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 32 of a 44-part series.

The third to the seventh points of training the mind

Though the world and its beings, filled with the effects of evil,
Pour down unwanted suffering like rain,
This is a chance to exhaust the effects of negative actions;
Seeing this, I seek your blessings to transform adverse conditions into the path.

Sometimes people do not like the teachings on the sufferings of samsara because they think it is a very pessimistic way of thinking. And we believe that being an optimist is how to be happy. The solution to this dilemma is to be pessimist with respect to expecting samsara to ever deliver happiness, but an optimist with respect to our pure potential to become an enlightened being. Usually we do the opposite. We expect samsara to work and are then frustrated and disappointed when it does not.  We likewise do not believe that we are capable of accomplishing any of the spiritual grounds and paths and therefore, we do not commit ourselves to training in them. We need to reverse this. The truth is samsara is the nature of suffering. Just as it is the nature of fire to burn, so too it is the nature of samsara to always go wrong. It is exceedingly rare that things go right, and when they do it does not last very long and never works out in the way we had hoped.

Why is this not a pessimistic way of thinking? It all comes down to managing our own expectations. We all know the logic of managing others’ expectations. If someone asks us how long it will take to complete a report, we think to ourselves it will probably take one week, but we tell the other person it will take two weeks. Why do we do this? Because if we told them it will take one week, and it takes one week, they will just simply accept it. But if we tell them it will take two weeks, and then we deliver it in one week, they will think we did an outstanding job. In both cases, the job itself was still done in only one week, the difference is what people’s expectations were determined how they experienced what happens. In exactly the same way, if we always expect things to go wrong, and it does, then we just accept it. But if it winds up being better than we expected, then we are pleasantly surprised. Either way, we are happy. Gen-la Losang said we should expect nothing from samsara – absolutely zero. If we do, then we will never be disappointed and will sometimes be pleasantly surprised. Thus, if we wish to be optimistic in terms of effect, in other words being happy with what happens in life, then we need to be pessimistic with respect to what we expect will happen.

There are two types of experience in samsara – pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences. We can transform pleasant experiences into the path through the tantric teachings, as explained before during the tsog offering. And we can transform unpleasant experiences into the path through the Lojong teachings. In this way, no matter what we experience, it serves as fuel for our spiritual development, and therefore is not a problem.

What are some ways that we can transform adverse conditions into the path? Geshe-la explains in Universal Compassion that we can do so by means of method and by means of wisdom. By means of method means we use the adverse circumstance to increase our renunciation or bodhicitta. When something bad happens to us, we can view it as a reminder that if we wish to escape from suffering permanently, we must escape from samsara. When something bad happens to others, we can view it as a reminder that we must become a Buddha so that we can free all other living beings from samsara. Further, patiently accepting when bad things happen functions to purify the negative karma that is ripening. In this way we can gradually exhaust the effects of our negative actions. If we also refrain from engaging in new negative actions, it is just a question of time for our karma changes. To transform adverse conditions by means of wisdom means to recall that our self, the suffering, and whatever gave rise to suffering, are all equally empty of inherent existence. They are all mere karmic appearances to mind. Instead of grasping at some things as being good and other things as being bad, we can experience all things equally as the dance of bliss and emptiness.

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 31 of a 44-part series.

Exchanging self with others

In short, since the childish are concerned for themselves alone,
Whereas Buddhas work solely for the sake of others,
I seek your blessings to distinguish the faults and benefits,
And Thus, be able to exchange myself with others.

Since cherishing myself is the door to all faults
And cherishing mother beings is the foundation of all good qualities,
I seek your blessings to take as my essential practice
The yoga of exchanging self with others.

To exchange our self with others means to cherish only other living beings. This mind is the natural conclusion of the previous contemplations. If there is no advantage and only suffering that comes from cherishing ourselves and only advantages and happiness that comes from cherishing others, it follows that we should not cherish ourselves at all and cherish only others.

We might object, “if we do not cherish ourselves at all then who will take care of us?” The answer is we do not need to cherish ourselves to take care of ourselves. It is perfectly possible to take care of ourselves – feed our body, get adequate rest, and meet all our other needs – for the sake of cherishing others. For example, if we starve or become sick because we are not caring for ourselves, then we are not able to help others. Indeed, the mind of bodhichitta, which we will discuss later, seeks to acquire every good quality for the sake of others. There is no contradiction whatsoever between improving ourselves, taking care of ourselves, and cherishing only others.

How can we generate the mind of exchanging self with others? As with abandoning self-cherishing and cherishing others, it suffices for us to contemplate the advantages of doing so and then make the determination to cherish only others. The more familiarity we gain with this determination, the more our behavior will become consistent with it. Fundamentally it is simply a question of familiarity. We need to make effort every day, month after month, life after life, to come to cherish only others. With familiarity this mind will come. Once it does, as explained before, enlightenment will naturally follow.

In chapter eight of Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Shantideva explains a special method for generating the mind of exchanging self with others. He encourages us to identify with people who we normally generate pride, competitiveness, or jealousy towards. We put ourselves in their shoes and look back upon our old self. For example, we usually generate pride towards someone who we think is inferior to us in some way. When we put ourselves in their shoes and look back at our arrogant old self, we can see very clearly our selfish and deluded behavior and can realize what the other the person needs from us. Seeing ourselves from the perspective of others is a powerful way for undermining and ultimately destroying our self-cherishing attitude.

According to Highest Yoga Tantra, we can exchange self with others by simply imputing our “I” onto all living beings thinking that we are now them. And then we can impute “other” onto our old self. On the basis of these new imputations, we cherish our new self and can completely neglect our old self. All these practices can give rise to misinterpretations of what it means, but if we put the instructions into practice sincerely and try approach it in the way it was intended, we can naturally overcome these doubts and hesitations.

