7. Kadampa meaning of special days

Happy Protector Day: Requesting the accomplishment of our wishes

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Protector Days, Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The 29th of every month is Protector Day.  This is part 10 of a 12-part series aimed at helping us remember our Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden and increase our faith in him on these special days.

The reason why we make offerings and requests, which was explained in the previous two posts, is to accumulate a special merit which will ripen in the form of Dorje Shugden being able to respond to our requests.  In the next part of the Sadhana, we actually make specific requests and prayers to Dorje Shugden.  These prayers reveal what Dorje Shugden can accomplish for us through our faithful reliance.

HUM
Whenever your followers with commitments
Request any of the four actions,
Swiftly, incisively, and without delay, you show signs for all to see;
So please accomplish the actions that I now request of you.

The first line indicates how if we choose to keep the heart commitment of Dorje Shugden (which was explained in a previous post) we become uniquely qualified to be able to make requests to Dorje Shugden to accomplish the specific actions we request of him, not just that he arrange things in general.  This is like a special qualification that gives us special power.  By requesting that Dorje Shugden causes the Dharma to flourish, we create the karma for it to flourish within our own mind.  In the context of the sadhana, what we are requesting of him is what follows in the sadhana, but outside of the sadhana, we can request him anything.

The stainless sun of Je Tsongkhapa’s tradition
Shines throughout the sky of samsara and nirvana,
Eliminating the darkness of inferior and wrong paths;
Please cause its light to spread and bring good fortune to all living beings.

Path in a Dharma context refers to believing a thought in our mind.  If we believe our delusions to be true, we are following an inferior path.  If we believe our wisdom to be true, we are following a correct path.

May the glorious Gurus who uphold this tradition
Have indestructible lives, as stable as the supreme victory banner;
May they send down a rain of deeds fulfilling the wishes of disciples,
So that Je Tsongkhapa’s doctrine will flourish.

Through increasing the study, practice, pure discipline, and harmony
Of the communities who uphold the stainless doctrine of Buddha,
And who keep moral discipline with pure minds,
Please cause the Gedän tradition to increase like a waxing moon.

There are two methods for growing a Dharma center, external and internal. The external methods include doing good publicity making the center known, working for the center in the running of the center, improving the facilities, etc.  Internally, a Dharma center is actually the collection of spiritual realizations of its practitioners.  If the practitioners have no realizations, it is a small center, even if it has hundreds or thousands of members and many external temples.  If the practitioners have rich realizations, it is a large center, even if there are only a few practitioners and the external conditions are limited.

Gen Tharchin explains the way to grow a center is for the practitioners of that center to gain authentic spiritual realizations and then form karmic bonds between them.  We are given the problems of the community we serve.  We then use the Dharma to solve these problems.  Then, Dorje Shugden arranges for people who have these problems to come to the center.  He does not do it beforehand because he doesn’t want people to come to a center and not find the answers they are looking for.  So he waits until we gain experience and that we have something useful to share.  In particular, we can gain such realizations if people in Dharma centers study, practice, and maintain pure discipline and harmony. 

Through your actions please fulfil the essential wishes
Of all practitioners who uphold the victory banner
Of practising single-pointedly the stages of the paths of Sutra and Tantra,
The essence of all the teachings they have heard.

Here we make special requests that whenever any practitioner makes requests to Dorje Shugden that he respond.  In this way, we put our karma behind it and we each help one another in our requests.

Beings throughout this great earth are engaged in different actions
Of Dharma, non-Dharma, happiness, suffering, cause and effect;
Through your skilful deeds of preventing and nurturing,
Please lead all beings into the good path to ultimate happiness.

This is an important verse.  Dorje Shugden has the ability to transform any action or any experience into a cause of enlightenment.  For example, if somebody falls ill with cancer, we can request that it become a powerful cause of his enlightenment.  Or if our child starts using drugs, etc., we can request that this become a cause of their enlightenment.  Through this, Dorje Shugden will bless their minds where the condition will function as a cause of enlightenment.  It may not be immediately obvious how, but over the years with our sincere requests, it will definitely happen.  The feeling is that he gradually shepherds all the beings within the protection circle onto and along the path to enlightenment.  It will take time, but through our persistent and faithful requests, eventually everyone without exception will be lead along the path to enlightenment.  Again, note that this doesn’t mean that they are all brought to the Kadampa path, though certainly some will.  We are happy for them to be brought to any authentic path.

In particular, please destroy the obstacles and unfavourable conditions
Of myself and other practitioners.
Increase our lives, our merit, and our resources,
And gather all things animate and inanimate to be freely enjoyed.

Again, we make specific requests for practitioners, understanding their importance.

Please be with me always like the shadow of my body,
And care for me always like a friend,
By accomplishing swiftly whatever I wish for,
And whatever I ask of you.

If you want to receive the protection of Dorje Shugden like a true spiritual friend, the best way to do so is to become a true spiritual friend for others.  This creates the karma necessary for you to receive his protection in this way. The same is true for receiving his protection like a spiritual father.  Become a spiritual father (or mother) for others.  Take responsibility for others in your life, do not just do the minimum.  We should take worldly responsibility and spiritual responsibility for others.  But we need to embrace that responsibility with wisdom. If we do others’ internal or external work for them, we may help them temporarily, but they don’t learn how to do things for themselves. It can be an example of compassion without wisdom. Conventionally, each person is responsible for their own mind, reactions, and feelings. If people blame us for their feelings or say it is our responsibility that they acted the way they do, we should reject that. They are responsible for their own actions. And conventionally, Buddhas can’t bestow enlightenment upon us like giving a present to somebody. If people don’t create the causes for their enlightenment, it will never happen for them. And we can’t create karma for other people, they have to do so for themselves. Ultimately, though, there are no beings with no minds and no karma from their own side. The beings that appear to us are the beings of our karmic dream and they have no independent existence outside of our mind. In that sense, we are responsible for everything and everyone and all their expereinces within our karmic dream. When these two perspectives are seen as non-contradictory, we have a good understanding of the union of the two truths.

Please perform immediately, without delaying for a year, or even for a month,
Appropriate actions to eliminate all obstacles
Caused by misguided beings with harmful minds who try to destroy Je Tsongkhapa’s doctrine,
And especially by those who try to harm practitioners.

It is possible that some people may oppose our practice of Dharma.  Dorje Shugden can dispel all such obstacles through external and internal blessings. He can do this by blessing our mind to see the other person’s ‘interference’ as perfect for our practice.  Then it is no longer an obstacle. He can also do this by blessing the minds of others so that they no longer create obstacles for us.  We do not request this for selfish reasons, rather we do so to protect others from creating the bad karma of interfering with the pure spiritual practice of another.

Happy Je Tsongkhapa Day: I Rejoice in the Great Wave of your Deeds

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days , , , ,

In many ways, October 25th, or Je Tsongkhapa Day, is my favorite day of the Kadampa calendar.  Why?  Because he is the founder of our tradition, our living spiritual guide, and the source of all good.  On Je Tsongkhapa Day, we can remember his great kindness, strive to emulate his example, and ultimately decide to mix our mind inseparably with his.  I pray that all those who read this develop unchanging faith in Guru Tsongkhapa, and in dependence upon this faith, effortlessly follow his joyful path.

Understanding How Holy Days Work

There are certain days of the year which are karmically more powerful than others, and the karmic effect of our actions on these days is multiplied by a factor of ten million!  These are called “ten million multiplying days.”  In practice, what this means is every action we engage in on these special days is karmically equivalent to us engaging in that same action ten million times.  This is true for both our virtuous and non-virtuous actions, so not only is it a particularly incredible opportunity for creating vast merit, but it is also an extremely dangerous time for engaging in negative actions.  There are four of these days every year:  Buddha’s Englightenment Day (April 15), Turning the Wheel of Dharma Day (June 4), Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day (September 22), and Je Tsongkhapa Day (October 25).  Heruka and Vajrayogini Month (January 3-31), NKT Day (1st Saturday of April), and International Temple’s Day (first Saturday of November) are the other major Days that complete the Kadampa calendar. 

A question may arise, why are the karmic effect of our actions greater on certain days than others?  We can think of these days like a spiritual pulsar that at periodic intervals sends out an incredibly powerful burst of spiritual energy, or wind.  On such days, if we lift the sails of our practice, these gushes of spiritual winds push us a great spiritual distance.  Why are these specific days so powerful?  Because in the past on these days particularly spiritually significant events occurred which altered the fundamental trajectory of the karma of the people of this world.  Just as calling out in a valley reverberates back to us, so too these days are like the karmic echoes of those past events.  Another way of understanding this is by considering the different types of ocean tides.  Normally, high and low tide on any given day occurs due to the gravity of the moon pulling water towards it as the earth rotates.  But a “Spring tide” occurs when the earth, moon, and Sun are all in alignment, pulling the water not just towards the moon as normal, but also towards the much more massive sun.  Our holy days are like spiritual Spring tides.

Je Tsongkhapa is the Founder of the New Kadampa Tradition

Buddha Shakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism in this world, and all of the different types of Buddhism (Zen, Theravadin, Kadampa, etc.) are all different presentations of his teachings.  Buddha gave 84,000 different instructions, but different traditions will place different emphasis on different aspects to correspond with the karmic dispositions of those who follow that tradition.  We cannot say one tradition is better than another in some absolute sense, rather we can say, “this tradition is better for me,” and “that tradition is better for her,” etc.  In this way, we can each cherish our own traditions while respecting all others.

Atisha is the founder of the Kadampa tradition.  ‘Kadam’ means a special presentation of Buddha’s 84,000 teachings called the “Lamrim,” which the Buddhist Master Atisha introduced when he went from India to Tibet in 1042 AD.  ‘Pa’ means somebody who puts into practice.  A Kadampa, therefore, means somebody who takes Atisha’s Lamrim as their main practice.  Atisha is primarily known for uniting the vast and profound paths together.  The vast path refers to the accumulation of merit, the principal cause of a Buddha’s body; and the profound path refers to the accumulation of wisdom, the principal cause of a Buddha’s mind.  By practicing the union of the two, our practices of the vast and profound paths reinforce each other and we create the causes to attain a Buddha’s body and mind simultaneously.  His path is generally presented as the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, namely renunciation, bodhichitta, and the correct view of emptiness.  Renunciation is the wish to escape from samsara ourselves, bodhichitta is the wish to become a Buddha to lead others to liberation, and the correct view of emptiness eradicates the root of samsara, self-grasping ignorance.

