The four commitments of the family of Buddha Akshobya

The difference between a Buddha and a samsaric being is the basis of imputation for their “I.”  A samsaric being imputes their “I” onto the contaminated body and mind of a samsaric being, and a Buddha imputes their “I” onto the pure body and mind of an enlightened being.  The body and mind of a being can likewise be thought of as “the five aggregates.”  The body of a being is the “form” aggregate, and the mind of a being is the remaining four aggregates of consciousness, discrimination, feeling and compositional factors.  Each of the five Buddha families corresponds to one of the five aggregates.  Buddha Vairochana corresponds to the completely purified form aggregate, and Buddha Akshobya corresponds to the completely purified aggregate of consciousness.  Therefore, the practice of the four commitments of Buddha Akshobya primarily function to generate within our mind the completely pure aggregate of consciousness of a Buddha.  The consciousness aggregate essentially has two main functions, the first is to “know” and the second is to serve as a storehouse for our karmic potentialities.

A contaminated aggregate of consciousness “knows” contaminated objects and stores contaminated karmic potentialities.  An object is contaminated if it is seen to be one with its inherent existence, and a karmic potentiality is contaminated if its generating mental action was a delusion.  A pure aggregate of consciousness only knows pure objects and stores only pure karmic potentialities.  A pure object is one that is seen as one with the emptiness of the very subtle mind of great bliss realizing it.  A karmic potentiality is pure if its generating mental action was a pure mind, free from grasping at inherent existence.  The training in the four commitments of Buddha Akshobya, therefore, function to uproot and cleanse our consciousness of all of the contaminated karmic potentialities stored there so that it can without obstruction know all objects of knowledge directly and simultaneously.

The moral discipline of benefiting other sentient beings. 

The meaning of this vow is we should help sentient beings whenever possible in the most appropriate way.  To understand this, we must look carefully at the meanings of “whenever possible” and “most appropriate way.”

Practically speaking, “whenever possible” means whenever others are willing to receive our help.  Ronald Reagan once famously quipped, “the most feared words in the English language are, ‘I’m with the Federal Government, and I am here to help.’”  While I disagree with the politics of Ronald Reagan on almost every count, this line does reveal a very important point, namely if we don’t want somebody’s help, we reject what is on offer.  A Bodhisattva is somebody who literally strives to be the savior of all.  But it is obviously completely counter-productive for us to walk into every situation proclaiming, “your Savior has arrived, stand aside.”  It is because we want to actually help people (as opposed to feel like we are a savior) that we only directly help those who are asking for our help.  If people reject the help we offer, who have we really helped?  Nobody.  Since the help we offer is Dharma advice, if they reject the help we offer they are actually creating the karma to reject the Dharma, which will harm them not only in this life, but in all of their future lives.  As a general rule, if people are not asking for your advice, don’t give it.  If people are not asking you to mediate their disputes, don’t do it.  If people are not seeking help, don’t provide it.  Sometimes the best way we can help people is by letting them do things themselves.  If a mother always picks up after her children, how will they ever learn to do so themselves?

We should not, however, take this too far.  Someone does not have to directly, verbally ask us for help before we should come to their aid.  We need wisdom to read a situation and know when somebody is willing to receive our help, even if they are not explicitly asking for it.  Oftentimes, the best way to help somebody is to do so anonymously.  This not only removes our attachment to receiving some form of recognition for our kind deeds, it also makes it easier for others to accept help.  Even better is helping others in such a way that it seems as if the good things just happen on its own, without anybody having helped out behind the scenes.  Then, people think they did it on their own, and their confidence grows.  The person who first got me interested in spiritual pursuits was a very close friend in college.  He gave me a copy of a book he was reading at the time on the mind of the ninja – not the ninja of Hollywood, but the deep inner philosophy of the ancient ninja masters.  In one phrase, the ninja “operates from the shadows.”  The meaning of this is quite deep, in fact it is no different than the Taoist concept of having all of our actions originate from the Tao or, closer to home, have all of our actions emerge from the clear light emptiness.  By staying centered in emptiness, correct conventional actions arise spontaneously.

At a more practical level, when acting in the world, the Tantric Bodhisattva likewise operates from the shadows.  No one sees what they do, yet they change everything.  Scientists now are discovering that the unseen scaffolding of the universe is elaborate lattices of dark matter and dark energy.  We only see the visible universe, but what holds it all together and provides its structure is unseen.  It is the same with the true spiritual masters of this world, they are like the dark matter holding everything together.  Venerable Tharchin once said something to the effect of, “it only takes 10 or so true spiritual masters in a country to make that country a source of peace in this world.”  We can understand this from the section on Cherishing Others in Eight Steps to Happiness where Geshe-la describes how somebody who cherishes others is a like a magic crystal with the power to transform any community.  We don’t need to be public about what we are doing, in fact it is usually better if we are not, but quietly, without anybody noticing, we work from the shadows bringing love to the world.

