6. Special series

Transforming our life into the Quick Path: Reliance and respecting other’s freedom

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Transforming our life into the quick path

 

We can summarize what it means to be a good example with the following phrase:  “While relying exclusively upon the spiritual guide as the source of all our actions and respecting completely everyone’s freedom to make their own choices, be the best outer, inner and secret example you can be of changing your own mind with the Dharma.”  Over the next four posts, I will expand upon the meaning of this phrase.

“While relying exclusively upon the spiritual guide as the source of all our actions…”

We can say we have two sources of our actions within us.  First is our ignorance and self-cherishing.  This is the current source from which all our actions arise.  The second is our wisdom.  This is actually our true self, which is none other than the Spiritual Guide within us.  Our job is to train in making the spiritual guide the source of all our actions.  By doing so, all our actions will be those of a Buddha, and our life will become the quick path.  Relying exclusively upon the guru is actually quite simple, it is merely a question of which mind we make requests to and it is a question of which mind we choose to listen to and follow.  For more information on this see the series of posts on Activating the Inner Spiritual Guide and relying upon the Guru’s mind alone, which you can find in the category section. 

But briefly, what is the actual method for having the guru be the source of all our actions? Geshe-la gave some special advice on this to the ITTP several years ago.  First, we need to make completely still your ordinary self to get out of the way.  Then, we generate a pure spiritual motivation to help those around us.  The scope of our motivation determines the scope of the actions that arise.  We should recall that our guru (definitive Vajradhara) is none other than our own true self, the foundation of our being.  Then, with deep faith, we request him to reveal to us what we should do.  Then, we surrender ourself fully to him so that he may work through us and he can use us as one of his limbs.  If we can master this, we can effectively accomplish all actions through invoking the Buddhas with a pure intention.  This enables us to engage in a Buddhas actions right now.

In particular, we can have all our actions be those of a Buddha from right now by learning how to invoke the Buddhas, in particular, the guru, yidam and protector, to accomplish their function.  There is little difference between being able to do things ourself and being able to ask somebody else to do something.  From the point of view of effect created in the world, it is the same.  Through the above method we can request the three principal deities to accomplish their function for ourself or for others, we invoke them to accomplish their function.  Clearly they will only do this if our motivation is correct, we have deep faith, and we understand how they are not separate from us.

The three principal deities and their function can be understood as follows:  The Guru guides us as to what to do and how to help others.  The Yidam, or personal deity, is the source of all our actions and who we ultimately strive to be.  The Yidam has the power to bestow blessings on others.  The Protector arranges everything so that whatever circumstances arise, it functions to forge us as quickly as possible into the Buddha we need to become.  We can accomplish all the four types of actions (pacifying, increasing, controlling and wrathful) through relying upon him.

We need to spend time building links with these three deities to increase our access to their power and function.  The most important thing is to build faith in them that they are there and ready to respond and help.  During the meditation session, we should feel as if we retreat into the pure land in our heart and we mix fully with them to gather their strength and wisdom.  Then, during the meditation break, we use them to accomplish all your actions in the way described above.

“and respecting completely everyone’s freedom to make their own choices…” 

We need to respect completely everyone’s freedom to make their own choices.  For Dharma to work it has to come from one’s own side, and one’s own desires.  When we do not respect the freedom of others, it invites rebellion and resistance.  Since we only want what is good for others, to not respect them sends them in the exact opposite direction.  We need to leave everyone free to contribute in their own way that they see best.  We should not have pre-conceived notions of what they should do.  We give to others the principles and let them decide themselves how to best contribute.  In particular, we need to do this without any trace of judgment.  If we judge others, they become defensive and self-justify, so we just create the conditions for them to hold on even more tightly to their wrong views.  In contrast, by accepting others fully, we create the space for them to change from their own side.

We need to be skillful.  We should not try to change others to adopt our view because when we do so it comes across as being patronizing, prideful and manipulative.  Instead, in our own actions, we should respect other people’s choices and make our own actions correct.  Other people do not have to understand what we are doing or thinking, but we do and we have to know with an honest mind whether what we are doing is right or just an excuse for remaining ordinary and deluded.  We have a tendency to project others are judging us and then we feel the need to defend against it.  When we do so, we wind up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We project others are judging us out of our own insecurity and doubt about whether we are doing something wrong.  If we clarify this internally, the people appearing to judge us will simply dis-appear.

We will inevitably encounter situations where there is a difference of view with someone.  Our goal during such discussions should be to avoid constructing things where one person is right and the other is wrong, rather we should strive for a situation where both people are equally right, just in different ways and from different perspectives.  We can simply explain why our way of viewing things works for us, without trying to impose our view on others or convince others that our view is superior.  If others find our view to be interesting and valid, then they can adopt it from their own side.  From our side, we simply clarify how we think and understand things.  In general, unless the circumstances call for it, we should not enter into debates with others.  Above all, when we are giving advice to others, we should never accuse them of having a particular delusion.  Instead, we should tell stories about ourselves in similar circumstances and explain how our own mind works in deluded ways, or we can tell stories of people we know in similar circumstances and we can use their story to illustrate how things work.  But we leave others to make the final step of connecting the story to their own lives and situation. 

It is a misuse of Dharma to try to change others with it when we have attachment to them changing.  All of Dharma is and should be viewed as personal advice.  We often feel others are judging us unfairly, so we want to change their views out of an attachment to getting them to stop.  We feel justified in doing so because ‘we are right’.  But because our motivation is attachment/aversion, when we do go out to ‘change others’, others will merely see us acting out of defensiveness and self-justification.  They will then train themselves in rejecting what we have to say, even if what we have to say is correct.

Transforming our life into the Quick Path: Building our spiritual reliquary

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Transforming our life into the quick path

To give our life direction, we need to have a life project.  Shantideva explains that our project is to build our spiritual reliquary.  Collectively, as a tradition, we are trying to build an outer and inner reliquary to give to others in future generations.  When we understand this from the point of view of emptiness, we need to build our reliquary for our world, our dream.   In short, we need to work on what endures – karma, realizations, and our reliquary.

We need to invest our time, energy and resources into building an external and internal reliquary that we will leave behind for the beings of this world.  The inner reliquary is our own spiritual realizations obtained for and dedicated to others.  They are our own realizations which we gain for the benefit of others that we carry with us into our future lives.  The most important part of our reliquary is ourself as a Buddha.   The most important part of the reliquary is building ourselves as a Buddha for others.  We likewise do the same in others by helping them gain realizations so there are more beings with realizations in our karmically appearing world.

