Whenever we see another suffering living being, we should feel compassion and consider how we can help them.  If we are unable to be of any practical assistance, we should at least pray for them.  If we do nothing, we incur a secondary downfall.

We are normally so busy that we don’t even notice other’s problems, much less stop to help.  If there is something we can do to help and we fail to do so without a good reason, we are in effect abandoning others to their suffering.  Would we want to be treated in the same way?  Karmically speaking, every person we see is a future emanation of ourself.  By helping them now, we are karmically helping ourselves in the future when we face a similar problem.  By abandoning others now, we are karmically abandoning ourself in the future.  Who in life are we the most grateful towards?  Surely it is those who were there for us when nobody else was.  Venerable Tharchin explains our ability to help others depends on two things:  first, we have some useful realizations to share; and second, the closeness of our karmic connection with the person.  By being there for others in their hour of greatest need, we build very deep and very pure karmic bonds with them.  We may not be able to give them Dharma now, but if we dedicate appropriately the day will come in this life or a future one, where we will be able to use our close relationship with them to help them along the path.

We may look at our life and say we don’t have many opportunities to really help others.  But Venerable Tharchin explains that our desire to help and the opportunities to do so are mutually dependent.  In other words, it is by maintaining a constant desire to help that we create the karmic causes to have opportunities to do so.  If we do not currently have many opportunities to actually help others, we can generate the constant wish to be of greatest possible service to others.  In dependence upon this wish, our karma will be reorganized and opportunities will begin to appear.  This desire to help also gives us special wisdom eyes to see opportunities where before we saw none. 

Ultimately, though, the best way we can help others is through our prayers.  Many people come into the Kadampa path in rejection of the touchy-feely sides of other religions, especially this whole prayer thing which strikes as superstition.  It says in many sadhanas, “Through the force of my intention, through the force of the blessings of the Tathagatas, and Through the force of the truth of all phenomena, may any suitable purpose that I wish to come about be accomplished without obstruction.”  This verse explains the power of prayer.

“Through the force of my intention” means our intention for praying is a spiritual one.  At a minimum, it means we pray for the sake of the other person, not for selfish reasons.  The highest intention is great compassion and bodhichitta, wishing that the person be free from all suffering.  But that does not mean a lesser spiritual intention is wrong.  If we see somebody who often gets angry, we can remind ourself that they are constantly creating the causes to be reborn in hell.  Wishing to protect them from such a fate we can pray that they learn to control their anger and find their patient acceptance.  “Through the force of the blessings of the Tathagatas” means the way in which our prayers are accomplished is through the power of the blessings of the Buddhas.  From our own side, of course, we have no power to bless other’s minds.  But we are able to pray to the Buddhas to bless others minds for us.  In dependence upon our faith in the Buddha and our karmic relationship with the person we are praying for, the Buddhas can bless their mind.  Even if they themselves have little karma with the Buddhas, our karma can serve as a bridge into their mind.  What is a blessing?  A blessing is the ripening of a karmic seed within the mind of a living being that functions to send that mind in the direction of enlightenment.  The difficult external situation may remain, but the mind of the person experiencing it will move in response towards enlightenment.

“Through the force of the truth of all phenomena” means emptiness.  It is emptiness that makes the power of prayer possible.  Ultimately, it is all dream.  Others do not exist separately from our mind, the Buddhas do not exist separately from our mind and what we pray for does not exist separately from our mind.  All are equally part of the dream.  When we grasp at others as being separate from us, or we grasp at the Buddhas as being separate from us, then it is quite natural to think prayers cannot work and are just superstitious happy thought.  But when we understand the equal emptiness of the other person, the Buddha, the blessings, and our prayer then all is possible.  Nagarjuna said, “for whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.”  In fact, the more we understand emptiness the more we realize prayer is simply the most effective way possible of accomplishing anything – arguably it is the only way possible.  In any case, it is clear that external methods have no power to alter the mind of another, so externally we do what we can to improve the external situation, and internally we pray to help improve the internal situation.

“May any suitable purpose that I wish to come about” means our prayers must be informed by wisdom of what is in fact suitable.  Many people mistakenly pray for specific external outcomes, such as good grades or a better job, and then lose faith when those outcomes do not materialize.  This happens in all religious traditions.  Suitable prayer is prayer conjoined with the humility that we might not know what is in fact best.  Perhaps the external hardship is exactly what the person needs to fundamentally alter the trajectory of their mental continuum.  So we pray, “please arrange whatever is best” and we pray, “please bless their mind so that this experience becomes a cause of their enlightenment.”  Such prayers open up the possibility for the external situation to remain exactly the same.  If it does, then we know it is “for the best” and we can accept it as such.  Our acceptance then helps the other person likewise accept their circumstance.  Acceptance and suffering are opposites – the more we accept, the less we suffer.  We suffer only because we do not accept. 

“Be accomplished without obstruction” is fairly self-explanatory, but has a deep meaning.  Obviously the meaning is that the prayer be fulfilled easily and fully, but the deeper meaning is the only thing that obstructs this from happening are “delusion obstructions” and “karmic obstructions.”  So implicitly, this is praying that the mind of the person be free from all delusions and that any karma that stands in the way of the fulfillment of the prayer be quickly purified.