Taking and giving

Therefore, O Compassionate, Venerable Guru, I seek your blessings
So that all the suffering, negativities, and obstructions of mother sentient beings
Will ripen upon me right now;
And through my giving my happiness and virtue to others,
May all migrating beings be happy.  (3x)

This is the only verse in the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide that has five lines. Geshe-la explains in Great Treasury of Merit this is to indicate the special importance of this practice. In Universal Compassion, Geshe-la explains that the practice of taking and giving is the synthesis of our Lojong trainings. All the previous meditations on exchanging self with others, great compassion, and wishing love all find their final conclusion in the practice of taking and giving.

The practice here is quite simple: first we generate a mind of compassion for all living beings, and then we generate the superior intention to ourselves protect others from their suffering. With this mind, we then imagine we take on all the suffering of others in the form of black smoke which comes to our heart and destroys our self-cherishing mind completely. We then generate a mind of wishing love, wishing that others experience only pure happiness, and we once again generate a superior intention to assume personal responsibility to help others be happy. We then imagine that from our heart infinite light rays radiate out in all directions bestowing upon all living beings pure and everlasting happiness. Imagining that we have taken away all their suffering and bestowed upon them perfect happiness, we then generate a mind of joy strongly believing that we have done so.

The doubt may arise that we have not actually taken on the suffering of others or given them happiness. This doubt then prevents us from generating joy, feeling that we have not engaged in the practice. There are several lines of thought we can use to overcome this doubt. First, others do not inherently exist. They are not inherently suffering, nor are they inherently unhappy. That is simply how they are appearing to us based upon our past karma with them. The practice of taking and giving is similar to our tantric practices of bringing the result into the path. Engaging in the practice of taking and giving creates a new karma which causes the beings of our karmic dream to appear to be free from suffering and experiencing everlasting happiness. This is a way of karmically reconstructing the empty beings of our dream. Second, we do not generate joy believing others have been freed from their suffering and so forth because we believe they inherently have, rather we generate joy because strongly believing we have done this is how we complete the mental action of taking and giving. In other words, generating the mind of joy believing we have taken on their suffering and bestowed upon them happiness is how we complete the mental action of taking and giving, which then gives us all the karmic benefits of the practice.

We can engage in the practice of taking and giving at any time. One powerful way of doing this is to mount the practice of taking giving upon the breath. As we inhale, we imagine that we take on all the suffering of living beings. And as we exhale, we imagine that we bestow upon others everlasting happiness. There is a close relationship between our breath and our mind. If we mount the virtuous practice of taking giving upon our breath, it will function to purify our inner energy winds. If our inner energy winds are purified, then our mind will naturally also become purified.

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 30 of a 44-part series.

Seeing that the mind that cherishes mother beings and would secure their happiness
Is the gateway that leads to infinite good qualities,
I seek your blessings to cherish these beings more than my life,
Even if they rise up against me as my enemies.

Just as self-cherishing is the root cause of all our suffering, the mind that cherishes others is the root cause of all our happiness. The logic is exactly the same. All our happiness comes from virtuous actions, and all virtuous actions come from the mind that cherishes other living beings and considers their happiness to be important. All virtuous actions begin by considering that others’ happiness and well-being matters, and therefore works to secure it.

Just as we need to gather all blame into one, so two we need to give all credit to one – namely the mind of cherishing others. Geshe-la explains in Eight Steps to Happiness that the path to enlightenment is very simple: all we need to do is change the object of our cherishing from ourselves to others, and all the other stages of the path to enlightenment will naturally flow from this. Enlightenment depends upon the mind of bodhicitta, the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of others. Bodhicitta depends upon the mind of great compassion, which wishes to protect all living beings from all forms of suffering for all their lives. The mind of great compassion only arises when we consider the suffering of those we love. If we do not love somebody, and we consider their suffering, we do not feel any compassion and we may even feel delight. But when we love somebody, and we see that they are suffering, the mind of compassion naturally arises. There are three types of love: affectionate love, cherishing love, and wishing love. Affectionate love is delighted merely to think or see other living beings, like a loving grandmother seeing her grandchildren. Cherishing love considers the happiness and well-being of others to be important to us, something worth working towards. Wishing love aims to give others happiness. The mind of great compassion depends upon having cherishing love for all living beings. Thus, enlightenment naturally follows simply from the mind that cherishes others.

How do we generate the mind of cherishing others? In this verse and in Eight Steps to Happiness, Geshe-la explains it is sufficient to simply contemplate the benefits of cherishing others and then make the firm determination to do so. We can likewise consider the analogy of viewing all living beings as the body of life. Of course we should cherish every part of our body because it is part of our body; in the same way, of course we should cherish all living beings because they are all part of the body of life. Atisha explains in Advice from Atisha’s Heart that the actual root of cherishing others is learning to appreciate their good qualities and to stop inappropriate attention on their faults. Because we focus on others’ faults, we generate aversion and even hatred towards others, and with such a focus it is impossible to generate the mind that considers what happens to them to be important. But when we focus our attention on the good qualities of others and choose to not pay attention to their faults, then we naturally start to see them as precious and, on this basis, it is easy to then cherish them.

