At the end of the day, the Dharma is very simple:  we have a problem, Dharma provides a solution.  If we gain an exact understanding of what is the real nature of our problem and how only the Dharma can give us a solution to this problem, then we will have no difficulty generating the necessary effort to progress along and ultimately complete the path.  As Venerable Tharchin said, “if we see how the Dharma actually works, effort becomes effortless.”  Once again, this post is quite long and for that I apologize.  But what can be more important than a solution to our biggest problem of impending lower rebirth?  Even if nobody ever reads this, it has been extremely helpful to me to write it out to clarify my own understandings.  I now know much more clearly what it is that I need to do.

What is our problem?  We have a precious human life with which we can accomplish even the highest spiritual goals.  But we may die at any moment and lose this opportunity for a very long time.  From the point of view of our problem, it makes little difference whether we physically die or simply lose what makes our human life “precious.”  If we lose the path and spend the rest of our days engaging in only worldly action, from a spiritual point of view it is as if we are already dead.  I have virtually only negative karma left on my mind.  If I look at my own personal biography over the last countless aeons, I have spent virtually all of my time in the lower realms where I engaged in almost exclusively negative actions.  When I was in the upper realms, I simply burned up what little merit I had and did precious little that was actually virtuous.  Even now, when I have such perfect access to the methods for purifying my mind, I have done virtually no sustained and sincere purification practice.  So there can be no doubt that my own personal stock of karma is almost uniformly negative.  If one of these negative karmic seeds ripens at the moment of my death, I will be thrown into the lower realms where I will once again become trapped for an incalculably long period of time.  Statistically speaking, if I have 10 times more negative karma than virtuous karma, there is a 10 times greater chance I will fall into the lower realms than attain a fortunate rebirth.  To make matters worse, if I die with a negative or deluded mind, I will activate one of these negative seeds and fall into the lower realms.  When I am faced with problems, pain or difficulty, I tend to get grumpy, irritable and I respond with negative and deluded minds.  Facing death will be the biggest problem, the most painful experience and the most insurmountable difficulty I will face in my life.  If I respond to life’s minor annoyances with delusion and negativity, what chance do I have to not do the same at the time of my death?  If I am 10 times more likely to respond to pain and problems with a negative mind and I have 10 times more negative karma on my mind, then at a minimum I have 100 to 1 chance of falling at the time of my death.  In reality, the odds are much worse than that.  This is a huge problem.

This problem becomes all the more poignant when I consider things from the point of view of others.  If I fall, all those who I would otherwise have helped and lead towards enlightenment will have to remain trapped in their own samsaras for all that time.  So it is not just me who will suffer, but all those who I would have otherwise helped will be forced to endure their suffering even longer.  If we understand things from the point of view of dream-like emptiness, all of the beings of my dream are trapped in samsara because I have dreamt them there.  From this point of view, I am not only responsible for the suffering of all those who I would otherwise have helped, but I am responsible for all suffering of all beings.  How can I condemn countless living beings to endless suffering?  This is exactly what I am headed towards doing if I don’t purify my mind and attain enlightenment for their sake.  From the point of view of emptiness of others, it is no exaggeration to say the fate of all beings rests on my shoulders and depends upon what I do with my mind right here and right now.

This is my problem.  The question is what is the solution?  According to Buddhism, the solution is going for refuge.  The meaning of this phrase is not always clear to people.  What it essentially means is turning towards and relying upon a viable solution.  When you have a cavity, you go for refuge to the dentist.  When you have a legal problem, you go for refuge to a lawyer.  When you have a karma and delusion problem, you go for refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  There are two ways of going for refuge:  simple and special.  The simple way is we create the causes for the Buddhas to activate our virtuous karmic potentialities at the time of our death so that we can continue with our practice.  The special way is we gain the power to do so ourselves.  In this post, I will explain simple refuge.  All of the subsequent posts in this series can correctly be understood as an extensive explanation of special refuge.