If we understand the above, we understand how prayer works.  Such understanding gives us great confidence that prayers do work.  The teachings on karma say “if the cause is created, the effect is guaranteed.”  The above explains how to create the proper causes, so if we pray in a qualified way the effects of our prayers are guaranteed.  The only thing we do not know is the timing.  It may be years, or even lifetimes, before the prayer will be answered.  This is not a problem for us because we know for a fact that it is coming and that our prayer will definitely help.  With each additional prayer we add, we build up karmic force for the outcome to happen.

Downfalls that obstruct the moral discipline of benefiting others

Not going to the assistance of those in need. 

If someone asks for our help, or we realize that they hope for it, and we are in a position to help them and yet, out of laziness or some other delusion, we do not go to their assistance we incur a secondary downfall.  In short, we should try assist others in whatever way we can.

Quite simply, this downfall says if we can help somebody and we don’t, then we incur a downfall.  Obviously, if we have a good reason for not helping, then this is not the case.  But generally speaking, we help others in every way we can.  In reality, the Kadampa path is very simple:  during meditation, we improve our inner qualities; outside of meditation, we serve others.  There is nothing else we need do.  Everything we do, one way or another, should be part of our practice of serving others. 

It is important to note, however, that sometimes helping people doesn’t actually help them.  If somebody out of laziness is manipulating us to do their work for them, then obliging them doesn’t help.  If somebody is confronted with some personal life challenge and absent our help they would do what is required of them and they grow from the effort, then helping them doesn’t actually help them.  If people know that if they make mistakes of create problems for themselves we will always be there to clean up their mess for them, then we are in effect encouraging them to engage in reckless behavior and are, again, not helping them.  If our kids are learning how to do things and we do it for them because it is just easier and quicker to do so, then we are actually not helping them.  We need wisdom to know when we are helping and when we are not helping them by helping them.  We will make mistakes along the way, but if we always request wisdom blessings to know what is the best way to help others, gradually over time we will become increasingly skilled.  Then, even our not helping others directly becomes an aspect of our serving them. 

Neglecting to take care of the sick. 

If we show no concern for sick people or animals whom we encounter and do not do our best to help them, we incur a secondary downfall.

Often times people will ask what is a good job for a Kadampa.  In my view, of course, any job is equally empty so any job can be equally transformed.  But with that being said, any job that is aimed at helping alleviate in some way the basic sufferings of samsara is a good one.  These basic sufferings are:  birth, sickness, ageing, death, being separated from what you like, having to encounter what you do not like and failing to fulfill your desires.  In this light, four of these are directly related to the medical profession in some way.  Being an assistant, nurse, or doctor, therefore, seems to be a natural job for a Kadampa.  I know somebody who helps really old people in their homes.  Every day they are confronted with the truth of ageing, and it does wonders for this person’s renunciation and compassion.  It is not emotionally or physically easy work, but it is a constant spiritual lesson.  I have another dear friend who helps people die in peace.  Wonderful.

We do not have to become a medical professional to go to the aid of the sick and dying.  Through the course of our life, the people around us will one by one get sick, get old, and die.  We should make a point of being that somebody who does more than the minimum culturally expected.  Do something extra.  Be there when everyone else has moved on.  Let them know you care for them.  Above all, pray.  Pray that they be healed; but more importantly pray that their sufferings become powerful causes of their enlightenment.  Some sickness will eventually kill us all, but each sickness is an opportunity to find the truth of the spiritual path. 

I find that most of society lives in total denial about samsara’s real nature, but when we are struck with some of its sufferings there is no longer scope for such denial.  It is then that it all makes sense.  It is amazing how the death of a mutual friend helps cut through the nonsense that clouds so many relationships.

When we ourselves are sick in the hospital, don’t wallow in self-pity.  Become a light where there is none.  Reach out to your fellow patients, listen to their stories, let them know you care.  Perhaps there is a reason why you have found yourself in the hospital with them at the same time.  Again, above all, pray for them.  In reality, we are all on our death bed.  Live your life now as if it was so.

Making no effort to study Dharma. 

If, without a good reason, we make no effort to listen to Dharma teachings or read Dharma books, we incur a secondary downfall.

Venerable Tharchin explains that if we take full advantage of the spiritual opportunities we have been given, it creates the causes for us to have even better opportunities in the future.  But if we waste the opportunities we have, we burn up the karma which created them in the first place and we will find it increasingly difficult to find such opportunities again in the future.  When we understand we have stumbled upon the one door through which we can escape from suffering forever we will realize there is nothing more important we can do with our life or our time than train our mind in the Dharma.  This is doubly so when we realize we can die at any point in time and lose this opportunity forever. 

But at the same time, again, we need to approach our practice with a balanced attitude. It is better to do a little every day for the rest of our life than a ton of spiritual activity for a short period of time and then nothing after that.  We are running a spiritual marathon and we need to pace ourselves for the long haul.  We should not project onto ourself an arbitrary standard that 24/7 we need to directly be doing Dharma, and if we are not, we are somehow committing some downfall.  Instead, we should practice comfortably and skillfully, improving a little bit each day, each month, each year.  Slowly but surely, drop by drop, the bucket of our enlightenment will be filled.