“Most appropriate way” means in such a way that it functions to cause people to engage in virtue from their own side.  As a general rule, we should help people in every way possible.  Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking, “because helping people by giving them Dharma advice is the best way to help others, every other way is somehow bad.”  This is wrong, and a classic example of making the best the enemy of the good.  Oftentimes, it is by helping people with their mundane problems that we can develop a closer karmic relationship with the person through which we can later help them in spiritual ways.  It is true, as Dharma practitioners, we primarily seek to help people solve their inner problem, but that does not mean we can’t and shouldn’t also try help people solve their outer problems too.  Most people are completely convinced that their problems are their external situation, so when they hear Dharma advice on how to change their mind they think, “that’s nice, but it does nothing to help me solve my problem.”  Given this, when somebody comes to us with a problem, it is usually more skillful to first try help them solve their outer problem, and then when they see solutions exist to their outer problem, their mind opens to possibilities for how to also solve their inner problem.

Sometimes Dharma teachers fear giving people advice about how to solve their outer problems because if the advice doesn’t work, then the person might come to blame the Dharma teacher for the bad advice, and as a result come to reject the Dharma.  Of course, there is a risk of this.  But there is likewise a risk that somebody, still convinced that their problem is an external one, will not come to the Dharma teacher at all viewing them as having nothing useful for them.  While of course we want to help people primarily with their inner problem, it is better we help people with their outer problems than to not help them at all.  Through the closer karmic connection we create with them by helping them with their outer problems, we can in the future help them also with their inner problem.  Protecting the other person from rejecting the Dharma if our external advice turns out to be bad advice is straightforward enough:  we just present our outer advice saying, “I have no idea if this will work, but you could try …” or “this doesn’t always work, but when I was in a similar situation I did …” or “this may be completely wrong, but it seems to me you could …” or “please feel completely free to ignore this, but if I were you I would …”  Couching our outer advice in caveats such as these protects the other person from thinking our outer advice is gospel and leave us free to try help in every way we can.

The moral discipline of gathering virtuous Dharmas.

I have a good friend who is a very successful businessman.  No matter where you go with him, whether it is to a restaurant, a golf course, even an amusement park, no matter where he looks he “sees” the business opportunities around him.  He can analyze every dish, or every ride, and calculate roughly the profit margins and how the company could make even more money if only they did XYZ.  In today’s modern economy, the greatest rewards go not to those who make things, but to those who invent new things or discover new or different ways of doing things.  It goes to those who can see and know how to realize opportunities to make money.

Of course as Buddhists, we tend to look down on such people, thinking them they have been seized by samsara, and we scoff, “if only they put as much effort into attaining enlightenment as they do in conducting business, they would be enlightened by now.”  Yet, let’s look at this statement from a personal perspective.  Put another way, “if only we put as much effort into attaining enlightenment as they do in conducting business, we would be enlightened by now.”  In fact, we can say these successful businesspeople are showing us a perfect example of how we should be as we go about our daily life – the only difference is we have a different bottom line.  We do not seek to maximize our outer wealth (though we don’t shun it either), rather we seek to maximize our inner wealth of virtuous karma and Dharma realizations.  Just like my friend, we should constantly be on the lookout for different ways of making inner wealth, and maximizing our virtues.  The difference between an entrepreneur and a Business School Professor is the entrepreneur acts on what they see, they don’t merely identify the opportunities.  In the same way, the difference between a Dharma practitioner and a Dharma scholar is the practitioner acts on the virtuous opportunities they see.

We may object, “but isn’t that a selfish way of looking at the spiritual path.  It just seems so crass to put it that way.”  This objection comes from a failure to make two crucial distinctions.  The first is the distinction between a way of doing things and what is being done, the second is between a selfish reason for doing something and a selfless reason for doing the same thing.  The way of doing things by the successful businessperson, politician or Olympic athlete is perfect.  They are “all in.”  They hold nothing back.  They leave no stone unturned, no task undone.  They push themselves 115% all of the time.  They are single-pointed in their quest to accomplish their objectives.  Everything they do, directly or indirectly, acts to move them closer to the accomplishment of their goal.  They never succumb to laziness, nor complacency with what they have already accomplished.  This is how we need to be with our Dharma practice.

Likewise, it may seem selfish to be in constant pursuit of inner wealth, but we can do so for selfish reasons or for selfish reasons.  The great philanthropists, like Bill Gates, have worked very hard to accumulate tremendous amounts of outer wealth, but their purpose in doing so is to have more resources with which they can help others.  Bill Gates alone has done more to help the people of this world than virtually all but the biggest countries, and you can even argue that he does so for a more altruistic motivation since most foreign aid has little to do with helping other countries and more to do with bringing those countries within one’s sphere of influence.  Bodhisattvas are spiritual philanthropists.  They work very hard to accumulate tremendous amounts of inner wealth of virtuous karma and Dharma realizations, and their purpose in doing so is to have more inner resources with which they can help others.  The goal of a Bodhisattva is take on the hard tasks so others don’t have to.  They learn how to do things to make it easier for others.  They gain realizations so that their own mind becomes a source of peace and stability for others in this world.  They acquire wisdom to be able to share it with others.