Since it will take a long time before we have the power to control our own process of rebirth, the first and most urgent thing I need to do is to try ensure that a positive seed ripens at the time of my death.  Even if I have 10 times more negative seeds than positive ones, if I can get that one positive seed to ripen at the time of my death I will at least buy myself more time to continue with my practice and thereby clean up the rest of my karma.  From my own side, I have little power to determine what seeds ripen because I have little control over my mental reactions to pain and difficulty.  One of the most important functions of a Buddha is they have the power to bless the minds of living beings.  What does that mean?  It means they have the power to activate on our mind our virtuous karmic potentialities – they can ripen those positive seeds.  If I can get them to do so at the time of my death, then I can avert my near-certain fall into the lower realms and then continue with my practice.

So the question becomes how can I ensure I receive a Buddha’s blessings at the time of my death?  From their own side, the Buddhas are constantly bestowing blessings on all beings much like the sun is always radiating light.  But for their light to enter my mind, I need to open the blinds to let the light in.  Very often we make requests for blessings, but sometimes we can make the mistake of thinking the Buddhas are holding back and will only bless our mind if we ask them or bribe them with offerings!  This is completely wrong – when we request blessings, what we are really doing is making the mental decision to open up our mind to receive their light.  This is how we open the blinds of our mind.  So every single moment of every single day we should be requesting blessings, in particular requesting that the Buddhas bless our mind at the moment of our death so that we may continue with our spiritual training for the sake of all beings.  Each request we make creates the karmic cause for the Buddhas to do precisely that at the time of our death.  Each request we make creates the karmic cause for us to open our mind to the Buddha’s light at the time of our death.

We need many such causes, we need these causes to be powerful and we need to increase the odds that their resulting karmic seeds are activated at the time of our death.  We create many of these causes by making this request many times.  We make these causes powerful in dependence upon the strength of our faith when we request them.  With faith, we trust, we believe and we don’t hold back.  We eagerly wish to come under the influence and protection of that which we have faith in.  The greater our faith when we make the request, the more completely will the blinds of our mind open to the blessing light of the Buddhas.  In the lamrim teachings it explains how we increase our faith.  We should actively train in increasing our faith which will create more robust karmic causes.

We increase the odds that their resulting karmic seeds are activated at the time of our death by having a close karmic relationship with the Buddhas.  If we have a close and frequent relationship with somebody, it is much more likely that our request will be fulfilled.  If we have no relationship with somebody, requests we make cannot be fulfilled even if the other person wants to fulfill our request because there are no points of connection.  So how do we develop closer karmic relationships with the Buddhas?  By believing they are always with us.  One of the unique abilities of a Buddha is wherever you imagine them to be they instantaneously appear.  The reason for this is simple when understood from the point of view of emptiness.  They already are everywhere, but by believing that they are there we activate the karma for them to appear.  Another unique ability of a Buddha is wherever a Buddha appears they spontaneously bestow blessings, just like wherever you bring a lamp it will spontaneously illuminate its surroundings.  If we can have the Buddhas with us at the time of our death, then they will spontaneously bestow the light of their blessings on our mind.  This will then activate the virtuous karmic potentialities on our mind which will then ripen in the form of a karmic dream in our next life where we can continue to have access to the path and we can continue with our training.  If we train right now in the mental action of always believing the Buddhas are with us, then this will become our mental habit.  We will eventually be able to remember this all of the time, and we can carry the continuum of this awareness with us into the moment of death.  Then it is certain that we will be able to avoid lower rebirth and continue with our practice in our next life.  Christians do the same for their preparations for the time of death – they try believe that Christ is with them (“know that I am there”).

