6. Special series

Working to fulfill others’ virtuous wishes

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

We watched recently a documentary about the election of Barack Obama.  It was a behind the scenes look at the people who actually ran and executed the campaign.  There were thousands of 20-somethings who volunteered themselves 15-20 hours a day over a period of 20 months to get him elected.  While they were exhausted, they felt like they were contributing to something of great meaning, they felt like they were fulfilling a higher purpose.  And so they did so joyfully and with genuine enthusiasm.  In many ways, you can say it was they who got him elected.

This reveals a great many things.  First, Obama in his previous lives must have volunteered himself smililarly hard and enthusiastically thousands and thousands of times (or perhaps once with a bodihchitta motivation, which would have the same karmic effect, such is the power of bodhichitta…) to help others fulfill their wishes.  This is what created the karma to have all these people help him.  If he didn’t have such karma, they wouldn’t have worked for him and he never would have gotten elected.  Second, when people feel like they are fulfilling a higher purpose and their project is one of great meaning, then even if they are working very hard and long hours, they do so joyfully and enthusiastically.  It is not the financial rewards or the status that motivates good people, it is the meaning of the purpose for which they work which drives them. 

So how does this then apply to us? 

  1. First, if in the future we want to accomplish the project of liberating all beings, we will need a lot of help to get the job done.  Like Obama, we will need many many volunteers who will help us out.  How do we get these volunteers?  By ourselves volunteering to help others fulfill their virtuous wishes.  If we do this with a bodhichitta motivation, understanding how our activities will benefit countless beings in countless future generations, then it karmically multiplies the value of our volunteerism.  For me personally, I have always been very bad at this.  I am happy to work on my projects, but I have always been bad about volunteering myself to help others accomplish their projects.  If I continue like this, in the future even if I have a virtuous wish, I will have nobody to help me fulfill it.
  2. In our own lives, we need to see how our activities are building towards fulfilling a higher purpose.  It is this higher purpose which will give us literally unlimited energy to work hard and keep going, and to do so enthusiastically and joyfully.  What higher purpose can there be than bodhichitta?  What higher purpose can there be than the project of building a pure land in which all living beings can take rebirth and complete the path?  If I grow tired or I lose my enthusiasm to work, it is because I have strayed from this purpose.
  3. We have an incredible opportunity to right here and right now be like a volunteer for Barack Obama, but instead of volunteering to work work to fulfill a politician’s worldly purposes (even a virtuous politican’s virtuous worldly purposes), we can volunteer to work to fulfill the living Je Tsongkhapa’s spiritual purposes in this world.  VGL’s wish and project is a ‘campaign’ to lead all beings to enlightenment.  His project is give people everything they need and to inspire them to take up the path which will permanently free them and all that they love from all suffering.  What can be more meaningful than that?  If we feel anything less than joy and enthusiasm in our work for fulfilling VGL’s wishes, it is because we do not really share them or we are not really working to fulfill his wishes, but rather our own.  If we do the work to put our mind genuinely behind this wish, then we will find literally endless energy to work continuously towards this end.  Even if our motivation is not perfect, the nature of the object towards which we work is so pure that the karma we create by volunteering ourselves is limitless. 
  4. We need to rely upon Dorje Shugden as the ‘campaign manager’, or our boss, in terms of assigning us our individual task.  The campaign manager has the big picture in mind, and his job is to assign work to the volunteers so as collectively their efforts produce the final result.  So we should request him to reveal to us and arrange the conditions for us to assume our job in the spritual campaign.  In ALL situations, our number one job is ALWAYS to gain Dharma realizations.  Externally, my current situation is I can help through caring for my family.  If I provide a good childhood for 5 kids, then I create the causes to be reborn at least five times in good families.  This will make a big difference in terms of my future.  Likewise, I am making this blog/website so that I have access to ample good teachings in the future (assuming what I have to say is good, that is!!! hee hee).  I am trying to learn how to transform a very normal life into a deep spiritual retreat, which I hope will benefit countless living beings in the future who live ‘normal’ lives.  This seems to be the conditions Dorje Shugden, my campaign manager, has arranged for me. 

Conclusion:  I need to see my living my life as my volunteering myself to fulfill the virtuous wishes of VGL in his project/campaign to liberate all living beings.  If I maintain this recognition as the purpose behind all of my actions and the context of my life, then this is the karma I will create.