Je Tsongkhapa (1357 to 1419 AD) is the founder of the New Kadampa Tradition. Just as Atisha presented the union of the vast and profound path, Je Tsongkhapa introduced the union of Sutra and Tantra. Like the old Kadampas, practitioners of the New Kadampa Tradition also take Atisha’s Lamrim as their main practice. The difference is New Kadampas can practice the Lamrim at the gross level (Sutra) and the subtle level (Tantra) as completely non-contradictory. Sutra is how we practice Buddha’s instructions with our gross mind, Tantra is how we do so with our subtle and very subtle minds, but both are methods of practicing Lamrim.

Ultimately, Tantra is much quicker than Sutra because our gross minds arise from our subtle and very subtle mind. If we pull weeds but fail to take out the roots, the weeds will grow back; in the same way, if we pacify our gross minds but fail to purify our subtle minds, the delusions will keep coming back. Tantra is a special spiritual technology for purifying our root mind, or our very subtle mind, of all of our delusions and their karmic imprints, thus eradicating samsara at its root. We purify our very subtle mind by meditating on its emptiness. This one meditation functions to simultaneously uproot all of the contaminated karma we have accumulated since beginningless time. Je Tsongkhapa showed how the paths of Sutra and Tantra are not only completely non-contradictory, but are mutually reinforcing, and by practicing them together in the context of Atisha’s Lamrim, we can quickly attain enlightenment.

The New Kadampa Tradition has five main aspects of the path: renunciation, bodhichitta, the correct view of emptiness, generation stage, and completion stage. These can be understood as there is one action on the path: changing the basis of imputation of our I from our ordinary samsaric body and mind to the completely pure body and mind of a Buddha. There are two reasons why we do it, renunciation (for ourselves) and bodhichitta (for others). And there are two levels at which we do it, the gross body and mind of a Buddha (generation stage) and the subtle body and mind of a Buddha (completion stage). Je Tsonkghapa is the founder of this way of practicing.

Since Je Tsongkhapa, there has been an unbroken lineage of his teachings down to our present-day lineage gurus, including Je Phabongkhapa, Trijang Rinpoche, and our very own Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.  There is no difference in meaning between the Dharma Je Tsongkhapa taught and what we currently practice, the only difference is the cultural presentation, analogies, and languages used to express that meaning.  Everything we practice, directly or indirectly, comes from Je Tsongkhapa.  We are Je Tsongkhapa’s tradition.  The New Kadampa Tradition – International Kadampa Buddhist Union (NKT-IKBU) was founded by Geshe-la to present Je Tsongkhapa’s teachings to the modern world. 

Je Tsongkhapa is our Living Spiritual Guide

One of the hardest parts of the Buddhist path for modern people is relying upon a “guru.”  At first, it all seems very “cult-like.”  I remember telling my first teacher Gen Lekma once, “I’m down with all of the Dharma teachings except this whole reliance upon the spiritual guide thing!”  When I told her this, she was in the middle of swallowing some tea, and she nearly spit it out in a laugh.  After collecting herself, she looked at me and said, “I have found that the things we struggle the most with at first later become the things that have the biggest transformative impact on our mind.”  Truer words have never been spoken. 

To understand why reliance upon the spiritual guide is the root of the path, we have to back up a bit.  Why do we need teachers in general?  Because we are ignorant and don’t know.  Why do we need spiritual teachers?  Because we are ignorant of the spiritual path, not knowing its destinations nor how to follow the path to these destinations.  Why do we need a root guru or root spiritual guide?  Because we need somebody who has completed the path and can guide our mind to the same state.  It takes humility to learn from any teacher, it takes great humility to rely upon a Spiritual Guide. 

Normally, we say Geshe-la is the root guru, or Spiritual Guide, of the NKT.  It is true everything we study and practice comes from him, and he has created for us all of the conditions we now enjoy for our practice, such as temples, centers, teachers, sangha friends, books, sadhanas, and so forth.  But what does he say?  He says don’t look at me, rather look at Je Tsongkhapa at my heart.  We view Geshe-la as an emanation of Je Tsongkhapa, but Je Tsongkhapa is our actual Spiritual Guide.  What does Je Tsongkhapa say?  He says don’t look at me, rather look at Buddha Shakyamuni at my heart.  What does Buddha Shakyamuni say?  Don’t look at me, rather look at Heruka at my heart.  Guru Heruka is our actual spiritual guide.  He appeared as Buddha Shakyamuni to introduce the Dharma to the people of this world.  He later appeared as Je Tsongkhapa, who in turn appeared as Geshe-la.  This is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is, always has been, and always will be the spiritual guide of the Kadampa tradition. From one perspective, it is the same person – the same mental continuum – appearing at different points in time according to the karmic dispositions of the people of this world.

But from another perspective, Je Tsongkhapa is still our Spiritual Guide today. His emanation bodies may change, but the jewel in the lotus remains the same person. When Buddhas attain enlightenment, they become deathless beings. Their emanation bodies may pass away, but they do not, they continue to live. We can continue to develop a living relationship with these holy beings because they are still with us today. He is still here, guiding us, teaching us, blessing us, and so forth. Geshe-la, the Gen-la’s, and all of our other spiritual teachers are essentially spiritual telephones which connect the pure world of Je Tsongkhapa with our present samsaric reality. Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka speaks and works through all of them. When we rely upon our outer spiritual teachers they explain to us how to develop a relationship with our inner spiritual teachers who then take us to enlightenment. The outer teachers and the inner teachers are not separate beings, but different layers of the same being appearing to different levels of purity of mind.

Whenever we engage in any Guru Yoga practice, our main job is to feel we are in the living presence of our spiritual guide – seeing all of the Buddhas as inseparable from our guru and our guru as inseparable from all the Buddhas.  Every practice we engage in is about creating a close karmic relationship with our spiritual guide in his different karmic aspects.  In dependence upon this karmic relationship, we gain greater and greater access to our spiritual guide’s blessings, until eventually, it is almost as if we gain the ability to download their enlightenment into our own mind.  In the end, we mix our mind with our guru’s mind, where we make no distinction between our mind and his enlightened mind.  From one perspective, it is like a mind transplant where his mind becomes ours; from another perspective, it is like removing the obstructions to our own root mind and discovering that our actual mind was his enlightened mind all along. 

Because Je Tsongkhapa is the embodiment of his Dharma, by mixing our mind with his, we mix our mind with his special union of Sutra and Tantra and eventually come to see ourselves as a wave inseparable from the ocean of his omniscient mind.  We view all phenomena as arising from emptiness, all emptinesses as the nature of our mind of great bliss, and the union of our realization of great bliss and emptiness as inseparable from our guru’s Truth Body, or Dharmakaya. 

Je Tsongkhapa is the Source of all Good

This is somewhat harder to understand.  All good things come from good karma.  All good karma comes from virtuous actions.  All virtuous actions arise due to receiving blessings from the holy beings.  Je Tsongkhapa is the synthesis of all the Buddhas, therefore he is the source of all blessings, virtuous actions, good karma, and ultimately good results. 

Sometimes, we like to take credit for our good deeds, therefore we think Je Tsongkhapa is not the source of all good, we are. Or maybe it is a mixed affair, where he helps us with his blessings, but mostly it comes from our own effort. This doubt comes from grasping at a duality between ourselves and our ultimate nature. Our good deeds arise from our good intentions, but where do they arise from? They pour into our mind when we open it up to the sun of our pure potential. Just as the sun pours in whenever the blinds are opened, so too virtuous intentions come into our mind when cracks in the layers of the karmic obstructions on our mind appear. But what is our pure potential? By nature, it is Guru Tsongkhapa. All Buddhas impute their I onto the truth body or Dharmakaya. What is this? It is a mind of great bliss that realizes directly and simultaneously the emptiness of all phenomena. A Buddha’s body and mind are the same entity, the same nature, which means their truth body pervades all phenomena. Because we too are empty, we have a pure potential. This pure potential fully realized is Je Tsongkhapa. Every time we access or ripen this potential, we are releasing some of Je Tsongkhapa into our mind. Thus, he is inseparable from all of our good intentions – he is our good intentions manifesting in our mind.

There are many prayers to Je Tsongkhapa, but the most famous is the Migtsema prayer, which explains that Je Tsongkhapa is the synthesis of Buddha Shakyamuni, Vajradhara, Avaolokitehsvara, Manjushri, and Vajrapaini. There is also the single-pointed request which explains he is the guru, he is the yidam, he is the daka, and the Dharma protector. If all of the goodness in all of the universe were gathered together, it would produce the appearance of Je Tsongkhapa. Put another way, Je Tsongkhapa is a holy being who has managed to successfully impute his I onto the synthesis of all goodness. Thus it is perfectly correct to say he is the source of all good because he is all goodness itself.

But how can we understand he is the source of all good, including that of non-Buddhists?  Everything we perceive is ultimately created by our mind, arising from our mind.  There is no creator other than mind, and there is nothing that exists outside of our mind (if it did, that thing would be inherently existent).  This means that everything is part of our karmic dream. Any good we perceive in the world is a reflection of the goodness in our mind.  We created the karma for that goodness to appear.  We already established that all goodness that arises in our mind comes from Je Tsongkhapa, thus any goodness that arises in our karmic dream also arises from him. 

Remembering Je Tsongkhapa’s Kindness

On Je Tsongkhapa Day, our main practice should be to remember his kindness.  We can do this by contemplating what Geshe-la said about Je Tsongkhapa Day.  I find it particularly helpful to remember his kindness in my own life.  He has given me my spiritual life.  Without my Dharma practice, I don’t know how I would have turned out in the wake of my mother’s suicide on my wedding day or all of the other challenges I have faced in my life.  Je Tsongkhapa’s way of thinking has come to dominate my way of thinking, and I am much happier for it.  It suffices to ask myself what my life would be like if I had never met his Dharma to see the profound impact it has had. 

More importantly, he has provided me with the spiritual tools I need to close the door on ever taking lower rebirth again through purification and refuge practice.  Through his kindness, I have found the door to liberation that will enable me to once and for all cease the samsaric nightmare I have been trapped in since beginningless time.  He has shown me not only that I can attain enlightenment and thereby be in a position to help all those I love who are also drowning in samsara, but he has provided me with incredibly simple step-by-step instructions for how to do it.  In what can only be described as a miracle, I have found qualified tantric teachings of generation and completion stage through which it is possible to attain enlightenment in one life or barring that, at least getting to the pure land where I can complete my spiritual training.  His blessings flow into me day and night, even while I sleep, holding me back from quite literally going insane.  Without him, I would be lost.  With him, I have been found.  By relying upon him, I can fulfill all my own and other’s pure wishes.  He is a true wish-fulfilling jewel who has kept alive the holy Kadam Dharma in this world, and it is my job to do all that I can to internalize it and then pass it on to future generations.

