfect outer and inner conditions necessary for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  Some people mistakenly believe he can only do so with our virtuous karma, but in reality he is especially skilled at transforming the ripening of our “negative karma” into our most transformative Dharma teachings.  If he can transform our worst negative karma into the path, then certainly he has the power to transform whatever happens in our life into a “Dharma teaching” and wherever we might find ourselves into our “Dharma center.”

Many of us grasp onto a fixed notion of what it means to lead a spiritual life, namely somebody who leaves behind the worlds of work and family to dedicate themselves to a life of meditation, retreat and working for the center.  It is true, this is one way to lead one’s spiritual life, one that we should deeply rejoice in; but by no means is it the only way.  After the publication of Modern Buddhism, Geshe-la said our mission now is to “attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and modern life.”  Modern lives are incredibly diverse in nature, and all of them have equal potential to be quick paths.  Due to karma accumulated over countless previous lives, we find ourselves with some form of modern life – whatever form that might be.  Our job is to bring the Kadam Dharma into our life and realize the union of the two.  Time and time again, Geshe-la has said, “everyone needs Kadam Dharma.”  This does not mean everyone needs to become Buddhist, it means everyone can beneficially bring Kadampa wisdom into their lives.  The only way they will be able to do so is if we, the Kadampa practitioners of this world, learn how to do the same.  If we grasp at the Kadam Dharma only being practicable in a single type of life, its reach in this world will be extremely limited.  If instead we learn how to bring the Kadam Dharma into any life, we will help fulfill Geshe-la’s vision of bringing into everyone’s life.  In short, as Venerable Tharchin says, we each need to “assume our place in the mandala.”  We each have a role to play, and that role is to show how whatever life we may have (including one that does not have regular access to a Dharma center) can be a quick path to enlightenment.

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Motivation for series

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

This series of posts is written for the benefit of all those who, for whatever reason, are unable to have regular access to a Dharma center and Dharma teachings.  I have attempted to gather in one place my own experience and understanding for how it is not only possible to continue to make progress when access to a center is difficult, but it is also possible to spiritually thrive.  This series is additionally written in the hope that those who do have regular access to a Dharma center might be able to better understand, accept and help those who don’t.  It will hopefully also be useful for all practitioners who wish to receive a constant stream of Dharma teachings every day.  This is not to say Dharma centers are not important, rather it is to say our understanding of them is too narrow.  Our Spiritual Guide is providing all of us without exception access to Dharma centers and Dharma teachings every single day, regardless of how the world might conventionally appear to us.

The kindness of our Spiritual Guide in establishing Dharma centers, temples and study programs around the world is unequaled.  Without this basic spiritual infrastructure we would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make the journey to enlightenment.  Through his provision of these things, he has created for us magical transporters that connect our home towns to the city of enlightenment.  Gen-la Losang said Dharma centers are like Embassies of the Pure Land in this world.  Dharma centers accomplish two main functions.  First, they provide us with regular access to qualified teachings; and second, they provide a focal point for connecting with and building up pure spiritual communities in this world.  Venerable Tharchin says a Dharma center is not the bricks and mortar, though they of course matter, rather a Dharma center is the “collection of spiritual realizations of its practitioners bound together by their mutual love for one another.”   When we understand the nature of samsara, there is quite literally nothing more precious in this world than this basic spiritual infrastructure.

For a wide variety of reasons, though, not everyone has easy access to a Dharma center and Dharma teachings.  Some people simply live far away from the closest center, some live in countries where Dharma centers are not allowed, some lack the financial means to get to and participate in the center’s activities, some have family or work obligations which make it difficult to come to the center as often as they would like.  Some people have physical constraints which prevent them from coming, such as disabilities, illness or old age.  Some people have mental constraints, such as strong delusions, wrong views, or simply a failure to understand the importance of receiving teachings or being involved with a spiritual community.  Some people may simply lack the karma to be able to make it to the center, others may love the teachings but may have strained relationships with certain members of the Sangha or the institution of the “NKT.”  Some people, sadly, are simply not made to feel welcome at their local Dharma center, even though our Spiritual Guide has made it clear that the sign hanging over the center door reads, “Everybody Welcome.”  Whatever the reasons, it happens that practitioners will sometimes find it difficult to have regular access to Dharma teachings and a Dharma center.