The external reliquary is what we give in time, energy and resources to the destruction of delusions and the flourishing of Dharma in this world.  Our local center and the Sangha community is our main reliquary.   We need to build them up so that they endure and become self-perpetuating.  The objects of our reliquary are our Books, sadhanas, temples, centers and sangha.  But the real inner reliquary are the inner realizations and karma of practitioners.

It is really worth considering how the reliquary works.  A former student of mine in Lausanne once generated the intention to receive a Medicine Buddha empowerment for the benefit of a particular family, and a year later, the conditions ripened where this happened.  We make intentions to perpetually become ourselves whatever other living beings need.  When this fully ripens, we spontaneously give to others without having to generate anew the conceptual intention to do it. 

Strategically speaking, Venerable Geshe-la encourages us to think cosmically, but to act locally in tight, pure concentrations that gradually expand.  A Dharma center is like an outpost for the Buddhas in the barbarian land or wild west of this deluded world.  We need to build the pure land around us in close proximity, with tight concentration of high quality, and then gradually radiate out.  We work immediately around us, working to concretely transform our world into a pure land.  We shouldn’t spread ourself too thin, instead we should expand gradually over time by focusing on quality and purity.  We need to karmically reconstruct our dream into the pure land, like Mount Meru arising out of the swamp of samsara.  We need to build your own mandala, externally and internally.  Our mandala should be built in a non-exclusive way.  Everybody is invited in, and you share it with everyone.  Within our mandala, everyone is free to do as the wish.  The pure land is a place of total freedom.

We should think of building our reliquary as the very means by which we provide ourselves with provisions for the continuation of our spiritual project in future lives.  In general in life, we need to invest time, energy and resources into that which is most beneficial and produces the highest possible return for our self and others.  Karmically, everything we invest for others we invest for our own future lives.  Other living beings are like magical time machines for transporting what we have in the present to ourselves in the future when we do not have these things.  In our future lives, we will karmically inherit the reliquary that we create and give in this life.  For example, the NKT is Venerable Geshe-la’s reliquary in this world. 

We need to become a spiritual philanthropist across time.  We will inherit the reliquary that we give away to others.   We will lose forever that which we keep for ourself.  The reliquary will appear to us in our future lives to benefit us to the extent to which we use it now to benefit others.  We will find the reliquary to the extent to which we help others to find it now.  It will appear attractive and useful to the extent to which we render it attractive and useful to others now.  This depends on ourself finding it attractive and useful.  Which itself depends on us relating to it with an attractive and useful mind.

Specifically, what do we need to do to re-find the reliquary in our future lives?  We need to align our personal motivation with that of the reliquary.  If we do this, we will flow in the same direction as it and more easily re-find it.  We need to concentrate on putting into practice the  instructions we have received.  Every time we do so, we create karmic connections between ourselves and the spiritual guide who gives the instructions.  Since he is at the center of the reliquary, we will be reborn with him.  We should also pray to never be separated from it in all our future lives until we complete the final goal.

Whatever we do, we should pour ourself fully into doing it as part of building our reliquary.  To enjoy ourselves, we need to get our effort right.  We do this by pouring ourselves into everything we do.  Right now, we either do not do samsara because we feel guilty and we know it does not work anyway or we do not do Dharma because we are afraid of changing and think we will lose the only remaining happiness we have.  The end result is we are just unhappy and bitter with both our life and our practice.  But if we pour ourselves into all that we do, focusing on doing things well, we will enjoy all that we do.  We need to live our life from the point of view of ‘doing’ instead of ‘being.’  When we pour ourselves into all that we do, we will seek how to do things better and better.  We will naturally then bring Dharma into it because it works to makes everything better.  Whatever we do, we do it with quality and we do it well.  My grandma always used to say, ‘a job worth doing is a job worth doing well.’

In the end, having our life’s project be building our reliquary is about creating good causes.   There are two levels to this:  First is responding well to whatever arises.  Appearances arise, our job is to respond to them correctly.  When we do so, the appearances become increasingly pacified and we create good causes for the future. Very simply, we try to respond to whatever appears with the least delusion and the most virtue possible. Second is building our reliquary for the future.  It is not enough to just respond, we also need to actively shape our reality by creating a new one.

Our biggest obstacle to doing this is our preoccupation with worldly concerns.  To overcome this, we can repeat the mantra, “So what, quit whining and get on with it.”  ‘So what’ means live life from the point of view of the mental factor of discrimination, it doesn’t matter what you are feeling or what effects are ripening.  ‘Quit whining’ means realize that everything is perfect and stop wishing things were otherwise.  Stop self-cherishing making such a drama out of it.  ‘Get on with it’ means just practice what you need to do.

 

Transforming our life into the quick path: Assume responsibility for your part of the lineage

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Transforming our life into the quick path

In Joyful Path, Geshe-la says one of the most important minds in the Lamrim is superior intention, taking personal responsibility for the spiritual welfare of others.  Each one of us has a responsibility for part of the lineage.  Our part of the lineage is the specific understanding of Dharma that transforms our life into the path to enlightenment.  Other people in future generations will have lives similar to ours.  We learn how to transform a life like ours into the path and then we share what we have learned in the hope it proves beneficial to others with similar lives.

Our responsibility is towards all the beings of future generations who have the same type of life as ourselves.   Our job is to learn how to make a life like ours into the quick path.  We need to learn how to use everything for the accomplishment of our training.  Ven. Tharchin says we need to design our own enlightenment.  What kind of Buddha am I going to be?  If we learn how to transform our life into the quick path with a bodhichitta motivation for the sake of those with a similar life, then we will become a Buddha who has that specific power. Then, situations where we can help will naturally arise and we just share our experience.  I have a very close friend who has been in a psychiatric hospital for about 15 years now.  He is a very pure Dharma practitioner, but the tendencies that ripen in his mind are horrific.  He says, “I am training to be a Buddha of extremely degenerate times.  In the future, all beings will have tendencies of mind like I do.  I am training to be a Buddha for such time.”  This attitude is perfect.

Very often we think we cannot transform our life into the quick path because our life isn’t conducive to that.  But because everything is equally empty, everything can equally function for us as the quick path.  Because we grasp at some things as being inherently better, we conceive of things as obstacles and when we can’t overcome them, we make excuses for not practicing or we develop aversion for our life.  Geshe-la explains in Universal Compassion that obstacles are created when we grasp at certain situations as being better than others.  Assenting to this is laziness and an ignorance.  Sometimes we think our obstacles are particularly difficult.  Actually, there is no situation that can prevent us from practicing Dharma.  All lives are equally good for practice because everything is equally empty.  No matter what our situation  nothing can prevent us from loving others and training our mind. 