Emulating his Example

If I were trapped on a desert island and only allowed one book, it would be Great Treasury of Merit. Normally we say Joyful Path of Good Fortune is like the hub of the wheel of Dharma, and all of the other books are like spokes of that wheel. But the axis around which Joyful Path turns is Great Treasury of Merit which presents the very synthesis of Je Tsongkhapa’s Dharma by showing how all the essential meanings of his teachings fit together with exactly the right proportionalities of how important each teaching is. In truth, the book is about 70% how to rely upon the Spiritual Guide and 30% everything else, which is exactly correct. The sections on visualizing the spiritual guide explain the meaning of his holy form. Buddhas can manifest their inner realizations as outer forms, and Je Tsongkhapa’s body is quite literally all of his realizations as form. By generating faith in his holy form, we mix our mind with all of his realizations. The sections on prostrations, praises, and making requests explain his many good qualities and special functions in our life. Reading these with faith, one cannot help but be amazed. In truth, I would say the true hub of the wheel of the Kadampa teachings is Oral Instructions of Mahamudra and Mirror of Dharma. In my mind, Mirror of Dharma is the Oral Instructions of Lamrim. Around this is Great Treasury of Merit, round that is Joyful Path, and then emanating like spokes are all the other books. But if I’m only allowed one book, I still pick Great Treasury of Merit.

There are two aspects of his example which appeal to me most.  The first is how he demonstrates the practice of moral discipline and the second is the great wave of his deeds. 

His outer form is of a fully ordained monk, revealing the practices of the vows of individual liberation. His inner form is Buddha Shakyamuni, revealing the moral discipline of a Bodhisattva. And his secret form is Vajradhara or Heruka, demonstrating the moral discipline of a tantric master. At my very first Kadampa festival, when Geshe-la first opened the temple in Manjushri, he gave a three-day teaching on essentially one subject – overcoming distractions. He explained that we have everything we need to attain enlightenment, the only thing that is missing is our practicing these instructions without distraction. The practices of moral discipline are how we overcome our gross distractions by letting go of each object of abandonment. Moral discipline is not wishing to engage in negativity, but holding ourselves back from doing so. Rather, it is realizing we no longer wish to do so, and so we “let go” of wanting the objects of our transgressions. Normally, we think moral discipline is a list of ‘don’ts’ that deprives us of our freedom. We have everything backward. The practice of moral discipline is a profound shift in our mind that is experienced as a “release” into greater and greater levels of inner freedom by leaving behind the chains of samsara.

Every day in our Heart Jewel practice, we rejoice in the great wave of Je Tsongkhapa’s deeds. What exactly is this great wave? We can say it is his special method for eventually liberating all beings. He attained enlightenment. What did he do with his enlightenment? He formed new spiritual guides for carrying forward the tradition. What did those spiritual guides do? Create more spiritual guides still. In this way, his virtuous deeds multiple exponentially until eventually the wave of his kind actions will carry every single living being to the state of full enlightenment. He has set in motion a spiritual self-perpetuating machine whose function is to liberate all beings from all suffering forever. In one short life, he initiated a wave that will never stop until all of his pure wishes are fulfilled.

We have the incredible good fortune to not only receive benefit from him but to become ourselves part of his great wave. He has laid at our feet exactly the same Dharma he taught and realized. By picking up the Dharma he has given us and bringing it into our mind, we too can become a fully qualified spiritual guide able to carry forward this great lineage for the benefit of all those we have a close karmic relationship with. If we do not do this for those we love, who will? It may be aeons before his wave comes around again to these beings, but we can carry them with us right now. Gen Tharchin says the beings who we generate bodhichitta towards as bodhisattvas are among the first we lead to enlightenment when we attain the final goal. Look around at everyone you love, see how they are drowning, and now remember Je Tsongkhapa has given you the means to do something about it by becoming part of his great wave.

Deciding to Mix our Mind with His

In the final analysis, attaining enlightenment is very simple:  all we need to do is mix our mind inseparably with somebody who has already attained enlightenment.  In this way, the duality between their mind and our mind vanishes, and their enlightened mind becomes our mind and our mind becomes their enlightened mind.  Everything else in the Dharma is why we should do this and how to do it.  As practitioners of the New Kadampa Tradition, whose mind do we mix ours with?  Lama Tsongkhapa’s.  It’s as simple as that.

Every object of meditation is an aspect of his mind.  Every instruction we practice comes from his mind. Every realization we gain is an infusion of his mind into our own.  Every practice we do is changing the basis of imputation of our I from our ordinary contaminated body and mind to his completely pure body and mind.  Every deity we rely upon is like a facet on the diamond of his mind.  Every phenomenon we see is a wave on the ocean of his mind.  He is everything.  Our job is so simple:  just mix our mind with his.  Whatever we mix our mind with, we become.  Since he is the synthesis of all the Buddhas, all Dharmas, and all Sanghas, by mixing our mind with his, we too become the source of all good.

The only thing that is missing is deciding to dedicate our lives to this goal.  There are so many things we do in life, but how many of them do us any good?  Only deciding to mix our mind with his will free us.  We can reach the point where our every thought, word, and deed is him working through us.  We need not struggle in our spiritual practice, we merely need to request his blessings.  We need not invent the path, we can simply follow the one he has laid out for us.  We need not ever doubt, we can internally request his wisdom.  There is nothing he cannot provide us, all we need to do is decide to rely upon him.

Today is Je Tsongkhapa Day.  Every decision we make today is karmically equivalent to making that same decision ten million times.  What better way to mark this holy day than making the firm internal decision to dedicate our life to mixing our mind with Lama Tsongkhapa’s, our living Spiritual Guide.  I pray that everyone who reads this transforms their life in this way.

Happy Tsog Day: Remembering our Spiritual Guide’s Profound Qualities

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 18 of a 44-part series.

Requesting by expressing his secret qualities

You are the essence of the ten million circles of mandalas
That arise from the state of the all-knowing exalted wisdom;
Principal Holder of the Vajra, pervasive source of the hundred families,
O Protector of the Primordial Union, to you I make requests.

Our spiritual guide’s secret qualities are him being by nature Vajradhara, the principal deity and spiritual guide of tantric practice. When Buddha Shakyamuni taught sutra, he appeared as Buddha Shakyamuni; but when he taught tantra, he appeared as Buddha Vajradhara. According to Highest Yoga Tantra, we regard all deities as emanations or manifestations of our spiritual guide. Here, it explains there are ten million circles of mandalas and one hundred Buddha families that all arise from and are manifestations of Buddha Vajradhara. In this way, we recognize our spiritual guide as the synthesis of all the Buddhas. But at the same time, we do not make a distinction between an emanation and the Buddha doing the emanating. Just as you cannot separate a wave from its underlying ocean, so too you cannot separate the waves of any of the countless Buddhas from the underlying ocean of Vajradhara.

Sometimes we think Vajradhara was an historical figure that existed in the past. But in truth he still lives and is guiding us today. Buddha Vajradhara emanates Buddha Shakyamuni, who later appeared as Atisha, who later appeared as Je Tsongkhapa, and who is appearing today as our present spiritual guide. These are all the same person continuing to appear at different points in time according to the karmic dispositions of the people of the different worlds they inhabit. Thus, when we think of our spiritual guide, we think of all the Buddhas. And when we think of all the Buddhas, we think of our spiritual guide. While there is no doubt the outer aspect of our present spiritual guide is important in that he serves as a bridge between our “I”mpure world and the pure world of the Buddhas, we should recognize that he is just an appearance inside of our samsaric dream, but in reality, our actual spiritual guide is Vajradhara. Understanding this, we make requests to our living spiritual guide Vajradhara requesting that he continue to emanate the ten million circles of mandalas and the hundred Buddha families for our benefit.

Requesting by expressing his suchness qualities

Pervasive nature of all things stable and moving,
Inseparable from the experience of spontaneous joy without obstructions;
Thoroughly good, from the beginning free from extremes,
O Actual, ultimate bodhichitta, to you I make requests.

The spiritual guide’s suchness qualities are his ultimate nature of bliss and emptiness. Once again, the analogy of waves and oceans is helpful. The definitive spiritual guide is an I imputed upon the bliss and emptiness of all phenomena. This is the ocean. Every phenomena is a wave on this ocean. This bliss and emptiness is the pervasive nature of all phenomena that is both stable, in the sense that it always remains equally empty, and moving in the sense that phenomena are in constant change. The ocean always remains the ocean, but the waves take on different shapes and forms. The experience of spontaneous joy without obstructions experiences the entire universe as our body of great bliss and emptiness rippling as waves according to the currents of karma. This ultimate nature has always been and always will be and it has always been completely pure, hence it is thoroughly good from the beginning free from the two extremes. Here, the two extremes refer to the extreme of inherent existence, thinking that somehow waves can exist separately from their underlying ocean; and the extreme of nothingness, thinking if things do not exist inherently, they do not exist at all.

Here, we direct our request to ultimate bodhichitta recognizing the suchness nature of our spiritual guide is ultimate bodhichitta. According to Sutra, ultimate bodhichitta is the realization of the emptiness of all phenomena motivated by the mind of conventional bodhicitta, or the wish to become a Buddha for the benefit of all. According to tantra, ultimate bodhichitta is the union of great bliss and emptiness. What is the relationship between these two understandings of ultimate bodhicitta? The emptiness according to sutra and the emptiness according to tantra are exactly the same. The difference is in the subject mind that realizes the emptiness of all phenomena. In sutra, we realize it with the mind of bodhichitta; and in tantra, we realize it with the mind of great bliss. Therefore, the proper question is what is the relationship between the mind of bodhicitta and the mind of great bliss? In science, we say there are necessary and sufficient causes. In Dharma, we say there are substantial and circumstantial causes. The substantial cause is the acorn and the circumstantial causes are the sunlight, soil, and water. The effect is an oak tree. The acorn is called the substantial cause because it is the thing that transforms into the next thing in dependence upon the circumstantial causes. In exactly the same way, bodhicitta is the substantial cause of the mind of great bliss. It is impossible to generate the mind of great bliss without first having generated the mind of bodhichitta, just as it is impossible to have an oak tree without an acorn. The practices of generation stage and completion stage of tantra are the circumstantial causes that transform our mind of bodhicitta into the mind of great bliss. The mind has three levels, gross, subtle, and very subtle. Bodhichitta is a gross level mind and great bliss is a very subtle mind. Put another way, great bliss is the very subtle version of bodhicitta, and bodhicitta is the gross version of the mind of great bliss. It is vital that we understand the relationship between these two minds. If we do, we will then understand the union of sutra and tantra. Recalling all this, we make requests to our spiritual guide’s suchness qualities recognizing them as the very subtle version of all the other qualities we have previously requested.

