My Kadampa understanding of the Bible: The story of Abraham

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, My Kadampa understanding of the Bible

The story of Abraham is by far one of the most important stories in the Bible.  Three of the world’s major religions emerge from Abraham’s family, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  From a spiritual point of view, he is the father of these three great civilizations.  How he and his family responded to the challenges they faced set the pattern for how all the Abrahamic religions respond to the challenges they face.  Given what all has evolved over the millenia from his original example, it is worthwhile to appreciate his story.  As Kadampas, understanding his story will profoundly help us in understanding the spiritual edifice upon which Western and Islamic civilization was built.  Understanding his story from a Kadampa point of view, therefore, will help us transform the life of somebody within Western and Islamic civilization into the Kadampa path.  We do not do so to convert others to Kadampa Buddhism, but rather to help those Kadampas who have found themselves reborn in such civilizations to transform more thoroughly their new reality into the Kadampa path.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Abraham, here is a brief account of the main points (according to my understanding):  Abraham lived about 4,000 years ago.  He was supposedly a descendent of Noah.  He lived at a time in which the people worshipped all sorts of worldly gods (gods which granted worldly favors, such as wealth and greater fertility).  His wife was barren, which in those days was a big problem since everything you had passed to your first born son.  Abraham himself was the first son of a modestly successful shepparding tribe.  They were badly mistreated by the local king who demanded too much in taxes/tribute.  None of the worldly gods “spoke” to him, and one day he smashed all of his brother’s statues of these worldly gods declaring them all false and lies.  Later, a “new God”, one understood as “the God most high” spoke to him and told him to leave his family and he would be led to the promised land.  This experience so marked Abraham that he left his family with his wife, personal servants and livestock and allowed himself to be guided by his new god.  Abraham was the first to commune with this God and this marked the beginning of monotheism.  This god led him to Canan, modern day Israel, and said this is his promised land to be held by his descendents forever.  (This helps explain the importance of this area of the world for Chirstians, Jews and Muslims.  All are children of Abraham, but they still struggle to learn how to share the land freely and harmoniously as his children.)  But the Canans were already there, and while he could have waged war to seize the land he did not want to do things that way, so they left and were guided to Egypt.  In Egypt, his wife was kidnapped by the Pharoh to be one of his wives.  The Pharoh and the other Egyptians got some disease which they took to be a curse from Abraham’s God, and the Pharoh set the wife free on condition that Abraham leave Egypt.  He did so, went back to Canan, and reached an agreement with the Canans on sharing the land and allying with one another.  Then God said he would give Abraham “a son of his own flesh.”  Abraham’s wife then proposed that an Egyptian servant girl bear the child, but be born on Abraham’s wife’s lap (which according to their customs made the child Abraham’s wife).  After becoming pregnant, the servant girl felt herself to be the mother and started asserting more rights.  These rights were denied per the customs of Abraham’s family, she then ran away while pregnant.  One of God’s angels, who I presume to be Gabriel, came to her, told her to go back, submit to Abraham’s wife and that her son would be the father of a great nation and he should be named Ishmael.  She then went back, had Ishmael, who then grew up to be a strong and natural leader.  Later God told Abraham that he would have a son with his barren wife (which was biologically impossible becasue she was too old at the time) and that he would be the father of nations (plural).  God said the son would be called Isaac.  After Isaac was born, Abraham, who was getting older, invested all of his time in training Isaac to be able to take over the tribe.  Ishmael’s biological mother grew jealous and Abraham’s wife feared she would plot to have Ishmael take over the tribe, so she encouraged Abraham to expel Ishmael from the family.  Abraham felt that the reason why he had this problem was because he had not had sufficient faith in God when God said he would have a son of his own flesh and that was why he agreed to have a child with the servant girl.  He decided to follow his wife’s advice, but prayed that God always be with Ishmael and Ishmael set off with his biological mother.  Again, the Angel appeared and told Ishamel’s mother that Ishmael would be the founder of a great nation and led them on their way.  Ishmael became understood as the father of Islamic civilization with the Prophet Mohammed being one of his descendents.  Later, in a test of Abraham’s faith, God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son (normally, they sacrificed lambs).  This was devastating for Abraham, but not wanting to repeat his mistake of a lack of faith in God he agreed and took Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed.  Just as Abraham was about to do it, an Angel appeared and said it was basically a test, Abraham had passed and the Angel provided a lamb.  This event was the culmination of the story of Abraham and what he is often most known for.  It is by analogy with this story that we can understand why Jesus is sometimes called “the lamb of God,” his only son, who he sacrificed for the sake his people.  Some say Jesus was himself a descendent of Isaac, and generally the Judeo-Christian world is understood to descend from Isaac.  Throughout the story, there were also various points where God would lead other groups to join Abraham, usually just in time when Abraham needed it most.  Abraham then lived out the rest of his days training Isaac and guiding his tribe as a humble shepparding tribe.

As a Kadampa how do I understand this story and what lessons do I take from it?  How does this story reveal the truth of the Kadam Dharma to me?

