The fourteen root downfalls of the Secret Mantra vows

Abusing or scorning our Spiritual Guide. 

In this context our Spiritual Guide is anyone from whom we have received both the empowerment of our personal Yidam and the commentary to that practice.  If we decide not to rely upon our Spiritual Guide any more we incur a root downfall.  Developing non-faith or anger towards our Spiritual Guide are very heavy negative actions and block Tantric realizations, but are not downfalls.

The reason why abusing or scorning our Spiritual Guide results in such heavy negative karma is clear:  The Spiritual Guide is the synthesis of all of the Buddhas, so any negative action towards the Spiritual Guide is kamrically the same as a negative actions against all of the Buddhas.  Just as you cannot separate the sun from its light, so too you cannot separate the Spiritual Guide from his instructions.  At a very profound level, the light is part of the sun, and the instructions are part of the Spiritual Guide.  To abuse or scorn the Spiritual Guide is to create a particularly horrible karma in the mind that obstructs our ability to appreciate (much less realize) ALL of the instructions of that Spiritual Guide.  In this way, it sabotages everything.

At a practical level, the only way we can gain any realization of any Dharma subject is through receiving the blessings of all of the Buddhas.  But it is through our relationship with the Spiritual Guide that we can receive these blessings.  He introduced us to them, he gave us empowerments into them, he explained to us how to practice them.  By abusing or scorning the Spiritual Guide, we cut off our mind to being able to receive these blessings.  The sun of Dharma stops shining anew in our mind, and it is just a question of time before all of its light has passed us by and we are replunged into a world of spiritual darkness.

To publicly abuse or scorn the Spiritual Guide is even worse negative karma, because our actions function to destroy the mind of faith in a holy object, we cause others to abandon their path, and often they just wind up turned off from all spiritual paths. But as with all the vows, we need to be careful.  In many of the Tibetan traditions, they strongly emphasize this concept of “samaya.”  Its practical interpretation can be downright abusive.  It often is interpreted to mean once you have taken an empowerment from somebody, they own you and you have to do everything they say for the rest of your life, otherwise you will burn in hell forever.  It makes people feel trapped, like some form of spiritual enslavement from which there is no escape.  Such an interpretation is ridiculous and spiritually abusive.

Within the Kadampa tradition, we have regrettably had quite a few high profile teachers who, through the force of delusion, broke their spiritual vows.  This created a good deal of confusion for people.  What do I do if the person who has granted my Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment winds up disrobing in disgrace?  Since they broke their commitments to their Spiritual Guide and I am “bound” to them due to having received empowerments from them, should I follow them?  Do I go to hell with them?  Are my empowerments still in tact?  And what do I do if I decide this person or this tradition is no longer for me?  If my karma draws me to another path, am I going to burn in hell if I follow my karma?  Am I trapped in some commitment I didn’t even realize I was taking when I signed up for that festival?  This sort of tight grasping at a wrong understanding can and has led to extreme inner turmoil in many people.

Within the context of the modern Kadampa Tradition, we have a very elegant, and yet subtle, solution to this problem.  Geshe-la explains that when we receive teachings or empowerments, we should view that the living Je Tsongkhapa enters into the vessel of our teacher, and it is our actual Guru Je Tsongkhapa who gives the teachings and empowerments through our teacher.  Geshe-la said we should do this even with him.  Our actual Spiritual Guide is the living Je Tsongkhapa.  He enters into our different teachers, gives us instructions, empowerments, blessings and so forth.  Our “guru commitment” is not made to the appearance of the human being of our teacher, but rather to Lama Tsongkhapa (or Lama Action Vajra as the case may be) at his or her heart.  Since there is no danger of Lama Tsongkhapa ever breaking his vows, even if the human appearance of our teacher does, there is no problem for us.

Likewise, some people’s karma may take them to another tradition.  But if they likewise view Je Tsongkhapa entering their new teacher, then in reality they have the same spiritual guide, just speaking through somebody else.  Because they have never abused or scorned Je Tsongkhapa, they have never abused or scorned their Spiritual Guide, and so therefore they are protected against creating this particularly heavy negative karma.

Venerable Tharchin said, “we must be clear, our ultimate refuge is in the Dharma, not the person.”  He explains, if our ultimate refuge is in the person, then if that person does something stupid, then we will be plunged into a crisis of faith and possibly lose everything.  Instead, if we are clear our ultimate refuge is in the Dharma, then if our teacher does something stupid, it serves for us as yet another Dharma teaching – teaching us what not to do, teaching us the power and deceptiveness of delusions, etc.  We are protected.  It is for this reason that during the empowerments, our actual commitment is not to the person, but is instead a commitment to engage in certain practices.  Our actual commitment is, “to strive our best to one day keep all of our commitments purely.”

The only way we break this commitment is if we say, “no, I will no longer try become a better person.  I reject Lama Tsongkhapa and his teachings, they are wrong and deceptive.”  So even if we go to another tradition, if we never lose our intention to try become a better person by putting into practice Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings, we have not broken our commitments.  We need not feel trapped. This modern Kadampa special view of the relationship between the Spiritual Guide and the student has many advantages, but the main one is it preserves the central importance of our commitment to the spiritual guide while at the same time protecting us against the spiritually abusive interpretations of “samaya” found in so many other traditions.  If you check Geshe-la’s works, he never uses this term.  We reject spiritual abuse, we embrace a commitment to relying upon the living Je Tsongkhapa.