Preferring to rely on books rather than on our Spiritual Guide. 

If we neglect the practice of sincere reliance on our Spiritual Guide and prefer to acquire our understanding from books, we incur a secondary downfall.

There are many people, especially in the West, who really struggle with the idea of reliance upon a “guru.”  The very sound of it just sounds cult like, and alarm bells go off every time we hear people speaking in this way.  It may be that we usually only talk with other Dharma practitioners who speak in a similar way, and so we inadvertently sound like we have joined some crazed cult when we speak with others and talk about our “guru.”

Geshe-la says externally we should treat our Spiritual Guides “exactly as normal.”  Outwardly, there should be no visible indications of us treating our teachers, including our root guru, differently than we would any other respected person in this world.  Geshe-la explains in Great Treasury of Merit that the Spiritual Guide’s true miracle powers are his ability to outwardly appear completely as normal, even though internally they have perfected every good quality.  At a Summer Festival once he explained that it is by relating to our spiritual teachers exactly as normal that we gain the realizations we are supposed to get.  If we act all weird with our teachers, we do not gain the needed realizations, others think we are crazy and so we bring the Dharma into disrepute, we set ourselves up for a fall when our teacher appears to make mistakes, and we are actually putting our teachers into a real personal bind.  In the early days of the tradition, everyone spoke of their teachers as if they were Buddhas without fault.  This then led to the teachers pretending to be better than they are thinking it was helpful to the student’s faith.  The teachers would then repress their delusions, develop all sorts of strange forms of pride and then either implode from repression or explode by doing something stupid thinking it was divine to do so.  This is why Gen-la Khyenrab is such a good example.  There is not an ounce of pretention in him and he constantly encourages us to keep it real.  Such behavior is perfect.

Criticizing other Mahayana traditions. 

If some of the different traditions of the Mahayana appear to be contrary to our own tradition, we should not discriminate against them or criticism them without a good reason.  If we do so with a deluded motivation, we incur a secondary downfall.

Generally speaking, we leave people to make their own spiritual choices.  It is not our place to judge the spiritual path of others, just as we do not wish others to judge us.  Just because another path is not what is best for us does not mean it is not best for those who follow that path.  So there is no contradiction in saying the other path is not for us, but still respect that it is the right path for somebody else.  If we all respect each other, there are no problems.

Many people criticize Kadampas because generally speaking we “follow one tradition purely without mixing.”  Because we do not mix Kadampa teachings with non-Kadampa teachings, those who do such mixing can feel that we are being sectarian for not doing so.  The fact that we don’t do so can be taken by some as a judgment by us about other’s spiritual choices.  It is also not uncommon for Kadampas to unskillfully criticize others who do mix, thinking that people who do so are somehow inferior practitioners or doing something wrong.

The reality is this:  most people will mix.  We ourselves can decide against doing so for the reasons given, but we should never judge those who do differently than we do.  We should not feel like we need to embark upon a personal crusade to stop people from mixing.  If they ask us why we don’t do so, we can explain our reasons, but we should make it very clear that it is our own personal decision to not do so and in no way are we saying others should do as we do.  It is up to each person to decide how to approach their spiritual life.  It is true that not mixing is not being sectarian, but if we judge others who do mix then we are being sectarian and incurring this downfall criticizing other Mahayana traditions.  We are also providing those critical of Kadampas with fodder for their wrong views about us.  It is because there are so many misunderstandings about our way of practice that we need to be unambiguous in our respect for those who practice differently than we do.  This especially includes people who come to our local centers and who participate in the on-line discussion forums. 

One area where we are justified in making a distinction when it comes to not mixing is in the selection of the teachers of Kadampa centers.  It is entirely reasonable to say that those who teach in Kadampa centers should themselves be Kadampas.  If there is only Kadampa coming into a practitioner’s mind, there will only be Kadampa coming out in their teachings.  If there is a mix of things going in, there will be a mix of things coming out in their teachings.  Since our centers are Kadampa centers, it is entirely reasonable that the teachings given are Kadampa teachings.  But besides this one exception, we leave people be.

Praising ourself and scorning others. 

This is similar to the first root downfall except that here we are motivated by slight pride but have no intention to deceive others.

This downfall was already explained in detail in the context of the root downfall.  The reality is this:  almost every time we say anything even slightly negative or judgmental about somebody else, we are typically implicitly saying we are somehow better.  If we check carefully and honestly, we will see that virtually everything we say is directly or indirectly saying we are somehow better than others who make the mistakes we cite.  This is why as a general rule it is best to adopt a very simple policy of never saying anything bad about anyone ever.  A corollary of this is to never say anything good about ourselves ever.  Of course, sometimes we can do so without delusion and a good reason, but generally speaking, if we follow these two basic rules, there is little risk of us committing this downfall.

Studying non-Dharma subjects without a good reason. 