We might object, “but if I do not see their faults then I am not seeing things objectively and they could even harm me.” This is a wrong conclusion. First, there is a difference between not seeing others’ faults and having inappropriate attention towards their faults. Inappropriate attention exaggerates the appearance of faults, and therefore is a mind that is not objective. Second, we need to make a distinction between the person and their delusions. The person is not their delusions, rather their delusions are like clouds in the sky of their mind. Because we make a distinction between the person and their faults, we are able to see the faults for what they are, but not see them as faults of the person and therefore still be able to cherish them. Third, when we see others’ faults and relate to them as faulty, it functions to draw out their worst aspects and it creates self-fulfilling prophecies. Every teacher and every parent can confirm whatever we pay attention to is what we draw out in others. Thus, even if they have faults, it is better for us to focus on their good qualities to help draw them out. Fourth, Venerable Tharchin explains that any fault we see in others is in fact a reflection of that same fault within our own mind. It is only because we have that fault in our mind that we can perceive it in others. This is true because others are fundamentally empty – they are mere projections or reflections of our own mind. Thus, when we see faults in others, we should see them as a mirror reflecting back to us faults that we have within ourselves. He goes on to explain that if we eliminate the fault within our self, it will begin to disappear in others almost like magic. Finally, we can view the appearance of faults in others as a supremely skillful teaching of an emanation of our spiritual guide. Buddhas can emanate all sorts of forms to reveal to us the truth of Dharma. People behaving in faulty ways teaches us to not act in those ways, and therefore they provide us with powerful teachings. Who is to say they are not emanations of Buddha teaching us these lessons? Even if that is not in fact the case, it is still a beneficial way of viewing things, and so we can still perceive the fault, defend ourselves against it, and nonetheless not see any fault in others.

In the sadhana it says that we should cherish others even if they rise up against us as our enemies. There are several reasons for this. First, by cherishing them despite them harming us we are able to purify the negative karma associated with them harming us in some way. If instead we retaliated, we would create once again new negative karma ensuring that others harm us again in the future. Cherishing those who harm us is therefore a way of ending the karmic cycles that we have been trapped in since beginning last time. This is not different than what Jesus advised to turn the other cheek.

Second, Geshe-la once famously explained in Toronto that love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies. If we cherish our enemies, they will come to view us as their friends, and therefore no longer view us as their enemy. Yes, this process may take time before we bring about a change in their perspective of us, but if we are patient with the process and willing to accept the karmic consequences of our past behavior of viewing them as an enemy, gradually we will turn our relationship around with them. We should be careful though to not misinterpret this to mean that we should cooperate with others’ dysfunctional or abusive behavior. It does not help others for us to enable them and allow them to engage in abuse towards us. Therefore, it can be an act of cherishing others to no longer cooperate with their delusions.

Third, others are only our enemies by mere imputation. If we viewed others as emanations of our spiritual guide, for example, then they would no longer be our enemy, but instead we would see them as our kind teacher. Atisha once had a cook who was very disrespectful towards Atisha. Atisha’s other disciples wondered why Atisha keep kept this cook around when there were so many other disciples who would be more than happy to serve their spiritual guide. Atisha said this disrespectful assistant was in fact very kind to him because this person gave him the opportunity to train in patience, and there’s no virtue greater than patience.

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 29 of a 44-part series.

Equalizing self and others

In that no one wishes for even the slightest suffering,
Or is ever content with the happiness they have,
There is no difference between myself and others;
Realizing this, I seek your blessings joyfully to make others happy.

As explained above, there are two methods for generating bodhicitta: considering how all living beings are our mother and exchanging self with others. Meditation on equalizing self with others is the first meditation of the second method. The second method for generating bodhicitta is more powerful than the first method because we cherish ourselves more than we cherish our mother. Since it is more powerful, the practice Offering to the Spiritual Guide dedicates five full verses to the practice.

When we equalize self with others our objective is to generate the same degree of cherishing for others as we have for ourselves, in other words, to cherish others as we cherish ourself. This is not that uncommon of a mind. Political leaders who view their job as serving the public interest consider the happiness and welfare of all their citizens as being equally important. If some politicians can generate this mind, then surely we can generate this mind as a would-be-bodhisattva. We likewise find this mind in many families that consider every person in the family to be equally important and make decisions based upon what is best for the family as a whole. Some teachers do the same with the students in their classroom and some employers do the same with the people who work at their company. Even in normal society, we would say a political leader, a parent, a teacher, or an employer who puts their own interest ahead of the interests of those they serve is a corrupt person.

There are several different methods we can use to reach this mind. One method for doing so is to realize that all living beings have an equal wish to be happy all the time. There is nothing about our own happiness that makes it more important than the happiness of anybody else. Since we all share an equal wish, and there’s nothing that makes us more important than anybody else, it follows that we should cherish the happiness of each and every living being equally. A particularly powerful way of generating this mind is to consider how all living beings are like cells in the body of life. Just as we would not say the hand does not care what happens to the foot, so too when we have equalized self with others, we cannot say that we do not care about what happens to other living beings because we are all part of the same body of life. The definitive way of generating this mind is to consider how all living beings, including ourselves, are all equally empty and therefore equally projections of our mind. There is no basis for cherishing one appearance in our mind over another since they are all equally appearances to our mind. Whichever line of reasoning works for us, the goal is the same, namely to generate a feeling that cherishes all living beings equally.

The dangers of self-cherishing

Seeing that this chronic disease of cherishing myself
Is the cause that gives rise to unwanted suffering,
I seek your blessings to destroy this great demon of selfishness
By resenting it as the object of blame.

In the teachings on training the mind, we are encouraged to gather all blame into one. The meaning of this practice is every time we experience any problem, or we see anybody else experiencing any sort of suffering, we blame it entirely upon the mind of self-cherishing. In the Lord of all Lineages prayer it says, “since beginningless time the root of all my suffering has been my self-cherishing mind, I must expel it from my heart, cast it afar, and cherish only other living beings.”

How can we understand self-cherishing to be the cause of all our suffering? All our suffering comes from our negative karma, and all our negative karma is committed with a mind of self-cherishing. Self-cherishing considers our own happiness to be more important than the happiness of others and is therefore willing to sacrifice the happiness of others for the sake of ourselves. All non-virtuous actions fundamentally are willing to harm others in some way for the sake of ourselves.

Further, what happens to us is only a problem because we consider our own happiness to be important. If we did not consider our own happiness to be important, then what happens to us would also not be important, and therefore not a problem. From this we can see the only reason why we have any problems is because we cherish ourselves.