A Pure Life: Don’t eat at inappropriate times

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part ten of a 12-part series on how to skillfully train in the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  The 15th of every month is Precepts Day, when Kadampa practitioners around the world typically take and observe the Precepts.

The precept here is to not eat at inappropriate times, which is typically understood to mean we do not eat after lunch.  The reason for this precept is not that it is inherently non-virtuous to eat after lunch, rather we do so as purification for all of the negative karma we have accumulated in our past lives related to food.

We all need food in order to survive. But we do not necessarily have to engage in negative actions in order to get our food. However, in our countless previous lives we have engaged in innumerable negative actions in pursuit of food. We see this in particular in the human realm, the animal realm, and the hungry ghost realm. In the human realm, people hunt or fish and kill animals for food.  In Joyful Path, Geshe-la tells the story of the man who was born in a resembling hell that during the day he was eaten by vicious animals, but at night he was visited by beautiful goddesses. This rebirth occured because in his past life he was a butcher, but made a promise to not kill animals at night. As a result, his practice of moral discipline led to him being visited by beautiful goddesses but his killing of animals during the day resulted in his rebirth being viciously attacked by animals. Many people hunt and fish thinking there is nothing wrong with it. But from a karmic perspective killing animals and killing fish is still killing.

We also see tremendous non-virtuous actions in the animal realm related to feeding. It is enough to watch Animal Planet or National Geographic documentaries about the animal realm to see what life is like and how virtually all day every day animals in the wild are either hunting other animals or being hunted.  The hungry ghost realm is worse still. Beings in the hungry ghost realm are almost never able to find food unless it has been specifically dedicated for them by kind practitioners. They engage in virtually every kind of negative action in pursuit of finding something to eat. Even if they acquire their food, the negative karma remains with them. We ourselves have been born countless times in the animal realm and in the hungry ghost realm, and as a result all of the negative karma we accumulated during those rebirths remains on our mind. If we do not purify this negative karma, it will eventually ripen.

When we take the precept to not eat after lunch, it is a practice of purification of our negative karma associated with food. The practice of purification can be understood according to the four opponent powers: the power of regret, the power of reliance, the power of the opponent force, and the power of promise. 

In this context, we aim to make our training in the precept of not eating after lunch a practice of purification. We generate the power of regret by contemplating deeply all of the negative karma we have created in this life and in our countless previous lives related to food. We should consider that we have not yet purified this negative karma and that it remains on our mind. If we do not purify it, we will inevitably suffer the negative consequences. We generate the power of reliance through engaging in the practice of actually taking the precepts. We imagine in the space in front of us is our spiritual guide in the aspect of Buddha Shakyamuni.  Our taking of the precept itself is relying upon the Dharma. If we are taking the precepts with our spiritual friends, us mutually encouraging each other to engage sincerely in our precepts practice is relying upon sangha. We generate the power of the opponent force by keeping our precept throughout the day. Every time the thought or tendency arises in our mind thinking that we should eat something, we can recall all of the negative karma that we have created with respect to food in the past and remind ourselves of are precept to not eat after lunch as purification. This mental action of keeping our precept functions as the direct opponent that we are engaging in out of regret. The power of the promise in this context is not the promise to just simply keep our precept for the day, but rather to refrain from engaging in negative actions associated with food in the future.

It is important to remind ourselves that we are all bound for the lower realms unless we purify. It is not a question of do we fall into the lower realms or not, nor is it like in Christianity where if we are 51% good we supposedly take rebirth in heaven. Rather, from a Buddhist perspective, everyone bound up in samsara will inevitably fall into the lower realms. Indeed, close to 99% of all living beings within samsara are in the lower realms. The lower realms are our actual home, and our present rebirth in the human realm is a very brief and very rare aberration from our normal state.

We also need to honestly acknowledge that up until now we have not taken the practice of purification seriously enough. If we had time bombs strapped to our back and we had no idea when they would go off, we would be extremely motivated to remove the timebombs from our back. Our situation is actually far more dangerous than this. We have countless karmic time bombs which could cause us to take lower rebirth and experience incalculable sufferings, and we have no idea when this karma will ripen or when we all die. It may happen today. We do not know. It is simply too dangerous to remain complacent and allow this negative karma to remain unpurified on our mind. This is the essential meaning of a pure life and the practice of the eight Mahayana precepts. We recognize we have created non virtuous karma by not following these precepts, and our training in them is a practice of purification aimed at solving this problem.

Happy Tsog Day: Remembering our Spiritual Guide’s Surpassing Qualities

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 17 of a 44-part series.

Requesting by remembering that he is a supreme Field of Merit

Even just one of your hair pores is praised for us
As a Field of Merit that is superior to all the Conquerors
Of the three times and the ten directions;
O Compassionate Refuge and Protector, to you I make requests.

What is the field of merit? Just as farmers can plant seeds in fields that later produce crops that can nourish our body, spiritual practitioners can plant seeds of virtue in the field of merit which will later ripen in the form of a rich crop of Dharma realizations. We can understand how our spiritual guide is a supreme field of merit by understanding how he is kinder than all the Buddhas as explained above. Here, we emphasize how all three jewels are in fact emanations of our spiritual guide. Every Buddha, bodhisattva, and so forth are all emanated by our spiritual guide. The ultimate nature of our spiritual guide is an I imputed upon the bliss and emptiness of all things. In this way, we can say that everything is an emanation of our spiritual guide. Thus, any virtuous action we perform towards the three jewels or towards all living beings is an offering to our spiritual guide and the planting of seeds in his field of merit. Without this field, we would never be able to have our virtuous seeds ripen in the form of Dharma realizations, just as seeds alone cannot grow without the ground they are planted in. In this sense, our spiritual guide is truly indispensable for our attainment of enlightenment.

Requesting by expressing his outer qualities

From the play of your miracle powers and skilful means
The ornament wheels of your three Sugata bodies
Appear in an ordinary form to guide migrators;
O Compassionate Refuge and Protector, to you I make requests.

We can understand how important the outer aspect of our spiritual guide is by considering what our life would be like if we had never met Geshe Kelsang Gyatso or if he never appeared in this world. If he did not exist in this world, we would not have our Dharma books, our Dharma centers, our Dharma festivals, our global sangha, and so forth. We would have nothing. Because we met the outer form of our spiritual guide, he has introduced us to all sorts of enlightened beings such as Heruka, Vajrayogini, and Dorje Shugden. Through reliance upon these deities, we are quickly making progress towards enlightenment. But none of this would be possible without having encountered the outer form of our spiritual guide. With this verse, we request that our spiritual guide, who we understand to be the living Je Tsongkhapa, continue to appear in this world to guide living beings along the path to enlightenment. Without the outer form of the spiritual guide, there would be no bridge between our world of suffering and the pure worlds of the Buddhas. It would be as if the doorway to the Buddha lands was permanently closed to us.

We might wonder how we should understand this verse now that Venerable Geshe-la has passed. While the cute little Tibetan no longer appears, he continues to exist in this world through his various “emanations,” such as all our resident teachers, centers, and so forth. He promised that he would be with us always. So when we make these prayers, we can understand how he is continuing to appear through the various aspects of the NKT, and pray that the continue to do so.

Typically, at the end of some of our practices or festivals, we recite the Request to the Holy Spiritual Guide, which used to be one of the long-life prayers. After Venerable Geshe-la passed, we started doing this prayer in the place of the long-life prayers, but we should understand it has the same function – namely requesting that the Spiritual Guide’s emanations continue to appear in this world turning the wheel of Dharma in general and the Ganden Oral Lineage in particular. We can understand that the present appearance of our spiritual guide is really an outer emanation of our living spiritual guide Je Tsongkhapa, or more specifically Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka, who will always be the principal spiritual guide of the New Kadampa Tradition. In many ways, it is like our “living Jesus,” who is always with us and always our guide. When we make this request, in truth we are requesting Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka to continue to emanate outer spiritual guides in this world. When we make this request, we create the karma to have the spiritual guide appear to us in all our future lives between now and our eventual attainment of enlightenment. Further, by making this request with faith, when we meet our spiritual guide in our future lives, we will continue to have faith in him and be able to pick up where we left off on our spiritual path.

Requesting by expressing his inner qualities

Your aggregates, elements, sources, and limbs
Are by nature the Fathers and Mothers of the five Buddha families,
The Bodhisattvas, and the Wrathful Deities;
O Supreme spiritual guide, the nature of the Three Jewels, to you I make requests.

Samsara is sometimes best understood as being trapped within the cycle of the five contaminated aggregates – contaminated discrimination, contaminated feeling, contaminated compositional factors, contaminated consciousness, and contaminated form. Contaminated discrimination conceptually discriminates objects as inherently good, bad, and neutral. On the basis of these discriminations, we develop contaminated feelings where we experience objects as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. On the basis of these feelings, we then develop contaminated compositional factors, or different delusions and other mental factors related to the objects we are experiencing. These contaminated mental factors in turn lead us to engage in contaminated actions, in other words actions motivated by delusions or deluded minds. These actions subsequently plant contaminated karmic potentialities on our consciousness, which is the aggregate of contaminated consciousness. When this karma ripens, it appears as contaminated forms or contaminated appearances. These appearances appear to be inherently good, bad, or neutral, which our contaminated discrimination then discriminates objects as such, causing the cycle to continue forever.