When this happens, it can be a real problem for people.  They can come to view everything in their life that prevents them from making it to the center as an obstacle to their spiritual progress, giving rise to all sorts of anxiety, worry, inner turmoil and family conflict.  They then wrongly conclude that they cannot practice Dharma, and either postpone or even abandon their spiritual life.  It does not help that some of those who do have regular access to a Dharma center, including some teachers, lack the spiritual imagination to see how one can transform such a circumstance into the path.  As a result, those who do lack regular access can feel judged as lacking spiritual commitment or looked down upon as being spiritually lazy.  Since their teachers or spiritual friends are assenting to the view that there is only one way of fully committing oneself to the practice of Dharma, people who cannot live their life in that image continue to grasp at these constraints as inherently being obstacles to their spiritual practice.  Like old people and some other marginalized groups I have written about before, people whose access to a center is difficult “experience many special sorrows.”  In my view, all of this is completely unnecessary.

To understand why, in this series of posts I will first attempt to dispel some wrong views about spiritual life when access to a center is difficult, then I will explain some practical steps we can take to make manifest a Dharma center in our life.  I will then explain how we can receive individualized Dharma teachings through our every experience, and I will conclude by sharing some special advice Geshe-la has given us for how to receive perfectly reliable inner guidance from him every day.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Dedication for entire series

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

This series is by far the biggest series of posts I have ever done.  My goal in doing so was to clarify my own thinking on how to practice the vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism in the context of my modern life.  I have generally neglected my practice of moral discipline, but now I see it as the foundation of everything else.  I can only hope that those reading along have also found something useful.

I dedicate all of the merit I have collected by writing and sharing these posts so that myself and all living beings are never separated from the joy of moral discipline.  Through our training in moral discipline, may we maintain an uninterrupted continuum in all our future lives of our Buddhist path, our path to liberation, our path to enlightenment, our path of Highest Yoga Tantra, and in particular our path of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  May we all progressively take higher and higher rebirth until we attain the highest of all, full enlightenment.

 

Tomorrow, I land in Taiwan, where I will be posted for four years.  My project while there will be to go through all of Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, and explain how I try to integrate Shantideva’s teachings into a modern life.  It should be about a four year project, one I hope to finish by the time I leave.

 

 

 

 

 

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Masturbation and losing your drops

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

It is worth saying a few words about masturbation.  In the last vow, we were advised to not lose our drops.  In many religious traditions, it is considered a “sin.”  After reading this vow, one could think the same is true in Buddhism and then we wind up imputing all sorts of Western guilt onto the act.  We construct it as this awful thing we must not do, but eventually the strength of our attachment gets the better of us, we do it, then afterwards we proceed to beat ourselves up about what an idiot we are, etc.  We become, in effect, sexual bulimics.  We repress our sexual desires until we can repress them no more, then we binge on them.  Afterwards, we feel guilty, beat ourselves up and feel like we are worthless and spiritually incapable.  All of this is unnecessary.

Does this mean we should have free reign to masturbate all of the time?  Of course not, that would be going to the other extreme. We should proceed naturally and gradually over a long period of time.  If we push beyond our capacity with this, we will quickly become discouraged with one failure after another.  Instead, we should focus our attention on identifying within our own mind the trade-off between losing our drops and our spiritual vitality, especially in meditation.  We should focus our attention on increasing the power of our spiritual wishes and aspirations through our practice of Lamrim.  Then we can proceed from wanting to do it all of the time to wanting to do it less and less.  We are not repressing our desire to do it, we are changing our desires to not wanting to do it.  If we want to do it, but through force of will stop ourselves, we will most likely just repress the desire.  If we change our desires to not wanting to do it, then we are not repressing at all.  Eventually we start to willingly make promises to increase the number of days between doing so more and more.  We keep training in this way until we are only losing our drops with our partner and in our dreams.  When we lose our drops in our dreams, the build up of tension is less and it becomes easier to not masturbate at all in between dreams.  Later, once we gain control over our behavior even in our dreams, we can repeat the process and gradually abandon losing our drops even in our dreams.

Yes, this is a long training.  Work naturally and gradually over a long period of time to change what you desire and you will eventually get there.  Don’t repress the urge, outgrow it.

 

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Why we rely upon an action mudra

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Never to forsake the two kinds of mudra.

When we are qualified we should accept an action mudra.  Until then we should rely upon a visualized wisdom mudra to help us to develop great bliss.