Finally, we can enhance the above by also going for refuge to Sangha.  Sangha are our spiritual friends (I would say spiritual family) who are likewise training just as we are.  Who our friends are makes a huge difference to our lives because our friends have an enormous influence over us.  If our friends routinely bully others, we will start to do the same and indeed think it is funny and normal.  If our friends are routinely requesting blessings and trying to practice virtue then we will likewise do the same and indeed think it is entirely normal to do so.  For this reason, we must choose our friends wisely.  Sangha does not only matter from the point of view of how they support us, but they also give us a chance to support them.  When we support them when they are struggling, we create the causes for others to support us when we ourselves are struggling.  If we encourage them to go for refuge so as to prepare for their death, we create the causes for others to do the same for us.  If we support them, they will come to see that as normal and they will start to support others in the Sangha, so by supporting them directly we are indirectly supporting all of the others in the Sangha.  It is likewise extremely important to never create division within the Sangha and to always try to heal all relationships within the Sangha.  If each one of us is holding a candle, and we put all of our candles together we will make a giant flame which will benefit everyone equally.  But if we separate the candles, the resulting illumination is diminished for everyone.  Creating division within the Sangha does precisely that.  We need a robust, very close, very harmonious spiritual family.  This then functions as a beacon of light for us at the time of our death.  Our close relationships with the Sangha will create many karmic transmission channels through which we can benefit from their prayers for us at the time of our death.  Even if physically we die alone, with a closeness to spiritual family we are karmically never alone and there will be no obstructions to their prayers on our behalf at the time of our death.

If each being is a wave on the ocean of our mind, a spiritual practitioner is a calm wave.  A Sangha is a clustering of calm waves.  If we center ourselves in a patch of the ocean where the waters are calm and translucent, we dramatically increase the chances of our own wave being calm and translucent.  There is no more important time for that than at the time of our death.  But if we spend our entire life in turbulent waters, it will be very difficult to find the calm waters at the time of our death.  Since the time of our death could be at any moment, it is foolish to not always be centered in such waters.  This doesn’t mean we need to physically be with Sangha all of the time (though that certainly helps).  But with modern communication technology, such as email, Facebook and Twitter, we can mentally always remain close to our Sangha.  What a fortunate state of affairs!

We have a problem, but there is a solution.  Now it is up to us to put it into practice.

The purpose of meditating on the dangers of lower rebirth is to generate a great fear of engaging in negative actions, the karmic cause of lower rebirth.  The perfection of fear of lower rebirth is we fear taking lower rebirth because if we do so we will become trapped in the lower realms for an incalculably long time during which all the being who we would otherwise have saved if he hadn’t fallen in the lower realms must continue to suffer.  The ultimate perfection of fear of lower rebirth is the perfection of the fear of lower rebirth conjoined by an understanding that our negative actions, the lower realms and all the beings who inhabit them are empty.

One of the biggest obstacles to our generating a fear of lower rebirth is we do not really believe they exist.  An understanding of emptiness provides us with a definitive reason proving their existence.  Many do not believe in lower rebirth because they do not believe in rebirth at all.  They believe that when the body dies, the mind dies with it and nothing remains afterwards.  They believe this because they believe the body creates the mind.  But in reality, it is the exact opposite – the body is merely a dream-like projection of the mind.  It is fairly straightforward to understand how the body is nothing more than a mere mental label imputed upon the parts of our body, and that if we took away all of the parts of our body there would be nothing remaining that could be considered our body.  The same is true of all of the individual parts of our body, they too are just mere mental labels imputed upon their parts.  While our ignorance assents to the body as being somehow real or solid, when we check carefully all we find is mental projection.  Death is no different than one dream ending.  The body of last night’s dream never was anything more than a mental creation and when we wake up we do not wonder where the dream body went – we understand clearly that it has simply dis-appeared.  But a new body appears in the waking world.  We have all had experiences of having dreams within a dream.  One dream ends and we wake up only to later find that we woke up into another dream.  When we wake up from that dream then we are back in this world.  In exactly the same way, our waking world is simply another layer of dream.  When the karma giving rise to the appearance of this dream body and dream world fully exhausts itself, the body of this life will dis-appear exactly as the body of last night’s dream did.

In any moment, the quality of the mind we have determines the quality of the karma that ripens.  If we have a negative mind, it functions to ripen negative karma giving rise to negative appearances.  If we have a positive mind, it functions to activate positive karma giving rise to positive appearances.  If we have a pure mind, it functions to activate pure karma giving rise to pure appearances. This process is happening all of the time – our every mind is functioning to activate certain karmic seeds and our every mental action in response to those appearances functions to plant new karmic seeds.  This process equally functions at the moment of our death.  The last mind we have at the time of our death determines the quality of our next rebirth.  Why?  Because if for example we have a negative mind at the time of our death it will activate a negative seed, but this seed will ripen in the first moment after our death determining the  karmic trajectory of our next life.  Just as when we are dreaming we believe everything to be real, so too when contaminated karma ripens it does so appearing to be real even though it is not.  Seen in this way, rebirth in the lower realms is no different than being trapped in a dream of being in hell from which we never wake up and which we do not realize it is a dream.