We need to optimize on the two forms of practice, formal and informal.  From one perspective, it is easier to only practice Dharma when all day we are only practicing Dharma directly and formally.  This is important and if we have such a life, we should be very happy.  For the rest of us, our job is to learn to equally practice Dharma regardless of where we are and what we are doing.  We need to learn how to ‘attain enlightenment where we stand.’  We need to optimize between these two, formal and informal ways of practicing, for maximum transformation of our mind.  We need to alternative between these two, between our meditation sessions and our meditation break; between our teachings and working in the field; between our retreat and our daily life.

What matters is not how we practice, rather that we dedicate our entire life to the practicing of Dharma and to the destruction of delusions in the minds of living beings in this world.  Shantideva says we are at war.  How we specifically wage that war depends on our karma and everyone is different.  When we grasp that one way of doing things (formal, ordained or informal, lay) IS best, it blocks the mind to creatively see how to make any life a quick path.  This leads to suffering in minds of those who do not have the karma to lead such a life and causes them to impute obstacle on everything that prevents them from doing so.

How do we actually transform every aspect of our life into the quick path?    Practically speaking, we need to look at everything in life and see how it can be part of our practice.  Every situation gives us an opportunity to overcome delusions.  With training, we can get to the point where we can go anywhere with anybody doing anything and be free from delusion.  Wherever we can’t currently do so is our samsara because we are unfree.  Liberation is complete freedom. 

We need to request Dorje Shugden, “please forge me in the fires of my karma into the Buddha that I need to become / into a fully qualified Kadampa Spiritual Guide.”  Then, every situation should be viewed through the lens of the opportunity it provides us to train our mind in abandoning delusion and cultivating virtues.  One of the most important things for being able to do this is to maintain pure view of others.  Geshe-la explained at the Spring Festival many years ago that Buddha Vajradhara intentionally appears in the aspect of ordinary beings for us to act normally with them, and by doing so, we will create the causes to become a Buddha ourself.  Because we conceive of all beings engaging in enlightened actions, it karmically reconstructs others into Buddhas and we receive maximum benefit.

Our ability to maintain this pure view arises in dependence upon first and foremost our Bodhichitta intention.  The function of an object is determined by our intention.  By wanting to become a Buddha, it changes the function of every object to be a cause of our enlightenment.   When we are unsure how something is perfect for our practice, we can ask ourselves specific questions: What delusions does this situation provoke?  What does this situation give me an opportunity to practice?  What spiritual lessons can I learn from this/does this teach me? What does this situation teach me about the truth of Dharma?  When we have answers to these questions, we will understand how the situation can be viewed as emanated.   These questions will give us valid reasons for believing it to be true that everything is emanated for our practice.  On the basis of this, we practice the believing faith that others are Buddhas intentionally doing whatever they are doing to give us an opportunity to practice something or to teach us something about the truth of Dharma.  It doesn’t matter if this is objectively true – nothing is – what matters is that it is very beneficial to believe.

In terms of how to respond to the various situations we encounter, Geshe-la gave us a powerful and simple practice at the Spring Festival many years ago called “integrating Lamrim into our daily appearance.”  Whenever we experience suffering, we view it as a reminder of the far worse suffering we will experience in countless future lives if we don’t attain liberation.  So this appearance is encouraging us to attain liberation.  Whenever we see others experiencing suffering, we view it as a reminder that all our mothers will experience far worse suffering in all their future lives if we do not become a Buddha and free them.  So this appearance is encouraging us to attain enlightenment for their benefit.  Whenever we see any attractive, unattractive or neutral appearance, we view it as a reminder that the things we normally see do not exist at all.  These are just dream like appearances within our mind.  So the appearance of inherently existent forms reminds us that they are empty of such existence.  Geshe-la said by practicing in this way, we can enter the pure land.  He then said something amazing:  he said the mind of Lamrim itself is Sukavati pure land.

Transforming our life into the Quick Path: Reconstruct our dream

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Transforming our life into the quick path

Is this world samsara or is it part of the pure land?  Actually, it is neither.  Because it is empty, this world is nothing other than how we discriminate it.  This world is samsara if we look at it from a samsaric point of view.  This world is part of the pure land if we look at it from a pure point of view.  So is our waking reality a training simulation orchestrated by Dorje Shugden or not?  It is if we view it that way.  It is not if we do not.  The choice is ours.

We need valid reasons to be able to look at our life in this way.  It is more beneficial to view it this way.  By doing so, everything becomes part of our training to become a Buddha.  This is how pure beings view it.  For a pure being, this is a pure world.  For an ignorant being, this is a world of suffering.  The minds of ignorant beings are mistaken, the minds of pure beings are not.    If we request Dorje Shugden to make our life a training simulation, he has the power to do so since all things are mere karmic appearances to mind and he has the power to manage what karma ripens if we request him to.  On the basis of these valid reasons, we train in believing that it is, and through the power of this, it will be and become this for us.

So how can we view things in this light?   The purpose of everything Dorje Shugden emanates for us is to forge us into the Buddha we need to become.  He orchestrates what appears in our life optimally to the extent to which we request him to and that we have faith in him.  But he leaves it up to us to make our own choices.

We can practice this according to completion stage by imagining our entire world is taking place inside of our indestructible drop.  We imagine we are inside the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss.  This itself is inside the indestructible drop.  To strengthen our bodhichitta, we can believe that we are living our life inside the hearts of all living beings.  So everything we do in this space reflects into the minds of each and every living being.  If we generate love, love is generated in the minds of all beings.  If we generate the intention to attain enlightenment, this intention is generated in the minds of all beings.  In summary, we can view our whole life as a bodhisattva training ground emanated by Dorje Shugden and taking place inside the emptiness of our very subtle mind inside the drop.  We can view every object as a ripple on our very subtle mind emanated by your guru as part of our training. 

When we understand the emptiness of ourself, our world and others, we realize our real task is to karmically reconstruct our dream from a world of suffering into a pure land for ourself and for all living beings in it.  When we do this from the point of view of exchanging self with others, we view the delusions of anybody as our own delusions.  It is part of the fabric of our mind that needs to be liberated from all delusions.

What makes accomplishing our task difficult is each being has their own mind and the law of karma applies to each mind.  So they will only experience the effect of being in the pure land if they engage in the actions of the stages of the path from their own side and from their own free desire (because it is intention that creates karma).  So the practical conclusion is we need to get each being from their own side to engage in all of the stages of the path to enlightenment.

So how do we do this?  If we are a kadampa, the basic strategy we follow is that of the Kadampa Tradition of Je Tsongkhapa.  What is this basic strategy of Je Tsongkhapa’s tradition:  We become ourselves a fully qualified Kadampa spiritual guide who then forms other fully qualified Kadampa Spiritual Guides, who have the intention to form others, etc. 