If we study non-Dharma subjects without the motivation to increase our capacity to help other beings, we incur a secondary downfall.

In the early days of the tradition, there was a current of thought that pursuing our traditional schooling or jobs was somehow a mistake or waste of time.  Jobs, families and worldly knowledge were viewed as obstacles to our spiritual training, and those who pursued such things were viewed as somehow not being dedicated practitioners.  Such wrong views lead to a great deal of inner turmoil and tension for practitioners as they struggled between these two apparent needs.  About the time that Geshe-la first published Transform your Life he addressed this point.  He said, “up until now we as a tradition have fallen a bit into the extreme of Dharma.  That has been OK because of the unique times we are in, but now is the time to seek the middle way between Dharma and modern life.”  At first, people misunderstood this to mean we need to do 50% dharma life, 50% modern life.  But this wasn’t Geshe-la’s meaning at all.  Rather, the middle way between the two is we view the Kadam Dharma as the means by which we live our modern life and we view our modern life as the context of our practice of the Kadam Dharma.  In this way, there is no contradiction whatsoever between 100% living a Dharma life and 100% living a modern life.  The two are one in the same. 

In recent years, since the publication of Modern Buddhism Geshe-la has become even more clear saying that the main purpose of the tradition right now is to attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and Modern Life.  This is the meaning of “Modern Buddhism.”  It is by NOT abandoning our modern lives, but instead navigating through them with the Kadam Dharma, that we will gain the realizations the people of this world need.  Ultimately, all situations are equally empty, thus all situations are equally perfect for our spiritual training.  While there are still those who grasp at “normal life” as somehow being an obstacle to Kadampa practice, their doing so doesn’t make such a view true.  In fact, such a view is an aspect of an ignorance that grasps at the Dharma somehow not being practicable in the context of certain karmic appearances.  Such a view is completely wrong.  This does not mean people should no longer get ordained, move into centers, etc.  Each person must follow the karmic path that works best for them individually.  What it does mean is there is no hierarchy of spiritual lives where one is better than another in some universal sense.  All life contexts have equal potential to be quick paths to enlightenment or a completely wasted opportunity. 

So there is no contradiction between people pursuing their normal studies, engaging in lifelong learning and career professionalization, and their bodhichitta goals.  Indeed, we actively seek to maximize our potential in this world because doing so will push us to the limits of our capacity.  Dorje Shugden will arrange things so that the challenges we face along the way are the ones we need to overcome.  Our purpose in studying non-Dharma things is to pursue the opportunities available to us knowing that it is by operating within the context of those opportunities that we will gain the realizations we need to gain.  Besides, all things reveal the truth of the Dharma.  When we approach our study of any subject as an opportunity to see how the truth of Dharma is revealed through that subject, then there is no danger of us committing this downfall.

What we don’t do, though, is view our non-Dharma studies as ends in themselves.  They are rather means to our Dharma ends.  Our final purpose is always to improve ourself to better serve others.  Learning non-Dharma wisdom helps us move in that direction.

Becoming engrossed in non-Dharma subjects for their own sake. 

If we study non-Dharma subjects simply for pleasure (losing our original good intention) we incur a secondary downfall.

This downfall should be pretty self-explanatory if we understood the previous downfall.  But we need to be careful to not go to extremes here.  It is unrealistic to assume we will maintain a perfect spiritual motivation for every non-Dharma thing we do.  We of course try to transform everything we do, but if we fall short of this, we should not feel like we are doing something wrong.  Just because we can do better doesn’t mean what we are doing is wrong.  There is good and even better.  We simply do our best and maintain a balanced and comfortable approach to our practice.  There is a danger that we push too hard and adopt an unsustainable approach to our practice.  This never lasts and creates lots of problems.  We strive to be a slow, but steadily flowing river.

At the least, we can say that our engaging in non-Dharma activities, such as watching a favorite TV show, is a form of rest that enables us to come back to our practice refreshed.  Avoid extremes.

Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of wisdom

Abandoning the Hinayana. 

If we regard the holy Dharma of the Hinayana as contradictory to the Mahayana and believe that it must be abandoned, we incur a secondary downfall.

This downfall can take many forms.  First, it can take the form of a simple misunderstanding thinking that a Mahayanist abandons the path to liberation in pursuit of the path to enlightenment.  Very often you will hear people new to the Mahayana path mistakenly say that a Bodhisattva forsakes their own liberation and stays in samsara forever until everyone else has been freed.  While no doubt a sublimely compassionate way of thinking, ultimately this is wrong.  We can only save people if we ourselves are on secure grounds.  Likewise, in pursuit of enlightenment, we cannot help but attain liberation along the way.  So such a wish is actually impossible.

Second, we can mistakenly think abandoning our own self-cherishing means abandoning trying to free ourselves.  It can seem selfish to put great effort into our own freedom, so thinking it is selfish we don’t try do so and instead we try to serve only others.  It is true we are to serve only others, but it is because we wish to help others in the greatest possible way that we single pointedly strive to improve our own qualities, skills, and abilities to forge ourselves into the most helpful instrument possible.  It is by having improved ourselves that we are freed to help others even more.  It is by gaining wisdom and experience ourself that we have something useful to share with others.  It is by having worked through our own delusions that we can skillfully guide others to do the same.  A Bodhisattva seeks every good quality without shame or even the slightest trace of guilt because they know their sole purpose in doing so is to be of greater service to others.