  1. Monotheism.  Abraham renounced reliance upon worldly gods for worldly purposes and instead came to rely upon the God most high, a single all-powerful God.  As Kadampa’s, we too need to renounce our worldly gods (who we may not diefy, but we still follow – wealth, reputation, praise, worldly pleasures, etc.).  While there are many different Tantric deities, we are to understand them all to be the same nature, the Dharmakaya, the eternal definitive Spiritual Guide.  We view the different tantric deities as manifestations or facets of a single source.  Sometimes Buddhists are understood to be polytheists, but we Kadampas understand ourselves as monotheists who understand their ultimate object of refuge to have the ability to assume many conventional forms according to the different needs of living beings.  Some Buddhists fall into the extreme of thinking the Dharmakaya is just a state of nature and not a being so they de-deify the ultimate.  As Kadampas, we understand the Dharmakaya to be being, whose omniscient mind of great bliss is at one with a realization of how things truly are (empty), and that this Dharmkaya assumes the aspect of infinite forms according to the needs and dispositions of living beings.  These aspects or emanations are simply the shape the underlying Dharmakaya assumes, but are not separate from it (like waves are not separate from the ocean).  As Kadampas, I believe we can understand Abraham’s God as how the Dharmakaya revealed itself to Abraham according to the karmic dispositions of the beings at that time and for all those who descended from him and the nations he spawned.
  2. Total faith and reliance.  Abraham was considered one of the first prophets, namely somebody who had the ability to communicate directly with God.  As Kadampas, this is also an ability we can and need to cultivate – the ability to receive perfectly reliable inner guidance from the ultimate, the definitive Spiritual Guide, the Dharmakaya.  Venerable Geshe-la explains that to do so we need to first align our motivation perfectly with that of the definitive Spiritual Guide, then generate indestructible faith, and then on that basis make our ordinary mind completely silent and still.  In this stillness, with a perfectly aligned motivation and faith, we then request guidance and hold our pure wish for such guidance with a still, well-motivated faithful mind.  If we do so, gradually a vision, insight or plan will be revealed to us.  This will be our message.  The more we align our motivation, deepen our faith and make still our ordinary mind the more reliably and clearly we will receive guidance.  We see this in the story of Abraham – he would receive visions and messages, follow them, they would seem crazy at first but later be revealed as reliable in unforseen ways, and then he would receive a new, deeper, more vast vision with even more demanding tests of his faith.  This process culminated in the ultimate test of all, his willingness to sacrifice his only son and heir in the name of his faith.  By no means is this to mean we should sacrifice our children for the Buddhas!  But we can nonetheless be inspired by a mind that is willing to sacrifice that which is held most dear for the sake of their faith, and that by doing so, no matter how crazy it may seem, in the end ultimate sources of refuge are perfectly reliable and will never lead us astray.  Venerable Tharchin said in his 30+ years with Venerable Geshe-la, there has almost never been a time when Venerable Geshe-la would propose some crazy course of action and Venerable Tharchin would not think Geshe-la is nuts!  But he would follow and over time it became clear that Geshe-la was right all along but in ways unforseeable.  When this happens to us again and again, our faith and reliance grows and we are gradually led along the path until we eventually complete it.
  3. “The Lord shall provide.”  There were many points in the story where God would lead Abraham to do things that made no sense from a worldly point of view, requiring them to leave behind what was good from a worldly point of view for the sake of their faith.  Each time they would do so things would get much worse and they would be at the point of total desperation, face doubts about whether they had done the right thing to follow, then just as things were at their darkest they would have some final test of faith where they would perservere with their faith and then something miraculous would happen where they were provided for.  For Kadampas, this too happens all of the time.  Disaster may strike our life, we may feel we have been abandoned, our faith gets tested, we perservere and eventually we come to realize how what we thought was a disaster was in fact the best thing that ever happened to us, always spiritually but sometimes even externally.  The Dharma Protector, Dorje Shugden, accomplishes this function for us.  By surrendering our karma completely to him, we can have total faith that no matter what happens to us it is what is best for us.  By holding onto this faith, no matter how bleak and dark things may seem, we will eventually come to realize how this is so.  It begins with small things and small tests of faith, but gradually grows into larger and larger things with more and more challenging tests of faith, but each time we take a leap of faith we are always caught and carried to a higher plane.  Externally, we should not be extreme about this doing completely crazy things, but if we work gradually and comfortably within the karma that is ripening, we will eventually be led in similar ways.  From this experience comes a fearlessness with which we follow the path – a mind of fearless spiritual adventure.
  4. There is nothing more important than passing on the lineage.  Once Isaac was born, Abraham dropped almost everything and poured himself into training his son to carry on the lineage.  It is not enough to have the lineage written down, it needs to be fully realized by subsequent generations to continue on.  There is much that Kadampas do to serve the world, but no activity we do is more important than forming new teachers to carry on the lineage.  If we have the karma to be a teacher, we should pour every ounce of our being into becoming a qualified one that has personal experience of the truth and reliability of the teachings.  If we do not have the karma to be a teacher, we should use our karma to support those who do have such karma as our way of contributing to the carrying on of the lineage.  Ultimately, Venerable Geshe-la said we are all lineage holders just in different ways.  So really, we should all do both of these – become as personally qualified as we can and support others doing the same as much as we can.  Just one last note, Abraham’s insistence of passing the lineage on to his biological son simply reflected how legitimacy was culturally bestowed at that time.  Nowadays, legitimacy is bestowed through democratic legitimacy (peopel freely choosing to follow and rely) and individual merit (realizations and deeds).  Different cultures will have different methods of bestowing legitimacy and these methods should not be confused as being spiritually written in stone – rather they are merely cultural.  What matters is a legitimate passing of a qualified lineage.

There is much, much more to be said about this story.  Feel free to include comments on your own contemplations and reflections of what Kadampa truths this story reveals to you.

 

My Kadampa understanding of the Bible: Genesis

Kadampa Ryan My Kadampa understanding of the Bible

Conventionally, the story of genesis says first God created the heavens and earth in 7 days.  Then he created the Garden of Eden for Adam.  He then created Eve out of Adam.  God said Adam and Eve could enjoy all the purity in the Garden except the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  If they ate that, they would fall.  The serpent, the most subtle of God’s creations, tricked Eve into taking the fruit of the tree of knowledge saying it would set her free to become just like God.  But if you eat contaminated fruit, you will naturally experience contaminated results.  Grasping now at inherently good and evil, we begin to become attached to what we impute to be good and averse to what we impute to be evil.  We then begin clutching at some things and fearing others.  From this emerge exploitation and violence.  From this emerges a world of suffering.  In Genesis, after being expelled from the Garden due to eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Able.  Cain becomes a farmer and Able becomes a shepherd.  Cain makes produce offerings to God, Able makes an offering of his finest lamb.  God prefers Able’s offering, Cain becomes jealous and kills Able.  As a result, Cain’s suffering multiplies seven-fold as he spawns a world of suffering and violence.  Eventually somebody comes to kill Cain, and the suffering of the world multiplies seven fold further.  Adam and Eve then have a third child named Seth, one that is good and follows God.  There is then a series of generations from this lineage until eventually we get to Noah.  At this time, God looks at the earth and sees all the wickedness that emerged from Cain’s world but then sees Noah as the one good man following God.  God then tells Noah that he regrets having created human’s outside of the Garden, and says he is going to exterminate all of creation except Noah who he will save with all those that travel with him, including the animals.  God tells Noah to build an arc so that he may be saved.  Noah does so, gathers his family and the animals, and then the rains start which flood the earth killing all of creation.  The arc floats away safely, after a long time the waters recede, the earth reappears and Noah then sets out to populate the earth.  From this perspective we are all progeny of Noah who is in turn progeny of Seth.

How can a Kadampa understand this? 