To strive to maintain purely all the vows we have taken.

We fulfil this commitment by reminding ourself that we need to keep to the best of our ability all the vows and commitments we have taken.

In total, there are more than 240 different vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism.  This series of posts has been going on for close to a year now, and there are still many more vows to go.  When we first start practicing Dharma, we have countless aeons worth of bad habits within our mind.  It is completely unrealistic to think just because we have learned the vows and commitments, attending a few classes, received a few empowerments, that we will somehow be able to keep all of our vows and commitments purely.  Geshe-la advises us we need to work gradually with all of our vows, trying to identify the circumstances where we are likely to break them, and develop plans for how to avoid doing so.

The vows are, in effect, a synthesis of all of the teachings.  By putting our practice of our vows and commitments as something central to our practice, rather than the usual afterthought, we will gradually and surely be lead to our final destination of enlightenment.  The vows are like road signs that always point in the direction of enlightenment.  No matter how lost we might become, all we need do is revisit our vows and commitments, reflect on the different ways in which we might be acting in contradiction with them, and then gradually adjust course to live our life in a way consistent with them.  They will never deceive us, they will never lead us astray.  There is never a time where it is appropriate to set our commitments aside.  This does not mean we do not need to interpret them skillfully given the different circumstances we find ourselves in, but we never set them aside.

Our vows are like are best spiritual friends who always give us good advice.  There is little more valuable in this world than somebody we can turn to who will always give us good advice.  Our vows are such a friend.  Like any true friend, our vows might not always be gentle with us.  It might sometimes be painful to look into the mirror of Dharma because we don’t want to confront our own wrong behavior.  But in reality, the mirror of Dharma never judges us.  It merely points the way without judgment.  If we allow it to, it will protect us from all mistakes and gradually transform all of our behavior into correct behavior.

In their simplest form, the essential meaning of the refuge vows is to solve your inner problem of delusions by relying upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  The essential meaning of the Pratimoksha vows is do no harm, to yourself or to others.  The essential meaning of the Bodhisattva vows is to put others first.  The essential meaning of the Tantric vows is maintain pure view out of compassion.  We may not be able to remember all 240+ vows, but we can remember their essential meanings.  We cannot commit to keeping all of our vows purely, but we can commit to never giving up trying our best to do so.

It is said that the cause of higher rebirth is the practice of moral discipline.  Every time the tendencies within our mind push us in the direction of committing some negative deed, if we recall our vows, we recall the karmic consequences of negativity and the advantages of virtue, and then we decide to not engage in that negative action we are practicing the “moral discipline of restraint.”  Each time we do this, we create the karma for another precious human life.  If we have 50 such negative tendencies ripen in a day, and we resist 50 times, in one single day we create the causes for 50 future precious human lives.  Each vow is like a lottery ticket that wins every time.  It never loses.

The two commitments of the family of Buddha Amoghasiddhi

The two commitments of the family of Buddha Amaghasiddhi function to purify our aggregate of compositional factors and transform it into the wisdom of accomplishing activities.  When we have cultivated this aggregate within our mind, then all of our mental factors transform into the completely pure mental factors of a Buddha.  We literally have within our mind a Buddha’s mental factors.

To make offerings to our Spiritual Guide. 

This commitment is to make outer, inner, secret, and thatness offerings to our Spiritual Guide.

I remember when I first started practicing, I had a lot of difficulty with this whole idea of offering.  It seemed very cult-like, and very strange.  It seemed like it could easily be abused for the self-enrichment of the “guru.”  I think the fact that I have a lot of imprints of miserliness probably didn’t help either.  So I asked a lot of questions until I became comfortable with it all.  Now, every day, I wholeheartedly and without reservation offer, “my body, my mind, my time, my family, everything I own, my friends, my work, my tradition” to my guru, yidam and protector requesting them to “use these things for the swiftest possible enlightenment of all.”

The key point to resolving all of our doubts about offerings is from their side, the Buddhas need nothing.  They already have everything (indeed, they already are everything).  So we don’t make offerings to Buddhas because they need anything, rather we do so because we need to create the karma of making offerings.  The Buddhas are delighted to receive our offerings not because they like receiving things, but rather because they are happy for us because they know the good karma we are creating.  Everytime we give, we create the cause to receive.  Giving different things creates different types of karma.  When we make offerings to the Spiritual Guide, all of the countless Buddhas enter into his body and receive our offerings.  In this way, it multiplies the power of our offering by the number of Buddhas (which is countless).

We normally say there are four different types of offerings:  outer, inner, secret and thatness offerings.  Outer offerings can be divided into two types, normal material offerings and the traditional outer offerings of our practice.  Normal material offerings includes, for example, anytime we give something (like a vacuum cleaner, or new towels, or whatever) to our center, or when we give money for the International Temples Project, or when we give money to help send somebody to a festival.  Our normal material offerings function to create the karma to be able to have all of the outer conditions necessary to be able to practice in the future.  This is fairly easy to understand, by making the Dharma more easily accessible to others today, we create the causes to more easily access the Dharma ourselves in the future.