To take this one step further, it is very useful to ask the question:  who trapped all the beings in the lower realms?  If last night you dreamt of somebody in a wheelchair, who put them in it?  Clearly it was you, since it is occurring in your dream.  In exactly the same way, if you dream of countless beings trapped in the lower realms, who put them there?  Clearly it was you, since it is occurring in your karmic dream realm.  Every being is empty – another wave on the ocean of our mind.  When the ocean of our mind assumes the aspect of hell, all the beings of our dream become trapped there.  Our negative actions do not just condemn us to hell, but countless other beings as well.  Out of compassion, we therefore wish to never take rebirth in the lower realms!

Every time we engage in a negative mental action we create the causes for lower rebirth.  We engage in countless such actions every day.  Conversely, it is quite rare for us to engage in virtuous mental actions.  When we are in the lower realms, we engage in virtually only negative actions, thus creating countless causes to remain there.  When we take rebirth in the upper realms, we very quickly burn up all of our positive karma, leaving only negative karma on our mind.  We also almost never engage in purification practice.  Therefore, it perfectly stands to reason that we have countless trillions of negative karmic potentialities on our mind and very few, if any, positive ones remaining.  Every time we experience the slightest discomfort or problem, we usually respond by generating all sorts of negative minds towards our situation.  What can be more uncomfortable than death?  What can be a bigger problem than dying?  It is almost certain that we will respond with a negative mind at the time of death.  So with virtually only negative karma on our mind and a near certainty that we will respond to the death process with a negative mind, can there be any doubt about the fact that we are almost certain to fall in the lower realms at the time of our death?  This is not just something we say, this is the reality of our situation.  We are, for all practical purposes, on the precipice of hell and we can fall at any point.

If we deeply internalize this truth, we will generate a very healthy fear of negative mental actions and a very healthy fear of all of the negative karma which remains on our mind.  This fear will push us to cease generating negative minds and encourage us to engage in sincere purification.

This is part 4 of the series on my understanding of how to engage in the ultimate perfection of each stage of the path.

Normally we call the next meditation on death.  But once again, each stage of the path is a mental action, so an awareness of death itself is not the meditation, rather it is the mental conclusion we come to practice the Dharma purely right now without wasting a single moment that is the actual stage of the path.  In the previous meditation we realized how we have a precious human life with which we can attain the highest spiritual goals.  In this meditation, we first realize how we may lose our precious human life at any moment and as such we cannot afford to waste even a single moment of our opportunity.  Since we may die at any time, we realize that the only thing we can take with us into our future lives is the karmic potentialities we have planted on our mind, so when we realize death we choose to use this present life for the sake of our countless future lives.  This is what makes our practice of Dharma “pure.”  Our practice is impure if we practice Dharma for the sake of this life alone.  The perfection of the realization of death is the decision to practice Dharma right now without wasting a single moment with the aim of using this life to become a fully enlightened Buddha.  The ultimate perfect of the realization of death is the perfection of the realization of death conjoined with an understanding of how our precious human life, our death, our practice and our future lives are all empty.

It has already been explained in the previous post how our precious human life is empty.

The emptiness of the death of our precious human life can be understood in a variety of different ways.  First, if we recall from the previous meditation our human life becomes precious if we make the mental decision to use it for the purposes of attaining spiritual goals.  If for whatever reason we abandon this decision and start to use our human life only for worldly purposes (meaning reasons concerning this life alone), then our “precious human life” has died even though our human life itself has not.  This is a form of death that depends entirely upon our mind.  It is quite similar in how we say ordained people disrobing is a form of spiritual suicide.  From the point of view of emptiness, quite literally it is a form of spiritual suicide because the monk or nun known as Kelsang Whatever is no more – that person has died even though their human life continues.

