6. Special series

Dealing with the toddler years

Kadampa Ryan Cultivating healthy relationships with others

I have a “theory” that before they turn three, our children are not yet “human beings”!  I am not quite sure what they are, but you certainly can’t reason with them, you can’t expect them to be able to do anything, and you can be guarranteed they will do the opposite of whatever you want them to do!  Of course I am joking, but sometimes I do wonder…  Before our kids turn one, they are just babies and don’t get into too much trouble.  But from the time they can crawl around until about three, three and a half, kids are at their most difficult (until the teenage years, of course).  Once you get past three, it generally gets easier and easier.

During the early toddler years, our kids have a very well developed sense of “no-dar”, meaning they head straight for whatever is the most dangerous thing in whatever room you find yourself in!  I remember when my first child was 18 months old, and she thought it was really funny to climb up on top of my desk everytime I would turn my back and then start jumping up and down on it like a monkey going “yeahn yeahn yeahn yeahn”!  By the end of this period, our homes are virtual fortresses, with baby gates, security clips and barricades everywhere.  Anything of value, well frankly everything we own, is put up on shelves beyond their reach.  There is just no deterring them, they are like the Energizer Bunny!  So for about a year, all the hear is “no” as they head for the wires, the knives, the garbage, etc.

It is no surprise then that between ages two and three we have what are affectionately known as “the terrible twos” where they only know one word – “NO”.  But this time, it is them telling us no!  Everytime we try elicit their cooperation for basically anything, they are pre-programmed with one response – “NO”.  By this age, they have discovered our weaknesses.  When we go out in public, they know we will do anything so they don’t throw a fit and embarrass us, so what do they do?  They threaten to throw a fit everytime we don’t give them what they want.  For example when we go to the store, if at any point we made the mistake of buying them something they asked for at the store, then from that point forward everytime we go to the store they will ask us to buy them something and threaten to throw a fit if we don’t.  Stores know this which is why there is so much candy and little kid plastic crap toys in the checkout lanes!  (Note for any future parents:  a good rule is “we only buy things we decided to buy before we got to the store”.  If you never say yes once, then you avoid this dynamic).  They also know we are at our most vulnerable when we get on the phone or when we have guests over.  Look out!

So what is a parent to do during these difficult toddler years?  The following are the things that have helped me:

  1. Accept this age as purification for your own past toddler years.  When we were toddlers, in all of our countless past lives, we too did the same things.  So we happily accept this as purification.
  2. We remind ourselves that this is entirely normal.  Especially for first time parents, these years can be terrifying – oh dear, I am raising a monster!  But don’t worry, every parent has gone through the same things, probably even Ghandi’s mother.  It passes, so don’t worry.
  3. Don’t feed the behavior by responding to it in an animated way.  If you show that the behavior bothers you, then you can 100% guarrantee you will get more of it.  Remember, at this stage of their development they are trying to figure out how the world works.  If I push this red button, Elmo sings a song.  If I go digging in the garbage, mommy freaks out.  Look, how fun!  We need to maintain total equanimity with respect to everything they do, not freaking out, just dealing with the situation calmly.
  4. Just accept that your house will have to be completely baby proofed for several years.  Some parents think they can somehow teach their kids to not keep pushing the power button on the TV.  Maybe some succeed, but I have yet to meet any myself…  And even if they do, at what emotional and mental cost?  Not just for our own sanity, but actually for the child’s development, I think it is better to create giant “safe to go” zones, where they can roam around freely and do anything without exposing themselves to danger or breaking anything valuable.
  5. The less words you use the better.  It is useless to try lecture them or reason with them.  In general, the more we talk to our kids, the more it becomes an endless “blah blah blah blah” to them and they learn early on to just tune us out.  As the proverb goes, actions speak louder than words.  If they are putting their hand in the blender, don’t talk, just act – physically remove them from the area.  They will kick, they will scream, but you just act – clearly and decisively, without hesitation (if they smell the slighest hesitation in you, they will exploit it to the end).
  6. Primarily tell them what they can and should do, not what they can’t and shouldn’t do, “the DVDs are for watching movies, not plates for your dolls” or “the silverware is for eating, not banging on things.”  In particular, it is good to start developing “wisdom power words” that in one word communicate everything they need to do.  For example, many of the problems come when our toddlers have to wait for us to be able to help them because we are doing something else.  When they start to smolder, say “patience” in a loving way.  At first they will have no idea what you are talking about, but when done again and again they will start to understand, and then with just one word you help them know what they should be doing with their own minds.  Other good examples are, “calm” or “calmly” or “share” or “gentle”.  Doing this early and often helps lay the foundation for later when you use wisdom phrases which are more complex (I will do a future post on this).
  7. Redirect to try minimize the times you need to say no.  Generally, at this age they are programmed to explore.  So you have to find something more interesting than what they are currently looking at and redirect them towards that instead.
  8. First time gets a “pass”, second time gets a pre-explained “natural consequence.”  Very often our kids will do something wrong, and then we punish them.  But they didn’t even know it was wrong to begin with, so it seems very unfair to them.  Instead, the first time they do something wrong, you should say, “what you did is not correct for X reason.  That object should be used in Y way.  If you do that again, then I will apply Z natural consequence.  Then verify that they agree.”  A real life example was “hitting your brother on the head with your dolly is not correct because that hurts him.  Dollies should be loved, not used to hit people.  If you hit your bother again with the dolly then I will take the dolly away for the rest of the evening.  Do you agree?”  Then, have them acknowledge what you say and agree in advance to the consequence.  Then, if they hit their brother again with the dolly, without saying a single word, just take the dolly away and put it some place beyond their reach.  If they protest and scream, which they will, you just remind them that they agreed.  Then you let them cry and throw their fit, but don’t give in.
  9. When they are out of control, be prepared to put them in their room or crib until they calm down.  Toddlers throw fits.  That is what they do.  How we respond is our choice.  Sometimes they get themselves so worked up that there is really no talking them down.  At such times, it is generally best to just give them a time out in their room.  First, you should give them a warning, “if you don’t calm down, then you will need to go to your room to calm down.”  If they still don’t calm down, then again, without saying a single word, you pick them up and take them to their room.  When you put them in their room, tell them in a loving voice, “once you are calm and once you are ready to say sorry, then you can come out.”  When you leave the room, they will FREAK OUT.  You need to accept this and let them cry and scream.  This is harder to do if you have neighbors who can hear your kids screams.  To deal with that problem, you can do two things:  let go of your attachment to what other people think and in a non-crisis time go have a talk with your neighbors letting them know that your kid is a toddler and you are not beating them, but just giving them a time out until they calm down and are ready to say sorry.  It is a training, and you are sorry for the noise, but you just wanted to let them know.  Most will understand and when they do scream, you will not worry so much.  You can’t really do this for kids under 20 months, but after 20 months you can.  In terms of how long to leave them crying, the rule of thumb we use is we check back in with them avery 3 to 5 minutes.  When we check in, we say, “are you calm yet?”  Obviously they are not since they are still screaming, but asking the question gives them a chance to say yes and then they calm down.  If they don’t say yes, then you go back out for another 3-5 minutes and repeat the cycle.  Once they say yes, they are calm now (and they actually start calming down), then you ask, “are you ready to say sorry?” Remember, these were your two conditions for letting them out.  They might not be, so you go back out and start over until they answer yes to both questions.  Then you pick them up, give them a big hug and lots of love and have them sit on your lap for awhile cuddling, so you can recharge them with your love.  Then you ask, are you ready to go back out now?  Then off they go!  The first couple of times you do this, it will take a long time, but once they learn the pattern, it will get quicker and more and more effective.  Just stick with it.