Traditional outer offerings of our practice include various types of water, food, incense, light and so forth.  Generally speaking, these create the causes to have good health, long life and that we find it easy to gain realizations in the future.  Within the context of our practice, we are not just offering the physical bowls of water, etc., rather within our mind we imagine we fill the entire universe with these offerings and we offer them to the Buddhas before us.  In this way, we can infinitely multiply the power of our giving.  Within our Tantric practices, we likewise engage in a special way of making outer offerings by imagining that all forms, sounds, smells, tastes and objects of touch transform into infinite offering goddesses holding special objects, which we then offer to the visualized guru deity in front of us.  This is an extremely powerful practice that functions to enable us in the future to experience all objects of the senses as nectar giving rise to the realization of great bliss and emptiness within our mind.  In the context of our Tantric practice, outer offerings function to give us the merit we need to complete the path of generation stage.

Inner offerings are where we imagine we transform the impure substances of our body into a completely pure nectar which we then offer to our Spiritual Guide.  There are outer aspects of this practice with nectar pills, and the like, but the real inner offering is an internal one.  First we purify, transform and increase the contaminated substances into pure ones, and then we offer them to the guru deity.  Doing so creates the karma to purify completely our contaminated aggregates and transform them into the pure aggregates of the deity.  In the context of our Tantric practice, inner offerings function to give us the merit we need to complete the path of illusory body.

Secret offerings are where we imagine offering the guru deity in the aspect of the Yidam a consort, and in dependence upon that the guru deity generates a mind of great bliss.  In the context of our Tantric practice, this creates the karma for us to be able to complete the training in meaning clear light.

Thatness offerings are where we imagine that, in dependence upon the bliss generated from the secretness offering, the guru deity realizes the non-duality between his mind of great bliss, the emptiness of his mind of great bliss, and all phenomena (including his emanation bodies).  This creates the karma for us to be able to attain the union of illusory body and clear light, and ultimately enlightenment.

One way to think of this is how different kinds of vehicles need different kinds of fuel.  Cars use regular gasoline, planes use jet fuel, rockets use rocket fuel, and The Starship Enterprise uses dilithium crystals.  In the same way, in our “Trek” to enlightenment, we need different kinds of merit to power us along the different stages of the path, from our daily practice, through generation stage, illusory body, meaning clear light, and finally full enlightenment.  Making outer, inner, secret and thatness offerings gives us this fuel.

To rely upon the teachings of the two higher classes of Tantra. 

In general, our practice of Tantra usually has two phases.  In the first phase, we have not yet received a highest yoga tantra empowerment of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  During this phase, we will usually receive some lower tantra empowerments, such as Tara, Amitayus, Vajrasattva, and so forth.  During this phase, we can begin to have a daily practice of Tantra in the context of the corresponding deity sadhana.  Our main focus at this time should be to gain some initial experience of self-generation, and in particular we should start to consider deeply the relationship between our Lamrim practice and our Tantric practice.  The second phase of our Tantric practice begins after we have received the highest yoga tantra empowerments.

Once we receive our highest yoga tantra empowerments, we generally try follow Atisha’s advice to the Translator Richen Sangpo to integrate all our Deity practices into our practice of our personal Yidam by recognizing they are all the same nature and dissolving them into our Yidam (Yidam means personal deity, in this context it means Heruka or Vajrayogini).  Practically speaking, what this means is when we practice Heruka or Vajrayogini directly, we mentally understand we are practicing all of the other deities we have ever received empowerments into indirectly.  This is most easily accomplished by recalling that our Yidam is actually an emanation of our guru in the aspect of our Yidam, and our Guru is the synthesis of all the Buddhas.  By practicing in this way, every time we receive the empowerment of any deity, we seek to incorporate the essential meaning of the instructions we receive into our main practice of Heruka or Vajrayogini.  This does not mean we can’t practice the other deities directly.  We can of course do so when it feels like the right thing to do, but generally we deepen our practice of our principal deity.

The practice of Highest Yoga Tantra has two main stages, generation stage and completion stage.  Generation stage is when we change the basis of imputation of our I from our ordinary body and mind to the completely pure gross body, speech and mind of our Yidam.  Completion stage practice is when we change the basis of imputation of our I from the gross deity body to the completely pure subtle (and indeed very subtle) body, speech and mind of the deity.

For simplicity, we can view the entire path of Sutra and Tantra as gradually drawing our winds inward into our central channel at our heart.  We begin our training as an ordinary being.  We then meditate on the Lamrim and generate the sincere wish to become a Buddha.  Our identity has shifted to that of a Bodhisattva, and our inner energy winds have gathered into such a being.  Then we train in generation stage where we draw our identity and winds into the pure body, speech and mind of the Yidam.  Then we train in the body mandala meditations, which is like a bridge between generation stage and completion stage.  Then, we train in drawing our identity and winds into the different mantras of our Yidam.  The mantra of each deity of the body mandala is like the condensed meaning, or inner essence, of each deity.  Body mandala meditations and recitation of mantras function to purify the gross levels of our deity’s subtle body, and draw our identity and winds into it.  Then we begin completion stage.  First we train in bringing our identity and winds into our central channel at our heart.  Then into our indestructible drop at our heart.  Then into the seed letter of the deity inside the indestructible drop.  This seed letter is like the condensed meaning of all of the deities of the body mandala.  It is also the same nature as our very subtle body.  This body never dies and it travels from life to life.  If we can center ourselves within it, we will become a deathless being.  Then we seek to draw into our very subtle mind of great bliss inside the seed letter.  Then we seek to draw ourselves into the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss.  Finally, we seek to realize the non-duality of our very subtle mind of great bliss and the emptiness of that mind.  When we have realized this directly, we attain the realization of meaning clear light and we are very close to enlightenment.  In dependence upon the realization of meaning clear light, we purify our very subtle mind of all past delusions and contaminated karmic imprints.  When we have completely done so, we become a Buddha.