While there are countless different ways one can accumulate virtues, from one perspective they can all be classified under two categories:  making offerings and doing prostrations.  To make offerings, in the broadest possible terms, means to give away what we have that is valuable.  Whether we are giving to samsaric beings or enlightened ones, the mind of giving away what is valuable is the same.  Quite simple, giving creates the karmic causes to receive what we give.  Giving with a bodhichitta motivation functions to multiply the power of our giving by the number of beings upon whose behalf we give, in this case countless.  The only reason we have something to give now is because we gave in the past.  Giving to enlightened beings is a special form of giving.  We may wonder, “if enlightened beings already lack nothing, what is the sense in giving them things?”  The answer is we give enlightened beings what we have because we know they will use it in the most beneficial way for all living beings.  If you had money to invest, does it not make sense to give it to the most successful money manager?  In the same way, if we have virtuous karma to invest, it makes sense to give it to those who know how to make the most of it.  Every day, I offer my body, my mind, my time, all of my money, all of my family and the U.S. foreign policy establishment (all things I touch in some way) to Dorje Shugden, and I request him, “please fully use these things for the enlightenment of all beings.”  My first teacher, Gen Lekma, said, “Dorje Shugden wastes nothing.”  So while it might not be immediately obvious to me how all of these things can be used exclusively for the enlightenment of all beings, I can know with certainty that if my intention in offering them and my faith in Dorje Shugden are sufficient, it is guaranteed that eventually this will come true.

Prostrations, here, does not simply mean folding our hands together and putting our forehead on the ground in front of some Buddha.  The physical act of prostration, while in and of itself virtuous, is not the real act of prostration.  The mental act of prostration is “applying effort to cultivate within ourself the good qualities we prostrate to.”  We are normally completely blind to the good qualities of others, and instead only see their faults.  But those who seek to gather virtuous Dharmas have the opposite mental habit.  Venerable Tharchin explains that rejoicing in the good qualities of others creates the causes for ourselves to acquire those same qualities; and that criticizing the faults of others creates the causes for ourselves to acquire those same faults.  This is worth contemplating deeply and checking against our own habits of mind.  Normally, driven by our insecurity, we try knock down in some way those we perceive to be better than us and we generate disdain for those we see as less than us.  Such is the pathway to servitude.  Instead, we need to make a point of identifying, appreciating and then striving to emulate the good qualities we see in others.  If we do, we will make rapid progress towards enlightenment.  This is the essential meaning of prostration.

Putting the two together, we “prostrate” to the good qualities we see in others, acquire such good qualities ourselves, and then we give them away in the form of offerings to others.

To refrain from non-virtue. 

This commitment advises us to avoid all negative actions, especially transgressions of our refuge, pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows.

The reason for this is simple:  all non-virtuous actions are harmful in some way, either to ourself or to others; and all of a Buddha’s actions are beneficial in some way, either to ourself or to others.  So non-virtuous actions and a Buddha’s actions are completely opposite of one another.  When we train in Tantra, we are in effect bringing the future result of being a Buddha into the path right now.  Basically, by applying effort to act like a Buddha now we will more quickly actually become one in the future.  Christians sometimes wear these bracelets which say, “what would Jesus do?” and they use this as a constant reminder of how they should act in their daily life.  Tantric practice is essentially the same.

It was explained earlier that a Buddha’s form body is the karmic result of the Commitments of Buddha Vairochana (the ones discussed over the last several posts).  A Buddha’s form body is like a machine in this world that only engages in virtue and which functions to ripen and liberate all around us.  Abandoning all non-virtue is the method by which we bring ourselves into alignment with this liberating power.  We sometimes think becoming a Buddha means we take everything on ourselves.  But in reality, it is more an issue of putting ourselves into alignment with the Buddhas already doing this work in this world.  Their enlightened actions flow through our karmic relationships to eventually liberate all living beings.

There are more than 240 different Kadampa vows and commitments, so it is sometimes very hard to know how to practice them all.  That is why Geshe-la provides us with the “essential meanings” of the vows.  The essential meaning of our pratimoksha vows is “do no harm.”  The essential meaning of our refuge vows is “rely upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to change your mind.”  The essential meaning of our bodhisattva vows is, “put others first.”  And the essential meaning of our Tantric vows is, “maintain pure view out of compassion.”  If we just do these things, then we are practicing the essential meaning of all of our vows, everything else is just more specific applications/implications of these general principles.  To avoid non-virtue, then, is to do our best to live our life consistent with these basic moral precepts.