Third, this downfall can take the form of a pride in thinking the Mahayana practitioner is somehow superior to the Hinayana practitioner.  Does a roof think it can stand alone without its walls supporting it?  Can a mountain tower above without the earth underneath it? 

Finally, this downfall can arise from an ignorance grasping at a limited and ultimately mistaken understanding of who we are.  Our ignorance thinks we are this one small being we call ourself, when in reality we are all things.  With the veil of self-grasping ignorance is lifted, the duality between self and others falls away.  All others are parts of ourself.  Our self is the collection of all others.  When we see this, the difference between renunciation and great compassion simply falls away.  Not just in the traditional sense of the mind of renunciation being part of the mind of compassion but more broadly in that the wish to free “ourself” is the same as the wish to free “all beings” because we see the two to be one and the same.

Studying the Hinayana to the detriment of our Mahayana practice. 

If instead of studying the Mahayana we put great effort into studying the Hinayana with the result that our Mahayana practice is weakened, we incur a secondary downfall.

While it is true that the Hinayana is the foundation of the Mahayana, this does not mean we stop there.  When travelling a great distance, we know we will pass many places along the way to our final destination.  We do not stay to linger or remain content with what we have already accomplished, rather we push ever onward in our spiritual journey.  We view each stage of the path as a means to a greater end, a stepping stone towards a higher goal.  Just as it is possible to study Mahayana tenets with a Hinayana motivation, so too we can train in the great scope meditations with a Hinayana motivation.  This, too, would be another example of incurring this downfall. 

In some traditions it is taught that we train in one stage of the path at a time, mastering it fully before moving on to the next stage.  While this is no doubt the appropriate way to practice for people of other traditions, within the Kadampa path we train in all five of the principal causes of enlightenment simultaneously.  These five causes are renunciation, bodhichitta, the correct view of emptiness, generation stage and completion stage of Highest Yoga Tantra.  Why do we do this?  There are two main reasons.  First, each stage of the path is intimately interconnected with all the others.  When we practice them together in the context of a systematic lamrim practice, each direct meditation on any one stage of the path indirectly reinforces all the others, thus making the attainment of each easier.  Second, by training in all them simultaneously we will experience their final result simultaneously.  Technically, this is not exactly true in that our experience of the higher stages can never outstrip our experience of the lower stages, but when the results come they will come in rapid succession.  We experience this quite often in our practice, where when we have a sudden breakthrough on one meditation it quickly carries forward into all our others. 

The key test for this downfall is whether our practice of the lower stages is coming “at the detriment of” the higher trainings.  For example, some people become quite attached to their lamrim trainings and fearful of their Tantric practices, and as a result they never start their higher trainings.  In reality, Tantra is simply a more advanced and rapid way of training in the lamrim.  It is because we wish to deepen our lamrim practice that we take up the Vajrayana path.

Here taste refers to the experience of bliss, peace, and suppleness induced by concentration.  If we become attached to this and regard it as the ultimate result of concentration, we incur a downfall because this attachment diminishes our wish to help others.  The real value of concentration is it is a means by which higher realizations can be achieved.

For most of us, we have very little experience of the taste of actual mental stabilization, so from one perspective this downfall can seem remote to our experience.  But it drives at a deeper point in terms of how we approach our practice of meditation.  There is a fundamental difference between meditating in search of results and meditating in pursuit of creating causes.  The former is an example of this downfall and the latter is the correct way of practicing. 

What does it mean to meditate in search of results?  Quite simply it means our intention of meditation is to enjoy pleasant inner experiences while doing so.  In other words, we treat meditation as simply another means of fulfilling our worldly concern of experiencing pleasure.  We like to feel “blissed out” or we want to forget our troubles or we simply become attached to experiencing results while we meditate.  All these are examples of this downfall.  The definition of pure practice is practicing for the sake of our future lives.  Clearly, practicing for the sake of the time during our meditation session is not that. 

Attachment to experiencing results while meditating is very common and can be very subtle.  We perhaps want to experience some sort of “ah ha” moment, or perhaps we are attached to attaining a certain level of mental concentration, such as the second mental abiding.  In our Tantric practice, it is very easy to become attached to the imagery and the visualizations, relating to it as some form of spiritual pornography.  At a subtle level, it can simply be a subtle form of wanting to harvest the results of past efforts and judging the success of our meditation against the standard of whether or not it was a “good meditation” (by which we mean one that was pleasant and easy going).  Such attachment to results while meditating quickly destroys our practice.  Attachment functions to separate us from the objects of our attachment, so the more attached to results we become the more distant they will be.  Likewise, when they don’t come, we quickly become frustrated with our practice and can falsely conclude that it doesn’t work.  Many have completely abandoned their practice for this reason.  This can especially be a problem for people who do retreat.  In my view, attachment to results during retreat is the single biggest problem people face during retreat, and if they don’t learn how to overcome it, retreat time can be a living hell creating all sorts of bad habits they then carry into their daily practice.