  1. First, a quick note on the 7 days because people can sometimes dismiss the whole thing because they believe the earth was created over a period of billions of years worth of evolution.  Time in the God realms moves more slowly than time in the human realm.  It is perfectly possible that from the perspective of humans, it evolved over billions of human years, but from the perspective of those in the God realms it took only 7 God days.  What happens on each of the seven days follows the sequence of evolution, so there is no contradiction.  Further, when we understand emptiness, whole universes are created and destroyed in an instant.  When the ripened effect ripens, it produces entire world systems instantaneously, complete with a lengthy past.  For example, we have all had dreams where the dream world came complete with an infinite past and an infinite future, yet in reality the dream just emerged from emptiness with a mentally constructed past and future.  So there is not necessarily a contradiction here.
  2. Within Genesis, out of nothingness (black near attainment of reverse order) began the emergence of subtle appearances in 7 stages (the remaining stages of increasingly gross appearance until we reach the normal waking world).  At one point, God started naming things and thereby they came into existence (objects are nothing other than mere name). 
  3. According to Kadampa Buddhism, mind is the creator of all, so our root mind is God and God is our root mind.  But when we ignorantly grasp at things not being of God (meaning not created by our mind), we eat contaminated fruit and fall into a contaminated world.  We then begin grasping at some things being inherently good and other things being inherently bad (as opposed to their alternative of everything equally being completely pure creations (emanations) of God).  From this grasping at good and bad come attachment to what is considered good and anger towards what is considered bad.  From this all other delusions arise, such as the jealousy of Cain that killed Able.  From Cain’s deluded acts emerge increasingly violent and miserable worlds of suffering until eventually the beings caught up in that world cease to appear in the human world at all (Noah’s story), they have been consumed by the effects of their negative actions (metaphorically understood to be the wrath of God wiping them out) and fell into the lower realms out of karmic sight.
  4. If in contrast, if we believe that everything is the creation of God, or in Kadampa terms, if you believe everything is an emanation of the definitive Spiritual Guide, the Dharmakaya, then everything functions for us differently.  Everything becomes a perfectly pure gift of God (emanated by the Spiritual Guide for our enlightenment).  Instead of everything dragging us towards the pits of hell, everything draws us up to become one with God (gather and purify all phenomena into the complete purity of the Dharmakaya).
  5. Just as there is a “Tale of Two Cities” so too there is a tale of two worlds.  It is our own mind that made mistakes, and because we started following and assenting to contaminated appearances, we develop self-cherishing and other delusions which created a dream world of suffering not only for ourself but for all of the beings in our dream.  We created samsara with our mind of grasping, we take responsibility for the world of suffering we have created.  Then, like God in Genesis, we regret having created a world of suffering and we decide to uncreate it and instead start anew with only goodness and only those following God (relying upon the definitive Spiritual Guide). 
  6. Genesis says everything was created by God.  Believing this enables us to see everything as pure.  This pure view then ripens us into a being who likewise creates pure worlds.  There is a branch of Christianity called “creation spirituality”, which believes pure creation is a continuous and eternal process which we celebrate in.  A Tantric practitioner does precisely this – they take delight in creating pure worlds through the power of their compassion and wisdom realizing emptiness.

My Kadampa understanding of the Bible: Motivation

Kadampa Ryan My Kadampa understanding of the Bible

The heart commitment of Dorje Shugden, which I consider to be perhaps my deepest commitment of all, is to follow one tradition purely without mixing while respecting all other traditions.  This is a middle way between the extreme of sectarianism, which believes one has a monopoly on the truth and all others must ascribe to your views, and the extreme of having no tradition at all, which believes one has the ability to mix and match different paths into own’s own personal religion.  Both extremes are wrong.  There are different ways up the mountain and even if we could forge our own path up the mountain (an unlikely possibility) it is much more sensible to simply take the well-worn path karmically closest to you.

The paradox is it is only by following one’s own tradition purely without mixing that one can gain an appreciation and respect for all other paths as being valid for those who travel them.  It is not mixing to understand all subjects through the lens of one’s own tradition.  Quite the opposite, every subject understood through the lens of one’s own tradition takes our understanding of the truth of our path that much deeper.

The Bible is probably the most important book ever written in Western civilization and its stories also form part of the foundation of the Islamic world.  It has shaped the consciousness of these civilizations for thousands of years.  To understand the Bible through a Kadampa lens, therefore, enables us to understand the cultural, historical, political and spiritual legacy of close to half of the planet.

Likewise, its stories provide powerful and profound illustrations of the truth of the Kadam Dharma.  As Western Kadampas, I consider it part of our responsibility to fully integrate the Dharma into Western civilization to understand how the Bible reveals the truth of the Kadam Dharma.  If we can succeed in this, there is great hope we will likewise be able to understand more deeply how the entire culture we live in in the West likewise reveals the truth of Dharma.  For those who live in the East, having a Kadampa understanding of the Bible will help you to better understand how the Western world and what it does also reveals the truth of Dharma.  From this perspective, I feel it is a worthwhile endeavor to go through the main stories of the Bible and consider them through the lens of the Kadampa teachings so as to be able to derive Kadampa lessons from them.

Likewise, we now have a new Pope, who, as a Jesuit, seems to be a departure from past Popes.  This seems a topical time to consider the stories of the Bible through the lens of the Kadampa.  Finally, of all of the posts I have done so far on this blog, one of the most frequently read has been “In Praise of Jesus!”  Many Kadampas come to the tradition after having previously been Christian, either as practitioners or simply as part of their family life.  Many people mistakenly believe we need to reject Christianity to become a Buddhist.  Not at all.  One of the best parts about being a Kadampa is we have no need to claim a monopoly on the truth.  Because everything is empty, there are many different ways of viewing things.  Each one will work for different people.  So there is no contradiction whatsoever in saying we encourage others to follow their Christian path and we can appreciate its beauty from the perspective of our own path.   For many people, it was their Christian path that brought them to the Kadampa.  It is senseless to reject the boat that brought us to the Island of the Kadam Dharma.  We can be thankful for it, but still understand we have moved on.  We don’t have to reject our past, we simple move beyond it.  If we still grasp at rejecting Christianity as part of our Buddhist understanding, I feel we are creating obstacles which prevent us from fully integrating the Kadam Dharma into our modern world, which is pervaded by Christian values and norms.