The key spiritual lesson of all of this is to realize it is because we love our kids that we need to set and enforce realistic limits for them.  Sometimes we feel so cruel when we let our kids cry, but that is compassion without any wisdom.  Our kids need and in fact want clear (but fair) limits because it actually simplifies their life.  Our attachment to their being happy (something quite different than compassion) prevents us from living up to our responsibility of actually being a parent for them.

Your turn:  Describe some challenging/funny situation you have had with a toddler and what spiritual lessons you learned from that situation.

Loving others as we do our own children

Kadampa Ryan Cultivating healthy relationships with others

Just before I was to get married I was at the Summer Festival in England.  I went up to what was then the Protector Gompa (a special meditation room dedicated to the Dharma Protector).  I felt like getting married was the right thing to do for my spiritual practice, but I still had doubts.  So I made as sincere of a request as I could that my path be revealed to me.  What happened next was the only time something like this has ever happened to me.  I was meditating, my eyes were closed, but in my mind a Buddha who I understood to be Tara approached me.  She was made of a silvery metalic liquid, but very much alive.  In her hands was a baby – in normal flesh and bones that I could see as clearly as I could see any person out of meditation.  She then handed me the baby and said, “this is where you will find your heart.”  And then everything vanished.  I can still vividly remember and see this within my mind.  All doubt was then dispelled and I knew what my path was to be.  Thirteen years later, I now have five kids!

Prior to my being a parent, I was very much a Vulcan – heart-felt emotion wasn’t really part of my personality, and I was very intellectual in my approach to the Dharma (I still am, unfortunately, but it is slowly changing…).  I really struggled with feeling any Dharma realizations like love and compassion in my heart, and as a result I tended to shy away from such meditations and instead to focus on emptiness and other philosophical or technical topics.  “Finding my heart” was (and still is), in many respects, my greatest spiritual challenge.

To my surprise, the love I have for my children is not some sappy, mushy sort of thing, but is rather very active.  It can best be described as “there is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.”  It is a feeling of a fortunate assuming of personal responsibility for their welfare – I am glad it is me who is responsible for them, because I wouldn’t trust that anybody else would look after them the way I would and I very much want them to be taken care of.  It is a love that ‘knows them’, in many ways better than they know themselves.  I know and understand how they work and think, so I am always sensitive to what is best for them.  It is a love that happily works for their benefit.  It is a love that would rather me have the hardest tasks or the worst things so that they can have the best.  It is a love that somehow can see past all of their faults and understand where those faults are coming from and develop compassion wishing to protect them.  It is a love that literally laughs out loud when I see their summer portraits and the unique goofiness in each of their expressions!

And here’s the thing:  all of this comes naturally.  I haven’t worked to develop this love, I just naturally feel it.  Venerable Geshe-la explains the reason for this is because we have special karmic connections with these particular beings from our previous lives where we now spontaneously feel a pure love towards them.  Of course there are times when our minds are full of delusions towards our kids, but compared to everyone else we feel the most natural love for our kids.  It is thanks to my kids that I ‘found’ my heart, I realized what it means to feel an active love for somebody.

The work and spiritual training of a Kadampa parent is to learn to extend and replicate this feeling we naturally have towards our children with everybody else.   I had a very good friend who once said, “I only need two things to attain enlightenment, my son and my Spiritual Guide.  On my son, I impute all living beings, so by caring for and loving him, I am caring for and loving all living beings.  On my Spiritual Guide, I impute all of the Buddhas, and by relying upon and receiving blessings from him, I am relying upon and receiving blessings from all the Buddhas.”  There is actually tremendous wisdom in this statement.  Practicing in this way is really the doorway for extending our love to others.

Then, when we see others, the trick is to impute “this is my child too, so therefore I should love them as I love my own kids.”  How can we understand this to be true?  We all know the meditation of all living beings are our mothers.  Well, by extension, this also means that all living beings are our children.  If our child died, would we think the person is no longer our child?  Of course not.  In the same way, all of our children have died but they have all been reborn as the beings around us.  So we can correctly say that each and every person we meet not only was our child, but still is our child.  Therefore, we should cherish them as we do our own children.