Intellectually this is not difficult to understand. The practice is to develop the habit of gathering all blame into one. We need to do this again and again and again throughout our life, whenever we see ourselves or others suffer, we do the mental exercise of identifying exactly how and why it is the fault of self-cherishing. The more we do this, the more determined we will become to destroy this demon within our mind.

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 28 of a 44-part series.

Developing the wish to gain liberation

Being violently tossed by the waves of delusion and karma
And tormented by the sea-monsters of the three sufferings,
I seek your blessings to develop a strong wish for liberation
From the boundless and fearful great ocean of samsara.

Even if we take an upper rebirth, our situation is only temporary. It is just a question of time before we burn up the virtuous karma giving rise to our upper rebirth and we fall once again into the lower realms. Beings in the upper realms primarily just enjoy their good karma ripening. We can see this in our world with those who are extremely fortunate. How many dedicate their lives and their good karma to helping others? Besides Bill Gates, there is virtually no one. Taking an upper rebirth is extremely dangerous from a karmic perspective because we essentially create a bonfire for all our virtuous karma. Once it is burned up, all that remains on our mind is negative, and then we once again fall into the lower realms. Thus, to be in samsara is to be in the lower realms with only very temporary exceptions.

It is helpful to consider what exactly is samsara. In truth, it is a karmic nightmare that we are trapped in that we believe to be true. Everything we normally perceive does not exist, but we think it does, and as a result we suffer. To wish to escape from samsara, therefore is the wish to wake up.

How to practise the path that leads to liberation

Forsaking the mind that views as a pleasure garden
This unbearable prison of samsara,
I seek your blessings to take up the victory banner of liberation
By maintaining the three higher trainings and the wealths of Superiors.

All the so-called good experiences we have in samsara are in reality changing suffering – the temporary reduction of our discomfort. Eating temporarily reduces the suffering of hunger. Sleeping temporarily reduces the suffering of fatigue. Companionship temporarily reduces the suffering of being alone. The list goes on and on. And even if we were able to experience good things for all this life, we would still all inevitably get sick, get old, and die. We are imputing our “I” onto a sinking ship. From a tantric perspective, samsara is identifying with contaminated aggregates of body and mind. More profoundly, it is ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions. These have all been explained in detail in previous posts. The point is, there is no lasting happiness to be found anywhere in samsara. If we contemplate this deeply, we see our only rational choice is to escape.

What are the three higher trainings? They can properly be understood as the process of letting go of samsara. The three higher trainings are higher moral discipline, higher concentration, and higher wisdom. They are called higher trainings because they are motivated by renunciation, the wish to escape from samsara. With higher moral discipline, we let go of deluded behavior. With higher concentration, we let go of our distractions being fascinated by samsaric objects. With higher wisdom, we let go of grasping at the things we normally see existing from their own side. In particular, we let go of grasping at our ordinary body in mind as ourself. Once we let go of samsara, it will gradually exhaust itself because it was never anything more than mere karmic appearance.

How to generate great compassion, the foundation of the Mahayana

Contemplating how all these pitiful migrators are my mothers,
Who out of kindness have cherished me again and again,
I seek your blessings to generate a spontaneous compassion
Like that of a loving mother for her dearest child.

Just as we are trapped in samsara, so too are all other living beings. But frankly, we generally do not care. Why? Because we do not think these other living beings are important, or that their happiness matters. Once we consider them to be important, then we consider how they too are suffering, and we will naturally generate a compassionate wish that they too escape from samsara. In the Lamrim teachings there are two principal methods taught for how to consider the happiness of others to be important. The first is to consider how all living beings are our mothers, and the second is to engage in the practice of exchanging self with others. In this verse, we train in the first method.

The logic here is very simple. Because we have taken countless rebirths in the past, we have had countless mothers. Where are all these mothers today? They are the beings around us. Buddha said there is not a single living being who has not been the mother of all the others. This is difficult for us to understand only because we fail to grasp the infinite past of our lives. We tend to think in very narrow terms just the human world on this planet. Time is without beginning, therefore there has been plenty of time for each and every living being to have at one point been our mother.

Some people also struggle with this meditation because they have a bad relationship with their mother of this life. For these people, considering how everyone is our mother does not help us to generate compassion for them because we do not like our present mother. There are two answers to this problem. The first is to see things in perspective. No matter how much harm our mother caused us after we were born, the truth is we would not even have this life if she had not kept us and kept us alive when we were younger. Thus, everything we have in this life is indirectly thanks to our mother. And even if she was abusive with us, this has taught us how not to be with others, and so even her negative actions have brought us benefit. The second way of avoiding this problem is to consider that all living beings are equally our child. We have been the parent or mother of all living beings at one point in the past. It is because our mother so mistreated us that we now wish to not repeat her mistakes and instead to care for all living beings as a good mother should that we can consider everyone as our child who we must care for. The point is to realize each and every living being is someone important whose happiness we should care for. It does not matter whether we reach this destination by considering how everyone is our mother or by considering how everyone is our child.

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 27 of a 44-part series.

How to rely upon our spiritual guide, the root of spiritual paths

Through the force of my making offerings and respectful requests
To the venerable spiritual guide, the holy, supreme Field of Merit,
I seek your blessings, O Protector, the root of all goodness and joy,
So that you will gladly take me into your loving care.

In truth, the entire practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide explains how to rely upon our spiritual guide. The main point is to develop conviction that our spiritual guide is indeed a Buddha and the source of all good in our lives. To develop conviction in the former, we need to understand the emptiness of the spiritual guide. Sometimes when we hear teachings explaining that the spiritual guide is a Buddha, we misunderstand this to me we are to try view him as inherently a Buddha. But obviously that is not correct since nothing is inherently existent. Instead, we need to understand that by viewing him as a Buddha, Buddha will enter into him and we will receive Buddha’s blessings through him.