A second way our precious human life can die is the karma giving rise to the appearance of the 8 freedoms or the 10 endowments might exhaust itself before our human life comes to an end.  For example, imagine somebody moves to a country where there is no access to the Dharma and the person gradually loses interest and stops practicing.  This is a death of the person’s precious human life even though they are still alive.  This, sadly, occurs all of the time.  Each of the freedoms and endowments are a karmically appearing condition of human life.  As explained before, every phenomena is a mere karmic appearance of mind.  Every karmic appearance has a certain duration to it.  It is very similar to a DVD or a YouTube video.  Depending upon the intensity of the original karmic cause giving rise to the appearance, different karmic seeds will have different karmic durations to them.  Some appearances may last for many years, others may last for only a few moments.  Right now, we may have the appearing conditions of all of the freedoms and endowments, but there is no guarantee that this karma might not exhaust itself at any moment.  So it is not just an issue of we may get in some accident and die before we get old, the death of our precious human life can happen anytime through the simple exhaustion of the karmic appearances which enable our life to be precious.

A third way our precious human life can die is our human life itself dies.  This can actually be understood as a specific instance of what was just described.  Our human life is one of the freedoms.  The appearance of this life is a karmic appearance, and this karma can exhaust itself at any point.  When this happens, the appearance of this human life will cease completely.  When we die, it is like the karmic movie of our present life story coming to an end.  All of the appearances of this life gradually cease until we enter the clear light of death.  This is our very subtle mind which goes with us from life to life and never dies.  As will be explained in the next meditation, the quality of the mind we have at the time of our death determines the quality of the karmic potentiality that ripens at the time of our death.  This potentiality will then ripen in the form of the appearances of our next life.  It is like we put in a new DVD which will have its own duration.  We leave all of the appearances from our previous life behind, and the only thing we carry forward with us into our future lives are the karmic potentialities (each of which will eventually ripen as a different karmic YouTube video) we have placed on our mind during our life.  So if we think deeply about this, we will realize that the only thing that has any real value is the karmic causes we create – only this matters.  What appears does not matter at all.  The only thing that matters is what karma we create in response to what appears.

It is fairly straightforward to understand how our decision to not waste a moment of our precious human life is empty.  It is exactly the same as our decision to seize the opportunity afforded us by our precious human life.  Additionally, what does it mean to not waste a moment of our human life?  It means to use every moment of our life to train our mind in the Dharma.  To train our mind in the Dharma is to choose to engage in certain mental actions, such as choosing to abandon our attachment to what other people think or choosing to consider the happiness and well being of others to be something that is important.  These are mental actions, and thus depend entirely upon our mind.

In summary, understanding that our precious human life is nothing more than a mere karmic appearance of mind which can exhaust itself at any moment, we choose to use every moment of our life to train in engaging in the mental actions of the stages of the path so that we may plant on our mind the karmic potentialities that we can carry forward with us into our future lives and which will eventually ripen in the form of the appearance of ourselves as Heruka or Vajrayogini in our pure land liberating all living beings.

This is part 3 in a 31 part series on my understanding of how to practice the ultimate perfection of each stage of the path.

We normally refer to this meditation as the meditation on our precious human life.  But it is important to understand that every stage of the path is a mental action, and therefore the actual meditation of each stage of the path is a verb not a noun.  So while we call this the meditation on our precious human life, we should understand that the meaning here is “the wisdom decision to seize the opportunity afforded by our precious human life.”  According to Sutra, the perfection of this is the wisdom decision to fully seize the opportunity afforded by our precious human life by using it to attain the final goal of full enlightenment so that we may guide all others to the same state.  According to Highest Yoga Tantra, we use our precious human life to attain the specific goal of becoming our Highest Yoga Tantra deity, such as Heruka or Vajrayogini.  The ultimate perfection of this stage of the path, therefore, is the perfection of this wisdom decision according to Highest Yoga Tantra conjoined with an understanding that our precious human life, our act of seizing and the final result we strive for are all empty.