Another more profound way we can consider all living beings to be our children is to consider their emptiness.  The teachings on emptiness explain that everything is a mere appearance to mind arising from our karma, including others.  Basically, emptiness says that everything we see is all a dream.  If we dreamt of having a family and children, where do these children come from?  Likewise, where do the various people we encounter in our dream come from?  They all come from our own mind (and karma).  In the same way, if our waking reality is simply the dream of our waking mind, if we are ‘dreaming’ our current family and we likewise are ‘dreaming’ of the other beings we encounter in our world.  Where do all of these beings come from?  Our own mind (and karma).  They are all, quite literally, the offspring of our karma and the nature of our own mind.  What is our child if not our offspring?  Seen in this way, we can understand Venerable Tharchin’s statement that “all beings are our spiritual children.”

By training in the recognition that all beings are in fact our children, and recalling the love we have and actions we engage in for our children, we then apply effort to do the same for others.  In the beginning, yes, it is a bit artificial, but with training it becomes habit and more and more natural.  Gen Losang said, “What is natural is simply what is familiar.”  With effort, we make it familiar, and then it feels and becomes natural.

When we understand all of this we will feel so lucky to have our children.  We will cease to view them as obstacles to our spiritual practice.  Yes, it is harder to go to festivals and teachings when you have kids, but every day is a spiritual training.  We see how they are a stepping stone for our enlightenment and how without them it would be impossible for us to really progress along the spiritual path.  Our feeling lucky to have them will then increase our love even further, creating a virtuous circle of greater and greater love and progress along the spiritual path.  Fantastic!

And this is not even to speak of how we can use the love we have for our children in the context of our Tantric practice.  We train to be the Vajra Father (or Mother as the case may be) of all living beings.  We can bring all of our parenting experience into our self-generation practice.  This will not only help our self-generation practice, but it also creates a virtuous feedback into becoming a better parent too.

Your turn:  Take the most difficult person in your life right now.  How does viewing them as your child change your mind towards them?

Dealing with in/laws and family members who think you are in a sect

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

We live in a post-religious society, where in general people have little or no interest in spiritual matters.  Most of our families, likewise, have few spiritual inclinations, at most going to church on Christmas or Easter.  So when we start to develop interests in spiritual matters, it naturally raises a few suspicions or concerns.  Doubly so if we show interest in something non-traditional, like Buddhism.  When our family members see us becoming very interested, then their radar goes up and their immediate assumption is we have joined a sect.  This dynamic in particular comes out from our parents (who naturally assume we have no idea what we are doing) and from our in-laws (who fear for their loved one that is now linked with us).  Once they start becoming concerned, there is really no limit to how far they are sometimes willing to go to create obstacles for us in our practice.  They may resort to all sorts of blackmail, ultimatums, threats, insults and general mayhem.  I personally have experienced all of the above.

So the question is how should we deal with this?  I suggest the following as a multi-layered approach (if the first one fails, try the second; if the second fails, try the third, etc.):

  1. Appreciate how they are coming from a position of loving.  At the end of the day, their main concern is for our happiness.  They are not trying to create problems for us, they think they are protecting us.  When we assume they are being hostile and we respond defensively, then it feeds their narrative that we have been brainwashed, and then they redouble their determination to deter us from the wrong path we have taken.  If instead, we respond with understanding and appreciation for their concern, then we disarm the hostility and conflictual nature of the exchange and there is a chance we can have a healthy, rational discussion about the matter.
  2. Show them you yourself have already had all of the doubts and questions they raise, and then even show you have gone farther.  Explain to them how you too were skeptical at first, and how you too had many doubts and questions.  Show them that you are going in with your eyes open with a healthy skepticism.  Talk about all of the questions you yourself have asked and explain to them the satisfactory answers you have received as to why this is the real deal and not some sect.  When they see that you have already taken their objections into account and come up with reasonable answers to them, then they know that you are not being blinded.  It is important to even go further than they did in your doubts and concerns that you have addressed.  Show them that you have done even more due diligence than even they call for.  When they know that you have checked things out, their concern will be less.
  3. Completely and totally abandon trying to get them to appreciate Buddha’s teachings themselves.  Sometimes we fall into the mistake of thinking they need to appreciate the power of Buddha’s teachings for themselves, and then their resistance will go away.  But if we start to try to do that, they will feel us trying to ‘convert’ them and it will only feed their view that we have gone off the deep end.  Rather, you should take the approach of saying, “to each their own, you have your food, I have mine.”  You need to show total respect for their views, even if their views are completely hostile to you having your views (“it is your right to think like that”).  When you show respect for the diversity of beliefs people can adopt, and they show intolerance, then it becomes apparent to all who is being reasonable and who is not.
  4. Figure out what they want from you, and show with your actions (not your words) how the more you practice Dharma, the more they get what  they want from you.  For example, imagine your mother-in-law is creating trouble for you.  Why?  Because she is concerned about her daughter.  What does she want from you?  She wants you to be a good husband, who treats her daugher with respect and makes her daughter happy.  So use your practice to become a better and more loving husband.  While it may take time, you will become a better husband, your spouse will become happier, and your mother-in-law will come to see that actually your practice has made you better for her daughter, not worse, so she will come to accept it and even appreciate it.  But you should never say what you are doing because that ruins the whole thing.  Just let your actions speak for themselves.
  5. Patiently accept the obstacles that come your way.  Why are others creating obstacles to your practice?  Because you have created obstacles to others’ practice in the past and now it is coming back to haunt you.  You created the karma for this and you have not purified it, so now you must patiently accept it.  If you accept it as purification, then you will gradually purify this negative karma until eventually it exhausts itself.  If you start to retaliate and create obstacles for or fight with your family members, then the cycle starts all over again.  It may take years, even decades, even lifetimes before people come to accept, but if you sincerely accept the obstacles as purification, eventually the obstacles will pacify.  Two useful things you can do to help speed the process:  first, generate a specific bodhichitta motivation towards whoever is creating the biggest obstacles for you (I need to become a Buddha so I can help this person in the future).  If done sincerely in a qualified way free from any attachment, this will very quickly purify the negative karma you have with that person.  Second, make sincere requests to the Dharma Protector that he arrange whatever is best with respect to these obstacles – if they are harmful, may he pacify them; but if they are helpful, may he make them worse!  Then, whatever happens, accept that this is what has been emanated by the Dharma Protector as being what is best for your practice.
  6. If all else fails, don’t give into the blackmail, but don’t rub their faces in it either.  If your family members blackmail you saying ‘if you don’t quit, then I will … (insert emotional penalty)’, and then you give into that blackmail and do what they say, then you will remain forever trapped in their manipulations, you will lose your practice, and you will allow them to create the karma of successfully creating obstacles to the spiritual practice of another person.  This will then be bad for them in the future when they experience similar obstructions.  Yes, we are supposed to cherish others and fulfill their wishes, except when their wishes are wrong.  Assuming you have done your due diligence and you are on a qualified spiritual path, then their wish for you to abandon it is wrong.  To indulge them in that wish does not help them, it does not help you, and it does not help all the countless beings who you would otherwise help if you were to become a Buddha.  So you need to let them throw whatever emotional penalties they want at you, but you still keep going – you never abandon your practice.  Eventually, they will realize that no matter what they do, you will not give in and they will give up trying.  But you should also avoid the extreme of rubbing their face in it – “ha, ha, I am going to practice and you can’t stop me, na ni na ni na ni”.  Dharma practice is, above all, an internal thing.  We don’t need ostentatious external displays of our spiritual-ness!  Be skilfull so that they are not forced to confront it, but just quietly do your thing.  There are no rules with this, just be skilfull.