The correct way of practicing is to completely forget about any results.  Our only goal in engaging in practice is to create good causes, not harvest their results.  We seek not to experience any results, rather we seek to progressively improve the quality with which we create good causes for ourselves.  Like a training gymnast, we strive to perfect the internal gymnastics routine that is our sadhana.  Like someone diligently saving up their money, we view our daily practice as our rare opportunity to put away some good causes for a better future.  Like a squirrel, we go about the work of stocking up inner resources for the long winter ahead.  For a practitioner free from attachment to results, difficulties during meditation are greeted with enthusiasm since we know we are working through our greatest obstacles.  The greater the inner struggle, the happier we are because we know it is by persevering through them that we will make it to the other side.  Retreat for a pure practitioner is not engaged in with any hope for results, rather it is viewed as an extremely rare and precious opportunity to create countless good causes for the future.  Venerable Tharchin said we should think that everything that happens in this life was caused by actions of our past lives, and everything we do now will not ripen in this life but only in our future lives.  While of course this is not strictly true, there will be some effects which ripen from causes created in this life, as a mental outlook, this is perfect. 

In this context there are five key obstacles to concentration we need to overcome.  If we make no effort to abandon them, we incur a secondary downfall: (1) Needless self-reproach and excitement, (2) Malicious thoughts, (3) Sleep and dullness, (4) Distracting desires, (5) Frequent and disturbing doubts.

Needless self-reproach refers to how we tend to beat ourselves up when we discover that we have become distracted.  Anger at ourself is still anger, and therefore a delusion.  When we discover we have been distracted, we need to simply accept it and decide to go back to our object of meditation without unnecessary drama.  It’s normal and natural that we become distracted, that is why we are training.  Needless excitement refers to when we have some mental breakthrough or some profound “ah ha” moment and we get over-excited about it.  Sometimes this is hard to resist, but our over-excitement about it will cause us to lose the feeling or understanding.  Better to be happy and try maintain the continuum of remembering the new discovery for as long as we can.  The longer we do, the more deeply we plant the new understanding on our mind.

Malicious thoughts are bad both in and out of meditation, but they are especially bad in meditation itself.  We don’t usually realize, but this happens more than we think.  What often happens for me is I am meditating on some idea of Dharma, and then it causes me to recall how somebody else in my life is not living up to this idea of the Dharma, and then I start to judge the other person using the Dharma as my lens of judgment.  This can also take the form of we are angry at somebody, we sit down to meditate to try calm down, but we spend our whole meditation time contemplating the faults of the other person and why we are right and they are wrong.

Sleep and dullness happen to all us.  Our gross minds arise from our subtle minds, and our subtle minds arise from our very subtle mind.  The entire purpose of meditation is to plant the Dharma at increasingly subtle levels of mind.  When we do so, all the minds that are grosser than the depth to which we have planted the Dharma will be a reflection of the Dharma pattern we planted.  It is a bit like putting the stained glass of Dharma on our mind, and the light that then shines through it reflects the pattern of the stained glass.  The more we concentrate, the more subtle our mind becomes.  The problem for us is the only subtle minds we know are sleep.  So when we enter meditation, we fall into the parts of our mind that correspond with sleep and we become sleepy, we get the “nods” (our head bobbing up and down as we fall asleep while trying to stay awake), etc.  Virtually every meditator, from time to time, struggles with this.  What can we do to overcome this?  First, it is usually best to meditate in the morning because we are more rested and less likely to fall asleep.  If we are generally groggy in the morning, we can take our shower and shave first, do our meditation, and then get dressed for the day.  Second, when it does happen, accept it as part of our training.  When we die, our mind will likewise become increasingly subtle.  By learning to try maintain mindfulness of our objects of meditation as our mind becomes more subtle is the best possible training we can do to become prepared for death.  Third, we need to keep a positive attitude.  Don’t beat yourself up or feel like a failure, instead know you are purifying and working through your obstructions.  We all have to go through this.  It is a training, not a demonstration of accomplishment.  Fourth, sometimes if it is really bad, we can try open our eyes, stretch, roll our head around to the maximum extent possible in a circle, etc.  As a general rule, we should avoid giving in to the sleepiness and going to take a nap.  This is a bad habit to get into, and it will train our mind to equate meditation with taking a nap, and so we will have the problem of sleepiness even more in the future.  If you want to take a nap, you can do so after your meditation is over, but you will find that most often as soon as you come out of meditation your sleepiness goes away.  Fifth, request blessings.  The Buddhas are right there waiting to help us with our meditation.  All we need to do is request there help with faith.  It doesn’t matter if the sleepiness goes away.  What matters is we keep training and keep trying.

Distracting desires was discussed extensively in the two previous posts, so I refer you there.