To escape from samsara then, we need to develop the five omniscient wisdoms – the wisdom of individual discrimination, the wisdom of equality, the wisdom of accomplishing activities, the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, and mirror-like wisdom. The wisdom of individual discrimination discriminates every object individually as a manifestation of indivisible bliss and emptiness. The wisdom of equality then experiences all objects equally as great bliss unfolding in emptiness. The wisdom of accomplishing activities then generates pure minds in relation to every object it experiences, so that every action that subsequently follows is pure. These pure actions in turn, place pure karmic potentialities on our consciousness which is the wisdom of the dharmadhatu. The dharmadhatu is also a completely purified aggregate of consciousness, in other words there are no contaminated karmic potentialities on such a mind. Since there are only pure karmic potentialities on the mind, every karmic seed that ripens does so as pure forms which appear as manifestations of bliss and emptiness. Since all objects appear as manifestations of bliss and emptiness, the wisdom of individual discrimination is able to effortlessly discriminate each object as a manifestation of bliss and emptiness, and so the cycle continues indefinitely.

These five omniscient wisdoms correspond with the five Buddha families. The wisdom of individual discrimination arises in dependence upon reliance on Buddha Amitabha. Put another way Buddha Amitabha appears in the minds of living beings as the wisdom of individual discrimination. In the same way, Ratnasambhava appears as the wisdom of equality, Amoghasiddhi appears as the wisdom of accomplishing activities, Akshobya appears as the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, and Vairochana appears as mirror-like wisdom. By generating faith in and relying upon the five Buddha families, we can develop the five omniscient wisdoms. And then, instead of identifying with the five contaminated aggregates, we identify with the five omniscient wisdoms. Once we have changed the basis of imputation of our “I” from the five contaminated aggregates to the five omniscient wisdoms, we will have attained enlightenment.

In this verse, we recognize that the spiritual guide’s inner qualities are the five Buddha families or the five omniscient wisdoms. By making requests to our spiritual guide recognizing his inner qualities, we create the causes to receive the blessings of the five Buddha families and thereby experience and develop within our own mind the five omniscient wisdoms. In completion stage practice, we likewise rely upon the five Buddha families in the form of a collection of five wisdom drops that are the essence of each of the five Buddha families. When we engage in these completion stage practices, we should recall the meaning of the five Buddha families and the five omniscient wisdoms, strongly believing that by mixing our mind with the collection of five wisdom drops, we are mixing our mind with the wisdom of the five Buddha families.

In this verse we also recognize that our spiritual guide’s inner qualities include all the deities of Guhysamaja’s body mandala. There are three principal Highest Yoga Tantra yidam: Heruka, Yamantaka, and Guhysamaja. When we engage in the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide, we generate ourselves as Heruka, we recognize Lama Tsongkhapa as Yamantaka, and inside his body are the deities of Guhysamaja’s body mandala. In this way, we accomplish all the attainments of all the principal yidams of Highest Yoga Tantra in one single practice.

Happy Tara Day: May the Dharma and all good fortune flourish

Kadampa Ryan How to Rely Upon Tara, Tara Days

This is the tenth installment of the 12-part series sharing my understanding of the practice Liberation from Sorrow.

May I strive in my practice of sacred Dharma and increase my realizations,
May I always accomplish you and behold your sublime face;
And may my understanding of emptiness and the precious bodhichitta
Increase and grow like a waxing moon.

Every once in a while, there are these people who show up to our Dharma centers for whom everything comes easily.  They seem to walk into the door with realizations and Dharma comes to them quite instinctively.  This happens when people have a lot of imprints from Dharma practice in previous lives.  But sometimes, because everything comes so easily, they never learn how to apply effort to their practice and at some point their imprints exhaust themselves.  Once it starts to get more difficult, they sometimes drift away or experience some sort of spiritual crisis.  With effort, eventually all attainments will come.  Without effort, we are just burning up our good karma.  It can also happen where we become complacent with our spiritual progress.  We have enough Dharma wisdom in our mind to be happy in this life, and that is good enough for us.  Of course we would never admit that this is the case, but our actions sometimes speak louder than our words.  To protect ourselves against this, we pray to Tara that we always feel inspired to strive in our practice of Dharma, and that we never become content with our spiritual progress until we have attained the final goal.

May I be born from a sacred and most beautiful lotus
In the excellent, joyful mandala of the Conqueror;
And there may I accomplish the prophecy I receive
Directly from Conqueror Amitabha.

Being born anywhere in samsara, even as a Dharma practitioner, is very dangerous.  There is always the risk that we become sidetracked or distracted by samsara’s pleasures and then waste our precious human life, burning up our virtuous karma, and then we die.  There is also the risk that powerful negativity could ripen, resulting is us engaging in negative actions or experiencing terrible misfortune.  The greatest danger is we die with a negative or deluded mind, and then fall into the lower realms, losing the path for possibly eons.  The only way to protect ourselves from these dangers is to attain rebirth in a pure land.  A Buddha’s pure land is like a Bodhsiattva’s training camp. We are able to receive teachings directly from Buddhas, are protected from strong negativity, and are able to progress along the spiritual path.  If we can remember Tara at the time of our death, she will bless our mind and take us to her pure land.  There, we can continue with our training and our eventual enlightenment is guaranteed.  While technically not free from samsara, from a practical point of view, it will be as if we have escaped from all uncontrolled rebirth.

O Goddess upon whom I have relied in previous lives,
Embodiment of the divine actions of all the Buddhas of the three times,
Bluish-green One with one face and two hands,
O Swift Pacifier, Mother holding an upala, may everything be auspicious.

We all have different biological mothers, but Tara is our common spiritual mother.  She cares for and nurtures our spiritual life in the same way our regular mother cares for our physical life.  But we need to create the causes for Tara to continue to be our spiritual mother in all of our future lives.  Tara will never stop loving us, but from our side we can drift away from her, making it harder for her to care for us.  If, in contrast, we always stay close to her, she will always care for us spiritually in this and all our future lives.  As explained earlier, every action we engage in creates four karmic potentialities:  tendency similar to the cause, effect similar to the cause, environmental effect, and the ripened effect.  The ripened effect is the potential to take a rebirth similar in nature to the action we engage in, for example an action of hot anger creates the cause for rebirth in a hot hell.  Whenever we engage in an action of pure faith and reliance upon Tara, such as engaging in our Tara practice, we create a ripened effect to be reborn with her as our spiritual mother.  If throughout our life, on every Tara day, we make a point to engage in Tara practice, we will create a rich reservoir of virtuous karma to have her continue to be our spiritual mother in all of our future lives.  For myself, in addition to engaging in Tara practice on the 8th of every month, I dedicate every day that Tara always be my spiritual mother.  If she will always be my mother, what will I possibly have to fear?

O Conqueror Mother Tara,
Whatever your body, retinue, life span and Pure Land,
And whatever your supreme and excellent name,
May I and all others attain only these.

Buddhas appear in many different forms, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist.  While I haven’t heard Geshe-la say so, I have heard many people say that Jesus’ mother Mary was also an emanation of Tara.  This does make sense and there is certainly no harm in believing this to be true.  Regardless, Tara’s emanations pervade the whole world and appear in many different forms to help living beings, and especially Kadampa practitioners.  Can we say with any certainty that the very device we are reading this post on is not emanated by Tara?  I would say as soon as we believe something is an emanation of Tara, it becomes that for us.  If we view everything as emanated by Tara, then for us, everything will be.  When we recite this verse, we should pray that we gain the wisdom to view everything as emanated by her for our spiritual training.

Through the force of my making these praises and requests to you,
Please pacify all sickness, poverty, misfortune, fighting and quarrelling,
Throughout all directions where I and others live,
And cause the Dharma and all good fortune to flourish.

Most of our experiences in samsara are difficult.  Occasionally, things go “well,” but most of the time, life is a constant struggle.  Sickness, poverty, misfortune, fighting, and quarreling come like waves of the ocean, one after the other, just in different forms.  It is true that we can learn to surf this suffering, but sometimes it is nice to not have constant problems so we can spend time building something good within our mind.  Just as our ordinary mother would create safe spaces for us to play, so too Tara can create safe spaces for us to develop our mind.  For example, we now have international retreat centers, international and national festivals, Dharma centers, facebook groups, etc.  All of these are spaces carved out of samsara where we can develop ourselves spiritually in relative peace, free from major obstacles or obstructions.  Internally, we may still need to battle our delusions in these spaces, but even that is easier than doing so out in the savage lands of samsara.  Understanding she can help us in this way, we pray that she protect us and our practice so that the Dharma and all good fortune can flourish.

Happy Protector Day: Helping the Pure Kadam Dharma Flourish

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, Protector Days, Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The 29th of every month is Protector Day.  This is part 9 of a 12-part series aimed at helping us remember our Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden and increase our faith in him on these special days.

All my harmful thoughts and actions
That have offended your mind, O Great Protector,
I confess from the depths of my heart.
Please purify them swiftly, and care for me with love, like a mother for her child.

With this verse, we can purify all the negative karma that obstructs our ability to receive the care and protection of Dorje Shugden.  Such negative karma is like interference preventing a reception of our mobile phones or junk clogging up the arteries of a person.  We can generate a regret for whatever we have done in the past which has created negative karma preventing us from receiving the care and protection of Dorje Shugden.  Then we strongly imagine from Dorje Shugden purifying light rays and nectars flow down and touch all the beings inside the protection circle, ourself included, purifying all of the negative karma obstructing us from receiving Dorje Shugden’s care and protection.  We then strongly believe that all of these being are now without obstruction.

I beseech you from the depths of my heart, O Supreme Deity,
Please cause the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa to flourish,
Extend the life and activities of the glorious Gurus,
And increase the study and practice of Dharma within the Dharma communities.

We can understand this as follows:  The key point here is we realize how the Dharma of Je Tsongkhapa is the solution to all the problems of all beings.  The reason why beings suffer is because they too are trapped in a dream-like world of suffering created by their own self-centered minds.  They need to wake up from this dream into the pure world of the Buddhas.  The Dharma of Je Tsongkhapa provides a solution for destroying this self-centered mind, thereby enabling all beings to wake up from their worlds of suffering.  This is the solution to all of their problems.

Please be with me always like the shadow of my body,
And grant me your unwavering care and protection.
Destroy all obstacles and adverse conditions,
Bestow favourable conditions, and fulfil all my wishes.

Here we request Dorje Shugden to accomplish his main function, namely to arrange perfect conditions and to eliminate obstacles to our practice.  There are two types of condition:   When we are confronted with a situation which we think could be better, we request Dorje Shugden to arrange whatever is best and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.  If the external situation changes, then we know the situation was beyond our capacity and we can use that to develop bodhichitta, wishing later to have a capacity that can transform anything and everything.  If the external situation remains the same (or gets worse) then we can know that we need to work on the delusions that this situation generates for us.  We can equally do this with internal conditions.  An important thing worth noting at this point is Dorje Shugden will arrange what is best for our practice, not what is necessarily best for our worldly concerns.  We might even say Mick Jagger is actually part of Dorje Shugden’s mandala when he sung ‘you don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.’