Your turn:  Describe some obstacles you have had with those close to you and how have you overcome them?

Reflections on the lower realms

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Activating our inner Spiritual Guide
If we do not take control of our uncontrolled mind, we will be a slave to it, and it will no doubt take us to the lower realms.  There is only one destination our ordinary mind is trying to take us and that is the lower realms.  It really is the devil.  It will trick us with all sorts of lies and illusions trying to convince us that it is taking us to heaven.  Because we buy into its lies, we happily follow it to hell.  
 
As basic as it sounds, it really is like bugs bunny.  There are two minds within us, our ordinary mind (which is the devil in disguise as our closest friend) and our pure mind (which is the angel of our guru who has come to guide us to the pure land).  We need to decide who we are going to listen to and who we are going to follow.  What our ordinary mind promises seems so much more appealing, but it is all deceptive lies designed to ensnare us into its traps from which we will never escape and be literally dragged to hell.  Worse yet, we will go there of our own seeming volition completely oblivious to the fact that we march to our doom.  

Reflections on reliance upon the Spiritual Guide

Kadampa Ryan Activating our inner Spiritual Guide
I need to completely surrender control to my spiritual guide at my heart.  It is like I transform myself into a puppet which he controls.  It is almost like I make myself an inanimate object, like a car or a robot, but he is the one controlling me.  He is the life within me.  The goal is to have my every action be his.  I need to completely abandon any self-will.  I have no agenda other than to surrender myself to him.  He then takes over and uses me to liberate all beings.  
 
There is a difference between ‘surrendering control to the guru’ and ‘doing nothing.’  I am engaging in an action, and the action is to create the conditions so that I hand over control to him.  I am not handing over control to my delusions and letting them run wild.  When my delusions are functioning, I am their puppet.  I need to create a stillness within me, a stillness of my delusions and ordinary mind, so that he may take over.  I must ‘maintain’ the stillness on an on-going basis, which requires tremendous mindfulness in every moment.
 
To surrender control to my guru, internally, I must do the following:
 
1.  I need to actively align my motivation with his.  His motivation is to liberate all beings.  To accomplish this, his motivation is to forge me into a Buddha so that I may be an instrument of his peace.  I need to make active within my own mind this same wish.  
 
2.  I need to abandon my own plans and agenda.   I let him decide what I do next, what I need to work on, etc.  I adopt a mind of adventure, ready to see what he has in store next for me.  
 
3.  I must make and maintain my ordinary mind completely still.  My ordinary mind creates interference and it also takes over.  When my ordinary mind is manifest, it takes control of me and does deluded things with me.  If it is in control, how can my guru be in control?
 
4.  In an active way, I must wish him to work through me.  Depending on the circumstance, I make requests such as ‘reveal to me what I need to do now’, ‘what should I understand from this situation?’, ‘please speak through me, fill me with your words’, ‘what do you want me to do?’, ‘what next?’, etc.
 
We need to dissolve the guru into our heart, and completely surrender to him.  Our goal is to become his puppet.  “My only wish is for you to take over completely my life.”  We abandon any independent self-will, and surrender ourselves completely to his control.  He takes over, and controls us like a puppet.  To effectively do this, we need to:
 
1.  Make our ordinary mind completely still.
 
2.  Abandon any independent self-will or plan or agenda of what we think is best, and instead surrender completely to him.
 
3.  With deep faith, wish for him to take control of us and to do with us what he wishes.  
 
4.  Most importantly, we need to align our motivation with his.  One effective way to do this is to generate simply the wish to serve him, to help him accomplish his wishes.  We become his servant.  What does he wish for?  He wishes for us to improve our qualifications so that we can be of greater and greater benefit to living beings, eventually being able to guide them to enlightenment.
 
I need to become like an Avatar, and GSBH is the one controlling me.  I am a tool to be handed over to the guru so that he can do with me what he wishes, use me in the best possible way.  I need to not only surrender myself in this life, but I need to surrender all my future lives so that from this time forward, he is in control.  
 