Frequent and disturbing doubts refers to our inability to ever believe anything until we are 100% convinced.  Blind faith is an extreme in the Dharma, but so too is the inability to believe.  We need to ask questions and probe the Dharma to gain a deeper understanding, but we also need to not expect to have a perfect understanding until we actually attain enlightenment.  We need to be like a scientist.  Scientists work with hypotheses.  They gather all available evidence and information, and they say, “given all this, what is the most logical and reasonable conclusion I can draw.”  That conclusion then is their “hypothesis.”  They then say, “how can I test to see whether or not this hypothesis is correct?” and they design experiments to test the validity of their hypothesis.  The results of their experiment then give them more information and evidence with which they can either confirm or modify their hypothesis.  They continue to work in this way, gradually refining their theories until eventually they develop “laws of nature” or “scientific axioms.”  Throughout this entire process, they are never 100% sure that their theories are correct, but they are able to reach sufficiently high confidence levels that for all practical purposes this is what they “believe” to be true.  On the basis of this belief, they can build cars, computers and space ships.  In the same way, we work with our Dharma understandings, gradually refining them overtime into increasingly accurate understandings, until eventually we have a perfect and complete direct realization of each stage of the path with our very subtle mind.

Once we have a deep appreciation of the benefits of our objects of meditation, and mixing our mind with them is genuinely felt to be the most important thing in our life, then we will not find training in concentration to be that difficult.  We train as follows: First, we contemplate the benefits of mixing our mind with our chosen object to generate a desire to do so.  Then we engage in the contemplations which give rise to our object of meditation as explained in the various books.  Once we have found our object, we simply try maintain the continuum of remembering it, in particular remembering its meaning.  In the process of doing this, basically without us being aware of it, our mind will gradually slip away and become distracted by something else.  At some point we will “wake up” and become aware of the fact that we have lost our chosen object of concentration.  When this happens, we then ask ourselves the question, “what is more beneficial, mixing my mind with this object of distraction or mixing my mind with my object of meditation?”  If we have done our preliminary work well of realizing the benefits of our objects of meditation, the answer to this question will be obvious and heart-felt.  We then, on the basis of this desire to mix our mind with our object of meditation, re-engage in the contemplations which lead to our object and we start the cycle over.  We continue in this way again and again for as long as we have time to actually meditate.

The actual attainment of tranquil abiding appears to be a very high attainment and appears to be very far off.  Given this, it is difficult for us to actually be motivated to train in tranquil abiding because it seems like an impossible task.  Venerable Tharchin explains if we do not think something is doable, we can’t really generate a genuine effort to do it. 

So it is useful for us to consider the benefits of the earlier mental abidings.  The first mental abiding is being able to remember our object for one minute.  This is the basic building block for all subsequent attainments in concentration.  Think of how revolutionary it was for early humans to develop the first brick.  Think how that one invention has changed the world.  It is the same with the first mental abiding.  The second mental abiding is being able to remember our object for five minutes.  These are the cornerstones of our future enlightenment.  Bricks are wonderful, but they can easily fall.  If, however, we have the ability to make solid cornerstones then the structure of the object within our mind will be very solid.  The third mental abiding is when we forget our object of meditation, we can quickly regain it.  This is the difference between having to laboriously make each brick by hand compared with having industrial equipment which can crank them out quickly and perfectly every time. 

The fourth mental abiding is the ability to go an entire meditation session, even one that is four hours long, without ever once completely forgetting our object of meditation.  We are able to maintain the continuum of our meditation without interruption.  This is, in many ways, our most important attainment along the entire path.  The benefits of this are countless.  First, once we attain the fourth mental abiding, we see directly that it is entirely doable to attain tranquil abiding.  Because we see it is doable, we can then easily generate the necessary effort to complete our training in concentration.  Once we attain tranquil abiding, enlightenment will come very quickly.  Getting to the fourth mental abiding is like entering into a slip stream that leads inexorably to the attainment of tranquil abiding.  It is said that once we attain the fourth mental abiding, if we enter into strict retreat it is possible to even attain tranquil abiding within six months.  Second, once we get one object to the fourth mental abiding it is fairly easy to get all the others to the same level.  Venerable Tharchin advises we take one object and get it to the first mental abiding.  Once that is stable, we then bring all the others to the same level.  We then do the same with the second mental abiding, the third mental abiding and finally the fourth mental abiding.  The attainment of each abiding is like a muscle.  Once we build up the strength of a given muscle to lift say 10 kilos, then it doesn’t matter if the object we are lifting is round or square, we can lift it.  It is the same with the muscle of concentration.  Once we get all our objects of meditation (the 21 lamrim meditation, the six perfections, the three bringings, and the generation and completion stage objects) to the fourth mental abiding, we will make lightening progress on the path.  This is a very important moment in our spiritual life.  Fourth, we will have built the foundation of our future enlightenment.  Bricks are nice, cornerstones are great, but without a solid foundation it is all vulnerable.  Getting all our meditation objects to the fourth mental abiding is like laying the entire foundation for our future enlightenment.  Everything that follows will be built on this foundation, and everything we subsequently build will not be lost nor fall down.  Fifth, the greatest benefit of attaining the fourth mental abiding is we can guarantee we will make it to the pure land at the time of our death.  Venerable Geshe-la explained at a summer festival many years ago when he first started teaching about the Mahamudra that if we attain the fourth mental abiding on the Mahamudra object, then it is guaranteed we will attain the pure land at the time of death.  Once we attain the pure land, we will be guaranteed to complete our training.  This means attaining the fourth mental abiding is, for all practical purposes, us reaching a point of inevitable emergence from samsara.  If we can just make it to here, we will make it all the way. 