Now is the time to show clearly your versatile strength
Through your four actions, which are swift, incisive, and unobstructed,
To fulfil quickly my special heartfelt desires
In accordance with my wishes;

Here we request Dorje Shugden to arrange whatever is best in general, in his own mysterious ways and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function. Ask people their Dorje Shugden stories when you are at festivals, and you will be amazed.  If our motivation is pure, he can arrange anything.

Now is the time to distinguish the truth and falsity of actions and effects;

Here we request him to make clear the relationship between cause and effect for all the beings within the protection circle.  At present, we think negativity is entertainment and exciting and we think virtue is boring.  In reality, negativity creates the cause for enormous suffering and virtue is the cause of all happiness.  Here we request that Dorje Shugden to bestow special wisdom blessings on all beings within the protection circle so they naturally, from their own side, make good choices.

Now is the time to dispel false accusations against the innocent;

Here we request Dorje Shugden to enable all beings within the protection circle to stop making mistaken and false imputations on others, but to correctly impute onto everybody ‘emanation of my spiritual guide’ and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.  At present, we impute onto others ‘object of attachment’ ‘object of aversion’ or ‘irrelevant.’  These are false accusations we impute on others, and we relate to them as if they were really these things from their own side.  This creates all our problems.  The only valid imputation of anybody is ‘emanation of my spiritual guide.’  The ultimate nature of all things is the Dharmakaya, so it is correct to say that everybody is an emanation of my spiritual guide.

Now is the time to protect the pitiful and protectorless;

The reason why people are pitiful and protectorless is because we have been neglecting them.  Their experience is what we have karmically created for them in our empty dream.  So here we request that he provide protection for all the beings we have been neglecting and imagine that a protection circle radiates out accomplishing this function.

Now is the time to protect Dharma practitioners as your children.

It is particularly important to provide care and protection for Dharma practitioners because by helping them directly, indirectly it helps all living beings since they have vowed to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.  It is like opening up a second cash register at the supermarket.  Everybody gets through the line twice as fast.

In short, from now until I attain the essence of enlightenment,
I shall honour you as the embodiment of my Guru, Deity, and Protector.
Therefore please watch over me during the three periods of the day and the night
And never waver in your actions as my Protector.

The biggest fear of a Dharma practitioner is the fear of losing the path.  If we do not lose the path, we have nothing to fear; but if we do lose the path, we have all of samsara to fear.  When we recite this verse, we are creating the causes to be able to meet Dorje Shugden and rely upon him again in all our future lives.  In this way, we maintain the continuum of our practice and go from joy to joy until we attain enlightenment.

Happy Tsog Day: Generating Admiring Faith in our Spiritual Guide

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 16 of a 44-part series.

Requesting by remembering his good qualities as explained in the Vinaya scriptures

Great ocean of moral discipline, source of all good qualities,
Replete with a collection of jewels of extensive learning,
Second Buddha, venerable saffron-robed monk,
O Elder and Holder of the Vinaya, to you I make requests.

The practice of moral discipline is the primary cause of upper rebirth. Engaging in moral discipline with a spiritual motivation enables us to take another precious human rebirth, liberation, or enlightenment. Normally, we divide our practice of moral discipline into the different levels of our vows: refuge, pratimoksha, bodhisattva, and tantric vows. The essence of our refuge vows is to make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, receive help from Sangha, and to put the Dharma into practice. The essence of our pratimoksha vows is to not harm living beings, either ourself or others. The essence of our bodhisattva vows is to put others first, and the essence of our tantric vows is to maintain pure view out of compassion. At the beginning of the sadhana, we emphasized our practice of refuge. Here, we emphasize our pratimoksha vows by recalling our spiritual guide maintains perfect outer moral discipline. This is symbolized by his outer aspect as a fully ordained monk. During the prayer of the stages of the path later in the sadhana, we generate both aspiring and engaging bodhichitta for our bodhisattva vows, and we maintain pure view throughout the practice and especially after we dissolve the Guru at the end of the practice. In this way, the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide is a supreme practice of all types of moral discipline.

In order to understand all the different vows and how we practice them in the context of our Kadampa life, I did a series of posts on each of the 200+ vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism. You can find the explanation here. The posts are listed in reverse chronological order, but you can scroll down to the bottom and work your way up if you want to read them in order.

Requesting by remembering his good qualities as a Mahayana spiritual guide

You who possess the ten qualities
Of an authentic Teacher of the path of the Sugatas,
Lord of the Dharma, representative of all the Conquerors,
O Mahayana spiritual guide, to you I make requests.

In Hundreds of Deities of the Joyful Land we recite, “I rejoice in the great wave of your deeds.” What does this mean? Je Tsongkhapa’s special strategy for ripening and liberating all living beings is for himself to become a spiritual guide, then train others to become fully qualified spiritual guides, who then in turn form yet more spiritual guides, and so forth. In this way, gradually all living beings are guided to enter, progress along, and eventually complete the path to enlightenment. This is the great wave of Je Tsongkhapa’s deeds, and his actions as a Mahayana spiritual guide. This is symbolized by Buddha Shakyamuni appearing at the heart of Lama Losang Tubwang Dorjechang.

Requesting by remembering his good qualities as a Vajrayana spiritual guide

Your three doors are perfectly controlled, you have great wisdom and patience,
You are without pretension or deceit, you are well-versed in mantras and Tantra,
You possess the two sets of ten qualities, and you are skilled in drawing and explaining,
O Principal Holder of the Vajra, to you I make requests.

In the sutra teachings, we generate the wish to become a Buddha. But it does not explain exactly how we do so. The actual method for attaining enlightenment is only explained in buddha’s tantric teachings. When Buddha taught tantra, he appeared as Buddha Vajradhara. The tantric teachings explain how to change the basis of imputation of our “I” from the contaminated aggregates of an ordinary samsaric being to the completely purified aggregates of a deity. We can say but there are five principal aspects of the path: renunciation, bodhichitta, the correct view of emptiness, generation stage, and completion stage of Highest Yoga Tantra. These can be understood as follows. There is only one action on the path – changing the basis of imputation of our “I” from an ordinary samsaric being to an enlightened being. There are two reasons why we do this, for the sake of ourselves or renunciation, and for the sake of others or bodhicitta. Realizing the ultimate nature of phenomena or emptiness enables us to change the basis of implication of our “I”. This is the essence of the tantric teachings that Buddha Vajradhara taught. This is symbolized by Buddha Vajradhara appearing at the heart of Buddha Shakyamuni who himself is at the heart of Je Tsongkhapa.

Requesting by remembering that he is kinder than all the Buddhas

To the coarse beings of these impure times who, being so hard to tame,
Were not subdued by the countless Buddhas of old,
You correctly reveal the excellent path of the Sugatas;
O Compassionate Refuge and Protector, to you I make requests.

We can say that the spiritual guide is kinder than all the Buddhas because all the Buddhas are in fact emanations of our spiritual guide. There are two helpful ways to understand this. First, our spiritual guide is like a magic portal through which we can gain access to and communicate directly with all the Buddhas. By making offerings and requests to our spiritual guide directly, we are making offerings and requests to all the Buddhas indirectly. Second, our spiritual guide is like a diamond, and all the Buddhas are like different facets of this diamond. When we look at one facet, we might see Tara or Avalokiteshvara or Manjushri, but by nature they are all the diamond of our spiritual guide. Understanding this we can see that our spiritual guide is kinder than all the Buddhas.

Requesting by remembering that he is kinder even than Buddha Shakyamuni

Now, when the sun of Buddha has set,
For the countless migrators without protection or refuge
You perform exactly the same deeds as the Conqueror;
O Compassionate Refuge and Protector, to you I make requests.

Buddha is incredibly kind because he shows us how to wake up from the nightmare of samsara. Ultimately, samsara is like a Rubik’s Cube in which there is no solution. Yet we fundamentally believe that there must be a solution, and we spend all our time trying to arrange samsara in a way in which we do not suffer. Despite committing ourselves fully to this task since time without beginning we still continue to suffer. The reason for this is samsara is the nature of suffering, and that will never change. Buddha helps us recognize this, enabling us to let go of trying to fix the unfixable. Instead, we can focus on waking up from the contaminated dream of samsara. Only Buddha provides us this solution which is why Buddha is so kind. But our spiritual guide is kinder still. The reason is he is the Buddha who appears to us now and is helping us along the spiritual path. Buddha Shakyamuni while still living, does not appear directly to us because our minds are too impure. But he can emanate himself in the aspect of our spiritual guide who then introduce us to the path. In this way, we can say that our spiritual guide is even kinder – to us at least – than Buddha Shakyamuni. Ultimately, this is not correct because our spiritual guide himself is an emanation of Buddha Shakyamuni. But conventionally, we can say our spiritual guide is even kinder.  

Happy Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day: Returning to Help Those Less Fortunate

Kadampa Ryan 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

September 22 is Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day, one of the special holy days on the Kadampa calendar in which all of our virtuous actions are multiplied by ten million.  After Buddha Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, he went to the Land of 33 Heavens where his mother had taken rebirth, gave teachings to the beings of that realm, and then returned to this world to turn the wheel of Dharma here.  On this day, we can generate compassion for beings in the upper realms and generate the wish to return to this world as Buddha did so that the Dharma may flourish forevermore.

Understanding How Holy Days Work

There are certain days of the year which are karmically more powerful than others, and the karmic effect of our actions on these days is multiplied by a factor of ten million!  These are called “ten million multiplying days.”  In practice, what this means is every action we engage in on these special days is karmically equivalent to us engaging in that same action ten million times.  This is true for both our virtuous and non-virtuous actions, so not only is it a particularly incredible opportunity for creating vast merit, but it is also an extremely dangerous time for engaging in negative actions.  There are four of these days every year:  Buddha’s Englightenment Day (April 15), Turning the Wheel of Dharma Day (June 4), Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day (September 22), and Je Tsongkhapa Day (October 25).  Heruka and Vajrayogini Month (January 3-31), NKT Day (1st Saturday of April), and International Temple’s Day (first Saturday of November) are the other major Days that complete the Kadampa calendar. 