When we start our practices or sadhanas, we are starting from the space of our ordinary self.  With the refuge contemplations, we become aware of the fact that our mind is under the control of the devil of our ordinary mind and it will drag us to hell from which there is no escape.  We then visualize the guru, who seems like an ‘other’ but is actually our true self.  We then wish to draw closer to and come under the influence of our guru so that he may deliver us to the pure land.  Our sense of I is currently indistinguishable from our ordinary mind.  We think they are one and the same.  This is an aspect of our self-grasping ignorance.  We fail to make the distinction between our I, which is a mere name a label which is not the problem, and our ordinary mind, which is its current basis of imputation.  We think we ARE our ordinary mind.  We need to break this identification, and long to and make effort to transfer our sense of I to the guru’s mind, which is in reality our pure mind.  Then, through our tantric practice, we dissolve the guru into our heart, into our root mind, and train in identifying with his mind as our own until we feel this to be our living experience.  We then must familarize ourselves with this experience again and again over a long period of time, both in meditation and outside of it, until it feels to be us more than our old ordinary self.  We will come to relate to this purity as ourselves, who we are.  Then, when we fall back into our ordinary self, we will think, ‘this is not me, this is not who I am.’  
 
We are currently trapped in the spell of our ordinary mind, and we must wish to break free.  We do so by allowing ourselves to be drawn to the guru, staying focused on his voice, his wisdom, and applying effort to move towards him.  We need to turn our back on our negativity and delusions.  We need to leave them behind.  We can do this by confessing them, acknowledging them as misguided and wrong and deceptive and taking us in the wrong direction combined with wishing to now turn towards the light of our guru.  
 
 
I need to completely submit myself to my guru at my heart.  I need to want for him to completely take over and I do whatever he says without questions, with total faith, like a good soldier.  We submit internally, not externally.  My guru wants to take me to the pure land, but to get there I have to allow him to take me there.  I do not have the power to get there on my own, I need to be taken there by him.  I need to have deep experience of submission and doing exactly what he says without hesitation and allowing him to completely take over.  If I have this experience, then at the time of my death I dissolve him into my heart, I generate the pure wish to go to the pure land, and then I submit myself to him requesting, ‘please take me to the pure land.’  As long as I am trying to retain even a slight degree of control by my ordinary self, I can’t get there.  I need to renounce the control of my ordinary self completely and surrender it completely to my guru.  Since my ordinary self is a false self fabricated by my distorted and deluded mind, to hold on to its control is, paradoxically, what leaves me uncontrolled.  It tricks me into thinking my freedom depends on it retaining control, but by holding on to such control I reinforce and feed that which makes my mind uncontrolled in the first place.  The point is if I am going to be able to completely surrender myself to the guru to take me to the pure land at the time of my death, I need deep experience of doing this during my life.  Retaining control with my ordinary self, believing this is what makes me free, is actually what makes me a slave to my deluded mind and what leaves me out of control.
 
Externally, we surrend ourselves completely to Dorje Shugden that he arrange whatever needs to be.  Internally, we surrend ourselves completely to our guru at our heart, to use us as his avatar in this world, to guide us, to act through us, to reveal to us what we need to do, to teach us, etc. 

How to become an Avatar for your spiritual guide

Kadampa Ryan Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

Within our daily life, and indeed throughout all aspects of our spiritual life, we need to hand over control to the Spiritual Guide, where we essentially become a puppet that he controls.  He then uses us as a tool or an instrument for helping all living beings.  We invite him into us, request him to take over and work through us for the benefit of all living beings.  Essentially, we try transform ourselves into an emanation of him.  We provide the body, he is the one at the helm, in control.

DJ told me recently that the Sanskrit translation of Avatar is “emanation body of God”.  In short, we want to transform ourselves into an Avatar of the Spiritual Guide.  Once we have some deep experience of the Spiritual Guide working through us, essentially living and working through us, then on that basis we can develop some qualified divine pride, where we identify with him working through us.  Once our divine pride becomes more and more qualified, we come to identify more and more with the guru-deity until eventually we become or we are the guru deity, and our ordinary body and mind are like ‘our’ costume or vehicle or Avatar or emanation body.

The question is how do we do this, how do we first become an Avatar of the SG?

  1. We have to want to do this.  We need the humility to realize that when it is our ordinary mind in charge, it is really our self-cherishing which is in charge and it just makes a mess of things and binds us deeper into samsara.  But when it is the spiritual guide who is in charge, our every action functions to lead ourselves and others to enlightenment as swiftly as possible.  He is omniscient, has perfect compassion and perfect skilfull means.  By allowing him to take over, we put him at the helm or in the controls and these qualities come to animate our life.  It will be as if we possess these qualities in our own life, and he will engage in his enlightened actions through us.  The really cool thing about that is then we get the karma as if it was us who is engaging in these enlightened actions.  This then will swiftly take us to enlightenment.  We can also increase our desire to do this by understanding how it is an essential step along the way to a qualified divine pride.
  2. Dissolve the guru into our heart.  We can do this either through a formal practice or just instantly throughout the day.  The point is you remember that wherever you imagine a Buddha, a Buddha actually goes.  So with our believing and wishing faith, we dissolve the guru into our heart, strongly believing the living SG has entered into us and strongly wishing for him to take over.
  3. We need to ‘cease’ or ‘make silent’ our ordinary mind.  Our ordinary mind and its ramblings are like static noise operating in the background that interfere with the spiritual guide taking over.  Either our ordinary mind is in control of the Spiritual Guide’s mind is in control.  The one directly competes with the other.  They are mutually exclusive.  The former has only one intention – to send us into the deepest hell; and the latter only has one intention – to lead ourselves and all beings to the highest enlightenment.  They go in completely opposite directions.  So on the basis of wanting our SG to take over, we intentionally make silent our ordinary mind to create the space for him to take over.
  4. We then align our motivation with his, wishing to help all those around us or wishing that he live through us and use us to accomplish his enlightened intention, and we request him to do so.  We then hold our ordinary self in silence and allow him to come forth.