Many people mistakenly view moral discipline as a constraint or a limitation on their freedom.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  We are currently completely unfree because we are controlled by our delusions, but it is by restricting the freedom of our delusions through our practice of moral discipline that we set ourselves free.  It is by indulging in our delusions that we actually restrict our freedom.

To go for refuge to Sangha. 

Geshe-la explains the essential meaning of going for refuge to Sangha is to apply effort to seek Sangha’s help.  All of us face difficulties in life, and when we do, we quite naturally turn to others for help and guidance on how to respond.  This is natural and normal.  Since we have two types of problem – outer and inner – it is also entirely natural that we turn to two different types of help.  For our outer problems, we can and should continue to turn to the external experts exactly the same as everybody else.  There is nothing about being a Dharma practitioner that means we shouldn’t rely upon external help for external problems.  What being a Dharma practitioner does mean is that in addition to turning to external sources of help for our external problems, we also turn to Sangha for help with our inner problems of delusions and negative minds about what is happening in our life, and our inner problems of uncontrolled death and rebirth.

To keep things simple, we go for refuge to Buddhas when within our mind we pray to them and request their blessings.  We go for refuge to Sangha when we turn to any aspect of our tradition in this world.  Sangha is comprised of all of our Gen-la’s, our Resident Teachers, our center administrators, all of our Sangha friends, and even the various on-line Kadampa groups on Facebook, etc.  In a practical sense, to go for refuge to Sangha means (1) we acknowledge that we have an inner problem of delusion, (2) we have faith and confidence in our Sangha friends that they can help us resolve our inner problem, and (3) we have enough humility to be willing to ask for help.  All three of these are necessary, and each one individually represents a good deal of inner work.

To acknowledge that we have an inner problem means we are mentally clear on the difference between our outer problem and our inner problem.  Our outer problem is the outer circumstance, such as a controlling boss, an angry spouse, a lack of money, a bad reputation, etc.  Normally, we are completely convinced that this outer problem is the cause of our unhappiness, and because we wish to be happy, we apply great effort to change our outer circumstance.  Believing that certain external conditions are necessary for our happiness is the delusion called “attachment.”  Believing that certain external conditions are causes of our unhappiness is the delusion called “aversion.”  The fundamental point of departure on the spiritual path is the clear recognition that our happiness is completely independent of our external circumstance and is entirely dependent upon how our mind relates to that external circumstance.  Our external circumstance can be awful, but internally we have just the right attitude towards it, and not only will our awful external circumstance not be a problem for us, it will be viewed as a blessing pushing us towards enlightenment.  Likewise our external circumstance can be fantastic, but internally we have just the wrong attitude towards it, and not only will our external circumstance not lift our spirits, but it will even become a source of further misery.  This clearly shows that our experience of our circumstance depends entirely upon changing our mental attitude and reaction towards it.  This is our inner problem we turn to Sangha to overcome.

Having faith and confidence in our Sangha friends that they can help us overcome our inner problem means we trust that our Sangha friends will give us good advice based on their own experience.  We all have people in our life who we turn to for advice.  We also all have people who we don’t turn to because we know their advice is not good.  Some people think of faith as a bit like Cupid who shoots us with the love arrow, either we feel it or we don’t.  This is wrong.  Faith, like love, is something that can and should be cultivated with effort.  So we need to apply effort to cultivate faith in our Sangha friends.  Faith does not mean we turn a blind eye to the faults of that which we have faith in, rather faith is a wisdom mind that knows how to receive benefit from whatever qualities or faults appear to our mind.  Some people, not understanding this, generate faith when they think the object of their faith appears perfect, but then they become crushed when the object of their faith appears to make mistakes.  This is not faith, this is just a form of attachment to spiritual people.  It is not complicated to receive benefit from the mistakes of our Sangha friends, we just view their mistakes as lessons in what not to do.  It is important, also, that we make effort to be on good terms with everybody in the Sangha.  This is not easy, but it is worth our while.  We can view each member of the Sangha as revealing to us some aspect of our own mind, and by learning how to be on good terms with each member of the Sangha, we are working on that part of our mind.  But faulty appearing Sangha members aside, we should also cultivate close mentor-mentee style relationships with those teachers and senior Sangha members who particularly inspire us.  Different people have different experience and presentations of the Dharma, so it is normal that some teacher’s explanations will work for us better than others.  But it is not enough to just attend the teachings, we need to develop a close relationship with the person where we allow them to know of our faults and delusions fully and openly in complete trust that they are only there to help.  They know us better than we know ourselves, and sometimes that is threatening to us, but we accept this just like we accept our Doctor knowing the ways in which we are sick.