More profoundly, viewing our spiritual guide as a Buddha does not mean viewing him as a Buddha from his own side, rather it is a special way of relating to everything the spiritual guide does so that it functions to provide us with pure Dharma teachings. So even if our spiritual guide, or any living being for that matter, engages in manifestly negative or destructive actions, we can nonetheless view all these as powerful teachings of our spiritual guide. Nothing is pure from its own side, rather things become pure by viewing and relating to them in a pure way. Pure view does not exist on the side of the object, rather it exists on the side of the subject mind viewing things. Thus, if we want to generate pure view of our spiritual guide, regarding him as a Buddha, it suffices to relate to everything that he does as something confirming or revealing the truth of Dharma. We can apply this same logic to any living being, and therefore view anyone as an emanation of our spiritual guide. But we begin by first doing it with the person in our life who is so manifestly engaging in the actions of a Buddha, namely our spiritual guide. Once we can do it with our spiritual guide, it becomes easier to do it with other living beings.

To gain conviction in the latter, that the spiritual guide is the source of all good, it suffices to recall the teachings on karma that all happiness comes from virtuous actions. Then we look honestly into our mind and realize that all the habits that we have effortlessly move in a negative direction, and it takes effort for us to engage in virtuous actions. This shows that the current of our mind is moving in a negative direction. If this is true even once we have found the Dharma, it is obviously true for all our past lives. Thus, it is safe to say that the only time we engaged in any virtuous action was when we received the blessings of a Buddha to encourage us to do so. Thus, any happiness we enjoy comes from our past virtue, which comes from receiving the blessings of Buddha.

Developing the aspiration to take the essence of our human life

Realizing that this freedom and endowment, found only once,
Are difficult to attain, and yet decay so quickly,
I seek your blessings to seize their essential meaning,
Undistracted by the meaningless activities of this life.

It is important to make a distinction between having a human life and having a precious human life. To have a precious human life means to have a human life plus also have an interest in Dharma and an opportunity to meet pure teachings. It is exceedingly rare for us to attain a precious human life. For me, the most powerful analogy is likening the odds of a precious human rebirth to the odds of a blind turtle surfacing only once every 100 years putting its head through a golden yoke floating on an ocean the size of this world. The earth’s surface is 149 trillion square meters, so we can say we have a one in 149 trillion chance of attaining a precious human rebirth. Amongst humans, very few have an interest in practicing the Dharma and have found a pure path that they can practice. Thus, objectively speaking we can say it is almost impossible to attain a precious human rebirth. Yet we have attained one. That is undeniable. The question we all face is what do we do with the opportunity we have been given?

The actual method for gaining the happiness of higher states in future lives

Fearing the blazing fires of the sufferings of bad migrations,
From the depths of my heart I go for refuge to the Three Jewels,
And seek your blessings to strive sincerely
To abandon non-virtue and practise the entire collection of virtue.

When you look at the population of just this world, we can see that animals and insects far outnumber humans, probably by a factor of at least a million to one. Some scientists estimate much much higher than that. If we assume the same proportions into the hungry ghost and the hell realms, we can see that the overwhelming majority of living beings in samsara are in the lower realms. When we take rebirth in the lower realms, we engage in almost exclusively negative actions. This means that virtually all the karma on our mind is negative. To attain a human rebirth, positive karma needs to ripen. That is exceedingly rare simply because such karma is exceedingly rare. Whether we take a human or a lower rebirth in our next life depends upon the quality of mind we have at the time of death. If we die with a negative mind, it will activate negative karma throwing us into the lower realms. If we die with a positive mind, it will activate positive karma throwing us into the upper realms. If we die with a pure mind, it will activate pure karma enabling us to escape from samsara and take rebirth in a pure land. Typically, when we encounter adverse circumstances, we react with a negative deluded mind. We can observe this in our daily behavior. There is no experience more adverse than death. If we respond to even minor inconveniences with negativity, it goes without question that we are most likely to respond to our death with a negative mind. This means unless we thoroughly train our mind, it is almost certain we will fall into the lower realms.

The truth of the matter is samsara is almost entirely the lower realms. The upper realms are like a tiny island surrounded by an ocean of fire. The island we stand on is sinking into the fire. This is not a metaphor, this is our actual karmic situation. We tend to think it is highly unlikely we will take lower rebirth, but the reality is the exact opposite. We need to let this truth touch our heart and frankly become terrified at the prospect of our almost certain lower rebirth. Virtually everybody we know and everybody we see will all fall into the lower realms. We are all bound for hell. Hell is our natural home in samsara.

Sometimes we reject these teachings because we think it is a religious institution trying to manipulate us. While of course we need to check to see if this is the case, we also need to check to see if this is in fact our samsaric situation. There are many valid reasons establishing the existence of past and future lives. It is also a manifest truth that we very rarely engage in virtuous actions despite having found the Dharma. So how often do we create the karma to attain another rebirth compared to how often in our countless past lives we have created the causes for lower rebirth? Do the math. The truth is inescapable. The only question is whether we allow this truth to touch our heart and then become extremely motivated to engage in purification practice.

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 26 of a 44-part series.

HUM All you Tathagatas,
Heroes, Yoginis,
Dakas, and Dakinis,
To all you I make this request:
Like a lotus born from the centre of a swamp,
This method, though born from attachment, is unstained by the faults of attachment.
O Supreme Dakini, through the bliss of your lotus,
Please quickly bring liberation from the bonds of samsara.
AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO
May the assembly of stainless Dakinis
Look with loving affection and accomplish all deeds.