We have to gain living expeirence of how this works.  Then, it makes sense.

The main point is this:  by generating one virtue, the wish for him to take over, we are able to accomplish all virtues.  By neglecting this one virtue, our SC mind remains in control and sabotages all of our spiritual activities and our spiritual path and all virtues become nearly impossible.  I would go so far as to say that the extent to which we can do this is the extent to which we can lead a virtuous life.  The extent to which we neglect to do this is the extent to which we plunge headlong into the lower realms (even if we don’t realize it).

Your turn:  Would you like to become an Avatar for your Spiritual Guide?  Why or why not?

Regret as assuming responsibility for cleaning up the karmic mess you have created

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

If we make a mess, it is only normal that we assume responsibility for cleaning it up. When we try avoid cleaning up our own mess, we don’t actually avoid it, we are unpeaceful inside so do not enjoy our having avoided cleaning it up, we have violated our lojong commitments of not passing our burdens onto others, we strengthen our laziness, we generate resentment in others who then do wind up cleaning up our mess, we create a self-inflicted moral hazard encouraging our own reckless behavior because we know how to manipulate others into cleaing up our mess, we never learn our lesson because we think we ‘get away with’ having done wrong, we create a bad habit of most likely trying to do the same thing again in the future, we set a bad example for all those around us of somebody who does not assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and we assent to our aversion to the work of cleaning up the mess thus making is stronger and harder next time.

Everything I experience is the karmic result of me having done similarly to others in the past. I must assume responsibility for that and create new dynamics and patterns in my relationships. Everything deluded and negative that others do to me, I have done to others in the past, and now, through the force of my negative karma, others are compelled to themselves engage in negativity. So I have harmed them in the past and am harming them again since they are now compelled into negativity. Everything that happens in my samsara is ultimately my responsibility. I have created this huge mess, therefore, it is up to me to clean it up. I joyfully relate to the problem solving in my life as my opportunity to clean up the mess I have created.

Your turn:  What is a particular karmic mess you have created, and what are you going to do to clean it up?

The importance of practicing our vows

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

It is very easy to neglect our vows. We get busy with our lives, we get busy with our regular practices that our vows tend to get put on the back burner and we never really take them seriously. We still don’t even really know what they are, much less check our behavior against them. This is a mistake, especially when we do not have regular access to a center.

One of the main functions/benefits of applying effort to keep our vows is by doing so we create the causes to maintain the continuum of our practice in this and all of our future lives. We have the Dharma now, we have an interest in practicing, we have found the solution to all of our problems, but it is so easy to become distracted and swept away by samsara and we gradually lose our level of interest and intensity in our practice. Even if we remember our practice, there is no guarrantee that we will make sufficient progress in this life to guarrantee that we maintain the continuum of our practice in life after life. If we fall into the lower realms, we will lose everything we have built and done and will spend incalculably long times suffering in the extreme. And then we will have to dig ourselves back out again. It is like somebody who has fallen into a deep hole, manages to climb most of the way out, and then falls right back down.

Our vows protect us because they are a practice of moral discipline, and moral discipline functions to create the causes for higher rebirth in the future. Practicing our refuge vows creates the causes to find the Dharma again and again in all our future lives without interruption. Practicing our bodhisattva vows creates the causes to find the Mahayana Dharma again and again in all our future lives without interrupton. Practicing our tantric vows creates the causes to find the Tantric Dharma again and again in all our future lives without interruption. And practicing the internal rules of the NKT creates the causs to find the Kadam Dharma again and again in all of our future lives without interruption. When I asked him many years ago, VGL said the way to guarrantee that I meet him in all of my future lives without interruption is to ‘concentrate on practicing Dharma and always keep faith.’ By putting the instructions of the spiritual guide into practice, we draw closer to him, create karma with him and if we do this with faith when we find him again we will once again want to put his instructions into practice. Putting the Dharma into practice creates the ripened effect to meet the guru again and again and keeping faith creates the tendencies to wish to put the Dharma into practice. When keeping our vows, we must do so with the intention to maintain the continuum of our practice for it to ripen in a qualified way. I wish to maintain the continuum of my practice, practicing my vows will enable me to do so, therefore for this purpose I apply effort to practice them.

It is a good idea to say, once a a month at least, review all of the vows and commitments and just check how we are doing, identify weaknesses in our behavior and make plans for doing better. Yes, we should do this every day, but as a starting point once a month is a good place to start. Then once a week and later once a day.

While building up to this, we can start with the essence of the different vows and try to keep them in mind every day. The essence of the refuge vows is “to make effort to practice Dharma, to receive blessings from the Buddhas and to turn to the Sangha for help.” The essence of the bodhisattva vows is “to cherish others more than you cherish yourself and to improve yourself for the benefit of others.” The essence of the tantric vows is to maintain pure view (pure conceptions and pure appearances). These we can remember and we should make a point to keep them always present within our mind.

Understanding older women

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

I have a lot of karma with older, single women.  Many such women find their way to Dharma centers in search of answers and a framework for rebuilding new lives.  Many of these women grew up in an age when their job was to look after the men in their lives.  Their husbands grew rich, successful, they grew older and less appealing, and the marriage ended (usually with the husband going off with some younger woman).  Now they have few skills, very low employment prospects, no money, feel old and unattractive, face a society that is uninterested in them.  Their sense of worth and value before was grounded in how they look, but since that is now gone they lack in self-confidence.  They have given everything they had to raising their kids, but their kids are now largely on their own and don’t need them anymore and in fact want the mother out of their life.  WHen their kids are failures, they feel like it is a reflection on them and that they have failed as a mother.  Sometimes, they will interfere with the ability of their children from fully becoming adults on their own because they want to still feel useful and so they clean up all of the messes their adult children make, creating dependencies, irresponsibility in the kid, etc.  THey try be strong, but feel alone and with nothing meaningful to do. 