There are two levels at which we operate to get all living beings from their own side to engage in all of the stages of the path.  The practical means of doing this can be understood as follows: The goal of helping others is to teach them to walk on their own.  With somebody, we are like a spiritual parent.  In beginning, we help people with whatever they are doing practically.  Then, we help people transform whatever problems they have into their practice.  Then, we work with them step by step showing how to solve their problems by changing their mind with the Dharma.  Then, we help them by not giving answers, but by asking the right questions.  Then, we do not indulge their delusions.  Then, we should be willing to let them fall so they can learn to walk on their own.  Then, we give them discretion within a box.  Then, we help them in a supporting role to accomplish their own spiritual projects and aspirations.  Then, we let them completely run on their own and just be there for them when they want to come to us for help.

The profound means of karmically reconstructing others can be understood as follows:  We need to engage in the Guru Yoga of everything.  People appear to us as ordinary because in the past we engaged in the mental action of assenting to our ordinary appearance.  This planted the karma which ripens now in the appearance of others as being ordinary engaging in ordinary actions.  By maintaining pure view, we plant the karma on our mind which will ripen in the future in the form of all beings engaging in enlightened actions.  If we do this, later each being of our dream will appear to us to be engaging in the stages of the path to enlightenment from their own side.  We need to be patient with this, a farmer does not plant seeds and expect the crop to ripen the next moment.

What are the benefits of this?  First, by believing it to be true, it will become true.  Because this view is a correct imagination, by believing it to be true, it will increasingly become our living reality.  This will first happen as a conceived pure land – by believing this to be true, we enter the conceived pure land.  When it becomes our habit to view things this way, we can say we are abiding in a conceived pure land.  Later, this will happen as an appearing pure land – by relating to the pure appearances as if they were true, we create the karma that karmically reconstructs our dream world where it will actually appear to us directly to be true.  The second benefit of this practice is it gives us a correct attitude towards our practice.  Everything is important, but nothing is serious.  We view life as a challenging game that we need to learn how to play well.  The third benefit is we naturally create the causes to become a Buddha as quickly as possible.  If this is the story of our life, we will live our life accordingly and everything we do will be directed at attaining enlightenment.  The fourth benefit is we will draw out the best in others.  What we relate to, we draw out.  If we view everybody as Buddhas sent to help forge us into a Buddha, we will draw out their pure qualities in them.

Transforming our life into the Quick Path: Waking up to a new reality

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Transforming our life into the quick path

 

The purpose of this series of posts can be summed up in one phrase:  to explain the wisdom necessary to transform any life into the quick path, so we can help all beings attain enlightenment where they stand.

Because all lives are equally empty, any life can equally be transformed into the quick path.  Because we grasp at our life and our activities as being inherently ordinary, we block ourselves from being able to transform our lives or our activities into the quick path.  But when we let go of this grasping, realizing that because everything is equally empty, everything can equally be transformed into the quick path, then we free up the creative wisdom within our mind to be able to in fact transform our life into the quick path.

Very often people think that they cannot attain enlightenment in their current situation, and so they seek to make all sorts of external changes thinking that will bring them closer to enlightenment.  But in reality, no matter how many external changes we make, if we don’t change our mind, we will never attain enlightenment.  We don’t need to go anywhere or have anything different in our life to attain enlightenment.  What we have right now is completely perfect.  In short, our objective should be in every moment of every situation to ‘attain enlightenment where we stand.’  Once we learn how to transform our own life into the quick path, we will be able to help all others do the same because the same basic principles apply.

To transform our life into the quick path, we only need 4 things:  a correct view, a pure intention, a good story and wise actions.  We will develop all of these in detail during this series of posts.

  1. Correct view.  We are currently hallucinating a contaminated world, and we don’t even realize it.  As a result, we engage in contaminated actions which keep the hallucination going.  Like all hallucinations, this one is uncontrolled, and at any point can change into something very terrible where we can get sucked into hellish suffering for incalculably long periods of time.  We have the extraordinary good fortune to have met a fully qualified spiritual guide and to have all the conditions necessary to once and for all put an end to this uncontrolled, contaminated hallucination we call samsara. If we learn how to do this, we will then be able to help all others do the same and put an end to their hallucinations.
  2. A pure intention.  An impure intention is one that seeks something within the hallucination, like a better hallucination.  A pure intention is one that seeks to put an end to the hallucination or to wake up from it.  A great intention is one where we seek to put an end to all the hallucinations of all living beings so that they can all be free.  The supreme intention, or bodhichitta, is one where we wish to transform ourself into a fully enlightened being so we can fulfill all our pure intentions for ourself and for others.  When we adopt the supreme intention, every object acquires a new function.  Namely, everything functions for us as a cause of our enlightenment.  We see how everything can be used towards that end.
  3. A good story.  A good story is the ‘story of our life,’ or our life narrative, that ties everything together and gives us purpose in this world and informs our actions.  Because everything is equally empty, no story is ‘actually true’, but different stories will have different benefits when we live our life by them.  To transform our life into the quick path, we need to have a good story of our life which makes every aspect of our life part of our training to become a Buddha.  Ultimately, all stories are equally empty, but conventionally, we can say one story is more valid than another by how well it explains everything and how beneficial it is to believe.  When we believe a conventionally valid story to be true, it will literally become our living reality.  This is the power of correct imagination.  Prior to Dharma, our story was ‘find happiness in this world by getting the external conditions just right.’  This story didn’t work very well, and we just kept suffering and making our life worse.  Once we found the Dharma, our story became, ‘I and everyone I love is in samsara, and I need to get everyone out.’  This is a much more beneficial story, and leads you in the right direction.
  4. Wise actions.  Our view determines our actions.  If our view is correct, our intention will be correct and then our actions will be correct.  Wisdom is virtuous intelligence.  Virtuous means minds that make our mind more peaceful and therefore serve as the causes of happiness.  We will be happy if our mind is peaceful, and our mind will be peaceful if it is mixed with virtue.  Intelligence means we know what works and how to do things in the most effective way for accomplishing our goals.  If our actions are good, our karma will be good.  If our karma is good, our experiences and our world will be good.  There will be a delay between when we engage in the wise actions and when our experience and our world changes, but it will definitely come.  It is just a question of creating a critical mass of good causes.

If we rely on Dorje Shugden, and completely surrender our life to his protection, then we can see all of our life as an emanated training simultation of the mind, inside our mind.  We can believe we are actually within a bodhisattva training simultation, orchastrated by Dorje Shugden, to forge us into the Buddha we need to become. 