The fifth and sixth lines of this verse emphasize that the spontaneous great joy we generated with the previous verse is by nature completely free from any grasping or attachment. Sexual bliss is very pleasant, but is characterized by a strong grasping at the experience. If we check our mind when we are experiencing sexual bliss it is not a peaceful mind. The great bliss of completion stage is by nature inner peace. Enlightenment is sometimes called the supreme inner peace of enlightenment. Great bliss is an inner peace that is so peaceful it is blissful. It is completely relaxed and spacious without the slightest trace of tension or grasping. It feels as if our mind has settled into a complete stillness and has no need or desire whatsoever to arise from that stillness because any movement would be away from the most pleasant experience possible to something less pleasant. This is why the mind of great bliss is the supreme mind of concentration that far surpasses tranquil abiding. There is no better mind for concentrating on virtue.

In all our tantric practices of transforming pleasant circumstances into the path the procedure is the same. We can take eating ice cream as an example. When we eat ice cream, we generate a pleasant experience on our tongue. Normally we then grasp at the ice cream as an external cause of our pleasant experience and generate attachment for ice cream as a result. But if we were to transform the pleasant experience of eating ice cream into the path using tantric methods, we would then mentally imagine we dissolve both the ice cream and our tongue into their ultimate nature emptiness while retaining the pleasant experience we are enjoying. When we are able to retain the pleasant experience without the appearance of the external object that we mistakenly thought was giving rise to the pleasant experience, we are able to meditate on the union of the pleasant experience and emptiness. Instead of giving rise to attachment, we realize we can generate pleasant experiences from within our mind and hold them regardless of what external objects we are exposed to. In exactly the same way, we can transform any pleasant experience, including the pleasant experiences of sexual activities.

When we recite this verse, we can mentally imagine that we dissolve our self, Vajraygoini, and the entire pure land generated around us into the clear light emptiness while retaining the spontaneous great joy we experienced and generated through the previous verse. This is exactly the same as we would do if we were transforming eating ice cream using tantric methods. This meditation on the experience of spontaneous great joy mixed inseparably with emptiness, like water mixed with water, functions to purify all the contaminated karma on our mind. As explained before, there are two types of obstruction to our enlightenment: delusion obstructions and obstructions to omniscience. Delusion obstructions are the tendencies similar to the cause to generate delusions from our past delusions. Obstructions to omniscience are the effects similar to the cause, environmental effects, and ripened effects of our past deluded actions. Once we have freed our mind from all the delusion obstructions, we attain liberation. This comes first. We then continue to meditate on the union of bliss and emptiness and gradually purify all the obstructions to omniscience. When that happens, we attain full enlightenment. In this verse, we imagine that in dependence upon our experience of the union of spontaneous great joy and emptiness we completely purify all our delusion obstructions and therefore attain liberation. The lotus referred to in the eighth line is once again Vajrayogini’s bhaga.

When we recite the ninth line, we do not directly visualize ourselves engaging in union with Vajrayogini as we have done in the previous verses, rather everything has been dissolved into clear light emptiness. In Understanding the Mind, Geshe-la explains there are two types of object, manifest and hidden. Manifest objects are objects that appear directly to our sense consciousnesses or to our mental consciousness. Hidden objects are objects that do not appear directly but can nonetheless be established through inferential valid cognizers. With this verse, when we recite the ninth line, we imagine that we are focusing on the emptiness of engaging in union with Vajrayogini. It does not appear directly to our mind, but we nonetheless experience its effect of spontaneous great joy. The experience of spontaneous great joy is the valid reason supporting the inferential cognizer establishing that we are engaging in union with Vajrayogini. In this way, we can understand that the meditation on the union of clear light bliss and emptiness is in fact the definitive version of engaging in union with a wisdom mudra. Normally when we talk about Buddhas we say there is the interpretative Buddha and the definitive Buddha. Interpretive Heruka, for example, is the blue deity with four faces and twelve arms. Definitive Heruka is the union of bliss and emptiness. In exactly the same way, interpretive reliance upon a wisdom mudra is everything we have been describing up to this verse, and definitive reliance upon a wisdom mudra is described in this verse.

HUM All you Tathagatas,
Heroes, Yoginis,
Dakas, and Dakinis,
To all you I make this request:
Just as the essence of honey in the honey source
Is drunk by swarms of bees from all directions,
So through your broad lotus with six characteristics
Please bring satisfaction with the taste of great bliss.
AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO
May the assembly of stainless Dakinis
Look with loving affection and accomplish all deeds.

With this last verse, we continue to meditate on the union of spontaneous great joy and emptiness as in the previous verse. But here, we purify completely all our obstructions to omniscience. And thereby attain full enlightenment. When we attain enlightenment, we are able to perceive appearance directly as a manifestation of bliss and emptiness. Prior to enlightenment, we can meditate on a direct realization of bliss and emptiness, but when appearances once again appear to our mind, they appear to exist from their own side. When we attain enlightenment, this duality falls away and objects appear to us directly to be manifestations of their underlying bliss and emptiness. One way of thinking about it is we penetrate so deeply into emptiness that we find appearance. This is similar to the meditation on the clarity of mind. Clarity is so clear it can know any form. In the same way, the emptiness we perceive is so empty it can appear as any form. When we recite this verse, we strongly believe that we purify completely all our obstructions to omniscience and, as a result, the mandala of our self-generation as Heruka and Vajrayogini begins to appear directly to our mind as a manifestation of the bliss and emptiness we have been bathing in. We attain the resultant union of appearance and emptiness. We strongly believe that we have attained full enlightenment in dependence upon relying on the wisdom mudra Vajrayogini through the practice of Song of the Spring Queen, and we generate a feeling of profound joy experiencing the entire mandala as our body of great bliss and emptiness.