We once rented ‘It’s Complicated’ which is a movie about more or less this situation.  It touched on pretty much all of these themes.  The movie basically was the fulfillment of every such woman’s hopes and aspirations.  She was divorced for 10 years after her husband left her for a Barbie.  She had rebuilt her life, opened up a bakery business, her kids were now all off to college, her ex-husband is having a tough time with his new wife (former mistress), he comes wanting her back and falls back in love with her realizing that he was wrong and a jerk before.  He charms her, wants her, she tries to keep her distance but then gives it a go.  She feels new energy and vitality, her family becomes reconstituted just like old times, everyone is happy, some of his old bad habits resurface, she realizes that she has moved on and no longer needs him, she has outgrown him.  She then rejects him, but now they become good friends.  She then establishes something adult with a really nice guy.  She is also of course a really great cook, her children have all turned out great.  They wanted their parents to get back together again, she wanted to make them happy in this regard, but ultimately this wasn’t the right thing to do because she had moved on, and finally they understood.  In the meantime, she was finally having built the addition to her house that she has always wanted (her new kitchen and view of the sea from her bedroom).  She was of course a great cook, her children adored her, her ex-husband finally realized what a great mother she was, and she had spent a year in Paris in her 20s learning to cook really well.  She had a close circle of friends who she could confide in talk to.

Another recurring theme in so-called “chick flicks” these days is the woman is with some really nice, but ultimately incompetent guy.  She is bored with him, but he is a good guy.  She wants him to find his balls and his backbone, be able to take charge more so that she does not have to carry all of the load (which she is doing very well, because he has no idea how to do things and she doesn’t trust him to do things right).  Some crisis then happens, forcing her man to rise to the occasion, he discovers his strength, they are able to let go and have a good time, their relationship becomes revitalized.  And now she has a nice, strong and capable man who respects her and appreciates her. 

The other thing I have noticed recently is the life of older and retired people generally revolves around good food – buying it, preparing it and enjoying eating it.  This is true for my Dad and Helen (though they also have the toys my Dad plays with), Irv and Eva (though they also have their grandkids who they support outstandingly), and that movie A Year in Provence.

While I could make lots of Dharma commentary about all of the above, I think it is valuable in and of itself to better understand different groups of people, their stuggles and their aspirations.  On this basis, you can better help people.  Of course all of this is not meant as a gross generalization, rather just some recurring themes I have observed, etc.

Wisdom, compassion and teaching your children to sleep through the night

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

One of the hardest things about being a parent of small children is sleepless nights.  This is actually an issue of spiritual concern. 

  1. If we do not sleep properly then we will not be able to do our daily practice.  If we don’t do our daily practice, then everything will fall apart.
  2. If you are exhausted, then during the day you will have less capacity to respond positively to the challenges that parenthood bring.  You will then get upset more often, spoil your relationship with your child, create all sorts of negative karma and generally be miserable day and night.  If you can get the sleeping down, you will be able to deal with anything.  If you can’t get proper sleep, you won’t be able to deal constructively with anything. 
  3. Attachment to sleep is one of our biggest delusions, and this gives us a chance to work on overcoming it.
  4. We will suffer from sleepless nights to the extent that we are thinking about ourselves.  This is an excellent opportunity to practice cherishing others
  5. Learning the proper wisdom/compassion balance when it comes to teaching our children to sleep through the night helps us in many other areas of parenting.  Unfortunately, this is something we often mess up. 

The bottom line is this:  we are not helping our children by not helping them learn to fall alseep on their own and to sleep through the night.  But at the same time, we need to acknowledge their capacity and gradually work to expand it.  Our compassion without wisdom will not be able to tolerate our kids crying, and so we will rush in to console them.  But if we do so, we deprive them of the opportunity of learning how to calm themselves down and fall alseep on their own.  We can in fact create a dependency on us for them to fall alseep, which will make them less confident in themselves and also make them more tired because they too are not having very restful nights.  Eventually, every parent must let their child cry to fall asleep, the only question is how many sleepless nights will they inflict upon themselves and their children before they do so.  Therefore we should unapologetically adopt as a goal to teach our children how to sleep from the very beginning of their life.

How do we do this?