According to out Tantric practice, we can believe we are a tantric bodhisattva whose home base is in the pure land of all the Buddhas.  Since each day we go visit our home in the pure land during our Tantric practice, we can say that the pure land is where we are from.  During the empowerment, it was where we were spiritually reborn.  It is our real home world.   We can view our normal waking world as the charnel grounds in the pure land.  When others look at the world, they see samsara.  When we look at the world, we understand it to be the training grounds.  Our waking reality is actually part of the pure land.  It is Kadampa boot camp. 

Reliance on the Guru’s mind alone: Practice during the meditation break

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Reliance upon the Guru's mind alone

Our main practice during the meditation break is to maintain pure view out of compassion.  The guru is a portal between ordinary worlds and the pure worlds of the Buddhas.  Wherever we imagine a Buddha, a real Buddha goes, and accomplishes this function.  Thus out of compassion for all living beings we generate the guru everywhere.  It is valid to impute guru on everything since the definitive guru is the bliss and emptiness of all things, the ultimate nature of all things.  So he pervades everything. 

We maintain pure view out of compassion by imagining that everything takes place within the guru’s Truth Body, and that our mind is mixed inseparably with the guru’s mind.  We generate the guru at our heart so that when others interact with us it is the same as them interacting with the living lama Tsongkhapa.  We request the guru to work through us to liberate those around us.  Further, we have no idea how to help people ourselves.  We cannot read the minds of others; from our own side, we have nothing particularly worthwhile to say. Our guru however, knows perfectly.  He sees the mind of the other person, knows exactly what their difficulties are, and knows exactly what they need to hear to get better.  So instead of trying to help people ourself, it is far wiser (and more compassionate) to ask our guru to work through us to help the other person.  What we need to do is get out of the way and allow our guru to work through us to help those around us.  Our pride in our own abilities is obstructing our guru from working through us to help others. We need to actively get out of the way and stop relying upon ourself and start relying exclusively upon the guru.

We also should generate the guru at the heart of all living beings to draw out their pure potential.  We relate to their pure potential and this functions to draw it out.  We don’t pay attention to others faults but relate to their pure potential. 

We should finally generate Dorje Shugden’s protection circle around all living beings in order to lead all living beings into the good path to ultimate happiness.  We transform everything into offerings which we offer to the guru at the heart of everyone giving rise to great bliss.  We generate Tushita Pure Land around everyone to create the cause for them to take rebirth in Tushita Pure Land.  We maintain the string of clouds from their hearts to the heart of Maitreya, so that when they die, they take rebirth in Tushita.  We generate in their minds for them the minds they should be generating.  We do all of this with the guru’s mind.  We bestow upon them the realizations they need.

We should also put into practice the specific meditation break practice explained in the New Meditation Handbook that corresponds with our lamrim meditation of the day.  Even if we don’t have a formal Lamrim practice, we should still practice in the meditation break the meditation break practice and cycle through this.

When we are studying, we should do so with the guru’s mind.  When we don’t understand something, we can request the guru to reveal to us the meaning of the instructions.  We then close the book, request blessings, receive them, then re-approach the subject until we understand.

Most of us don’t realize that we can use our guru’s mind as if it were our own.  This is because we think that our mind is inherently separate from the mind of the guru.  We think there is this impenetrable wall that stands between our mind and his.  This impenetrable wall is merely a figment of our own deluded mind.  We need to tear down this wall, and then allow our guru to literally pour his mind into our own.  It takes deep faith in the guru to be willing to let him enter our mind, but once we do, he only does good.  We can come to bathe in his blessings day and night.  We have nothing to fear from having the guru in our mind, but we have everything to fear with having delusions in our mind.  With our admiring faith we create the space within our mind for our guru to enter.  With our wishing faith we wish that we had his good qualities within our mind.  With our believing faith we understand that he can emanate his mind in our own mind and that we can use his mind as if it were our own.  Without faith, such practices are impossible.  Faith is the beginning, middle, and end of the spiritual path.  Some people are so afraid of faith.  They are so afraid of letting go.  They are so afraid of allowing someone else to help them.  They are so afraid of relying upon anyone other than themselves.  I know these fears because I suffered from all of them.  But I can say, from my own experience, that from the day I opened my heart to my guru, and allowed myself to come under his influence, I have enjoyed a peace and protection which I cannot even begin to describe. His only wish is to lead us to perfect happiness.  We need to just trust him.

But this takes time.  We need to build up this trust.  We need to build up our awareness of how he is more reliable than ourselves.  Only when these understandings grow over time will we be able to eagerly grant him our trust from our own side.  We eagerly place ourselves into his loving care.  It is only by fully admitting that we have problems and he has the solutions that we can extend this trust from our own side.  To some, this may appear to be blind faith, but we should not be fooled into thinking it is.  Blind faith is faith without a valid reason.  We have a very valid reason, and that reason is our own acute awareness of how his mind is more reliable than our own.  If we do not have this awareness then allowing ourselves to come under the influence of our guru would be blind faith.  With this awareness it is simply the most intelligent and logical thing to do.

I dedicate the merit I have accumulated by doing this series of posts so that my every action of body, speech and mind may become my guru working through me to liberate others.  I dedicate that all living beings come to realize the inexhaustible fountain of goodness that comes from relying upon the guru’s mind alone.

 

Reliance on the Guru’s mind alone: Concluding Practices

Kadampa Ryan Reliance upon the Guru's mind alone

We begin by reciting the dedication prayer.

By this virtue may I quickly
Attain the enlightened state of the Guru,
And then lead every living being
Without exception to that ground.

Through my virtues from practising with pure motivation,
May all living beings throughout all their lives
Never be parted from peaceful and wrathful Manjushri,
But always come under their care.

Again, dedication functions to protect the virtue we have created.  This indicates the function of the sadhana.  The sadhana functions to make all of this happen.

‘I’ refers again to our very subtle mind.  ‘Enlightened state of the guru’ refers to the enlightenment we are striving for is to become a tantric spiritual guide, the highest of all the Buddhas.  Geshe-la said that he would rather one of his students become a spiritual guide than a hundred become Buddhas.  ‘Lead every living being’ means the reason why we become a Buddha is to lead all others to the same state.  So we dedicate not just to our own enlightenment but the enlightenment of all living beings.  Also, it is their very subtle minds that attain enlightenment.  ‘All living beings throughout all their lives’ indicates we need to learn to think three dimensionally:  all suffering, all living beings, all lives.  So everything.  ‘Never be parted’ means just as before we dedicated that we are never parted from this path and the guru, we make this dedication for others.  By making the dedication for all living beings we create countless causes for this to happen to ourselves.  ‘Peaceful and wrathful Manjushri’ refers to Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden.  ‘Always come under the care’ means we imagine that Je Tsongkhapa is at the heart of all living beings, and they are all inside of Dorje Shugden’s protection circle.  We dedicate so that they will remain forever with all living beings leading them to full enlightenment.