The fifth through the eighth line of this verse describe the practice of relying upon a wisdom mudra from the perspective of someone who has already attained the union of Heruka or full enlightenment. At present, when we engage in self-generation practice, we first generate the basis of imputation of our self as Heruka in Keajra in union with Vajrayogini. We then imagine that we identify with this Heruka and Vajrayogini as if it was ourselves. Wherever we imagine a Buddha, a Buddha appears. And certainly Heruka and Vajrayogini always abide in their pure land. Now try imagine how our engaging in self-generation practice is experienced from the perspective of Heruka and Vajrayogini in Keajra. From their perspective, it is as if countless tantric practitioners are like a swarm of bees who come and partake of the honey source that is their union of Heruka and Vajrayogini. They allow all living beings to enter into them and they share their great bliss with all of them. Here, when we recite this last verse, we imagine that we are Heruka and Vajrayogini in Keajra and that we invite all living beings to enter into us, like a swarm of bees, to enjoy the honey of great bliss that we are offering to them. In other words, we imagine we are experiencing things exactly as Heruka and Vajrayogini do. This way of practicing is incredibly profound and creates countless causes for us to be able to one day become a Heruka able to do this for others. It also creates the karma for us to more easily engage in the practices described by Song of the Spring Queen ourselves in the future. It is almost impossible to imagine how amazing all this is. We are so fortunate!

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 24 of a 44-part series.

Song of the Spring Queen

HUM All you Tathagatas,
Heroes, Yoginis,
Dakas, and Dakinis,
To all you I make this request:
O Heruka who delight in great bliss,
You engage in the Union of spontaneous bliss,
By attending the Lady intoxicated with bliss
And enjoying in accordance with the rituals.
AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO
May the assembly of stainless Dakinis
Look with loving affection and accomplish all deeds.

The Song of the Spring Queen is for many practitioners the highlight of the tsog offering. Not only is the song beautiful and a delight to sing, it also explains how we engage in the practice of relying upon a wisdom mudra according to Highest Yoga Tantra. As explained above, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the nature of tantric practice. Many people feel it is simply a method for having better worldly sex. The purpose of tantric practice is to explain how to transform pleasant experiences into the path to enlightenment. With our Lojong practice, we learn how to transform unpleasant experiences into the path to enlightenment. By learning both Lojong and tantra, we will be able to transform any experience into the path.

Our ability to engage and qualified Lojong or tantric practice depends upon whether our motivation to progress along the path is stronger than our worldly concerns. For example, if what we wish for is to never experience unpleasant experiences, then our practice of Lojong will lack power because we will not care that it is a cause of our enlightenment, we simply do not want to experience unpleasant things. But if our wish to progress along the path is stronger, then we will be able to accept our unpleasant experiences and use them to advance along the path. The experience will still be unpleasant, but it will no longer be a problem for us. In the same way, if our wish to experience worldly pleasures is stronger than our wish to progress along the path, we will not be able to use tantric technology to transform pleasant experiences into the path. Instead, our experience of pleasant experiences will just fuel our attachment. Thus, our motivation for engaging in tantric practice must be to end our attachment, not use tantra as an excuse to indulge in our attachment. This is very important. We should not underestimate the ability of our mind to hijack our Dharma understandings to do what our delusions want us to do.

The first four lines and the last three lines of each verse of Song of the Spring Queen are the same. The explanation that follows can be applied to every verse. With the first three lines, we recall the visualization of our spiritual guide in the aspect of father Heruka and mother Vajraygoini in union, surrounded by all the deities of Heruka’s body mandala. We likewise recall all the other Buddhas and holy beings filling the ten directions. We recognize all these holy beings as emanations, or limbs, of our principal spiritual guide Heruka. We additionally recall that all these appearances are like waves on the ocean of our definitive spiritual guide, dharmakaya Heruka, which is the nature of indivisible bliss and emptiness. Thus, every holy being is like an aspect of the Truth Body. With the fourth line, we generate a faithful mind requesting all the holy beings to perform the action we are about to describe with the next four lines of the verse.

With the ninth line of every verse, AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO, we imagine that we are Heruka engaged in union with Vajrayogini who is riding up and down on our vajra. As a result of this movement, we should imagine that Vajrayogini’s pure winds flowing through her central channel enter into our central channel flowing upwards, igniting our inner tummo fire, causing the white bodhicitta at our crown to melt through our central channel giving rise to an experience of great bliss. The great bliss we generate as a result of engaging in union with a wisdom mudra functions to loosen the knots at our heart chakra. When these knots are completely loosened, all our inner winds can enter, absorb, and dissolve into our central channel at our heart, which then gives rise to a direct experience of the eight dissolutions, the last of which is a fully qualified mind of clear light. With this clear light mind, we can then meditate on the emptiness of all phenomena, and in particular of our very subtle mind of the clear light itself. This meditation functions to purify our very subtle mind of all delusion obstructions and obstructions to omniscience. When our mind is completely purified of the two obstructions, we attain enlightenment. Thus, the purpose of this meditation is not to enjoy union with Vajrayogini – though that is certainly a pleasant experience – rather it is to loosen the channel knots at our heart so that we can complete our spiritual training. We must be very clear with our motivation for engaging in this practice. More explanations on how to engage in tummo meditation and how to rely upon wisdom and action mudras can be found in Oral Instructions of Mahamudra, Essence of Vajrayana, Clear Light of Bliss, and Tantric Grounds and Paths. All the explanations explained in these texts can be incorporated into our practice of Song of the Spring Queen.

With the last two lines of each verse, we imagine that all the Tathagatas, heroes, yoginis, Dakas, and Dakinis generate great delight knowing that we will soon attain enlightenment. Everyone is collectively enjoying a festival of great bliss!

The fifth through the eighth line of each verse of Song of the Spring Queen is slightly different, emphasizing different aspects of the practice and calling upon different aspects of the visualization to strengthen our practice of relying upon a wisdom mudra. With the first four verses, we can imagine we generate the four joys in serial order, then with the fifth verse we imagine we attain the union a bliss and emptiness, and finally with the last verse we attain the union of Vajradhara.