Doing everything for others

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

VGL says in Eight Steps to Happiness that the path to enlightenment is very easy, all we need to do is change the object of our cherishing from self to others and everything else will come naturally.  The essence of the Mahayana path is to have our every action be for the benefit of others.  Once we have made this shift, then we naturally look for ways of increasing the quality of the benefit we bestow upon others through our actions.  The most valuable thing we can do for others is help them overcome the real cause of their problems, their delusions.  To do that, we need to gain the wisdom knowing how to overcome delusions.  We acquire that through our own practice of Dharma.  Once we have this logic, then it is just an issue of taking things to their logical conclusion.  If only Dharma realizations provide any lasting freedom or happiness, then we should not stop gaining realizations until we have gained them all – in other words, attained enlightenment.

But the linchpin to all of this process is making this change in the object of our cherishing.  It is not enough to just mentally know we should or understand this logic, we need to bring about a genuine transformation in the reason or purpose behind our every action.  Every day, no matter what our circumstances, we are engaging in actions.  The easiest and most important method for transforming our life into a retreat is to mentally do everything we are normally doing anyways, but do it mentally for the benefit of others.  If we can do this, then our transforming the rest of our life into a retreat will come naturally.  If we fail to do this, then it will be impossible to really transform our life into a retreat.  Like with the path itself, this is the key step.

In the beginning, we should not worry about trying to do our every action with a bodhichitta motivation, but even just simply train in doing our actions for the benefit of others.  We happily serve others.  So in our work, we help our boss and clients/students, at home we help our kids, with our partner we support them in their goals and help with a disproportionate share of the household work, with our friends we try help them be happy, on the road we let others go first, when we are with strangers we give them a warm and friendly smile, when we bathe we do so so others don’t have to smell our bad human odors, etc., etc., etc.  We are doing all of these things every day anyways, we just need to change our reason for doing them from doing them for our own benefit to doing them for the benefit of others.

There is no mental habit more important than this to develop.  From this mental habit, the rest will come naturally and essentially effortlessly.

Emptiness and responsibility, part 4

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Ultimate stages of the path

In this final post of this series, I will try explain how I practice in the meditation break what I consider to be the most profound part of emptiness, namely how all phenomena are by nature mind.

First, what does it mean to say that all phenomena are mere karmic appearances “of mind”?  “Of mind” means that the conventional nature of all phenomena is mind.  The term “by nature” in a Dharma context roughly means “made of”, or “substance.”  In other words, all conventional objects are “made of” or are comprised of the “substance” of mind.  The nature of a gold coin is the gold, and its aspect is that of a coin.  In the final view of emptiness, we go one step further saying that objects are not just by nature mind, they are by nature our very subtle mind of great bliss.  It even goes one step further, by saying the ultimate nature of all objects is the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss.  The emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss is like the gold of the gold coin of all phenomena.  Put in other terms, the emtpiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss is like the Play Dough that gets shaped in the apsect of each and every object.  Just as you cannot separate the coin from the gold or the object from its underlying Play Dough, so too you cannot separate any object from its ultimate nature of the emptiness of our mind of great bliss. 

So how do I practice this knowledge in the meditation break?  First, I try train myself where I remember this wisdom every time I look at an object.  For example, I know with certainty that the World Trade Center is no longer in New York.  So when I see an old picture of the NYC skyline, the mere appearance of the World Trade Center buildings instantly reminds me that they are no longer there.  In the same way, I know for certain (intellectually at least) that all phenomena are nothing other than mere karmic appearances of mind, so the very appearance of any object “actually being there” reminds me that in reality nothing is actually there and it is just the emptiness of my very subtle mind assuming the form of (disguised as) the object.  Like any subject, the more I remind myself of the meaning of emptiness, the more familiar I become with this wisdom, and the more deeply I undestand and the more easily I remember it in a virtuous cycle. 

The second way I practice this is I try stop thinking of myself as somehow separate from everything, but rather to consider Ryan as merely a single wave on the ocean of my the emptiness of my very subtle mind of great bliss.  We naturally identify with our mind.  If we see all of reality as being by nature our mind, we start to identify ourselves as being the nature of everything.  Put another way, we see the entire universe as being by nature us.  I cease to be just Ryan and instead I feel as if I am the ocean of everything.  Every single phenomena is a wave on the ocean of my mind.  Samsara is my mind in the aspect of a turbulant, uncontrolled stormy ocean.  The pure land of my self-generation practice is my mind in the aspect of Keajra (Heruka’s pure land).  This is why it is called a “yoga” of self-generation.  In normal yoga, we put our body in certain positions (sometimes strange and uncomfortable positions) and then hold that positition and learn to relax into it.  In the same way, in our self-generation practice, we put all of our mind into the “mental position” or shape of Keajra, and then hold that position and learn to relax into it.    By adopting this ocean view, the duality between ourselves and all phenomena falls away and we experience reality as if all phenomena were inseparably one (and this oneness is ourselves).