Once again, as explained in earlier posts, we are qualified to accept an action mudra once we have attained isolated speech of completion stage.  Once we have attained this state, unless we are ordained, we should accept an action mudra.  Our motivation for doing so is not attachment, but rather through the practice of relying upon an action mudra we loosen completely the knots of our central channel at our heart.  We want to do this so that all of our inner winds may gather, dissolve and absorb into the indestructible drop at our heart.  When this happens, we will naturally experience the eight signs of dissolution culminating in the full experience of the clear light of Mahamudra.  Once we have attained this supremely blissful mind, we then meditate on the emptiness of our mind of great bliss.  When the duality between our subject mind of great bliss and our object emptiness dissolves, like water mixing with water, we will have attained the realization of meaning clear light. With this powerful mind, we can quickly purify our mind of all of our delusions and their past imprints.  It is said we can even attain enlightenment in as little as three years, or even three months.  When you consider we have been accumulated deluded karmic imprints since beginningless time, this is attaining enlightenment in nearly an instant.  In one powerful blast, all of our past misdeeds are evaporated and we become a Buddha.  There is no more powerful realization than this.

The eight dissolutions are different appearances that arise as our inner winds gradually gather and dissolve into our indestructible drop.  They are explained in detail in all of our Tantric texts, such as Tantric Grounds and Paths and Mahamudra Tantra.  Normally, when our winds dissolve we lose consciousness or awareness of what is appearing to our mind.  But with training, we can learn to maintain our mindfulness and alertness as the winds absorb.  When we do so, we are, for all practical purposes, clearing away an escape route out of the dark storm clouds of samsara and into the clear light skies beyond.  Even though at present our inner winds are not actually gathering and absorbing into our indestructible drop at our heart, we can nonetheless begin imagining that they are and that we are experiencing each of the eight signs of dissolution.  When we do so, our main task is to keep our mind single pointedly on our realization of the emptiness of our mind to which the signs are appearing.  By training in this way in our imagination, we plant powerful karmic seeds which will one day ripen in our actually being able to maintain our mindfulness of emptiness as our winds actually dissolve, either at the time of death or during our future completion stage meditations.

As explained before, when we engage in union we should mentally generate our partner as a fully qualified action mudra, and while our body consciousness may be aware of one thing, our mental consciousness is aware of the two deity bodies engaging in Tantric union.

If we are ordained, we should not take an action mudra, even if we are ready.  The reason for this is simple:  doing so would bring the Sangha and the tantric teachings into disrepute, because conventionally speaking ordained monks and nuns do not engage in union.  While it is true not taking an action mudra may delay our eventual attainment of enlightenment by a few years, the price is small compared to the harm we would do to the tradition if we engaged in union despite being ordained.  Likewise, if we have a committed partner who is not his or herself a qualified action mudra, we should similarly refrain from taking an action mudra because doing so would also bring the tradition into disrepute by creating the impression that it justifies engaging in sexual misconduct.  Remember, our practice of Secret Mantra should not contradict our Pratimoksha vows.  In reality, however, this is a false concern because engaging in union with an imagined action mudra creates the karma for a fully qualified action mudra to appear when we are ready to take one.  It may seem like magic, but in reality it is just karma.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Pleasant feelings are not the problem, attachment is

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Never to lose appreciation for the path of attachment.

Because the beings of this world have very strong attachment we definitely need to practice Secret Mantra, the method for transforming attachment into a cause for generating spontaneous great bliss.  Having found such a wonderful practice we must never lose our appreciation for it.

Attachment is the driving force of this world.  Attachment is a mind that considers certain external objects to be causes of happiness.  From this mind also comes aversion, thinking certain external objects are causes of suffering.  Because it thinks external objects are the causes of happiness, it tries to obtain them; and because it thinks external objects are the causes of suffering, it tries to avoid them.  But no matter how many objects of attachment we obtain, we never find the happiness we seek and we always go looking for new objects of attachment.  No matter how many objects of aversion we avoid, we keep encountering problems, and so there are always new objects of aversion.  If the mind is filled with attachment and aversion it will never be happy because it will keep projecting that we need to obtain and need to avoid yet more things.  This is the experience of everyone, we need only check our own life to confirm its truth.