All of these practices are explained in detail in Guide to Dakini Land, Essence of Vajrayana, Tantric Grounds and Paths, Clear Light of Bliss, Mahamudra Tantra and Modern Buddhism.  When we have even a glimmer of an appreciation of the power of these practices, then we will effortlessly realize there is nothing more important we can do with our life than train in these two tantric stages.

To rely upon the teachings of the two lower classes of Tantra

According to Sutra, the root of samsara is self-grasping ignorance.  According to Tantra, the root of samsara is ordinary appearance and ordinary conception.  Ordinary appearance is an object appearing to us as ordinary (meaning, existing from its own side, and all of its characteristics likewise appear to exist from their own side).  Ordinary conception is when we assent to ordinary appearances as being true.  We will continue to have ordinary appearances until we become a Buddha, but we can abandon our ordinary conceptions along the way.  Practically speaking, by abandoning ordinary conceptions we cut the power of ordinary appearances to generate delusions within our mind.  By abandoning delusions, we stop planting new contaminated karmic seeds on our mind, which will gradually weaken the preponderance of contaminated karma ripening.  But it is not until we completely abandon ordinary appearance that we attain the omniscient wisdom of a Buddha.

The actual method for overcoming our ordinary appearance is to remove from our very subtle mind the karmic imprints of all of our past delusion.  We do this by realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  Realizing the emptiness of one object – our very subtle mind – functions to uproot all of the contaminated karma we have accumulated since beginningless time.  We can understand this by considering the analogy of a wheel.  A wheel has a hub and many spokes.  If you shined a light inside any individual spoke, it would illuminate that spoke.  But if you could shine a light inside the hub of the wheel, it would illuminate all of the spokes directly and simultaneously.  It is the same with our realization of the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  If we realize the emptiness of a single object, it is like illuminating light in a single spoke; but since all karma is stored on our very subtle mind, by realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind, it is like shining light in the hub, which illuminates all of the spokes of our karma.

With this background, all of the tantric path can be divided into two main parts.  The first part is making manifest our very subtle mind, and the second part is realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  It is impossible to realize the emptiness of an object you do not cognize.  So if you don’t first realize your very subtle mind, you can never realize its emptiness.  Without realizing the emptiness of the very subtle mind, you can never attain enlightenment.

The very subtle mind in Sutra is sometimes referred to as our “root mind” or as “our Buddha nature.”  In Tantra, it is known as our “mind of great bliss.”  There is a good deal of misunderstanding concerning what Tantric bliss is all about.  There all sorts of “classes” people take on “Tantra” where the only requirement is you wear loose fitting shorts.  You know the rest.  In reality, this is just people misusing Buddha’s teachings for the sake of worldly pleasures.  This is like using $100 bills for toilet paper, a complete waste.  Worse, it leads to the degeneration of the pure Buddhadharma in this world.  The negative karma from this is beyond measure.

Tantric bliss, properly understood, is the feeling of inner peace taken to its ultimate fruition.  It is so peaceful, it is blissful.  Our very subtle mind, when manifest, is naturally blissful.  Put another way, when our aggregate of discrimination is perceiving our very subtle mind, our aggregate of feeling is experiencing great bliss.  Once this mind becomes manifest, we then meditate on its emptiness.  When we realize its emptiness directly, the duality between our subject mind of great bliss and its object, emptiness, dissolve completely like water mixing with water.  This is the mind of meaning clear light, the union of bliss and emptiness.  Once we attain this realization, it is said we can attain enlightenment in 3 years, and even in 3 months.  Of course, to get to this mind may take many lifetimes, but once there, we are very close.

So the question becomes, how do we make manifest our very subtle mind of great bliss?  The answer is by causing our inner energy winds to gather and dissolve into our central channel at our heart.  Our central channel at our heart is like a purifying bath for our inner winds.  When our winds are pure, all of the minds mounted on these winds are likewise pure.  Practically speaking, there are many methods for generating the mind of great bliss.  The four classes of Tantra (action tantra, performance tantra, yoga tantra and highest yoga tantra) are simply increasingly profound methods for doing so.

The way all four tantras work is the same:  we observe an object that would otherwise normally give rise to attachment.  When that occurs, we usually generate some sort of pleasant feeling in our mind.  We then consider how the pleasant feeling does not come from the object, but rather comes from inside our mind.  We then try to dissolve the object which gave rise to our attachment into emptiness while preserving the pleasant feeling.  When we do this, the pleasant feeling transforms into a pure feeling that is a similitude of the mind of great bliss (pure inner peace).  We then hold that mind for as long as we can, trying to stabilize it.  Once stabilized, we can then turn our attention to meditating on the emptiness of this mind of great bliss.