We then recite the prayers for the virtuous tradition:

So that the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa
The king of the Dharma may flourish
May all obstacles be pacified
And may all favourable conditions abound

Through the two collections of myself and others
Gathered throughout the three times
May the doctrine of Losang Dragpa
Flourish for evermore.

The essential point of this prayer is to make requests that the Dharma flourish.  The effect of such dedication is it flourishes in our own mind by the number of beings upon whose behalf we dedicate.

‘Tradition of Je Tsongkhapa’ means his tradition, namely the New Kadampa Tradition.  We are not requesting that it flourish for ourselves but for others.  This is not doctrinal, we want the minds to flourish, and this may take place in non-dharma ways as well.  ‘May flourish’ reminds us that the only place it flourishes is in the minds of living beings, so this is what we are dedicating for.  ‘All obstacles be pacified’ refers to outer, inner, and secret obstacles as explained above.  Most importantly are the inner and secret obstacles.  We make this request on behalf of ourself and others.  ‘All favourable conditions’ means whatever living beings need for their practice.  So these two are mostly requests to Dorje Shugden that he do his magic for everyone. ‘Two collections’ means the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom.  We need to make these two collections to become a Buddha.  The collection of merit produces the form body of a Buddha, and the collection of wisdom produces the mind of a Buddha.  ‘Gathered throughout the three times’ means we dedicate all of this that has ever been collected, is being collected now, and will ever be collected. ‘Doctrine’ refers to the Kadam Dharma, namely Lamrim, Lojong, and Vajrayana Mahamudra.  ‘Flourish forevermore’ is our principal wish, that the Dharma flourishes in the minds of living beings so that they may be freed.

Next, it is customary to recite the nine-line Migstema prayer:

Tsongkhapa, crown ornament of the scholars of the Land of the Snows
You are Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara, the source of all attainments
Avalokiteshvara, the treasury of unobservable compassion
Manjushri, the supreme stainless wisdom
And Vajrapani, the destroyer of the host of maras
O Venerable Guru Buddha, synthesis of all Three Jewels
With my body, speech, and mind, respectfully I make requests
Please grant your blessings, to ripen and liberate myself and others
And bestow the common and supreme attainments.

This is a more extensive version of the Migtsema prayer we did earlier.  This can be done in one of three ways, either to the Je Tsongkhapa in the space in front of us, to the Je Tsongkhapa at our heart that we dissolved earlier, or to a Je Tsongkhapa that we imagine at the heart of all beings surrounding us, where we are in effect praying that he do for them what he has done for us.

To practice in this third way, we can reciting the prayer to the Je Tsongkhapa and imagine that we are emanating a Je Tsongkhapa into the hearts of each and every living beings as an act of wishing love.  Specifically, when we recite “Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara” we can send an emanation of these two into the heart of Je Tsongkhapa who is in the heart of each and every living beings.  We recall that they are the source of all Dharma.  Avalokitesvhara, Manjushri, and Vajrapani are the same as before, but this time with respect to these emanations in the hearts of others.  ‘O Venerable Guru Buddha’ recalls that all of this is our spiritual guide, the synthesis of all Three Jewels.  ‘With my body, speech, and mind’ means with Manjushri’s, Avalokitehsvara’s, and Vajrapani’s body, speech, and mind we make these requests.  ‘Respectfully I make requests,’ here the most important thing is maintaining the conviction that your guru hears your requests, and that he has the complete power to fulfil your request.  ‘Please grant your blessings’ means please transform all these minds into the enlightened mind of the guru-deity.  ‘And bestow’ means the guru emanates these realizations in the minds of all these beings.  ‘Common and supreme attainments’ refers to the common attainments are all realizations short of enlightenment and supreme is enlightenment itself.

We can likewise finish our session by making personal prayers and dedications for the problems we are experiencing in our life at that time and for others in our life, such as our family and friends.

Reliance on the Guru’s mind alone: How to rely on Dorje Shugden

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Reliance upon the Guru's mind alone

Understanding from the last post what faith is and how we cultivate it, we can now turn to the question of how do we actually practice Dorje Shugden?  There are three main parts:

  1. Make requests out of infinite faith that he provide us with the perfect conditions we need for our attainment of enlightenment in this lifetime.  We need to let go of all doubts that he can do this.  We need to let go of all doubts we have about our own ability to attain enlightenment in this lifetime.  It is possible.  We have the methods, we have the Dharma protector, we have the guru, the only thing we are missing is us going for it.  We do not make worldly requests related to the wishes of this life, rather we make spiritual requests for wisdom and compassion.  We can make requests either for ourself or for others.
  2. Accept with infinite faith whatever subsequently arises as the perfect conditions we asked for.  He won’t always give us what we want, but he will give us what we need.  The whole trick is changing what we want to be what we need.  We accomplish this through sincere Lamrim practice.  The guru will knock us on our butt, but never so much that we can’t pick ourselves back up again.  He is especially good at creating situations that reveal to us our delusions.  We should make requests that he do this in a way that we can overcome them.  An obstacle is only an obstacle to the mind that imputes obstacle.  A perfect condition is a perfect condition only to the mind that imputes perfect condition.  Reliance on Dorje Shugden enables us to impute perfect conditions on everything, and so everything becomes an opportunity for us to practice Dharma, train our mind, and gain the ability to lead all beings to perfect freedom.
  3. Then, in these perfect conditions, we practice to the best of our ability.  We see what delusions the situation gives rise to and we attack them.  Different situations will present different opportunities to practice.  If we don’t know what to practice in a given situation, we should make requests that it be revealed to us what we need to practice.  Need to be skillful and content to practice within our limits and our abilities.  Dorje Shugden knows our abilities and constraints and is working with them.  He is not expecting us to do more than we can.  Often situations will seem beyond our ability, but that is only because we are trying to work through the situation with our ordinary mind.  These situations are encouraging us to use our guru’s mind which has infinite power.

Within the context of the Sadhana, how do we practice?  Geshe-la provides precious little commentary.  The reason for this is he wants us to develop a personal relationship with Dorje Shugden and for us to engage in the practice with the request that he personally reveal himself to us.  This makes it much more personal.  So I will follow that example.  I will, however, explain some essentials.

HUM

HUM is the seed letter for the mind of all the Buddhas, which is the bliss and emptiness of all things.  It is from the Dharmakaya that Dorje Shugden arises.

I have the clarity of the Yidam

In my view, this is the most important line of the whole Dorje Shugden part.  What it says is that when we engage in Dorje Shugden practice, we are doing so as the Yidam.  If we haven’t received HYT empowerments, we can do this as the guru at our heart.  The guru-deity has infinitely more power and ability to invoke the protection of Dorje Shugden.  So we use the guru-deity to make the requests.