  1. Rhythm is everything.  We should establish a night time sequence of events that we stick to every night that starts a couple of hours before they go to bed.  Then, when you start this sequence, the child already knows what comes next and where this particular sequence leads.  For example, our ritual for our older kids literally starts as soon as we get home.  We walk in the door, the first thing we do is take baths.  Then dinner, then a video/reading, then brush our teeth, then bed.  We do the same thing every day, the kids learn and know the rhythm, and it works.  For the little ones, we do bath, bottle, bed.   
  2. We should put our children down to bed before they have fallen alseep.  We first make sure all of their needs are met (clean diaper, well fed, blankets in order, pacifier, right temperature, etc.), then we put them down into their bed while they are still awake (but calm). 
  3. Once we put them down, there is no picking them back up unless things are really really extreme.  We can go back and give them their pacifier when they lose it, we can pat them lovingly, we can say things like ‘you can do it’, but we don’t pick them back up.  Then gradually, over time as their capacity increases, you go back less often, you stay less time, you start to not pat them but just console them with your words, etc.  Then, you start to not go back at all but just say something reassuring like ‘you can do it’ from a distance.
  4. We need to learn to distinguish between fussing and really needing something.  Often what happens is the baby will be crying or wimpering or making frustrated sounds, but they are working through them.  If you let it ride, they then have various points where they calm down (sometimes just through having exhausted themselves with their cries).  They have a moment or two of calm, and then they start up again.  But they cycle back to calm again.  Gradually, the amount of time fussing decreases and the amount of time calm increases until eventually they are alseep.  When they are cycling in this way, you don’t need to go back to them – just let it ride.  But if they lose their pacifier or teddy bear, reach a point of total hysteria where they will not likely be able to calm themselves back down without some consolation, or they have pooped something awful and need to be changed, then you should go address that need and then leave them again.  You have to be prepared to do this for several nights, possibly even weeks, before they start to get the hang of it.  Don’t plan on doing anything else during this time because you will then just get frustrated with them.  Know that it may take several hours every night of dedicated work before they finally settle down.  Investing the time to teach them will save you countless hours in the future when you can just put your kid to bed, close the door and not have to go back until morning.  So while difficult, it is worth the effort.
  5. Get them attached to a good teddy bear.  This can become their support and means of consolation.  We have found that those teddy bear security blankets are ideal.  They are both a teddy bear and a security blanket in one.  It should have things on it, like ears or tails or tags, that the kid can pull at.  One thing we also do is we have the mother sleep with it several nights so that she gets her smell all over it.  You can even consider putting it in the mother’s bra!  It may seem non-Dharma to encourage an attachment, we should not let the best (non-attachment to anything) be the enemy of the good (attachment for the teddy bear instead of the parent walking them around until they fall alseep!).  Eventually the child will outgrow their teddy bear, but if in the meantime they can use it to calm themselves down and enable both yourself and your child be properly rested, it is a small price to pay.  If it helps, mentally engage in the guru yoga of the teddy bear.  By nature, the teddy bear is the spiritual guide, but he is appearing in the aspect of a teddy bear.  So you are not cultivating an attachment in a samsaric object, you are teaching reliance upon the spiritual guide!!!
  6. Resist the temptation to go ‘save’ them from their crying.  Once you make the decision you are going to let them cry and that you are not going back, then you have to stick with it all the way (barring, of course, something really extreme).  If you let them cry for 15 minutes and then crack and go get them, then you are not helping them.  The only thing you are doing is guarranteeing that tomorrow night they will cry for at least 15 minutes before they settle down because they will think crying for 15 minutes is how you get a parent to come.  They will then cry even more the next night.  But if instead you let them cry for as long as it takes, then the next night it will be less time crying, then less again the next night and so on until eventually they don’t cry at all.

When it comes to the child sleeping through the night, again, you need to work gradually.

  1. Time everything so that you feed the kid a bottle when you, as parents, go to bed.  Typically, in the early days, the kid can go 2-3 hours between feedings.  So if you go to bed at 10:45, make sure you feed them a bottle at 7:45 so that they are sufficiently hungry at 10:45.  Likewise feed them at 4:45 and so forth going backwards in the day.
  2. Try expand the time-scale between feedings during the night, not during the day.  During the day, you want to stuff them like a sausage.  But at night, you practice expanding the scope of time between feedings.  For example, if your child normally does 3 hours between feedings, then when they start to wake up after 3 hours, instead of feeding them give them their pacifier, console them, etc., but don’t feed them until 4 hours.  Then feed them a bigger than usual bottle (since they will be hungry).  Then do the same thing again, trying to stretch it out to 4 hours again.  If you can do this, you will get them down to one feeding a night.  You feed them before you go to bed, once in the middle of the night, and then once again when you wake up.  This is a major accomplishment.
  3. Once you have done this, continue to stuff them full of lead during the day, especially just before they go to bed, and then try stretch it to 5 hours before you feed them in the middle of the night using the same tactics as above.  You can still feed them again when you wake up, even if it is less than 4 hours between feedings.  Once you have stabilized 5 hours, repeat the same process for 6 hours, then 7 hours until finally they can do 8 hours!  As a rule of thumb, a baby can do their weight in  pounds minus 2 hours.  So a 6 pound baby can stretch at most 4 hours before you really should feed them.  A 7 pound baby can stretch at most 5 hours, an 8 pound baby 6 hours and so forth.  But every baby is different, so really you need to figure this out according to your own kid’s capacity.  This has at least been our experience after 5 kids.

One final note on doing your daily practice during the training of your children.  Pre-children, our routine was say sleep 8 hours, then do our practice for 1 hour, for a total time period of 9 hours (this is an example, modify the number of hours accordingly to your individual circumstance).  So when you are training baby, when you get up to feed them the middle of the night bottle, instead of trying to go back to bed do your practice in the middle of the night, then go back to bed and wake up at the end of the same 9 hour period.  In this way, you will still get the same number of hours of sleep and the same number of hours doing your practice, but it will just be in a different order.  There are several advantages to doing this:

  1. The hours you do sleep will be more effective.  The problem I have had is when I wake up to feed the bottle, I tend to become more awake.  It then takes me longer to fall alseep so these hours are wasted.  Then when I wake up to do my practice, I am too tired to do so, and my practice is of poor quality (or sometimes not at all if I am really tired).  If instead you do your practice, your mind becomes more subtle and collected so then when you do go back to bed you will fall right asleep.  The reason why we can’t sleep is our gross winds do not dissolve.  If you make your mind more subtle through your practice, they will dissolve more easily.
  2. You willl have more virtuous dreams, leading up to sleep yoga.  Just as the last mind we have at the time of death determines the quality of our next rebirth, so too the quality of our mind we have as we fall alseep determines the quality of our dreams.  If we fall alseep with a virtuous mind, we are more likely to carry that virtue into our sleep and dreams.  Eventually, as our mindfulness improves, we will be able to carry it into our sleeping state and do lucid dreaming.  When we first start lucid dreaming we will want to fly around or do other such things, but eventually we can teach ourselves to meditate in our dreams.  Some of my most profound meditation experiences have come from doing this because at this point we are meditating with our subtle mind.  Think Shantideva!

I hope all of this proves useful to all those sleepless Kadampa parents out there!