In all tantras, we first generate ourselves as the deity we are going to practice.  It is inappropriate to maintain our ordinary body and mind when engaging in Tantric practice, so we do so as the self-generated deity.  In action tantra, we imagine we look upon a beautiful deity.  In performance tantra, we imagine that she is looking at us in an enticing, seductive way.  In yoga tantra, we touch, kiss, etc., the deity.  And in highest yoga tantra, we engage in union with the deity.  Each of these is a higher level of attachment, and so therefore a stronger feeling of bliss, which we then realize the emptiness of in the way just described.  We cannot engage in qualified highest yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified yoga tantra.  We cannot do qualified yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified performance tantra, and so forth.  But we can’t do any of these without first being able to generate ourselves as the deity in a qualified way.  Our ability to generate ourselves in a qualified way depends upon (1) a motivation of bodhichitta, in other words a solid practice of Lamrim, (2) a solid foundation of moral discipline, in other words training in all of our vows and commitments, and (3) a clear understanding of emptiness.  So our focus at this stage should not be on trying different methods for generating bliss, rather our focus should be on Lamrim, moral discipline, the wisdom realizing emptiness, and self-generation practice.

To rely upon the teachings of Sutra. 

We need to listen to, contemplate, and meditate on the instructions of Sutra.  The simplest way to do this is to study, contemplate, and meditate on the Lamrim.

I remember when I first found Geshe-la’s books and the first time I read Joyful Path of Good Fortune.  Prior to that, I had been going to the bookstore, buying books, then coming home and trying to make sense of them.  I would then go back to the bookstore and try again.  Because every individual instruction of Dharma has value, I was definitely receiving benefit and moving in a positive direction.  But then I read about the pre-eminent qualities of the Lamrim.  In particular, the fact that the Lamrim was the condensation of all 84,000 instructions of Buddha, so by practicing the Lamrim directly I was practicing all of Buddha’s instructions indirectly.  This moved my mind so much, I literally got up off the couch and started dancing in my apartment, going “Yes!”

Let’s face it, we live in an age of no more than 140 characters.  If people have to spend more than 3-5 minutes reading something, they simply give up.  Several years ago, the average length of a New York Times op-ed column was 1,000 words.  They have since shortened it to 800 words, because beyond that people lose interest and are pulled to the next thing.  How many of us, in this modern world, have the time to wade through all 84,000 instructions and try make sense of them?  And even if we had such time, why would we do so when it has already been done for us by great masters such as Atisha, Je Tsongkhapa and Venerable Geshe-la.  We don’t need to know every street in our city, it suffices to know the streets that take us from where we are to where we want to go.  We don’t need to know every detail of a study, what matters is that we internalize the main idea.  It is better to gain deep experience of the essential than endless intellectual knowledge of every subject.

True wealth is knowing you lack nothing.  You have no need for anything else, you have everything you need.  When we understand the Lamrim we become truly spiritually wealthy.  We feel as if we lack nothing, all that remains is putting it into practice.  We feel like our search is over, we have found home.

The Lamrim directly or indirectly opposes all delusions.  Every delusion has an opponent, but since we have countless different delusions, if we oppose them one by one, we need countless different opponents.  But a systematic practice of the 21 Lamrim meditations weaves within our mind an inter-connected system of Dharma minds that functions to protect our mind against any and all delusions.  When the we train in the Lamrim, our meditation on any one single meditation functions to strengthen and reinforce all of the other meditations.  It builds a spiritual synergy where every experience we have, every new instruction we hear, makes everything else is made stronger.  With the Lamrim, we understand not just individual pieces of Dharma wisdom, but more importantly how everything fits together.  With the Lamrim, we build within our mind a storehouse for the instructions we receive that functions to have nothing be wasted and everything easily retained.  There comes a point in our training in concentration where we reach the “concentration of the Dharma continuum.”  When we reach that stage, we spontaneously remember all of the Dharma instructions we have previously received and likely forgotten.  But with the Lamrim, it can almost be as if we have a similitude of the concentration of the Dharma continuum right now.  In fact, I would go so far as to say the concentration of the Dharma continuum is the full ripening of all of our previous lamrim practice, at least at the level of “listening” to Dharma.

The Lamrim, though, is not just an intellectual framework, it is a deep personal experience of Dharma.  It naturally leads to a transformation of our deepest desires from selfishly wanting samsara’s pleasures in this life to altruistically wanting eternal happiness for all living beings in all of their lives.  It is said the quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma is the mind of bodhichitta.  The first 19 meditations of the Lamrim are like rivers which fill the ocean of our bodhichitta.  Once we have bodhichitta, we then actualize it by improving our concentration and realizing directly ultimate truth emptiness.  With this mind, we reconstruct our karmic dream from a world of suffering into a pure world; and we do this not only for ourself, but for all living beings.

In short, there can be nothing more important to do with our life than transform it with the Lamrim.