A question may arise, why are the karmic effect of our actions greater on certain days than others?  We can think of these days as a spiritual pulsar that at periodic intervals sends out an incredibly powerful burst of spiritual energy or wind.  On such days, if we lift the sails of our practice, these gushes of spiritual winds push us a great spiritual distance.  Why are these specific days so powerful?  Because in the past on these days particularly spiritually significant events occurred which altered the fundamental trajectory of the karma of the people of this world.  Just as calling out in a valley reverberates back to us, so too these days are like the karmic echoes of those past events.  Another way of understanding this is by considering the different types of ocean tides.  Normally, high and low tide on any given day occurs due to the gravity of the moon pulling water towards it as the earth rotates.  But a “Spring tide” occurs when the earth, moon, and Sun are all in alignment, pulling the water not just towards the moon as normal, but also towards the much more massive sun.  Our holy days are like spiritual Spring tides.

Generating Compassion for Beings in the Upper Realms

The vast majority of beings in samsara are in the lower realms.  In this world, we talk often about the 1% and the other 99% of the wealth distribution.  Samsara’s demographics are quite similar.  The Wheel of Life image sometimes gives a distorted perception that the six realms of samsara (gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings) are roughly equally distributed, but in reality, roughly 99% of the beings in samsara are in the lower realms, whereas only about 1% are in the upper realms.  We know this to be true because roughly 99% of the actions of living beings in samsara are negative, and only about 1% are virtuous – meaning a cause for upper rebirth.  We might object that our actions are at least 50% positive – we are a good person after all – but the actions of beings in the lower realms are almost universally negative, so they remain trapped. 

When we talk about the 1%, we usually do so from a position of jealousy, resentment, and condemnation.  We are jealous of their wealth and power, resent the control they have over our lives, and condemn the many selfish and negative actions they engage in that harm the rest of us.  Wars, climate change, nuclear weapons, pollution, structural inequality, etc., are all caused by the decisions of the 1%, but the rest of us have to suffer the consequences.  Our natural instinct is to dislike or even hate the 1%.  Considering all the harm they do, generating compassion for them seems misplaced at best and twisted at worst. 

One of Buddha’s first acts was to go to the Land of 33 Heavens to give teachings, not just to his mother, but to all of the beings who had taken rebirth there.  In other words, he showed the example that we should also have compassion for the 1% – both in this world and in samsara. 

The method for generating compassion is the same for all beings – first, we generate a mind of love, considering their happiness to be important; and then we consider how they suffer.  The beings of the upper realms are also our mothers and so they are equally objects of our love.  Why should we resent them for whatever happiness and pleasant conditions they enjoy?  They created the karmic causes for such experiences, did they not?  They are also “living beings” and so are worthy of our love.  If Buddha loves them, why can’t we also?

How can we understand the sufferings of beings in the upper realms?  First, it is important to recall that we ourselves are among that elite group since we are human, and the human realm is considered an upper realm.  We are part of the 1%.  Human sufferings are quite manifest – we all get sick, if we are lucky we get old, and we all will die.  All of us already took rebirth.  All of these sufferings are inescapable and traumatic.  We also frequently encounter things we do not like, are separated from things we do like, and experience pervasive uncertainty about what happens next.  We all know these teachings, but we need to personalize them.  My mother in law had a terrible stroke that nobody wanted to encounter, much less her.  I have been separated from my family due to working in another country.  The whole world experienced pervasive uncertainty due to the Coronavirus.  All humans are experiencing these sufferings, regardless of how rich or powerful they might be.

Geshe-la explains in Modern Buddhism that demigods experience more mental pain than humans do.  We can see and understand how by considering the 1% of this world.  The 1% are extremely jealous of the 0.01%, and no matter how much they have, it is never enough.  My kids have had the good fortune to attend these amazing international schools around the world, but the vast majority of the families who put their kids in these schools are miserable.  They are constantly competing against one another, obnoxiously bragging about their kids in an effort to feel better than others, and worrying about their husbands running off with somebody younger and more attractive.  They work insanely long hours, experience tremendous stress at work, face constant criticism from others when the majority of them don’t do anything wrong, and they live in constant fear of losing it all.  I know hundreds of these people from all over the world, and I quite literally can’t think of one who is genuinely happy, and certainly nowhere near as happy as Aunt Paulette who doesn’t have a penny to her name, lives alone after her husband of 40 years died in a small apartment with little heat and faulty plumbing, in a tiny village in France. When you travel the world and see people of different levels of wealth, you can’t help but notice there seems to be an inverse relationship between having and being happy. 

The gods are no better off.  Venerable Tharchin explains that Greek Mythology is not myth, but rather a fairly accurate description of god realm society.  They are in constant conflict with each other, and their actions have terrible repercussions on millions in the other realms – creating horrific karma in the process.  There is a saying when an American sneezes, somebody in the developing world gets a cold.  Americans have tremendous power in this world and everything they do has spillover effects on the rest of the world.  The instability we create with our economic policy, wars, and negligence in controlling pandemics have echo effects around the world.  We are like the Hunger Games, living blithely in the capital while much of the world struggles to get by supplying our excesses. 

From a karmic perspective, those in the upper realms are quite unfortunate.  Sure, the karma that is ripening might be nice, but they are burning it all up and later will have nothing.  We get complacent when things are good and it is only when we suffer do we feel any motivation to practice Dharma, now try to imagine being a demigod or a god.  Bonfire of the vanities.  And even those who do take rebirth in the upper realms still have on their mental continuum all of the negative karma from when they were in the lower realms, and if they die with a negative mind, it will activate this negative karma and they will fall.  We respond to even mild adversities in life with negative minds, so it goes without saying that many people in the upper realms will likewise generate negative minds when they face the greatest adversity of all – their own death.  It is said gods can see their next rebirth.  Imagine the horror of reaching your death and knowing how far you will fall.

We may have studied these sorts of teachings many times in the past, but have we let them touch our heart?  We still, deep within our desires, wish for even a similitude of what the demigods and gods have.  We chase after these dreams, wasting our precious time, only to arrive at death and realize it was all for nothing.  We feel resentment or jealousy towards those whose good karma is burning up faster than ours.  How ridiculous.  What we need is compassion – just like Buddha had when he went to the 33 Heavens in the first place.

Returning to this World to Spread the Dharma

Buddha did not just go to the upper realms, he returned to help us.  Think about that.  How many of those who are in positions of great wealth, pleasure, or power return to help those less fortunate than they are?  The vast majority just wall themselves off from the unclean masses and try to turn a blind eye to the suffering around them, often while looking down on all those who are not as lucky as they are.  But Buddha returned.  Many people escape from poverty and enter into the middle or even upper classes; many people get out of their small towns and move to the big city where they enjoy great success; many people are the first in their communities to get a good education and go on to enjoy a life beyond the wildest dreams of those they grew up with; many people leave their country and move to rich countries; but very few of these return for the sake of those who were left behind.  The entire nationalist populist movement in the world today is a backlash against those who have enjoyed the fruits of globalization by those who were left behind.  Of all people, it was Trump who bothered to look back and even see these people.  Of course, he did so just to con them, but still – at least he looked back.  The rest of us…  But Buddha, he returned.

One of the best aspects of Jesus’ example is he made a point of seeking out those society had left behind, judged, and condemned.  He renounced the hypocrisy of those with wealth and power and lifted up the spirits of the downtrodden.  Despite being the Son of God, he returned and dedicated his life and his teachings to those less fortunate, those on the receiving end of oppression.  He returned. 

And so should we.  For us as Kadampas, it is an increasing time.  We are better off now than we were before.  There are many who we grew up with who have been left behind.  Maybe not in material terms, but certainly in spiritual terms.  When we are at our Dharma centers or festivals, we happily rejoin our friends, but think little of those who might feel alone or lost in the crowd.  When we start to gain some mental peace and stability, we start to become frustrated with “deluded people,” even using the Dharma to judge them in a sub-conscious effort to feel superior.  We start cocooning ourselves into smaller and smaller circles of like-minded people and view it as a chore to have to return to our families on the holidays.  The root of all negativity is self-cherishing, which is not just a mind that puts ourselves first but also neglects to bother caring for others.  We sometimes forget that latter part and content ourselves with not directly harming others.  Our failure to help when we otherwise could do so is a subtle form of harming others.  For somebody who travels Mahayana paths, they equally fear samsara and solitary peace, the latter being content to be absorbed in our own liberation while neglecting everybody else.  Buddha returned. 

If we are honest, it is terribly easy to call ourselves Mahayanists, but actually just be interested in our own freedom and happiness.  We generate ourselves as the deity in the pure land, but do we remember our compassionate reasons why we are bothering to emanate pure forms?  We may even be able to bring our winds into our central channel, but is our motivation bodhichitta or a wish for the bliss of mental suppleness?  Buddha returned.

On Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day, we should honestly examine our own behavior and see all of the different ways we neglect others.  We may not harm anybody, but we neglect almost everyone just in different ways.  We should ask ourselves, how can we return?  Who should we be returning to?  How can we emulate Buddha’s example?  We might think we will return when we become a Buddha, but if we never develop the habit of returning as a budding Bodhisattva, how will we want to return when we attain liberation? 

Returning doesn’t have to imply any physical action even, it is a mental attitude.  Do we give back?  Do we engage in our practices genuinely for the sake of others?  Do we say prayers?  Do we do powa for others?  Do we put others first in our daily actions?  All of these are returning.  Buddha returned, and so should we.

Returning to Spread the Dharma

The most important way in which we return is by dedicating ourselves to ensuring the Dharma flourishes forevermore.  Buddha did not just return to help people in worldly samsaric ways, he returned to help people escape from samsara as well.  Most people who escape from prison will not return to the prison to help everybody else escape as well.  Buddha does not seek for us merely that we enjoy a more privileged position in samsara, but he returned to tell us there is no happiness to be found anywhere within it.  He trains us to become qualified spiritual guides so we can help others likewise escape.  While we may leave samsara behind, like a good soldier, we leave nobody behind. 

Venerable Tharchin says we should each assume our place in the lineage.  The responsibility is on us to internalize the Dharma, then “return” to pass it on to the next generation.  We may not all do that as Dharma teachers, but we can do so as center administrators or even the person who secretly cleans all the toilets without anybody knowing.  Even if we do nothing physically to help others, through the power of our inner spiritual actions, we can bless the minds of everyone and pray for their well-being.  Some people think such actions are meaningless compared to “practical” (meaning physical) help, but Geshe-la explains that our mental actions are thousands of times more beneficial to others than anything we can do with our body or speech. 