Light rays from my heart instantly invite the wisdom beings from the sphere of nature, and from all the different palaces where they abide. They become inseparable from the commitment beings.

When it says ‘my heart’ it is referring to our heart as the guru deity.  ‘Wisdom beings’ are actual Buddhas which we invite to enter into the Dorje Shugden imagined in front of us, recalling that wherever you imagine a Buddha, a real Buddha actually goes.  ‘Sphere of nature’ refers to the Dharmakaya.  We are in the Dharmakaya of our guru inseparable from our own mind.  ‘Different places where they abide’ in particular refers to Keajra and Tushita Pure Land.  ‘Become inseparable’ means we imagine that all the wisdom beings dissolve into the commitment beings, infusing them with the power of all the Buddhas.  The ‘commitment beings’ are the visualized deities.  We then recite the rest of the sadhana, which I explained in a previous series of posts.

At the end we make the prayer,

All the attainments I desire
Arise from merely remembering you.
O Wishfulfilling Jewel, Protector of the Dharma,
Please accomplish all my wishes.   (3x)

This is a very blessed prayer.  We can use it at anytime, especially when we need protection.  It more or less is the meaning of Dorje Shugden’s mantra (OM VAJRA WIKI WITRANA SOHA).  The reason why merely remembering him accomplishes all the attainments is because by remembering him he infuses himself into the situation and accomplishes his function.  At this point in the sadhana we pause and make personal requests to Dorje Shugden for the flourishing of the pure Kadam Dharma in the minds of living beings.

 

Reliance on the Guru’s mind alone: Who is Dorje Shugden and what is his function?

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Reliance upon the Guru's mind alone

Who is Dorje Shugden?  Dorje Shugden and Je Tsongkhapa are actually the same Buddha, just two different aspects and two different functions.  Je Tsongkhapa accomplishes the function of bestowing blessings and leading us on the path of Lamrim, Lojong, and Vajrayana Mahamudra.  Dorje Shugden accomplishes the function of arranging all the outer, inner, and secret conditions we need for our attainment of enlightenment as swiftly as possible.

Outer conditions refer to all the external things we need to support our practice, such access to teachers, centers, Dharma books, adequate housing, food, and so forth.  He arranges the external conditions we need to practice in.  He is like our personal trainer.  Like one big Truman Show.  Inner conditions refer to the conditions within our mind.  Dorje Shugden is actually 1,000 times more powerful at arranging inner conditions.  Inner conditions are things like dispelling wrong views, having faith in Je Tsongkhapa’s Dharma, easily gaining the realizations of Lamrim and Lojong, etc.  Secret conditions refer to the conditions within our subtle body.  He is actually 1,000 times more powerful at arranging secret conditions than he is at inner conditions.  Secret conditions are removing obstructions within our subtle body and arranging all the conditions we need to generate spontaneous great bliss.

Like with Je Tsongkhapa, we need to develop a personal relationship with Dorje Shugden, where he is our best friend.  We feel his presence in our life at all times.  He is a real person, and we need to bring him into our lives.

The practice of Dorje Shugden is actually quite simple, but it is very vast.  Really there is only one part to Dorje Shugden practice, and that is faith.  It was explained at a festival once that from Dorje Shugden’s side he has infinite power.  He is the spiritual power of all the Buddhas.  If all of samsara somehow got coordinated together to cause a certain outcome to come about, he could just blow on it and send everything tumbling the other way.  He is not limited on his side, but we are limited on how much we can receive his help.  Our first constraint in having him help us is our karma.  He can’t cause us to experience things that we haven’t created the causes for.  He is like a karma manager.  He manages our karma in the optimal way for our swiftest possible enlightenment, but he can’t invent karma we don’t have.  His second constraint in helping us is the amount of faith we have in him.  If we have a little bit of faith in him, he will be a little bit helpful; if we have infinite faith in him, then he will be infinitely powerful for us.

So how do we develop faith in Dorje Shugden?

To understand this, we need to examine what are the types of faith?   Blind faith is faith without a valid reason.  We completely reject this is Buddhism.  Blind faith is better than no faith only when we happen to get lucky and place our blind faith in something that is perfect.  But with blind faith there is the risk that we could place our faith in something not worthy of faith.  And even if we did put blind faith in a worthwhile object, we wouldn’t get very far because from a Buddhist perspective we need to realize all the stages of the path from our own side.  We are not training to be followers, we are training to be leaders, those who lead others to perfect freedom.  We can never do this if we don’t understand everything perfectly ourself in our heart.

The second type of faith is admiring faith.  Here we appreciate the good qualities of enlightened beings, or their teachings, or our spiritual friends.  Our mind naturally becomes very clear and free from disturbing conceptions.  This creates the space within our mind to allow ourselves to come under the influence of what we admire.  Normally we keep a distance between ourselves and other objects because we fear coming under their influence.  But by contemplating and realizing their good qualities from our own side helps us to break down this fear, and thereby enables us to open our mind up. 

How many people in this world can we honestly say are looking out exclusively for our own welfare, with no hidden agenda?  Do we have any examples in our lives of really trusting someone?  Probably not.  This is difficult stuff for us, but it is only by investigating deeply for ourselves that we can gradually break down this resistance.  When we trust somebody completely, there is a peace of mind that comes over us that is literally overwhelming.  All tension and stress go away when we think about that person.  We feel great confidence in knowing that their advice is completely reliable.  Finally, we can drop our guard, and let ourself be taken care of.  It is so beautiful.  It is especially useful to develop admiring faith for the mind of faith.  This is in fact the most important thing to develop admiring faith for, because with this admiring faith, all of the rest of the path comes quickly and easily.

The next type of faith is wishing faith.  Here we wish to acquire for ourselves the good qualities that we admire with our admiring faith.  This compels us to engage in practice.

The final type of faith is believing faith.  This is the strongest type of faith, and it is a faith based on valid reasoning.  Even though it does not fully understand the given subject, it engages the topic without doubt.  Believing faith accomplishes a similar function as wisdom.  Wisdom knows its object thoroughly from one’s own side, and it functions to dispel doubt.  Believing faith accepts the truth of the subject even while uncertainty remains, and so therefore functions to dispel doubt.  It enables the practitioner to practice fully even when they don’t yet fully understand. 

How do we develop believing faith?  We can use the logical reasoning contained within the Lamrim to convince ourselves by weight of argument.  We can also be a good scientist by suspend our doubts about whether it works or not, put the instructions into practice purely, and then see if they in fact work.  We can actually “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.  If we have previously gained conviction that our spiritual guide is a Buddha, and therefore completely reliable, then we 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.  We then use our powers of reasoning to fully understand from our own side.