On the basis of this experience, all of the vast path of Sutra comes effortlessly.  In says in the Lamrim texts that bodhichitta, or the wish to become a Buddha so as to lead all beings to freedom, is the quintessential butter that comes from churning all of the Dharma.  When I see all phenomena, which includes all other living beings, as waves on the ocean of my very subtle mind, each and every being becomes an aspect or a part or a limb of me.  This doesn’t mean all beings are parts of Ryan, rather it means Ryan is just one aspect or part or limb or wave of the bigger me which is the ocean of my mind.  The same is then true of all other beings – each is a wave, but we are all by nature the same ocean.  There is nothing about the Ryan wave that is more important than any other wave.  So just as I strongly wish for the Ryan wave to never again experience suffering and to attain enlightenment, so too I naturally wish for every other wave to attain the same state.  If all of my body were in acid, but my nose was not, my nose would not be satisfied with this!  I would want all of myself to be free.  Bodhichitta becomes not some distant mind, but it becomes an issue of simple complete self-preservation.  If I am no longer just Ryan, but am instead the ocean of all living beings, since I naturally wish for myself to be free, if I am all living beings then wishing for my true self to be completely free is the same thing as wishing all beings were free, and vice versa.  I naturally then feel a feeling of deep and natural responsibility for the welfare and freedom of everyone. 

This post is already too long, but I will just throw out one last way in which I try practice this.  The practice of pure view is a mental ‘yoga.’  I put my mind in the mental position or shape of viewing myself and all beings as being already Buddhas in the pure land and then I engage in the mental action of believing this to be true.  This mental action actually functions to re-shape the Play Dough of my mind into this new aspect.  Each time I engage in this action, I plant the karma on my mind which when it ripens causes the ocean of my mind to take on the form or aspect of the pure land.  With enough training and enough familiarity, the shape of my mind is gradually transformed from samsara into the pure land.  Both are the same nature of the emptiness of my very subtle mind of great bliss (equality of samsara and nirvana), but one is by nature suffering and the other is by nature great bliss.  Bliss is better!  🙂

Emptiness and responsibility, part 3

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Ultimate stages of the path

In the first post of this series we looked at how emptiness can be understood as all phenomena are mere karmic appearances of mind, which is broken down into three parts, “mere appearance,” “karmic appearance,” and “of mind.”  In the last post we looked at how to actually practice “mere appearance” in our daily life, in this post we will look at “karmic appearance” and in the final post of the series we will examine “of mind.”

“Karmic appearance” shows the relationship between our actions and what appears to our mind.  Every action we engage in plants a seed on our mind which when it ripens takes the form of a certain appearance.  For example, if I yell at somebody, I create the karma for the appearance of somebody yelling at me in the future.  I also create the karma for the appearance of a rebirth that is of the same nature as the action I created, in this case a hot anger ripens as the appearances of a rebirth in a hot hell.  Likewise, if I engage in the action of being a good father, I create the karma to have the appearance of a good father for myself in a future life and, since it is virtuous, I create the cause for an upper rebirth.

If we understand this deeply, we realize that the world we inhabit is a creation of our own karmic actions.  The lower realms are the karmic appearances/creation of negative actions, the upper realms are the karmic appearances/creation of virtuous actions, and the pure lands are the karmic appearances/creation of pure actions.  One of my teachers always used to say, “if you don’t like your karma, change it.”  In the same way, if you don’t like your (karmically appearing) world, change it!  How?  By changing your actions.  We need to karmically create our pure land through engaging in pure actions.  If our world is anything other than a pure land, we have only our own past impure actions to blame.  It’s our karmic dream, it is coming from our mind, and ultimately from our actions, therefore we are responsible for all of it.

If we understand that everything that appears to our mind is part of our karmic creation, we will realize that we have a responsibility for everything that appears since our mind/actions created it all.  This is how we avoid the extreme of apathy or indifference that can sometimes come from thinking that nothing is really happening to anyone.  We have created a world of suffering that, while by nature is a dream, the people of the world believe to be real, and therefore they experience pain.  When we look at the wars, famine and disease in the world and realize we are ultimately responsible for all of, a very powerful bodhichitta wishing to clean up the karmic mess we have created for others will arise in our mind.
So how do we “karmically create” our new, pure world?  We harness the power of karma to our advantage.  If I give a flower to somebody, I create the cause for somebody else to give a flower to me in the future.  But when that being of my dream gives me a flower, they also plant on their mind the tendency similar to the cause to give more flowers to others in the future.  So they then give other flowers, create more good karma for themselves, which continues to ripple through the dream like a wave.  If I keep pumping out virtuous and pure actions, others in the future will continue to pump out virtuous and pure actions themselves until eventually everybody in my dream is always pumping out virtuous and pure actions.  The karmic result of engaging in virtuous and pure actions is to inhabit virtuous and pure lands.
In other words, if from this point forward I choose to only engage in virtuous and pure actions and I have the mental persistence to continue with this course of action for as long as it takes, it is a karmic inevitability that I will transform this world of suffering in which I have condemned all beings to misery into a completely pure world of bliss in which I have freed all beings forever.
Venerable Tharchin says, “when we understand how the Dharma actually works, generating effort becomes effortless.”  If we understand the relationship between karma and appearance we will understand the inner mechanism of reality and realize directly how to change it.  We know it can be done and we know how to do it and we know nothing can stop us.  This gives us an indestructible confidence and purpose that we then carry with us in all of our daily actions until we have attained the final goal!