With this first verse, we focus on the outer aspects of our self-generated as Heruka and our consort generated as Vajrayogini. We imagine that we are engaging in union with her and that she is completely filled with great bliss, as if her mind has been intoxicated thoroughly by this experience. She then concentrates all her great bliss into her central channel, which she then blows lovingly into our central channel through our engaging in union. “Enjoying in accordance with the rituals” refers to the 64 arts of love which are explained in Great Treasury of Merit. Recalling all this, when we engage in union and ignite the tummo fire, we imagine the white bodhichitta at our crown melts and descends down into our throat chakra where are we experienced the first of the four joys, called joy.

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 23 of a 44-part series.

HO This ocean of tsog offering of uncontaminated nectar,
Blessed by concentration, mantra, and mudra,
I offer to please the assembly of mother sentient beings.
OM AH HUM
Delighted by enjoying these magnificent objects of desire,
EH MA HO
May suffering and mistaken appearance be pacified.

In this final verse, which Gen-la Dekyong said is her favorite, we make the tsog offering to the assembly of mother sentient beings. When we do so, they receive special blessings that cause all suffering and mistaken appearance to be pacified. According to Highest Yoga Tantra, the roots of samsara are ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions. Ordinary appearances are the things that we normally see, such as computers, cars, food, and so forth. All these things appear to exist from their own side, independent of our mind. Ordinary conceptions are when we mentally assent to ordinary appearances, believing that the objects exist in the way that they appear. When we free our mind from ordinary conceptions, we attain liberation from samsara. But it is only when we free our mind from ordinary appearances that we attain enlightenment. When we say, “may suffering be pacified,” we are referring to ordinary conceptions that are the root of all our samsaric suffering; and when we say, may “mistaken appearance” be pacified, we are referring to ordinary appearances that prevent our full enlightenment. In other words, after partaking of the tsog offering, we strongly believe that all living beings have now attained enlightenment. This mental action of believing that they have done so creates the karma for them to appear to do so in the future. To strongly believe something in the Dharma does not mean to strongly believe the thing we are imagining inherently exists, rather it means we engage in the mental action of believing something conventionally exists because this mental action is how we create the karma for the thing we are imagining to later appear. In this way, we can understand how engaging in the tsog offering is a method for fulfilling our bodhichitta wish to lead all beings to everlasting freedom.

Making the tsog offering to the Vajra Master

EH MA HO Great circle of tsog!
O Great Hero we understand
That, following in the path of the Sugatas of the three times,
You are the source of all attainments.
Forsaking all minds of conceptualization
Please continuously enjoy this circle of tsog.
AH LA LA HO

Here we make the tsog offering directly to our spiritual guide Buddha Vajradhara at the heart of Lama Losang Tubwang Dorjechang. In making the offering, we remember that Vajradhara is the source of all attainments. Geshe-la explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune that all happiness comes through the kindness of Buddha. The reason for this is all happiness comes from virtue, and virtue arises only in dependence upon receiving blessings from Buddha. If Buddha is the source of all happiness, then certainly he is the source of all spiritual attainments which depends upon both his teachings and his blessings. When we make the offering to the spiritual guide in particular, we recall non-conceptual bliss and emptiness of all phenomena. The spiritual guide himself arises non-conceptually and we view everything that appears to our mind as manifestations bliss and emptiness. When we recite AH LA LA HO, we imagine that the spiritual guide partakes of our tsog offering through a straw of wisdom light.

The Master’s reply

OM With a nature inseparable from the three vajras
I generate as the Guru-Deity.
AH This nectar of uncontaminated exalted wisdom and bliss,
HUM Without stirring from bodhichitta
I partake to delight the Deities dwelling in my body.
AH HO MAHA SUKHA

This verse is particularly blessed. After our spiritual guide has partaken of the tsog offering, we imagine that he replies directly to us with the above words. We should strongly feel that we are in his living presence and he is speaking directly to us. With the first line, we understand that the spiritual guide is inseparable from the visual body, speech, and mind of all the Buddhas. With the second line, we recall his outer form as they guru deity – in this context he generates himself as Heruka. With the third line, we imagine that as a result of enjoying the tsog offering he generates a non-contaminated experience of exalted wisdom and bliss. With the fourth line, we recall that his motivation is bodhichitta. Sometimes we may wonder why a Buddha would need to generate the mind of bodhicitta. Aren’t they already a Buddha, so therefore why would they wish to become one? There are two answers to this doubt. First, the principle wish of bodhicitta is to lead all living beings to enlightenment, the wish to become a Buddha ourselves is simply a secondary wish or the assistant wish that enables us to fulfill our primary wish. When a Buddha attains enlightenment, they do not abandon there bodhichitta, but rather their bodhicitta continues to inform all their actions. Second, the spiritual guide generates within his mind all the realizations of the stages of the path as subtle emanations that we as practitioners can mix our mind with. He generates bodhichitta so that when we mix our mind with his we are also able to generate bodhichitta. The same is true for all the other realizations of the stages of the path. With the fifth line, we imagine that all the deities of the body mandala inside our spiritual guide’s body also partake of the tsog offering. As a result, we create a special karma for them to fulfill their function, which is to bless the subtle body, speech, and mind of ourselves. And with the last line, which means “oh what great bliss,” we imagine that our spiritual guide experiences not only himself but all phenomena as great bliss.

One of our refuge commitments is to offer the first portion of whatever we eat to the three jewels. In the eleven yogas of Vajrayogini explained in Guide to Dakini Land and Modern Buddhism, we are encouraged to recite this verse whenever we ourselves eat. This is a method for fulfilling our refuge commitment according to Highest Yoga Tantra. Since we eat many times every day, by memorizing and subsequently practicing this verse we will be able to recall our tantric practice day and night. The way to engage in the practice can be understood from the explanation above. More detail can be found in Guide to Dakini Land.