 

 

Reliance on the Guru’s mind alone: Meditating with the Guru’s mind

Kadampa Ryan Reliance upon the Guru's mind alone

In my view, this post is the deep inner core of this entire series of posts.  If you read only one of these posts, this is the one.

The fundamental issue of reliance upon the spiritual guide is asking ourselves the question:  upon whose mind do I rely?  If we are relying upon our own mind alone, then we will never get anywhere since we are not already enlightened.  We would be like a blind person trying to lead ourself.  It is precisely because the guru has attained enlightenment and we haven’t that we need to rely upon his mind.  But this does not mean that we blindly follow.  We have a huge habit of relying upon our own mind to understand things, to reason and so forth.  We may think we are intelligent, but if we are choosing to rely upon our own mind and not the mind of the guru, then in fact we are quite foolish.  If we have a choice to use a nail gun or a hammer, which do we choose?  Obviously the nail gun. In the same way, if we have the choice of relying upon the guru’s mind or our own, which one do we choose?  Obviously the guru’s mind.

In the Heart Jewel practice just before we engage in our Lamrim meditation, we dissolve the guru into our heart, and imagine that our mind is mixed indistinguishably with our guru’s mind.  We don’t then forget this and engage in our Lamrim meditation!  We dissolved our guru into our heart and mixed our mind with his precisely so that we can then meditate with his mind. 

It begins by learning how to reason using our guru’s mind.  One of the unique abilities of a Buddha is their ability to manifest their realizations in form.  The Guru’s mind is not inherently separate from our own, which means he can manifest his mind inside our own, and we can use his mind as if it were our own.  I have a choice of which mental factors I use to engage in my spiritual practices.  I can use my own limited mental factors, or I can use the fully developed mental factors of my guru.  We can literally use his concentration, his mindfulness, his compassion, his attention, his powers of reason, and so forth as if they were our own.  Wherever we visualize a Buddha, they actually go.  If we imagine that we are ‘using’ or ‘relying upon’ our guru’s mental factors, then literally his mental factors enter our mind and we can use them as if they were our own.  I have difficulty understanding topics, I have difficulty holding my object with single pointed concentration.  My guru doesn’t.  I don’t have to rely upon (use) my ordinary mental factors, there is nothing preventing me (except my own lack of faith) from relying upon or ‘using’ my guru’s mental factors as my own.

His mind has already gained all the realizations of the stages of the path perfectly.  Since we have mixed our mind with his, we can validly say that all of his realizations are inside our mind.  He is emanating his realizations perfectly inside our mind. 

So if we are meditating on compassion, for example, we imagine that his perfect compassion is emanated inside our mind.  We ask ourselves, what would his compassion be like?  What would it be like to have his compassion?  How would I view this situation if I had his compassion?  etc.  Then, like an actor playing a part, we then imagine that this is our compassion, and we come to identify with it as our own compassion. 

Identifying with a realization is a powerful way of ‘downloading’ the guru’s realizations into our own mind.  This is very similar to our divine practice in highest yoga tantra.  Kadam Bjorn calls practicing like this, ‘resultant Lamrim practice.’  We bring the result of our Lamrim practice into the path, we imagine that we already have mixed our mind indistinguishably from our guru’s realizations, and then we ‘try it on’ to ‘see what it is like.’ 

It is important to recall the logic of wherever you imagine a Buddha, a Buddha actually goes. Wherever you imagine your spiritual guide, all the Buddhas go.  Wherever a Buddha goes, they accomplish the function of a Buddha, namely to bestow blessings.  A blessing is something that transforms our mind into a more positive state, it moves our mind in the direction of virtue.  If we imagine that we are meditating with our guru’s mental factors of mindfulness, altertness, and concentration, then as a result of this correct imagination, he literally will enter our mental factors of mindfulness, alertness, and concentration, and transforms ours into his.  Then we can ‘use his mental factors as if they were our own.’  His power enters our mental factors.  This takes a while to get used to, but it makes all the difference in the world to our meditations. 

To meditate with our guru’s mind all we need really do is ‘call upon’ his mind to understand and generate our object instead of calling upon our ordinary mind to do the same.  If we check the thinking process carefully, what we find is that when we think we ‘call upon’, or ‘make requests to’ our ordinary mind.  We are confronted with some problem and we are trying to understand.  What do we do?  We ‘make requests’ to our ordinary mind.  We ‘call upon’ our ordinary mind for a response to our question.  It then thinks, and gives back to us some type of response (namely, an  unreliable one).  This is how we ‘think’ with our ordinary mind. 

The only difference between thinking with our ordinary mind and thinking with our guru’s mind is not the process of thinking (making requests, calling upon) but the mind that we make requests to or the mind that we call upon.  Instead of making requests to our ordinary mind, we generate our guru at our heart imagining that he is mixed indistinguishably with our root mind (we feel his living presence inside our mind), then we ‘call upon’ his mind, ‘make requests to’ his mind to understand (‘Please reveal to me X’, ‘Please help me understand Y’, ‘Please bless me to find this object’, ‘Please bless me to hold this object with single pointed concentration’).

All of these practices take some time to get used to, but with familiarity, it makes all the difference in the world. It is no coincidence that all of the most senior teachers say the same thing:  in the end, the path comes down to reliance.  It is no coincidence that reliance on the spiritual guide is considered the root of the path.  It is no coincidence that all that is really required in our Tantric meditations is faith and imagination.  Yet, we hold ourselves back, we try do things with our ordinary mind.  Of course we are free to do so, but why drive a wooden soap box when you can drive a Ferrari?

We conclude the Je Tsongkhapa part of Heart Jewel with its dedication:

Through being cared for throughout all my lives
By Conqueror Tsongkhapa as my Mahayana Guru,
May I never turn away, even for an instant,
From this excellent path praised by the Conquerors.

This reveals two things:  (1) the function of the Je Tsongkhapa and Lamrim parts of our practice, and (2) what we should dedicate our merit towards.  This is the goal we should be striving for.

‘Cared for throughout all my lives’ means if we practice sincerely our spiritual guide will find us in our future lives as he has found us in this life.  I asked Geshe-la once how to guarantee to always meet him in all my future lives, and he said to “concentrate on practicing Dharma and always keep faith.”  ‘Mahayana Guru’ means we rely upon him as our guru.  He is at our heart, and he will lead us to any virtuous destination we want to go.  ‘Never turn away’ means by some amazing good fortune we have found a way out of samsara, there is a big danger that we could get swept away by samsara and lose the path for aeons remaining trapped for all that time.  It is just too dangerous.  So we need to remain with our guru and maintain the continuum of our practice.  If we don’t seize this opportunity while we have got it, we will not get it again for close to forever.