Emptiness and responsibility, part 2

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Ultimate stages of the path

In the last post, we looked at what is the meaning of emptiness, namely all phenomena are mere karmic appearances of mind.  In the next three posts, I will try explain how I use this understanding practically as a solution to daily problems.  There are three main parts to the meaning “mere karmic appearance of mind”, namely “mere appearance”, “karmic appearance” and “of mind.”  Each one of these has its own main daily practices, which will be explained over the next three posts, but they all have as a common denominator to assume responsibility for everything and everyone.

First “mere appearance.”  Again, the meaning here is that all things are only (mere) appearances to mind, like dreams or mental holograms, and there is nothing other than these mere appearances.  So how do we practice this? 

The first distinction I make is between the appearance of a thing and my opinion of a thing.  One can argue (wrongly, in the end) that the appearance of something does not depend upon our mind – the thing is just there regardless or independently of my mind – but everyone would agree that our opinion of what appears is entirely dependent upon our mind.  As Hamlet says, “things re neither good nor bad, but thinking makes them so.”  Some people like Obama, others don’t, which shows different people can have different opinions of the same thing.  So our opinions of things are entirely created by our mind, therefore we are entirely responsibile for them.  We can have a good, bad or useful opinion of things.  It is true, from a worldly conventional perspective, getting cancer is bad and getting a rewarding job is good.  Of course they are not inherently so, but everyone more or less agrees about this.  But it is also entirely besides the point.  Everything can ge “good” for us if we change our outlook to be what is useful for our spiritual training.  This is a choice of mind, a choice to change our opinion of things by looking at them through a new optic of what is useful.  We don’t have to deny the conventional good and bad (though sometimes that is necessary too), it suffices to realize good and bad don’t matter, what is important is what is useful.  When cancer strikes, of course from a normal conventional perspective it is bad, but our experience of the cancer depends entirely on our opinion of it, which in turns depends entirely upon our mind – how we choose to relate to it.  If we choose to ask the question, “how can I use this for my spiritual training?”, then we will find ways in which the cancer is useful, and therefore welcome.  It will still be painful, no doubt, but through choice of mind, we can make that pain useful.  The pleasant and unpleasant experiences of our life are fleeting, but the mental habits and karma we create for ourself endure life after life.  Seeing that our mental habits and karma are more important, we are able to remain (more or less) happy in mind even through the most awful of things, cancer.  The same approach can be taken with whatever happens to us in life. 

Another powerful practice we can do with “mere appearance” is the power of “it doesn’t matter.”  We are all way too serious about everything.  We are all “drama queens” about pretty much everything.  Everything is so heavy and dramatic.  We make a big deal about whatever happens, and as a result we create all sorts of problems for ourself.  When we understand everything is just mental phantasamgora, a mental light show, we are able to take a step back like we are watching a movie.  If something terrible happens in a movie, of course it is bad in the movie, but ultimately it does not matter since it is just light being projected onto a screen – nothing is really happening.  In the same way, all of reality is just our mental movie being projected onto the screen of our very subtle mind.  Something terrible may happen in our movie, but ultimately it does not matter since it is just mere appearance – nothing is really happening.  We can still appreciate the good movies and laugh at the really bad ones, but we don’t get wrapped up in them or swept away by them.  We are able to let go, maintain some perspective and distance, and feel safe in our seat no matter what happens to appear.  So no matter what happens, I just keep repeating to myself like a mantra, “it doesn’t matter.”  I am able to let go.  This does not mean we become indifferent or apathetic towards what appears (we will talk more about this when we get to “karmic appearance”), but it does allow us to cut the drama.