The three commitments of the family of Buddha Amitabha

The commitments of Buddha Amitabha function to purify our aggregate of discrimination and transform it into the wisdom of individual realization.  The aggregate of discrimination is not a mind that discriminates against other people, rather it is a mind that knows the distinctions between different objects.  It is explained in Understanding the Mind that the way in which we “know” an object is by realizing its “uncommon characteristic.”  If someone were to ask, “who is John” and the reply was “the human being standing over there in that group,” we wouldn’t know who is John.  But if we said, “the bald, fat, white guy on the right” then we could clearly distinguish John from everybody else, and thus know him.

Venerable Tharchin explains that our samsaric problem is, quite simply, we have the wrong discriminations.  We discriminate objects as being inherently pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.  On the basis of this mistaken discrimination, we then experience objects as being inherently pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.  On the basis of these experiences, we then generate attachment, aversion and ignorance towards objects.  Motivated by these delusions, we then engage in contaminated actions which plant contaminated karma onto our consciousness.  When this karma ripens, it does so in the form of contaminated karmic appearances.  Due to these contaminated appearances, we then once again discriminate objects in a contaminated way, namely as inherently pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.  This cycle is samsara.  Understood in this way, we can see clearly that contaminated discriminations are the very root of samsara.  If we are to break the cycle of samsara, we must do so primarily here.  It is the weak link, it is the first domino, it is the thing we can most easily change.  By changing our discriminations, we change how we conceive of things, this changes how we experience things, this changes what minds we generate towards things, this changes the actions we engage in, which then changes the karma we plant on our mind, which finally changes the world that appears to us.  Pure discriminations lead to pure feelings which lead to pure minds which lead to pure actions which leads to pure karma which results in a pure world.

Seen in this light, all of our Dharma study and contemplation is, in effect, a systematic assault on our wrong discriminations.  It is likewise a comprehensive rebuilding of correct discriminations.  We can incorrectly view people as friend, enemy or stranger; or we can correctly view people as our kind mothers.  We can incorrectly view difficult circumstances as adversities or we can correctly view them as opportunities to grow and to train our mind.  We can incorrectly view those who criticize us as mean or we can view them as our kind benefactors who help us identify our faults and do even better.  We can incorrectly view external circumstances as good or bad; or we can view them all equally as opportunities to put the Dharma into practice.  We can incorrectly view our world as samsara or we can correctly view it as the pure land.  Correct and incorrect in a Dharma context does not means “objectively true” or “objectively untrue.”  Something is objectively true if and only if the truth of the object can be established on the side of the object itself.  But since no object exists from its own side, nothing is objectively true.  Epistemologically speaking, according to the Prasangika’s truth is established on the side of the mind, not the object.  If the mind knowing an object is a valid mind, the object known by that mind is considered an existent.  “Correct” or “incorrect” refers to whether a particular discrimination is beneficial or not.  Beneficial, in this context, means conceiving of the object in this way is conducive to our enlightenment.  Any object can be discriminated in countless different ways, each more or less beneficial.  What is conventionally true for a Prasangika, therefore, is the way of discriminating things that is the most beneficial – the way most conducive to our swiftest possible enlightenment.

In short, objects are inherently nothing, they are what we discriminate them to be.  Discriminate wisely.

To give love.

To fulfil this commitment we should try develop the thought “how wonderful it would be if all living beings could be happy.  May they be happy.  I will help them to become happy.”  We should begin by developing this thought with our friends and family and then gradually increase the scope until it embraces all living beings.

Everybody wants to be happy, yet almost nobody knows how to attain it.  Everyone is convinced that they are not happy due to some unfortunate turn of external circumstances, so they invest all of their energy into changing them.  Most people are also confused about what is happiness.  They think the pleasant feelings they get from attachment is happiness, and so they relate to external objects as if they have some power to give us happiness.  As a result of this type of thinking, people develop all sorts of addictions and dependencies on the things of samsara.  But over time, these things provide us less and less happiness, and we are left only with frustration and want.  True happiness is inner peace.  If our mind is peaceful, we can enjoy everything, even adverse conditions.  A peaceful mind is a flexible mind that is undisturbed by things going wrong.  A peaceful mind is a light mind that simply can’t be bothered.  A peaceful mind is a blissful mind, a deep inner contentment radiating from within.  We cannot truly give love if we don’t know what true happiness is.

After we know what giving love is, we must want to do so for others.  Normally we don’t care whether others are happy or not, but that is only because we think they are somehow separate from us.  On the surface, it appears that one wave is distinct from another; but in reality they are both parts of the same underlying ocean.  It is the same with ourselves and others.  At a minimum, we can develop the wish of wanting to give love by thinking of the many karmic benefits of this wish.  This wish functions to purify our past negative karma towards others (it is the opposite of wishing to harm), it accumulates within our mind vast quantities of merit, and it creates the causes for our own future happiness.

It is not enough to merely want to give love, we need to actually do so.  We must pass beyond wishing others were happy to actually dedicating our life to making that happen.  We can think, “if I don’t work to help this person be truly happy, who will?”  In reality, everyone wants to feel loved, and everybody likes to feel loved.  Geshe-la likens giving love to a magic crystal with the power to transform any community for the better.  On this basis, we can generate a personal determination to actually give them love.