It is said that the Spiritual Guide is kinder than all the Buddhas because he helps us directly when we are at our most deluded.  By the same logic, we can perhaps say that our Sangha friends are kinder still, because they help us every day.  Sangha does not just help us by providing advice, but also by providing us with living examples of people doing their best to change themselves with the Dharma.  Their example and their experience are often greater teachers for us than even the highest master’s perfect discourses.  In many ways, we can say that our Sangha friends are the most precious people for us in the whole world.

To go for refuge to Dharma

It is not enough to wish to become an enlightened being, we must know how to do it.  Dharma usually has two different non-contradictory meanings.  The first is the Dharma is the set of instructions given by Buddha explaining to us, step by step, how we transform our mind from its current deluded state into that of a Buddha.  It teaches us how to identify within ourselves the states of mind we need to abandon and explains how to do so.  It also reveals to us the inner qualities we need to cultivate and provides methods for doing so.  It is a complete path that connects each and every mind to the final destination of enlightenment without any gaps or obstructions.  Just as all roads lead to Rome, so too all Dharma paths eventually lead to enlightenment.

The second meaning of Dharma is the realizations of the truth of Dharma within our own minds.  In other words, Dharma is not just the instructions for how to gain realizations, but it is also the realizations itself.  Because all of our suffering comes from our delusions and negativity, Dharma is our real refuge because it protects us from these things.  If we have a realization of patience, it protects us from the harms of anger.  If we have a realization of love, it protects us from the dangers of self-cherishing.  If we have a realization of our precious human life, it protects us from wasting it on meaningless things.  Tantric realizations protect us from ordinary appearance and ordinary conceptions.  This is our actual refuge, and all other forms of refuge are ultimately aimed at building within our own mind the definitive refuge of our Dharma realizations.

The root of refuge is understanding the nature of our inner problem.  Doctors say 85% of good medicine is correct diagnosis of the problem.  When the problem is correctly diagnosed, then the treatment becomes obvious.  Our fundamental problem is we are confused about the nature of our problem.  We are convinced our problem is what is happening externally, with some things being good and other things being bad.  So we put all of our effort into changing our external circumstance and it seems to us that the Dharma is useless at best since it does nothing to solve what we perceive to be our problem.  Due to not understanding the nature of our problem, we gradually have less time and energy for Dharma because we are absorbed with other things.  But when we are very clear about the nature of our problem, the need to go for refuge to the Dharma becomes obvious.  If our problem is an internal one, it is clear that external things won’t help us solve our problem.  We will then look at different internal solutions, and investigate their different qualities, and eventually we come to see that the Dharma is the solution.  In particular, when we come to understand our problem is our mind is plagued by the wisdom grasping at inherent existence, we realize that only the Dharma can provide us with a solution because only it teaches emptiness.

Since Dharma itself has two meanings, to go for refuge to Dharma, therefore also has two meanings.  The first is to make effort to seek out Dharma instructions and to improve our understanding of what we need to do to actually train our mind.  Fortunately, Geshe-la makes this very easy for us.  He has given us a complete set of books that meticulously go over every stage of the path from our first steps all the way to the final goal.  He has struck the perfect balance of giving us everything we need and nothing we don’t need.  Likewise, he has established for us Dharma centers throughout the world so that we can receive teachings directly.  Having books is great, but having somebody we can go to and receive individually tailored instructions is invaluable.

The second way of going for refuge is to make the pursuit of the inner wealth of Dharma realizations our life purpose.  We see that our problem is our mind, and we make effort to actually change our mind in the direction the Dharma teaches.  If what we want out of life is to increase our realizations, then we suddenly develop a genuine equanimity with respect to life’s ups and downs.  It really doesn’t matter what happens because we know how to use everything to train our mind.  Since every situation is equally empty, we realize every circumstance is equally good in terms of the opportunity it affords us to train our mind.  The driving force of business people is making money, and motivated by this wish they work incredibly long hours and devote tremendous energy.  With the same vigor, we pursue the inner wealth of Dharma realizations.  They are our bottom line.  If the pursuit of inner wealth is our life’s purpose, it doesn’t matter if we are young or old, rich or poor, powerful or not, sick or healthy, in every circumstance we can practice.  Nothing can interfere with us doing what we wish.  Because we know we are building for a better future we get something more fulfilling than temporary pleasure, we get inner contentment and confidence knowing we are on the right track.

But we should not fool ourselves.  Training in Dharma is not easy, in fact sometimes it can be very hard.  We have literally eons worth of bad habits built up, and these do not change over night – they scarcely change even after decades of practice.  But they do change, and because we have correct methods, if we never give up, it is guaranteed we will get there in the end.  In sports, we say “no pain, no gain,” meaning if it isn’t hurting, you are probably not making any progress.  It is the same with our Dharma practice.  When we actually try go against the grain of our delusions, in particular our attachment, it can be really difficult, even sometimes painful.  But like a rebel soldier fighting for a good cause, we gladly assume the difficulty because we know our cause is just and it is worth it in the end.