In Oral Instructions of Mahamudra, Venerable Geshe-la explains how we can reach the fourth mental abiding at various stages of our Mahamudra training and skip our way to enlightenment.  These are like shortcuts on the path – by attaining the 4^th mental abiding here and there, we take quick routes to our destination, enabling the attainment of enlightenment very quickly.

Attaining the fourth mental abiding is entirely doable.  We may not at present genuinely believe we can attain tranquil abiding, but if we put enough effort into it, we do feel that attaining the fourth mental abiding is something that is doable.  It will not be easy, it will take a lot of work, but surely it takes less effort to attain the fourth mental abiding than the amount of effort we put into the average professional career.  But just look at the difference in the rewards between the two!  A good career may create stable external conditions for the rest of this life; attaining the fourth mental abiding will create stable internal conditions for an eternity.  

Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of mental stabilization

Neglecting to train in mental stabilization. 

The attainment of Tranquil Abiding is necessary to achieve profound realizations.  Therefore, if we fail to make an effort in the following areas we incur a secondary downfall:  (1) to listen to and think about the instructions on tranquil abiding, and (2) to improve our concentration by training in tranquil abiding.

At the end of the day, we have been given perfect methods for attaining enlightenment.  We have been given everything.  All we now need to do is actually do them.  Our main problem is when we do our practices, our mind is filled with distraction.  So while outwardly it appears that we are meditating, inside our mind is wandering everywhere except where it is supposed to be, namely on our practice.  If we can learn to overcome this one problem, progress along the path will come very quickly.

Why is concentration important?  Ultimately, the strength of our concentration determines the extent of our spiritual power.  The more powerful our practice, the more quickly and profoundly we make progress.  It is no exaggeration to say we are fighting a war against our delusions.  It is an all or nothing battle.  Either our delusions defeat us or we defeat our delusions.  There is no middle ground, there is no peace treaty or compromise possible.  Either we exterminate them or they will not stop until we are pinned down into the deepest hell forever.  This may sound like exaggerated rhetoric, but it is not.  Delusions are relentless in their deceptions and they will never stop.  At no point will they ever be satisfied thinking this person is deluded enough, they will keep deceiving us until they drive us literally insane.  The more freedom we give our delusion to reign within our mind, the more they will seize control of us and make us do things which only serve to harm ourself or others.  They are an enemy without remorse.  They have no redeeming qualities.  The only reason why we do not see this or realize it is because they have us so firmly in their grasp that they have convinced us they are our friends.  Against an enemy such as this, we need power to defeat them.  Concentration is our power.

Concentration has two components:  (1) remembering our chosen object of meditation, and (2) realizing its object clearly.  In the beginning, our primary focus should be remembering the object.  To remember the object means to keep it in mind, to maintain the continuum of keeping the focus of our mind on the object of our choice.  The ability to do this is called mindfulness.  Mindfulness simply means remembering our object, or more practically, not forgetting it. 

If we check, there is really only one reason why we forget our objects of meditation.  It is because we think our object of distraction is more important or more interesting than our object of meditation.  To us, the value of our objects of distraction seem evident and seem immediate, whereas the value of our objects of meditation seem abstract and seem to be far off in some uncertain future.  If we want to remember our objects of meditation, we need to reverse this.  Remembering our objects of meditation has to become, for us, the most important thing in our life.  If we can remember our objects of meditation, we will find permanent freedom.  If we allow ourselves to forget them, we will quickly be swept away and become lost forever.  Again, this sounds like hyperbole, but it is not.  The stakes are this high, the choices are this stark. 

So if we want to remember our objects we have to want to remember them because we understand them to be the most important things in our life.  We accomplish this by meditating again and again on the benefits of each meditation we do.  If we check, a very large proportion of all Geshe-la’s books is simply an explanation of the benefits of the different objects of meditation.  We should not gloss over these and try jump straight to the object of meditation itself.  If we do this, we will quickly become distracted, receive almost no benefit, and then gradually abandon our practice.  If instead, we take the time in the beginning to focus most of our time and attention on contemplating and meditating on the benefits, then we will become very motivated to remember our objects when we are in meditation.  When we meditate on the benefits of a given object of meditation, the most important thing to focus on is not the “what” but rather the “why.”  In other words, just knowing what the benefits are will have little power if we don’t understand why the given object of meditation produces the actual benefit.  If we don’t directly see and understand the connection between the two, our desire to mix our mind with these objects of meditation will be superficial at best and lack the power necessary to remain with them.  When distractions come, we will eagerly go with them.  In particular, we should focus on realizing the benefits of meditating on death, the benefits of bodhichitta, the benefits of the self-generation object and the benefits of the Mahamudra object.  These are our main and most powerful objects of meditation.