Based on this motivation, I will now share my own personal thoughts on the subject.  By no means should this be taken as a definitive account of anything.  Rather this is my own personal attempt to deepen my own understanding.  For me, putting my thoughts into words forces me to be very precise in my thinking.  I view writing as part of my own contemplation of the Dharma.  I hope that it may also prove useful for others.

Ultimate stages of the path: Completion Stage

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog, 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

According to Modern Buddhism, “Generation stage is like drawing the basic outline of a picture and completion stage is like completing the picture.”  Completion stage itself is “defined as an inner realization of learning developed in dependence upon the inner winds entering, abiding and dissolving within the central channel through the force of meditation.  The objects of these meditations are the central channel, the indestructible drop, and the indestructible wind and mind.”

So how does this work?  By using exactly the same logic of generation stage, but with respect to the deities subtle and very subtle bodies.  What makes completion stage particularly powerful is we use our own subtle body (channels, drops and winds) as the basis of our completion stage meditations.  We do so as follows:  first we realize the emptiness of the subtle body that we normally see.  This is a true cessation, and our completely purified subtle body.  We then imagine that this cessation, or the emptiness of the mind realizing the true cessation, appears in the aspect of the deity’s completely purified subtle body.  So first we generate the subtle body of the deity and then we identify with it as our own understanding it is arising from the cessation of the subtle body that we normally see.

In completion stage as defined here, the main objects of these meditations are the central channel, the indestructible drop and the indestructible wind and mind.   Through the above meditations, we feel as if we are inside our central channel, inside our indestructible drop, and inside our indestructible wind and mind.  One of the amazing things about the power of the mind is the mind is located at the object.  So if the object is in the pure land, the mind actually goes there.  If the object of mind is the inside of our central channel, indestructible drop and indestructible wind and mind, then our mind actually goes there.  And wherever our mind goes, our winds inextricably go as well.

Since the entire universe is nothing more than a projection of our root mind, by centering our mind entirely within our root mind we cause all of our inner winds to gather, dissolve and abide inside our root mind (represented by these three objects).  When this happens, all of the appearances that all of our gross minds support likwise begin to dissolve into increasingly subtle levels of appearance.  This is where the eight dissolutions come in – each appearance is what the universe looks like when the previous wind had been gathered inside our central channel.  When no winds are dissolved, we see samsara.  When the earth element dissolves, we get the mirage like appearance.  When the water element wind we get the smoke-like appearance.  When the fire element wind dissolves we get the sparkling fireflies like appearance.  When the wind element wind dissolves we get the candle flame like appearance.  When that dissolves, we get the mind of white appearance.  When that dissolves, we get the mind of red increase.  When that dissolves, we get the mind of black near attainment.  And when that dissolves, we get the mind of clear light.  This is our very subtle mind of great bliss.  All appearances have naturally been dissolved and it is very easy for us to realize the emptiness of all phenomena, including the emptiness of the mind of great bliss realizing the emptiness of all phenomena.  There is no deeper mind than this.  This is the definitive deity, the Dharmakaya.  Milarepa said everything is the nature of mind and the mind is the nature of emptiness.  So we recognize everyhing is the nature of our very subtle mind of great bliss, and we realize the emptiness of this very subtle mind.  When we say my mind of bliss and emptiness in the aspect of something, what we really mean is the emptiness of my mind of great bliss in the aspect of something.

This realization of clear light functions to purify our consciousness of all contaminated karma and their imprints.  When all of these have been purified, we become a Buddha.

Taken all together, the tantric path proceeds as follows.  First we generate the intention to train in our tantric vows and commitments.  Then we establish ourselves inside the gross deity body through generation stage.  We then train in the body mandala meditations, which is in effect a self-generation of our subtle body.  We then train in the completion stage meditations of the central channel, indestructible drop and indestructible wind and mind.  This then causes our inner winds to gather.  We continue to realize the emptiness of the entire universe in the aspect of the eight appearances of the eight dissolutions until finally we realize the clear light, first through a generic image and then directly.  This final direct realization of clear light vaporizes countless aeons worth of contaminated karma in an instant.  We continue meditating on this meaning clear light again and again until we have finally, once and for all, purified our mind completely of all delusions and their imprints.  We will have become a Buddha!

Through this series of posts, I have tried to clarify (and share) my own understanding of how to practice each of the stages of the path from the point of view of emptiness.  We looked at how emptiness is the definitive reason establishing the validity of each of the stages of the path and how by combining these stages with an understanding of emptiness we can engage in the practice at an extremely profound level.  We did this for the lamrim, the training in the six perfections, and the practices of vows and commitments, generation stage and completion stage.  The final result being our full enlightenment.

All of the above posts should be understood as nothing more than my own ramblings about the Dharma.  None of it should be considered definitive Dharma.  For that, only Venerable Geshe-la’s books can suffice.  I have written these posts to help clarify my own understandings of these subjects.  Different people have different learning styles, and for me putting things in writing forces me to make very clear my own understanding (especially when I know I have such an enlightened audience as all of you!).  For me, this project has proven to be extremely beneficial for me.  I feel like I understand things much better.  If others reading through these posts also gain some insights or benefit, then all the better!

I dedicate all of the merit I have gained from doing this project so that Dorje Shugden will bless the minds of all those who read these posts (including myself) and reveal to all a correct understanding of the Dharma (be it through my words being a similitude of correct or through realizing that my words are totally wrong).  In this way, no matter whether what I have written is correct or not, anybody who reads this will gain correct understandings.  Such is the power of prayer!  Don’t get me started on the emptiness of prayer!!!  hee hee

 

 

Reflections on healing our heart

Kadampa Ryan Cultivating healthy relationships with others

Once we see the negative in one thing, we will soon see it in all things.

Getting distance, mentally or physically, is not the same as running away.

We can’t repress our anger, we need to let it go.

We are right that others behavior is wrong. We are wrong to not forgive them for it.

First fix what is wrong in your own heart, then forgive others for what is wrong in theirs.

There is little in this world more beautiful than a heart big enough to forgive others for their mistakes, especially when they can’t even see or admit them.

We should not expect others to get it right.  How could they? They have no guide and don’t even know they are lost.

At the core of it, we just want people to love us without judgment.  This begins by doing the same for them.

Be with others in their suffering, but do not join them in its cause.

If you want to help others, first heal your own mind of what ails them.

When you need strength, pray.