To go for refuge to Buddha

A Buddha is an enlightened being, somebody who has already completed the path.  Every Buddha was once just like us, an ordinary, ignorant person prone to mistakes and sorrow.  They realized the nature of their problem, put effort into improving themselves, and continued to do so until they became completely free from all delusions and the imprints of their past deluded actions.  Once they attained that state, the duality between them and everyone else (indeed, everything else) disappeared.  They ceased to be a being somehow trapped in just one body repetitively dying and being reborn, and they transcended into a higher state that is simultaneously beyond samsara yet still active within it.  Because they lack nothing, they give everything continuously.

They realize that everyone can enjoy the same blissful state and so they work tirelessly to gradually lead everyone to freedom.  When someone we know dies, it feels to us as if they have left this world.  When we die and are reborn, we have no recollection of our past lives and everyone seems a stranger.  For a Buddha, even though their conventional emanations may cease, they never feel as if they die.  They remember their relationships with every living being and work to build upon them.  When somebody dies and is reborn, the Buddha just picks up where they left off with that person, just in a different karmically appearing context.  They can see directly into other’s minds in exactly the same way we currently see into our own.  But unlike us, they don’t judge anybody for their confusion or delusions, rather they realize all of these beings are simply confused, indeed deceived by their deluded states of mind.  So they patiently try reveal the paths of wisdom while respecting everyone’s individual choice to follow it or not.  They do not feel as if they are in one place and not another, but they experience themselves as simultaneously being everywhere, equally fully present for each and every living being helping in every way possible every day.

Sadly the Buddha sees (from one perspective at least) that the minds of virtually all beings remain completely closed, and indeed blind to the fact that they are suffering from a schizophrenic hallucination that they believe to be real.  Driven by this confusion, living beings endlessly harm, rape, even kill one another.  They constantly create the causes for their future suffering, creating false divisions and differences between people.  Endlessly, they see beings being chewed up in the meat grinder of samsara, relentlessly without end.

But they also see when practitioners generate Buddhas within their own minds, such as in our sadhanas or Tantric practices, it is like a portal opens up between the infinite ocean of wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s mind and the mind of the individual practitioner.  Buddha’s blessings spontaneously pour through this opening in the same way water pours through the opening of a dam.  In this way, the Buddha feels as if they are nourishing the minds of living beings, like a mother feeding her newborn baby.  Gradually, over time, just like a baby growing in the womb of its mother, a living emanation takes root within the minds of some.  Most of the time, the being is closed off to this Buddha within their heart, but some are making sincere efforts to align themselves further and further with the Buddha within them.  They seek to stop identifying with their ordinary body and mind, and instead to start to identify with the Buddha emanating within.  Gradually, the duality between themselves and the emanation ceases, and then the duality between the emanation and the Buddha themselves ceases.  Then, like a magic crystal opening up, the being is able to reflect more and more purely the light and actions of the Buddha in this world.

Some very rare beings reach the stage where they can do this most of the time, if not all of the time, and their every action of body, speech and mind is actually that of the Buddha in this world.  Such a being is known as a “Spiritual Guide.”  A Spiritual Guide is like a sun within the darkness of the world, radiating out in all directions.  Normally we think of the sun as the ball of fire in the center of our solar system, but in reality can we say the rays of sun that reach the earth are separate from the sun itself?  In the same way, the countless emanations of Buddha in this world are not separate from or other than the Buddha himself.

To go for refuge to Buddha, then, means to turn to this light.  To make effort to open our mind to it so that these blessings may flow down into us.  It is to realize there are immortal enlightened beings standing ready to enter our life and draw us back into their bosom.  It is to be inspired to become an instrument through which they work in this world.  It is to aspire to become just like them.  It is to long to unite inseparably with them for all time.

The six commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana

The practice of the six commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana function primarily to create the karmic causes to attain the form body of a Buddha.  The form body of a Buddha is a conventionally physical force that, while existing outside of samsara, nonetheless operates within it in a way that is perfectly consistent with virtue.  Its function is to provide a living example of how one acts in a way consistent with the Dharma and to provide living beings with whatever they need to enter, progress along and complete the path to enlightenment.

It is a mistake to conceive of the form body of a Buddha as somehow confined to the physical body of a single human being.  It is something much, much larger.  It is informative to use Geshe-la as an example.  Conventionally, we can say that Geshe-la’s body in this world is that of an aging Tibetan monk.  His speech in this world is the words that come out of his mouth and through his written words.  His mind is what is inside his body thinking about the rest of the world.  From one perspective, this is completely correct.  But from a deeper perspective, we can say his larger body in this world is all of our bodies when we try put into practice his teachings with our body, his larger speech in this world is all of our speech when we try say things consistent with what he has taught us, and his larger mind is all of our own thinking to the extent that it has been influenced by his teachings.  After he passes away, this larger body will continue to exist, grow and function in this world.  Conventionally, we will say that he has died, but in a deeper sense he will live on in a different form.  We are, even now, part of his body, speech and mind in this world.  Christians have a similar concept of the living Christ.  This is no different than the ways in which our loved ones “live on” through us when we carry forward and embody that which they have transmitted to us.  By extension, we can understand the living Buddha’s form body in this world by seeing the evolution and development of Buddhism in this world, in all of its myriad forms, of which the Kadampa tradition is merely one part.