At the end of every spiritual practice we do, we recite the prayers for the virtuous tradition.  Aligning our life with the meaning of this prayer is the actual meaning of Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day.  As Geshe-la explains, Je Tsongkhapa represented Buddha’s teachings, and his Dharma is Buddha’s Dharma.  Geshe-la has done the same for the modern world.  He returned.  This is the deeper, spiritual meaning of returning. 

So that the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa, the King of the Dharma may flourish, may all obstacles be pacified and may all favorable conditions abound.  Through the two collections of myself and others, gathered throughout the three times, may the doctrine of Losang Dragpa flourish forever more. 

A Pure Life: Abandoning Intoxicants (In particular alcohol and marijuana)

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part nine of a 12-part series on how to skillfully train in the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  The 15th of every month is Precepts Day, when Kadampa practitioners around the world typically take and observe the Precepts.

One of our Mahayana precepts is to abandon intoxicants.  This includes drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or taking drugs.  This is often one of the toughest ones for us to follow.  The object of this vow is obviously any intoxicant, whether it is legal or not.  Some people ask the question whether caffeine counts, after all it is highly addictive and many people relate to it no differently than other drugs.  And if coffee is an intoxicant, then aren’t all of the centers and festivals and World Peace Cafes constantly encouraging others to break their Pratimoksha vows?

Some people don’t like the answer I am about to give, but I will give it anyways.  Yes, I think caffeine can be considered an intoxicant.  I think nothing is really an intoxicant from its own side and everything can be an intoxicant for us depending on how we relate to it.  Sugar is not an intoxicant from its own side, but if we adopt an addictive attitude towards it, then for us I would way it is and likewise should be brought under control.  Likewise, many people get addicted to porn.  This is a very common addiction in the modern world, especially with the ease of access on-line.  This too can be a form of intoxicant for us depending on how we relate to it. Whether caffeine, sugar, and porn would be considered intoxicants as far as the Pratimoksha vows are concerned is debatable, but strictly speaking probably not. Should we nonetheless consider abandoning addiction to things a worthwhile goal on precepts day about abandoning intoxicants? Sure, why not.

Some objects, like cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are in a somewhat different category because their express purpose is to alter our mind.  This is the main point.  If we understand that our problem is our mind and alcohol and drugs help us change our mind, then can’t we argue that with them we are at least solving the right problem?  From one perspective, I guess we can say that.  But it is still a completely wrong thought.  Yes, we need to change our mind, but we need to change our mind with our mind.  We can think of our mind as like a muscle.  The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.  The more we become dependent upon other things to change our mind, the weaker that muscle becomes.  Ultimately, we need a very strong mind.  Further, alcohol and drugs function to render our mind uncontrolled.  Our goal is to make our mind controlled.  So these things may change our mind, but they do so in a way that makes our mind more uncontrolled, and thus they take us in the opposite direction of where we want to go.

Let’s talk about alcohol

Alcohol in particular generally just makes us stupid.  The reason why alcohol is so dangerous is it primarily functions to undermine our inhibitions.  Our inhibitions are often what hold us back from engaging in negativity.  If we harbor in our heart a good deal of negative impulses, then when we consume alcohol, it erodes those inhibitions and our negativity is given free rein.  We all know stories.  Now, some people say that there is nothing wrong with being an occasional social drinker, especially if is done in moderation.  It is true that it is less bad, but that does not necessarily make it good.  It is true that it is good to be social, but how will you grow more as a person, by using the crutch of alcohol or doing the deep inner work of overcoming those delusions which prevent you from being a socially engaged person?  I am now a diplomat and I attend quite a number of social gatherings where virtually everyone is drinking.  I walk around with a glass of water or even orange juice in my hand.  At first, I hated these gatherings because I have never liked parties.  But I forced myself to learn how to become socially engaged, to let go, relax, and have a good time.  I learned how to be able to have a good conversation easily with anybody.  The secret to this is not complicated:  take a genuine interest in what others have to say.  Everyone has a lifetime’s worth of experiences waiting to be tapped, and all you need to do is be interested in finding out what they have to say.  Usually people only want to talk about themselves anyway, so it is not difficult to get the conversations started, and what you will find is because you have all of your mental faculties about you, you are better able to cherish the other person and occasionally pepper the conversation with some wisdom. 

Other people object saying having a glass of red wine every day has been medically proven to be good for your health.  I am not a doctor, so I cannot say whether this is true or not, but let’s just assume it is.  My question is simple:  isn’t moral discipline also good for your health?  Let us take a wild exaggeration of the benefits of drinking a glass of wine every day and say it adds 10 years onto your human life.  Surely that is extraordinary, is it not?  Surely that is enough justification to do it.  But every time we engage in the practice of moral discipline we create the substantial karmic cause for a rebirth in the upper realms, for example as a human.  If we assume an average lifespan of 80 years, what extends our experience of human life more, the 10 years or the 80?  And, just to take this a little further, if you practice this moral discipline every day from age 21 to 80, then that is 21,535 instances of moral discipline, each one of which creates the cause for at least another human rebirth of say 80 years, then keeping this vow will extend our experience of human life by 1,722,800 years!  Do the math.  Logic doesn’t lie. 

Let’s talk about marijuana

Some people agree that drinking alcohol just makes us stupid and taking hard drugs is just too dangerous, but they then ask what about marijuana?  People who have smoked almost all agree that it makes them more mellow and often gives them insights which are very similar and profound like what we realize with the Dharma.  There are also a great number of medical studies about the health benefits of this drug.  Let us face it, a very high percentage of Dharma practitioners have smoked pot in the past. 

Here the case is much harder, but still it is not worth it.  Why?  First, just as alcohol functions to undermine our inhibitions, marijuana functions to undermine our desire to do anything other than more marijuana.  This is true and anybody who has smoked knows what I am talking about.  Conventionally, people usually all agree that people who regularly smoke have less ambition and drive than they used to.  Whenever free time arises, their first impulse is to light up.  As we know from the lamrim teachings, desire is everything.  All of the lamrim meditations are ultimately about building up within us an unquenchable desire for liberation and enlightenment.  Marijuana deflates our desires, and the more we smoke the less we desire anything else. 

Second, if we are even slightly prone to psychiatric disorders, marijuana is downright dangerous.  When I was in Geneva, there were three different practitioners who were mentally completely normal prior to smoking marijuana, but they had latent potentials for psychiatric disorders, and after smoking regularly for a period of time, they all three developed very serious psychiatric issues, so much so that all three of them have spent a fair amount of time in mental hospitals.  We do not know what latent potentialities we have lurking under the surface, and smoking could activate them.  Perhaps we have smoked a few times without a problem and therefore think we are immune to this problem.  But we never know if we are just one joint away from tripping over some invisible karmic wire we did not know was there.

Third, marijuana is a gateway drug.  It is like crossing the Rubicon, and once we have done so, the other drugs that before we said we would never even consider trying suddenly no longer seem that different.  Marijuana seems to be OK, perhaps Ecstasy, opium, or a little blow might be OK too.  Geshe-la explains in the teachings on delusions that the easiest way to stop delusions is to do so early before they have gathered up steam.  Once we allow them to run a little bit in our mind, they can seemingly take on a force of their own and become unstoppable in our mind.  It is the same with drugs.  Just as they say it is easier to attain enlightenment once we have become a human than it is to become a human if we have fallen into the lower realms, so too it is easier to avoid marijuana now than it is to avoid using other drugs once we have started using marijuana. 

Finally, sometimes people object saying that when they smoke marijuana it gives them deep insights into the Dharma, so how can that be bad.  Perhaps it is true that when we smoke up, suddenly emptiness makes sense.  We see all the connections between the different Dharma teachings.  Such experiences can quickly and easily be used to justify doing it some more “for valid Dharma reasons.”  So again, just like with the health benefits of drinking a glass of wine every day, let us assume for the sake of argument that there are deeper insights to be had by smoking marijuana.  Once again, my question is simple:  isn’t having a precious human life also good for gaining spiritual insights?  Every time we practice moral discipline for spiritual reasons, we create the karmic causes for an entire precious human life.  So what gives us greater opportunities to gain spiritual insights, 80 years worth of a precious human life or a few hours each week for 80 years?  And this is setting aside the fact that there are diminishing returns.  Perhaps the first time we get high we feel the subtle vibrations of the cosmos, but do we get that same feeling the 20th time we get high?  Eventually, it starts to do very little for us.  So again, let us assume you smoke once a week for your whole life.  By taking this vow, you will train in this moral discipline 3,120 times (assuming you are 20 and live until you are 80).  3,120 actions of moral discipline translates into 3,120 precious human lives or another 249,600 years’ worth of precious human existence.  What will give you the opportunity to gain greater spiritual insight, 250,000 years’ worth of precious human life or a few random insights from being high?  Again, math does not lie.

The final thing I want to address is the situation of what happens if despite all of the above, we are ready to take the Pratimoksha vows for everything except this one related to intoxicants.  We just can’t bring ourselves to do it.  Should we hold off on taking the vows?  Normally, Geshe-la teaches that we generate the intention to one day keep all our vows purely and that is good enough. So by that logic, the answer would be we should take the vows and then gradually work with all of them until we can keep them better. But for technical reasons I don’t fully understand, apparently we can’t follow this logic with our pratimoksha vows.

So should we not take the Pratimoksha vows at all then if we find ourself in this situation? I would say there is nothing stopping us from formally taking all the other Pratimoksha vows as clear, absolute moral disciplines, and then we take the one at the level of intention of working gradually with the vow until one day we can keep it perfectly too. Have we taken Pratimoksha vows in this way? Technically no, but we’ve taken something very close to them. So there is no reason to not do this. It makes absolutely no sense to refrain from all moral discipline just because you cannot do one act of moral discipline perfectly.  How is that any better? 

Now it is true that we cannot take all of the Pratimoksha vows except the one regarding intoxicants, we need to work with all of the vows, but we can work with each one at different levels according to our capacity.  Just as Buddha skillfully encouraged the butcher to no longer kill animals at night, so too we can skillfully promise to refrain from taking intoxicants in some circumstances, such as never do so while alone.  Or not on Tuesdays, whatever.  Start somewhere, and then gradually expand the scope.  What matters is that mentally you understand the value of moral discipline and you maintain the intention to one day keep even this vow purely.  It is better to get incomplete benefits from imperfect Pratimoksha vows than it is to get no benefit from no Pratimoksha vows.  So don’t let this wrong understanding prevent you from getting started on the path of improving your moral discipline.