 

Ultimate stages of the path: Generation stage

Kadampa Ryan Ultimate stages of the path

According to Modern Buddhism, Tantra is a special method to purify our world, our self, our enjoyment and our activities.  Generation stage Tantra is an inner realization of a creative yoga that is attained through training in divine pride and clear appearance of being an enlightened Deity.  What is this special method?  It is by engaging in believing faith of a correct imagination we karmically reconstruct our mind of bliss and emptiness into what we imagine.  How does this work?  We can only understand precisely when we examine the question from the perspective of the union of the laws of karma and emptiness.

We can understand this by considering how the five contaminated aggregates (the basis of imputation for a samsaric being)  interact with one another.  We see some appearance (aggregate of form).  We then categorize each appearance into a category of good, bad or neutral (aggregate of discrimination).  From this discrimination between objects we feel them as either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral (aggregate of feeling).  We then generate delusions, such as attachment, aversion or indifference, with respect to these feelings (aggregate of compositional factors).  These delusions are themselves mental actions which create contaminated karma. This karma then gets planted onto our consciousness, making it contaminated (aggregate of consciousness).  Put another way, whenever we see something, we conceive of it as being inherently good, bad or neutral, we then experience it that way, generate delusion which then plants a karmic seed onto our mind which will later ripen in the form of a contaminated appearance.

But here is the amazing thing about the creative yoga of Generation Stage.  We take this same karmic logic which explains the relationship between karma and emptiness and we use it for transforming ourselves into a Buddha by bringing the future result into the path.  Because we will one day become a Buddha, our future Buddhahood is already in our mental continuum as a future object.  By imagining we are that and identifying with that final result we engage in what only can be called the “warp dirve” of travelling the path.  In Star Trek the space ships have warp drive, which takes them across space at phenomenal speeds.  In the same way, by identifying with the final result of the path, we race down the narrow path to enlightenment like a warp-powered mind.

How specifically does this work?  We mentally choose to construct within our mind the clear appearance of ourself, our world, our environments and our activities as those of the Tantric Deity (a created appearance).  We then train in a believing faith that the deity is really there and that this deity is the nature of our own mind (pure mental discrimination).  We then experience the appearance as blissful and pure (pure feeling).  Pure experiences, such as drinking nectar in our inner offering practice, function to give rise to the wisdom realizing the union of bliss and emptiness (pure compositional factors).  These wisdom minds function to create pure karmic causes, which we then plant on our consciousness, making it pure (pure mental consciousness). Put simply, be believing the appearance we have created in our mind we create the karmic seeds which will later ripen in the form of our living experience being that which we imagined.  So if we train in believing in this correct imagination now, we create the karma for that imagination to be our actual reality in the future.  This is extremely profound reveals the wisdom that is the union of the laws of karma, emptiness, pure worlds, and the emptiness of the three times.  If we understand this clearly, we will be extremely motivated to dedicating our every moment to training in Generation Stage Tantra.

When we engage in generation stage what do we actually do?  We purify ordinary death, intermediate state and rebirth into the Truth Body, Enjoyment Body and Emanation Body of a Buddha.  More practically, what we train in doing is learning how to die in a controlled way where we take rebirth as a Highest Yoga Tantra deity.  So we engage in a variety of different meditations designed to purify death, intermediate state and rebirth.  Each series of meditations work for the reasons described above.  Our main meditation, though, is on the Emanation Body, or the self-generation.  The reason for this is simple:  with generation stage we attain the gross deity body, and in completion stage we attain the subtle deity body.  So first we must attain the gross deity body (generation stage) before we can attain the subtle body (completion stage).  In the self-generation, we have an extremely elaborate correct imagination of ourselves, the body mandala deities, temples, Mount Meru, the completely purified three thousand worlds, protection circles, the charnel grounds, etc.  We use a correct imagination of not only the future result of ourself as a Buddha, but rather the future result of all living beings having already attained enlightenment with all abiding in the pure land.  This functions to karmically reconstruct the fabric of our mind to assume the aspect of an actually appearing pure land!

To generate a qualified divine price believing we are a Buddha, we can reason as follows:  for an imputation to be valid the basis of imputation must have a valid aspect, nature and function.  In terms of the self-generation, we are trying to validly impute our “I” onto what we have generated in our mind.  Does it have a valid aspect?  Yes, it appears as the pure land.  Does it have a pure nature?  Yes, I generated this out of emptiness and it is infused with the living guru deity so its nature is completely pure.  Does it have a pure function?  What are the activities of the self-generation?  They are to guide all beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  So you generate within your mind of feeling like you are actually doing this.  On the basis of looking like Heruka, being the nature of Heruka and engaging in the activities of Heruka, what are you other than Heruka?  Divine pride becomes easy.  In particular, I focus on the activities of the pure self-generation.  When I engage in the actions of a father, I feel like I am a father.  The fact that I have kids doesn’t really make me one.  In the same way, when I engage n the actions of a Buddha, I feel like I am a Buddha.  This feeling makes it very easy to identify with being one.

Ultimate stages of the path: Vows and Commitments

Kadampa Ryan Ultimate stages of the path

The conclusion of Sutra is I must become a Buddha for the benefit of all by realizing emptiness.  Emptiness makes possible mentally reconstructing samsara into nirvana.  Tantra, then, gives specificity to the type of Buddha we strive to become.  Tantra is normally divided into generation stage and completion stage.  In generation stage we construct within our mind the template of our enlightenment, and then in completion stage we fill in the template with our increasingly subtle bodies and minds.  Our vows and commitments of highest yoga tantra are parts of generation stage and completion stage.  But since the way we practice our vows and their function is the same in both generation and completion stage, I tend to think of Tantra as having three main practices:  our vows and commitments, generation stage and completion stage.  The three together produce enlightenment.

All vows arise from the same wisdom and all vows perform the same function.  The wisdom vows arise from is the wisdom that realizes the union of karma and emptiness.  If we understand emptiness, we understand everything is created by our mind.  The laws by which mental creation occurs are the laws of karma.  So if we understand emptiness, our behavior will naturally be in accordance with the vows and commitments.  But we don’t yet understand emptiness, so we still think it is a good idea to act in ways which are contradictory to our vows.  It is for this reason that we practice vows and commitments.  With faith, we trust that they are arising from the wisdom of karma and emptiness, but we just don’t understand it yet.  But we have faith that the vows are good for us at a very profound level.  We then consider each vow, trying to understand its wisdom, and when we get some understanding of the wisdom of a vow and some faith in where they come from, we then make promises to train our behavior to be in alignment with what is called for in the vows and commitments.  When our uncontrolled mind tries to go in a way that is in contradiction with our vows, we see this, recall the wisdom of following the vows, and choose to not follow our deluded impulse understanding it to be deceptive.