Once we have the wish to actually give love, we can do so in a variety of different ways.  But generally speaking, they can be divided into the three different types of love.  The first type of love is affectionate love.  Affectionate love is a feeling of genuine delight when we see or think of somebody.  The example Geshe-la give is the delight a kind grandmother gets when she sees her grandchildren, or the delight a 5 year old has when their parents walk in the door after work.  Most of the time we are convinced people don’t like us, so it really warms our heart when somebody is genuinely happy to see us.  In the same way, we can warm the heart of those around us by expressing our delight at seeing them.  Of course we shouldn’t overdo it, making them feel uncomfortable.  Each culture will have different norms and customs when it comes to expressing our delight, and we should act accordingly, but whatever is within the scope of culturally normal, we should express our delight.  In particular, we should do so when we haven’t seen somebody for a long time.  When we see others, we should feel as if we have found a long-lost precious treasure, because in fact that is exactly what has happened.

The second way we can give love is to cherish others.  What does it mean to cherish others?  It means to consider their happiness and well-being to be something important.  We naturally work for whatever we consider to be important.  We of course think our own happiness is important, and so we work for our happiness.  In exactly the same way, because we consider other’s happiness as something important to us, we naturally work to secure it.  At a very practical level this means we make no distinction between whether some problem is happening to us or happening to somebody else, we seek to resolve it all the same.  We make no distinction whether some happiness or good fortune is happening to us or happening to somebody else, we seek to sure it all the same.  When making decisions, we consider the well being of all concerned, and pursue the outcome that provides the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people.  In short, we cease working only for ourself and we begin working only for others.  Working only for others does not mean we neglect ourself, we still seek to improve ourself and our capacities so that we are able to serve others even more effectively.

The third way we can give love is to take personal responsibility for others happiness.  Anybody who becomes a parent knows the profound difference between being a good friend, and being responsible for the welfare of somebody else.  Geshe-la gives the example of seeing somebody drowning in a river, those with compassion in their heart will wish fervently that the person is saved; those with superior intention (also known as personal responsibility) will dive in themselves to save them.  We realize it is not enough to just consider other’s happiness to be important, we actually need to take personal responsibility to do something.  If we understand emptiness correctly, we realize that ultimately all of the problems in the world are parts of our own karmic dream.  If thousands were killed in a battle in last night’s dream, who is responsible for those deaths?  Surely our own conflicted mind.  In the same way, if this entire world is nothing more than a karmic dream of our waking mind, then who is responsible for all of its sufferings?  Surely, our own contaminated mind.  Through correct mental actions, in particular our tantric practices of generation and completion stage, we can literally karmically reconstruct our dream from a world of suffering into a world of eternal joy.

In short, we should give love to others in every way we can every opportunity we get.

To give fearlessness.

We give fearlessness by protecting others from fear and danger.  If we cannot do anything directly to protect others, at least we should make prayers and dedicate our merit so that others may become free from fear and danger.

Giving fearlessness and compassionate action are synonymous.  Compassion is the wish to protect others from suffering, fear and danger.  We live in samsara, and so are surrounded by fears and dangers.  It is the very nature of samsara.  People are in constant danger of losing what they have, be it their money, their position, their reputation or their enjoyments.  People around the world face dangers from others threatening their lives, livelihoods or freedoms.  In schools and in the workplace, the weak or the different are bullied and shunned.  Those with great power manipulate the political system to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.  Those with great knowledge deceive those with less, effectively swindling them out of all they have worked so hard to build.  Those with powerful speech judge and condemn those weaker than them, using others as scapegoats for their own failures.  Those with no scruples will lie, deceive and make false allegations against the innocent.  Governments will terrorize and steal from their own people to maintain their hold on power.  Even those in society whose job it is to protect us are often sources of fear and danger.  Doctors may prescribe medical treatments or perform tests just so they can make more money off of our illness.  Lawyers may keep our conflicts going so they get more in fees.  Police may abuse their power to extort money or carry out their racist visions.  Our political leaders may stoke fear and discord in an attempt to gain electoral advantage.  If we check, there is no safety to be found anywhere in samsara.

As Kadampas and as bodhisattvas in training, our job is to protect and to serve wherever possible.  Power is very much like wealth, just with a different causal chain.  We all know that giving creates the cause of wealth.  We want wealth so we have even more to give.  In exactly the same way, protecting others creates the cause for power.  We want power so we have even more ability to protect others.  While it is beyond the scope of this blog to do so, a Dharma reading of the rise and fall of great powers is one of the protecting and then exploiting of others.  The same is true at the level of individuals.  The more we protect others, the more power we will accumulate.  Not all power is formal, indeed most of it is informal.  It doesn’t depend on the ability to coerce, rather it primarily depends on the ability to inspire.  It does not depend on our position, it depends on how much others respect and trust our intentions and opinions.  The Kadampa finds the person in the greatest need, and helps them first.  They find the protectorless, and brings them under their wing.  If they hold any power or influence in the world, they use it to protect the weak.  They wield their power for the common good, not their own narrow self-interest.  When we take our tantric vows we vow to “deliver those not delivered, liberate those not liberated, give breath to those unable to breath, and lead all beings to a state beyond suffering.”

It is of course good to wish to protect people from the effects of suffering, it is even better to wish to protect others from the causes of suffering, namely their own delusions and negative actions.  We easily generate compassion for the rape victim, but do we equally (if not more so) generate compassion for the rapist?  It is easy to condemn those who commit harm, it is hard to help them do right.