So during the meditation break, I try focus on these two practices:  viewing things through the lens of what is ‘useful’ (instead of good and bad), and realizing how whatever happens is just a mental movie I am watching, and so ultimately ‘it doesn’t matter.’  Through these, we can assume full responsibility for our own experience of whatever happens to us and stop blaming others or external things.

Not getting angry at those who are angry

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

It is obviously hypocracy at its finest to get angry about the fact that others around us are angry, but this is something we do all of the time (or at least, I do).  Learning how to constructively relate to the angry people in our life is one of our greatest personal and spiritual challenges.  But the need to do so is definite.   In this post, I am primarily going to discuss dealing with people who are angry at their lives.  In a later post I will discuss how to deal with people who are angry at us.

The first thing we must do is protect ourselves from being swept away by our own anger.  Anger is one of the most infectuous diseases which very quickly can spread like wildfire.  If we too get swept away by our own anger, any hope of being helpful will evaporate completely.  We will become part of the problem, not part of the solution. 

So how do we not get angry ourselves when surrounded by angry people?  We must first understand the cause of anger, which is, quite simply, wishing things were different.  In this context, it is wishing that the people around us weren’t so angry.  Many Dharma practitioners know they are “not supposed to get angry”, but they usually just wind up repressing it – either pretending that they are not angry, when in fact they are; or just holding it in.  Repression never works.  The pressure just builds, our fuse just grows shorter, and eventually we blow.  To prevent our own anger, we must stop wishing the people around us weren’t so angry, and instead generate the mind that wouldn’t have it any other way.  This obviously doesn’t mean we want others to be deluded, rather it means that for the purposes of our own training, their being deluded is perfect for us.  Since we view it as perfect, we let go our attachment to it being different, and as such, we do not ourselves get angry about them being angry.

So how do we do this? 

  1. Accept that this is just how things are.  We live in degenerate times in which the people around us will likely grow more and more angry.  This is the nature of samsara.  Samsara is populated by deluded beings, to expect it to be any different is to not understand the nature of samsara. 
  2. Realize it is a reflection of our own karma and our own mind.  I am surrounded by angry people because I have been so angry myself in the past.  The world I inhabit is a karmic echo of the world I have created for others in the past with my own anger.  If I want this cycle to stop, I need to not get angry myself now.
  3. View dealing with the angry person as part of your larger training.  In Offering to the Spiritual Guide, it says we must strive “for complete enlightenment with unwavering compassion; even if I must remain in the fires of the deepest hell for many aeons for the sake of each being.”  We first learn how to constructively relate to the angry people in our life as a training for becoming the courageous bodhisattva who can enter into the deepest hells and lead beings out.  Demographically speaking, most of the beings of samsara are either already in or they are en route to the hot hells, which are nothing other than the karmic consequence of angry minds. 
  4. Realize it is not your problem.  We must make a distinction between what is their problem and what is our problem.  Their problem is their anger towards their life, our problem is our anger towards the fact that they are angry.  Our anger tells us that the way to solve our problem is for the other person to stop being angry.  So motivated by this, we try to change them.  But this just makes things worse.  If the other person is angry, that is not my problem, it is their problem.  So I shouldn’t let it bother me or become my problem.  If other people are angry at their lives, that does not harm me in any way, so their being angry is not my problem.
  5. Take it as a lesson of what not to do.  Everytime we see somebody doing something wrong, such as being angry about their lives, we can view the other person as a skilful teacher showing us what not to do.  If we are learning something from what we are observing, we are growing from it, and then it is not a problem for us.  Quite simply, we tell ourselves, “I need to not be like that.”
  6. Generate compassion for them realizing that they are possessed by their anger.  Anger is a demon which seizes us quickly and we lose total control.  When we are under the influence of anger, for all practical purposes it is as if we have been seized by a demon and we are no longer in control.  We say and do and think all sorts of things which just make our situation worse, both in the short term and also for the future as we create the causes for others to get angry at us in the future.  Seeing people are possessed by their anger, we can generate compassion for them.
  7. Not cooperating or going along with their anger.  When others are angry, they will harm those around them.  Because we don’t want to become the object of their anger, we will often go along with them or cooperate with their harmful wishes.  Unless we are in a position to do so, we usually cannot stop others from harming those around them, but we can ourselves choose to not do the same.  If others get angry at us for not doing like them, then we can explain why we feel getting angry and harming others will make things worse and so we do not want to do so.  They may still get angry at us for not going along with them, but they can never make us actually go along with them.  It remains our choice.
  8. Know when to remove yourself from the presence of the angry person.  We should remove ourselves from the presence of angry people when we are not able to keep our own anger under control or when our continued presence implicitly enables the other person getting angry or acts as a de facto approval of their behavior.

All of these things are difficult, but they are all essential parts of our training.