I like to think of vows like a pipeline which channels the current of our mental continuum.  At present our mental continuum is flailing about in all sorts of directions, throwing us from one samsaric rebirth to another.  But when we start training in the vows and commitments, we give definite parameters within which our mental continuum can flow.  At one end of the pipeline is where we are now, but the other end of the pipeline is the city of enlightenment.  At the beginning of the pipeline, the diameter is quite large, but then some way down a more narrow pipe is placed inside the large one.  Then a little further down, a more narrow pipe still is placed inside the second pipe, and so on.  The net effect is the closer one gets to the city of enlightenment, the more narrow the diameter of the pipeline the water of our mental continuum travels.  Just like water, the more narrow the diameter, the faster the water moves.  The narrowing of the pipeline correspond with the different levels of vows we take.  At the widest point of the pipeline we have the refuge vows.  By keeping our refuge vows we create the causes to find the Buddhist path again and again in all of our future lives until we attain the final goal.  The general direction of the current of our mental continuum is established.  Slightly more narrow than that are our pratimoksha vows, or our vows of individual liberation.  More narrow that that are our bodhisattva vows.  More narrow still are general commitments of Highest Yoga Tantra, and finally the most narrow we have the uncommon vows of Mother Tantra.  Keeping our pratimoksha vows creates the causes to meet a qualified path to liberation again and again between now and our enlightenment.  Keeping our bodhisattva vows creates the causes to meet a qualified path to enlightenment again and again between now and our enlightenment.  Keeping our general commitments of Highest Yoga Tantra creates the causes to meet a qualified tantric path to enlightenment again and again between now and our enlightenment.  Keeping our uncommon commitments of mother tantra creates the causes to meet a qualified path tantric path of Heruka or Vajrayogini again and again between now and our enlightenment.  The advantage of having the concentric circles of pipes is if one of the more narrow one breaks, the others are still there to catch the water, like additional lines of defense.

Vows are like inner laws that we voluntarily strive to follow.  Just as external society requires good laws to maintain order and prosperity, so too our empty inner society of the emptiness of all living beings requires laws that we strive to follow.  The difference is the internal laws of our vows are laws only for ourself.  We do not impose in any way these laws on others.  Certainly we encourage others to lead a virtuous life, but we never impose vows from the outside.  For them to work, people need to adopt them voluntarily seeing the wisdom of following them and the folly of doing their opposite.  If they are imposed from the outside, internally the people rebel against the imposition.  Thus, even if we appear to succeed in causing others to lead a more virtuous life, but internally they are actually rebelling against these internal laws and putting up a show to avoid our punishment.  Karma arises from mental intention, and so two seemingly identical acts – externally appearing to lead a virtuous life – the motivations are completely different (following wisdom vs. rebelling against wisdom), thus the karma created is profoundly different.  One takes the person down the path to enlightenment, the other creates the karma to reject pure paths when we encounter them in the future.

Another way vows are commonly thought of is refuge vows are the substantial cause of Pratimoksha vows, which in turn are the substantial cause of Bodhisattva vows, which are then the substantial cause of our Tantric vows.  Our ability to maintain purely the higher levels of vows depends to a large extent on whether we are keeping purely the previous levels of vows.  By this logic, breaking one of our Bodhisattva vows directly indirectly unravels all of our Tantric vows; and breaking our Pratimoksha vows directly indirectly unravels all of our Bodhisattva and Tantric vows.  But it is important to not be heavy about vows.  This does not mean we abandon the path if our delusions get the better of us and we break our vows, rather it means our vows are no longer in tact, and so therefore not functioning.  But we still continue to follow the path, and create good karma from the practices we do do.  They are like a GPS which always finds us the correct route to the city of enlightenment, even when we take wrong turns.  If while driving we take wrong turns, our GPS recalculates and gives us a new route – there is no wrong turn we can take that the GPS can’t find the route back.  Sometimes we may take wrong turns, but if we choose to follow our internal GPS of our vows and commitments, we replace our mental continuum on the good path to our final destination.

Ultimate stages of the path: The perfection of wisdom

Kadampa Ryan Ultimate stages of the path

Wisdom is a virtuous mind that functions mainly to dispel doubt and confusion by understanding its object thoroughly.  Normally we think of wisdom in terms of the wisdom understanding emptiness because in many ways it is the most important wisdom.  But in this context, wisdom also refers to conventional wisdoms.  Every Dharma mind, from a certain point of view, is a conventional wisdom.  But normally, we talk about the following conventional wisdoms:  the wisdom understanding the laws of cause and effect, great wisdom, clear wisdom, quick wisdom, profound wisdom, the wisdom of expounding Dharma, the wisdom of spiritual debate and the wisdom of composing Dharma books.  The wisdom understanding the laws of cause and effect are understanding the teachings on karma in such a way that we live our lives in accordance with these laws.  Great wisdom is knowing which objects are to be abandoned and which objects are to be attained.  Clear wisdom enables us to understand clearly subtle characteristics of objects or teachings.  Quick wisdom is whenever doubts or misunderstandings of the Dharma arise we are able to dispel them quickly by understanding the subject quickly.  Profound wisdom is being able to understand the profound meaning of the scriptures without difficulty.  The wisdom of expounding Dharma is the ability to teach the Dharma in such a way that others accept them and put them into practice.  The wisdom of spiritual debate is the ability to skillfully dispel the views contrary to Dharma.  And the wisdom of composing Dharma books is the ability to write authentic Dharma books that are perfectly reliable (in other words, NOT blogs!!!  All of these posts are my random babblings, the reality is I just love the Dharma and since I don’t have many people to discuss it with, I discuss it with all of you out there in cyberspace!).

The perfection of wisdom is any wisdom practiced with a bodhichitta motivation.  So how does wisdom enable us to attain enlightenment?  Conventional wisdoms help us to maximize the karmic benefit we can derive from our virtuous intentions and the ultimate wisdom realizing emptiness purifies all of our contaminated karma, our delusions and their imprints.  The entire Kadampa path is, by nature, a wisdom path because we are the wisdom tradition of Je Tsongkhapa.  Wisdom creates the causes to attain the enlightened omniscient mind of a Buddha.  This is our most important attainment.