Sometimes circumstances require us to stand up and fight against some injustice.  Our doing so must be motivated by compassion.  Compassion not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators.  Ghandi clearly showed that the best way to fight oppression is to appeal to the oppressors own ideals, and show how their actions contradict their own values.  The Prasangikas clearly show that the best way to oppose wrong views is to expose their contradictions through penetrating questions.  It is not an attack on somebody to request them to live up to their own ideals, it is an act of wrathful compassion.  Most people, even the most destructive people, in their own mind view themselves as fundamentally good people.  Nobody wants to be a bad buy, everyone strives to be the good guy.  Instead of calling somebody bad, invoke them to live up to their own standards of good.  In the short run, this may lead to conflict with the other person, but in the long run it helps free them from continuing to create causes for their own future suffering.

To give Dharma.

Here the commitment is to remember six times every day that it is our duty to help others through giving Dharma.  Even if we cannot give formal Dharma teachings we can take every opportunity to help others by giving them spiritual advice in skillful ways.  We should likewise dedicate our spiritual practice to others, imagining we are practicing on their behalf.  Finally, we can practice the yoga of purifying migrators.  These will now be explained in turn.

Skillfully giving Dharma advice.

Giving material things is good, but ultimately the benefit we can provide by doing so if quite limited.  At most, we can help people in this life alone.  Just because it is limited in scope does not mean we shouldn’t still do it, but we should not stop there thinking it is sufficient.  Giving Dharma advice helps people not only in this life, but it helps them in all of their future lives.  It not only helps them reduce their problems, but it gives them a chance to become permanently free from them.  In reality, there is no more beneficial form of giving possible.

If our giving of Dharma is to truly be beneficial, we must do so in a skillful way.  If we give Dharma unskillfully, even if we give perfectly pure Dharma and give the other person exactly the advice that they need, others will reject what we have to say.  Far from helping them, we will actually harm them because they will now create the karmic habits of rejecting the Dharma.  Therefore, it is vital that we strive to be increasingly skillful in how we give Dharma advice.

In my view, the number one rule of skillfully giving Dharma advice is, “if others aren’t asking for your advice, don’t give it.”  Others do not have to formally ask, but we need to use our judgment to assess whether the other person is at least implicitly seeking our counsel or perspective.  The second rule is we should have no attachment whatsoever to the other person following our advice.  If we believe our happiness depends on the other person following our advice, then they will feel our giving advice is actually us trying to manipulate or change them.  All of us naturally resist when others try to manipulate or change us.  Instead, we should feel that the other person not changing actually suits us just fine because of all of the opportunities it gives us to work on our own mind.  The third rule in skillfully giving Dharma is we should only explain the general Dharma principle, but leave it up to others to determine for themselves how to apply that principle in their own lives.  We can tell stories about past experiences of ourselves or others we know, we can affirm certain Dharma truths, but we leave it up to others to form their own conclusions about what it all means for them and their situation.  The reason for this is simple:  when it is their conclusion that they reached themselves, they own it and they will follow it.  Dharma only works when we put it into practice from our own side knowing it is good for us.

Dedicating our practice for others.

Dedication is essentially the means by which give away the merit we have accumulated through our practice.  Philanthropists make money so that they can give it away.  We accumulate merit so that we can give it away.  Giving away our merit is like creating within our mind an inexhaustible fountain of good karma.  The more we give, the more we accumulate, and then the more we can give.

If we check, making dedications and making prayers are essentially the same thing.  Perhaps that is why they are called “dedication prayers.”  It is of course good to dedicate that people are freed from their troubles, cured of all illnesses, unencumbered by obstacles, etc.  But it is even better to dedicate that peoples troubles, illnesses and obstacles become causes of their swiftest possible enlightenment.  Troubles, illness and obstacles are only problems when we lack the means to transform them.  If we possess the wisdom and strength of mind to transform them, such adversities are actually the strongest fuel we have pushing us along the path.  The highest thing we can pray for is that the Dharma flourish in the minds of living beings.  Only Dharma realizations can provide us with lasting protection from all suffering, only Dharma realizations can survive death.

Engaging in the yoga of purifying migrators.

If last night we dreamt of somebody in a wheelchair, we should ask ourselves, “who put them there?”  Surely, since it is our dream, we did.  In the same way, if the entire waking world is nothing but a karmic dream, who created all of this suffering?  Surely, since it is our dream, we did.  Realizing this incorrectly can lead to a crushing form of guilt, realizing this correctly can lead to a vajra-like confidence that all of our bodhichitta wishes can be realized.  If we can make a world of suffering, then we can also unmake it.  In fact, we can karmically reconstruct this world of suffering into a pure land.  The method for doing so is the yoga of purifying migrators.

When we mentally transform somebody else into a Buddha several things happen.  First, the Buddhas enter their mind, blessing them to move in the direction of enlightenment.  Second, we counter our own ordinary appearances and conceptions of the person, thus producing within our mind only virtue when we relate to them.  Third, since they are nothing more than a mere karmic appearance to mind, by viewing them in this way we plant the karma on our mind that will ripen in the future in the form of them directly appearing – even to themselves – as a Buddha.  In this way, little by little, we karmically reconstruct the world into a pure land.

Understanding all of this, it is clear there is no higher form of giving than skillfully giving Dharma.