In reality, both our happiness and suffering are parts of mind.  Therefore, their causes must come from inside the mind.  If we have a mind of contentment, we want for nothing.  If we have a mind of patience, we can accept everything.  Then nothing has the power to disturb our mind.  We can be happy all of the time.  Contentment, quite simply, is the ability to be happy with what we do have, not unhappy about what we don’t have.  Patience, quite simply, is the ability to use any adversity for our spiritual growth and the cultivation of inner peace.  These two minds are the secret to a happy life.  Possessing them makes us truly rich, even if we own nothing.

Once we have reduced our minds of attachment and aversion to more manageable levels by training in contentment and patience, then we are ready to use the instructions of Tantra to transform the residual attachment we experience into the path.  We need to be very clear on this point:  we cannot transform gross, uncontrolled attachment into the path with Tantra.  The reason for this is simple:  delusions function to make our mind uncontrolled, and attachment is nothing other than uncontrolled desire.  If we cannot control our mind, when attachment arises it will seize us and we will become a slave to its desires.  In such a state, it is nearly impossible to recall our Tantric practice, much less engage in it.  If our desire for our objects of attachment is greater than our desire to be free from attachment then it is impossible for us to use Tantra to transform attachment into the path.  This is very clear and there are no exceptions.  So we must first bring our gross attachments under control with the Sutra teachings, in particular those on contentment, renunciation and emptiness.  Once they have been reduced to manageable levels and once our desire to be free from attachment altogether is very strong, we are then ready to transform attachment into the path.  Absent this, what will likely happen is our attachment will kidnap the teachings on Tantra and then use them as an excuse to indulge in our objects of attachment.

In reality, we don’t transform attachment into the path.  Attachment is a delusion, and delusions are objects to be abandoned.  Instead, what we really do is transform pleasant feelings into the path.  There are two types of feelings we can have, pleasant and unpleasant.  We can transform pleasant feelings into the path with Tantra and we can transform unpleasant feelings into the path with the teachings on patient acceptance.  With these two, no matter what we feel, we will always have something to practice.

As explained in earlier posts, we transform pleasant feelings into the path by realizing that the pleasant feeling does not come from the external object, rather it comes from within our mind.  We dissolve the object of attachment into emptiness but retain the pleasant feelings, thus helping us realize clearly happiness comes from within and does not in any way depend upon anything external to us.  In this way, we use the pleasant feelings to dispel the mistaken illusion of external causes of happiness.  In this way, our experience of the pleasant feelings functions to destroy our delusion of attachment.  Such spiritual technology is truly priceless.

Sometimes we can be afraid of Tantra.  We know how strong our attachment is and we know how easy it is for our attachment to kidnap our knowledge of Tantra and use it to justify not ever abandoning our attachment.  So we are reluctant to even try.  This is an extreme, and an example of this downfall.  The way we protect ourselves against this extreme is to say, “I do not need to seek out objects of attachment to transform, rather as I go about my life I will naturally encounter them.  When I do so, even if I don’t succeed in actually transforming the pleasant feelings into the path, I will nonetheless try to do so.  With enough experience born from sincere effort, I will get better and better at doing so until eventually I can do so with any and all objects of attachment.”  This is a balanced way of practicing.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  The emptiness of sex

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

While in union, not to be separated from the view of emptiness.

By maintaining the view of emptiness while in union with a consort we shall experience the bliss of union in a meaningful way, we shall prevent it from causing our delusions to increase, and our act will be a cause for developing and increasing the realizations of Tantra.

Bliss, quite simply, is what emptiness feels like.  When our mind correctly cognizes emptiness, a feeling of qualified bliss naturally arises within our mind.  Qualified bliss is quite different from ordinary bliss arising from attachment.  Ordinary bliss, or the pleasant feelings that sometimes arise when we engage with our objects of attachment, is a grasping mind that looks to something outside of oneself to feel good.  In the Lamrim, indulging in attachment is likened to licking honey off or a razor blade.  You cannot get the honey without being cut.  You may not feel the cut at the time you are licking the honey, but later equally proportionate mental pain is sure to follow in one form or another.  We all have experience of mental pain due to our relationships with our objects of attachment.  If we allow ourselves to become attached to these pleasant feelings, it is certain we will later experience equally painful mental feelings.

When people practice Sutra alone, it is fairly easy to misunderstand the conclusion of the teachings on attachment to think it is somehow a downfall to be happy or to enjoy anything.  They can then fall into some form of the extreme of aestheticism.  I knew a practitioner once who, driven by this misunderstanding, made himself quite miserable.  He thought it was a fault to be happy, and anytime somebody around him was happy he felt it was his duty to rob them of that happiness by judgmentally condemning the person as just indulging in their attachment.  Not only did he kill the joy of his own practice, he wound up deterring people from wanting to take up the spiritual path.  Why would anybody want to become a Buddhist if it makes one that miserable?