The ultimate perfection of wisdom is training in any wisdom combined with an understanding of emptiness.  It is beneficial to enumerate specifically what this means.  The wisdom realizing emptiness is a wisdom, but then this too has an emptiness, so realizing the emptiness of realizing emptiness.  The conventional wisdoms each take on a new meaning when combined with emptiness.  Understanding the laws of karma in the context of emptiness brings us to the unions of the vast and profound path.  Understanding great wisdom in the context of emptiness is really about understanding how to engage in each of the stages of the path combined with an understanding of emptiness (something this series of posts has attempted to do).  Understanding clear wisdom in the context of emptiness enables us to understand clearly the relationship between subtle conventional truth and subtle levels of the wisdom realizing emptiness.  Understanding quick wisdom in the context of emptiness enables us to jump immediately to the definitive reason establishing the reliability of every practice of Dharma.  Understanding profound wisdom in the context of emptiness enables us to understand every subject all the way to its ultimate understanding.  Understanding the wisdom of expounding Dharma combined with an understanding of emptiness enables the teacher to realize the emptiness of the three spheres of teacher, teaching and student while simultaneously giving teachings.  Understanding the wisdom of spiritual debate in the context of emptiness enables the bodhisattva to realize the emptiness of the three spheres of our own understanding, the subject being misunderstanding by the other person, and the other person’s misunderstanding simultaneously while engaging in debate.  Understanding the wisdom of composing Dharma books in the context of emptiness enables the author to realize the emptiness of the three spheres of author, book and reader while simultaneously writing the book  These wisdoms are absolutely astounding, when you think about them, especially these last three!

It is also useful to understand the karmic effects of wisdom – what does wisdom produce?  We have all of the conventional wisdom as described above.  These essentially synthesize down into bodhichitta.  When the wisdom realizing emptiness is realized in the context of bodhichitta it produces the effect of full enlightenment.  When the wisdom realizing emptiness is realized in the context of renunciation, or the wish for individual liberation, it produces the effect of liberation.  When the wisdom realizing emptiness is realized in the context of generation stage tantra it produces the effect of becoming the deity of generation stage.  When the wisdom realizing emptiness is realized in the context of completion stage tantra it produces the effect of attaining meaning clear light and the Truth Body of a Buddha.  When we understand all of this, we realize the importance of studying the entire vast path in the context of the profound path, as we do within the Kadampa tradition.

Finally, it is quite amazing to consider the relationship between guru and disciple in the context of emptiness.  When the sun of my faith shines on the Snow Mountain of my Spiritual Guide, the snow of his blessings melts and flows down into my mind.  This is the meaning of the symbol for the NKT.  Our faith combined with emptiness literally opens the door of our mind by removing the obstructions between our mind, the relationship with the guru, and the mind of the guru.  This then enables the snows of the Guru’s own realizations to melt and flow down directly into our own mind, thus transferring his realizations and wisdoms into our own mind.  When we understand this, then we will be very motivated to make faith in the wisdom Buddha Guru Je Tsongkhapa our main practice.  This is what our Guru has revealed to us to be our main practice by only admitting himself to having this one realization (namely, this faith).

Ultimate stages of the path: The perfection of concentration

Kadampa Ryan Ultimate stages of the path

Mental stabilization, or concentration, is a mind whose nature is to be single-pointedly placed on a virtuous object and whose function is to prevent distraction.  Concentration is a transversal stage of the path, meaning we practice it with respect to all of the other stages of the path.  We train in concentration with respect to each of the other stages of the path, taking each object deeper and deeper within our mind.  We begin by simply holding our mind single-pointedly for a few seconds, and we keep training in concentration until we attain tranquil abiding.  With tranquil abiding we can remain single-pointedly placed in concentration on our objects of Dharma forever if we wish.  The mind of tranquil abiding, though, is not the end of our training in concentration.  It is merely the first level of concentration of a desire realm god.  Our body may be that of a human being, but our mind is that of a form realm god.  We continue to train in all the different absorbtions of the bodhisattva’s grounds and paths, taking our mind higher and higher until it reaches the peak of samsara.  But even that is not far enough, since that realizes our objects of Dharma merely with our gross mind.  To attain enlightenment, we must learn how to bring the objects of Dharma into our subtle and very subtle minds.  We can only do this through training in Tantra.  Tantra teaches us how to make manifest our subtle and very subtle minds so that we can learn to meditate with them.  Eventually, we need to directly realize each and every one of the stages of the path with our very subtle mind of great bliss.  Fortunately, however, once we realize one object with any given level of concentration, it is not that difficult to realize all of the other objects with the same level of concentration, much like with the strength to lift a 100 pound box also enables us to lift a 100 pound chair.  Also, there are certain objects of meditation, like bodhichitta, emptiness, generation stage and completion stage, which are actually the synthesis of all of the previous objects of meditation, so by realizing these special objects directly we realize all of other objects indirectly.

The actual training in concentration begins with “seeking, finding, holding and remaining.”  First we seek our objects of meditation through analytical meditation until we first find them.  We then hold them for longer and longer periods of time until we can remain with our object throughout the entire meditation session without ever losing it.  When we train in concentration, we abandon gross and subtle mental excitement and sinking.  Gross excitement is when we lose our object of meditation completely for an object of attachment.  Subtle mental excitement is when part of our mind is with the object but part of our mind is with another object.  Gross mental sinking is when our mind becomes so dull that we lose the object completely and we are practically alseep.  Subtle mental sinking is when the focus of our objects wavers somewhat, but we haven’t lost it.

The perfection of concentration is training in concentration motivated by bodhichitta.  To understand this, we need to realize the relationship between concentration and attaining enlightenment.  Concentration functions to mix our mind with its object.  According to the Prasangika teachings on emptiness, mind and its object arise in mutual dependence upon one another – there is no object without a mind and without an object there is no mind.  In reality, we can say that the mind and its object are actually two aspects of the same entity.  Once again, the analogy of Play Dough proves useful.  The mind is the Play Dough and the object is essentially the aspect or shape that the Play Dough takes.  When we concentrate on any given object of Dharma, we are for all practical purposes holding our mind in the shape or aspect of our object of Dharma.  When we concentrate on virtuous objects, it functions to render our mind peaceful and controlled.  It is explained in many texts that the principal cause of happiness is mental peace.  When our mind is peaceful, we are happy; when our mind is unpeaceful, we are unhappy.  Concentration on virtue renders our mind peaceful, and therefore happy.  The greater the concentration, the greater the inner peace.  It not only does so for the moments we are happy, but each moment of concentration functions to create a seed for the experience of future happiness.  The longer the duration and the deeper the intensity of our concentration, the longer the duration and the deeper the intensity will be the resulting seed.  We can think of it like attaching a balloon to a helium machine.  The longer you keep it connected, the more inflated the balloon becomes, and the higher the pressure of the gas the faster and more intensely it fills.  The difference is our mind is an infinitely elastic balloon that has no limit to how far it can be inflated with virtue.  To illustrate the power of concentration, it is said that just one moment of concentration on love with a mind of tranquil abiding is enough to create the cause for an entire lifetime as a long-life god.