From a Tantric perspective, Buddha’s form body is not something that is somehow limited to just the things we would conventionally call “Buddhist.”  But we can literally “inject” Buddha’s body, speech and mind into everything that appears to our mind.  Whether the world we inhabit is samsara or the pure land, in the final analysis, depends entirely upon our own mental choices.  One of the unique qualities of a Buddha is wherever you imagine them, they actually go; and wherever they go, they accomplish their function, which is namely to ripen and liberate living beings.  If I view my boss as an emanation, he will function for me as an emanation.  From his own side, he may see himself in a different way, but his view of himself does not limit in any way my view of him.  He can, for me, function as an emanation.  The same is true for everything we encounter, every physical form we come in contact with, every sound we hear, every idea or thought expressed.  Everything can be viewed – validly – as the body, speech and mind of Buddha in this world.  With such recognitions, we will experience our living reality as everything being the unfolding of enlightenment in this world.

The first three commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana are to go for refuge to Buddha, to go for refuge to Dharma and to go for refuge to Sangha.  In this post, I will explain in general what it means to go for refuge, and in the subsequent posts I will describe what it means for each one.

When people first encounter Buddhism and they hear the phrase “go for refuge” it sounds quite strange, almost cult-like.  But the true meaning is actually something very practical.  When you have a legal problem, you turn to a lawyer for help; when you have a dental problem, you turn to a dentist for help; when you have a delusion problem, you turn to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  It starts with the recognition of the nature of our problem, then transitions into an appreciation of how these three can help us with our problem, and it ends with our applying effort to change our own mind and behavior.  The Three Jewels cannot help us fix our car, but they can help us have a better attitude about it breaking down.  The Three Jewels cannot solve our legal or financial problems, but they can help us transform such problems into the path to enlightenment.  As Buddhists we rely upon external help for our external problems just like everybody else, but we also rely upon the Three Jewels for our internal problem of our unhappy, negative, deluded states of mind.  We have two different types of problem (external and internal) and therefore two different types of solution (external and internal).  Our going for refuge to the three jewels is simply our turning towards them to solve our internal problem.

The nineteen commitments of the five Buddha families

It is very important to keep our Tantric commitments purely.  If we do, and on this basis we practice the generation and completion stages of highest yoga tantra, we can attain Buddhahood in this life; but if we break our vows and commitments we create immense obstacles to our spiritual development.

As was mentioned earlier, our vows and commitments are the essential methods by which we practically bring our own actions in line with our spiritual intentions.  Each vow is like a road sign that points in the direction of enlightenment.  If we follow all the road signs of the refuge vows, we can maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our Buddhist practice in this and all our future lives; if we follow all the road signs of the pratimoksha vows, we create the causes to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our path to liberation; if we follow all the road signs of the bodhisattva vows, we maintain the continuum of our path to enlightenment; and if we follow all the road signs of our tantric vows, we maintain the continuum of our Tantric path and we will swiftly attain enlightenment.  Just as the Dharma books have a “condensed meaning of the text” we can correctly view the vows and commitments as the condensed meaning of the various paths.

In the Lamrim teachings, it says our chances of finding the Buddhadharma in any given life are about the same as a blind turtle at the bottom of an ocean the size of this world who rises to the surface only once every 100,000 years who manages to put his head right through a golden yoke floating on the surface.  I did the math once, and this is something like once every 640 billion lifetimes.  Finding the Tantric path is rarer still.  It is said only the 4^th, 11^th and last of the 100 Buddhas of this fortunate aeon will teach Tantra.  If we assume an aeon is 1 million years (I think it is much longer, but this is long enough to illustrate the point), and we assume that the Dharma of any given Buddha lasts about 5,000 years, it means the probability of Tantric teachings even being around when the turtle raises its head is only 1.5%.  This translates into our finding the Tantric path only once every 42.5 trillion lifetimes!  But miraculously we have found it in this lifetime.  If we do not want to wait another 42.5 trillion lifetimes to find it again, it would be advisable to keep our tantric vows purely in this life.  Doing so enables us to beat the odds, and maintain the continuum of our tantric practice until we attain the final goal.