While such thinking is a misunderstanding even according to Sutra, it is completely misplaced in Tantra.  The miracle of Tantra is it gives us methods to, as they say in French, “prendre plaisir sans saisir” (take pleasure without grasping).  It makes a clear distinction between pleasant feelings and the external objects we mistakenly think are their cause.  This enables us to enjoy everything without generating delusion.

The way Tantra works is quite simple:  first we generate a spiritual motivation wishing to overcome our delusion of attachment.  Then, when we experience some object of attachment (we do not need to seek out objects of attachment, rather we transform our experience of them when they naturally occur), we generate some pleasant feeling.  Then, we consider how the pleasant feeling is an inner mental feeling, part of the mind.  It is only our ignorance which mistakenly thinks the pleasant feeling comes from the external object when in reality it comes from inside our mind.  We then meditate on the emptiness of the external object of attachment, dissolving it into emptiness, but while doing so we retain the inner pleasant feelings.  When we do this, we will gradually disentangle the pleasant feelings from what mistakenly appears to be their cause (the external object of attachment).  We are then able to maintain the pleasant feelings without depending upon an external object of attachment.  We recognize the pleasant feelings as a similitude of qualified bliss coming from our mind while at the same time meditating on the emptiness of the object of our attachment – realizing that nothing was ever there to begin with.  We then hold this union of bliss and emptiness for as long as possible.

This meditation is an extremely powerful method for quickly overcoming our attachment.  In the Tantric teachings, it is likened to using the wood of attachment to light that fire that burns the attachment completely.  If we do the meditation correctly, when we dissolve the object of attachment into emptiness our pleasant feelings should actually increase.  It does not become more intense, rather it becomes more sublime.  It feels as if the coarseness of the pleasant feelings subside into an extremely pleasant suppleness.  Instead of becoming more agitated, as often occurs when we indulge in objects with our attachment, our mind becomes more peaceful.  Qualified bliss is, quite simply, the feeling of inner peace fully refined.  Our mind becomes so peaceful, so supple, that it feels blissful.  When we are experiencing objects with our attachment, the pleasant feelings within our mind feel fragile like we can lose them quickly and at any time.  When we are experiencing objects with our wisdom realizing emptiness, the pleasant feelings of inner peace feel stable, like everything has settled down into its natural resting place.

When we engage in union with somebody, we have a choice.  We can try enjoy the union with a mind of attachment or we can try enjoy the union with a mind of emptiness.  When we enjoy the union with a mind of attachment, the mind is more agitated and selfish, seeking one’s own pleasure.  The pleasurable feelings are good, but it is devoid of love because we are using the other person for our own purposes.  In much pornography, the participants look angry and they act like crazed animals.  The intention is to make it seem like their primal passions have been unleashed, but all it actually shows is how the mind of attachment destroys the joy even from the act.  Most of us don’t act in such ways, but within ourselves part of our mind is trying to use the other person in this way.  Our goal when engaging in union should be to become a Tantric deity, not a rabid dog.

When we enjoy the union with a mind of emptiness, we naturally become more loving, affectionate, and attentive.  The more we meditate on the emptiness of ourself, our partner and our union, the more it feels as if the barriers between ourself, our partner and indeed the whole world melt away.  As these barriers dissolve, it feels as if we are releasing sublime inner peace into the world as a gift of love.  All agitation subsides, all duality dissolves away.  It is not only more spiritual, it is far more enjoyable for ourself and our partner.  Our delusions subside and our wisdom and feelings of closeness increase.  Tantra is call the Vajrayana path.  Vajra, in this context, means indestructible, inseparable, immovable, unchanging, unshakable inner peace.  When centered within the union of bliss and emptiness, it feels as if we – our mind – are undefilable because we are simply beyond the reach of anything in samsara.  It feels completely unbreakable, not because it can’t be bent but because there is nothing there to bend or break.  It is a completely spacious feeling that is nonetheless a completely immutable foundation.  It feels like an inner radiance vibrantly glowing purely from within without fluctuation.  We feel as if we have tapped into an inexhaustible inner source of joy where we want for nothing, but instead overflow with an abundance of love generously pouring out in all directions.