Emptiness greatly increases the effectiveness of our concentration.  We normally grasp at inherently existent objects of Dharma, inherently existent meditating minds and inherently existent meditaters.  If an object of Dharma is inherently existent, then it is actually impossible for a mind to concentrate on it because the object of Dharma is separate from the mind. If a mind is inherently existent, it cannot mix with any object because doing so would change it and inherently existent things are unchangeable.  And if the meditater is inherently existent then they could never benefit from their mind meditating on objects of virtue because there would be no connection between the meditater and their mind.  But when we realize the emptiness of these three, it becomes very easy for our mind, its object and ourselves the meditater to all mix together like water mixes with water.  It was discussed above how mind and its object are like two aspects of the same entity.  We also naturally impute our I onto our mind.  So if the only object of our mind is the object of our meditation (meaning we have perfect concentration) and we naturally impute our I onto our mind (which in this case is the subject/object union) then we literally become our object of meditation.  The meditater, his object and his mind are three different aspects of the same entity.  This reveals an extremely powerful effect of concentration combined with an understanding of emptiness:  we become that which we concentrate on.  If we concentrate on love, we become a loving person; if we concentrate on compassion, we become a compassionate person; if we concentrate on the deity in our Highest Yoga Tantra practice, we become the deity.  If we understand this clearly, we will find it effortless to generate the desire to train in concentration.

Ultimate stages of the path: The perfection of effort

Kadampa Ryan Ultimate stages of the path

Effort is a mind that delights in engaging in virtue.  It is not “hard work”, rather it is enjoying, like a child at play, engaging in virtue.  If there is no joy, there is no effort, even if we are working very hard.  Effort principally overcome laziness.  There are three types:  the laziness of procrastination, which puts off virtue until later; the laziness of attraction to what is meaningless or non-virtuous, or generally become distracted by samsaric activities; and the laziness of discouragement, which feels no matter how hard we try we will never accomplish anything.  There are three types of effort:  armour-like effort, which has the strength to persevere no matter how significant the obstacles; the effort of gathering virtuous Dharmas is when we put energy into actually engaging in virtuous actions; and the effort of benefiting others, which is when we put energy into actually benefiting others.  The lamrim teachings explain there are four methods for increasing our effort:  the power of aspiration, which is the wish to engage in virtue understanding its benefits; the power of steadfastness is the ability to sustain our practice for as long as it takes; the power of joy is having a calm and joyful mind when we engage in virtue; and the power of rest is learning to relax so that we don’t become overtired and can recharge our batteries so that we can return fresh to our practice.

Any of these practices engaged in with a bodhichitta motivation is the perfection of effort.  Basically, this means we understand the relationship between our effort and our attainment of Buddhahood, and so we train in effort knowing it is essential for our attaining enlightenment.  Just as giving is the cause of wealth, moral discipline the cause of higher rebirth and patience the cause of beauty, effort is the cause of attainments.  This is pretty easy to understand – effort is mental action which enjoys engaging in virtue, so the karmic result of that will be the result of our practice, namely attainments.  Attainments come in all sizes.  I tend to think of them like spiritual legos, where we put together smaller ones to create bigger ones, and we can piece them together in all sorts of different combinations to make all sorts of different spiritual creations.  I view the progression of attainments on the path like two funnels connected by their open mouths.  In the beginning, we have small initial experiences.  We build on these and gradually our understanding broadens more and more.  Once we have a good grasp of the full horizontal scope of the Dharma we have reached the point where the two funnels are connected.  Then we start to put together all that we have learned and we realize that as we do so the Dharma becomes simpler and simpler.  A few key ideas start to function to capture more and more breadth of Dharma.  We continue to simplify and synthesize our Dharma understanding more and more until it becomes extremely simple and clear.  All of the Dharma gets captured in a few notions like ultimate bodhichitta or bliss and emptiness or the union of the two truths.  What is truly amazing about the book Modern Buddhism is it is simultaneously the ultimate book for beginners in terms of introducing the initial ideas of the Dharma and the most advanced of Venerable Geshe-la’s books in that it is the simplified essence of all of his other books.  We start with Modern Buddhism, then expand into FP, then TTP, and then we start simplifying more and more until we are eventually led back to Modern Buddhism – it is both our first and last book.

The ultimate perfection of effort is engaging in the perfection of effort understanding emptiness.  While normally I use the analogy of the ocean of our mind, in this context the analogy of Play Dough works better.  Many of our practices are called “yogas”, such as the 11 yogas of generation stage, the Yoga of Buddha Heruka, etc.  Normally when we think of yoga we think about people who put their body in all sorts of very strange and uncomfortable positions.  Why do they do this?  When they put their body in an uncomfortable position, but learn how to relax into that position until it becomes even blissful they loosen the knots that build up in their body and mind, and thereby become much more balanced and equilibrated.  In exactly the same way, all of our Dharma practices can correctly be understood as “mental yogas”, where we put our mind in all sorts of initially strange and sometimes uncomfortable mental positions (such as cherishing only others, taking, fear of the lower realms, etc.) and then we learn how to relax into these mental positions until they even become blissful.  Our mind is like Play Dough that is currently shaped in the aspect of a samsara.  But through the force of our effort at the various mental yogas of the Kadampa path, we reshape the Play Dough of our mind into a Pure Land.  The Play Dough of our mind itself is the emptiness of our mind of great bliss.  Milarepa said we should understand all phenomena as being the nature of mind (of great bliss) and the nature of mind is emptiness.  If we realize this, we realize how all phenomena are by nature our mind of bliss and emptiness in the aspect of whatever is appearing.  Right now, what is appearing (in other words the shape of our mind) is samsara, but with training we can reshape it as nirvana.  Every time we engage in a spiritual practice we are reshaping our mind in some way.  When we understand what we are doing, namely undoing the samsara we have created and reshaping our mind as a pure land, how can we not help but generate joy when we apply effort?