Keeping commitments is the best means to attain success in our generation and completion stage practices.  It is the very life of Tantric practice.  When we keep our Tantric vows and commitments, we plant on our mind the karma which will ripen in the form of Tantric realizations.  Our practice of moral discipline plants the seeds, our actual practice of generation stage and completion stage function to ripen those seeds.  Even knowledge of these vows is like being given the secret code that enables you to unlock the mysteries of the universe.  Nothing is more important, and we should consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to even have the opportunity to know of these, much less have the opportunity to put them into practice.

The 19 commitments of the five Buddha families are the very methods by which we acquire the five completely pure aggregates of a Buddha.  At present we impute our I onto our five contaminated aggregates (form, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors and consciousness).  These are essentially our contaminated body and mind.  The only reason why we experience the sufferings of a samsaric being is because we impute our I onto samsaric contaminated aggregates.  If instead we imputed our I onto the pure aggregates of a Buddha, we would experience the eternal bliss of enlightenment.  We already have an “I”, but the question is how do we generate a qualified five pure aggregates that we can then identify with?  The answer is through our practice of the 19 commitments of the five Buddha families.

These will now be explained in detail over the next several posts.

Do not wish for gratitude. 

When we help someone we should not expect anything in return.  If we do, we turn the kindness into a sham.  We should direct all of our efforts exclusively for the benefit of others, ideally with a bodhichitta motivation.

The difference between a kindness and a contract is whether we expect anything in return.  Since our primary goal is to create good karma for the future, we actually don’t want anything in return because we know we will then have burned up the good karma we worked so hard to create.  We do not have to formally ask for something in return for us to implicitly be requesting it.  I personally think the best form of kindness is the anonymous kind, because then we know we are not doing so for the sake of getting something in return.

It is very rare for anybody to be kind to others without expecting something in return.  And when this something doesn’t come, we then find others to be very ungrateful and we begin to regret our acts of kindness.  We feel justified in at least wanting a thank you from others, and we are quick to condemn others when it doesn’t come.  Where do all of these ungrateful people come from?  Our own past ungratefulness.

It is especially hard to not wish for gratitude when we have really gone out of our way to help somebody, and they nonetheless criticize us and even sometimes get mad at us for not helping them out correctly.  Gen-la Losang tells the story about how he was at Manjushri center and he was not on kitchen clean up duty.  It was at night, and he went down to the kitchen to get an apple and he saw that the kitchen still hadn’t been cleaned up since dinner.  So being the kind bodhisattva, he then proceeded to clean everything up.  Just as he was finishing, the person who was supposed to clean up the kitchen came down, and frustratedly said to Losang, “you missed a spot!”  That is when, Losang said, he knew he still had some work to do on giving selflessly.

This sort of experience happens to us all of the time.  We may help some people a tremendous amount, such as our children or our partner, and despite all that they still get mad at us.  When we are working hard and we need some help, they don’t lift a finger to help us.  They may be generally upset or going through a difficult time, and they project onto us that it is our responsibility to make them feel better, and when we fail to do so, they get mad at us.  Why are people so unreasonable with us?  Because this is how we have been with others in the past.  It is very easy for us to become frustrated at these people and resentful about how despite all that we do for them they still get mad at us.  But if our objective is to accumulate good karma for the future, we realize it is better this way.  We are learning how to give unconditionally.  We are not using up our virtuous karma on them expressing gratitude for us now.

Even though we should not expect gratitude, we should nonetheless always make a point of being grateful for what others have done for us.

When we are growing up, it seems entirely normal to us for our parents to do everything for us, and when they don’t we feel let down and betrayed.  But the reality is nobody owes us anything.  The fact that anybody does anything for us should be welcomed as an act of extreme kindness.  But as we grow older and become parents ourselves, we realize it is not our parents that owe us anything, it is we who owe our parents for all that they have done for us.  Of course everybody’s circumstance is different, but we should make a point of doing everything we can to look after our parents when they become older.  They were there for us when we needed it most, it is only normal that we are there for them when they need it most.

We should likewise make a special point of being grateful to all those who have taught us in some way.  The reality is we don’t know how to do anything on our own.  Everything we are able to do comes from the kindness of somebody else teaching us.  Even the things we have learned on our own ultimately come from the kindness of others because somebody taught us the skills we relied upon to be able to learn the thing on our own, for example even something as rudimentary as knowing how to read what is written.

Usually due to our inappropriate attention on what the person is not doing, we are unable to develop gratitude for what they have done.  Our resentment about the other person not living up to our expectations of what they should have done for us prevents us from developing gratitude for what they have done.  What good does this do anybody?  Our lack of gratitude for what they have done doesn’t exactly encourage the other person to do more for us, and even if it did, we would, in effect, be emotionally blackmailing the other person into giving us more.  We don’t want that karma on our mind.  Such an ungrateful attitude poisons our relationship with the other person, and frankly transforms us into an ungrateful jerk.  In contrast, being grateful is always well received.  When we are grateful for what others have done for us, they naturally want to do more for us.