Our “precious human life” can be understood to be empty in two ways.  First, our human life is not precious from its own side, rather it becomes precious in dependence upon our mental decision to use it to accomplish spiritual goals.  All life is, of course, precious, but that is not the meaning here.  Precious in this context means more than the mere existence of human life.  Here our human life is as spiritually precious as the extent to which we use it to accomplish spiritual purposes.  The higher our spiritual purpose, the more precious our life becomes.  If we use our human life to accomplish the highest goal of becoming Heruka or Vajrayogini for the benefit of all, then our human life is the most spiritually precious possible.  If we use our human life to attain personal liberation or to avoid a lower rebirth, our human life is still precious, but less so than if we use it to become a Buddha.  In this context, if we use our human life only to attain goals that concern this life alone, then our human life is not spiritually precious at all.  Thus, the preciousness of our human life depends upon our mind and so is therefore empty.

Second, we can understand the emptiness of our precious human life by understanding that the conditions which make our human life precious, namely the 8 freedoms and the 10 endowments explained in the lamrim teachings, are themselves mere karmic appearances of mind.  The 8 freedoms are in essence freedom from conditions which prevent us from practicing Dharma, such as being born in the lower realms.  The 10 endowments are in essence favorable conditions which give us the actual opportunity to practice Dharma, such as having access to teachings and the mental faculties and disposition necessary to actually practice.  A detailed explanation of these can be found in Joyful Path of Good Fortune.  Where do these 8 freedoms and 10 endowments come from?  They are the karmic results of our own past actions.  In the past we engaged in the actions which created the karmic causes and conditions which are now ripening in the form of our precious human life.  Karma is primarily mental action.  For example, our mental action of engaging in moral discipline created the karma for us to have a human life.  Our mental action of deciding to create the conditions for the Dharma to be available to others, such as by helping out at our centers in the past or giving Dharma teachings, created the causes for the Dharma to be available to us now.  What is the nature of these 8 freedoms and 10 endowments?  They are by nature mere karmic appearances of mind.  They are a mere appearance because each one can be shown to be nothing more than a mental imputation on the basis of a certain collection of parts.  They are a karmic appearance because the appearance itself of these conditions arises in dependence upon karma.  And the nature of these appearances is our mind itself, specifically the emptiness of our mind of great bliss appearing in the aspect of these freedoms and endowments.

Our act of seizing our precious human life itself is also empty.  The actor is our empty self, the object of our action is our empty human life, the action of seizing is a mental decision to change our mind in the ways indicated by the instructions and the effect of the seizing is the karmic potential to experience the inner results of attaining our spiritual goals.  The emptiness of ourself and our empty human life have already been explained.  The action of seizing itself is a mental decision to change our mind in a particular way.  Normally, we allow our mind to be pulled or pushed according to the uncontrolled whims of our delusions.  But the action of seizing is a mental decision to intentionally choose to mentally respond to our life in a different way, such as by avoiding negative actions understanding their karmic consequences or by seeing through the deceptive lies of our delusions and thus not following their misguided advice or by choosing to put the interests of others first.  Each such decision is a mental changing of the shape and inner dynamics of the ocean of our mind.  And the karmic fruit of these actions is a karmic potentiality which will ripen in the future as a mere karmic appearance of our body, mind, environment or enjoyments being those of a Buddha (or something that moves in that direction).

The final result we strive for is also empty.  As explained in the meditation on reliance upon the spiritual guide, a Buddha is empty.  Normally we grasp at our future Buddhahood as somehow being an inherently different being.  No.  Right now, the ocean of our mind is in the aspect of an ordinary contaminated being in an ordinary contaminated world of suffering surrounded by others experiencing a similar fate.  By training our mind in the stages of the path, we karmically reshape the ocean of our mind to appear in the aspect of the Vajra King Heruka in his universal pure land Keajra surrounded by all beings having been led to the final blissfully pure result of full enlightenment.  The ultimate nature of both appearances is the same – namely the emptiness of the ocean of our very subtle mind of great bliss – what changes is our realization of its ultimate nature and its assumed aspect or shape.  Samsara and Nirvana are equally empty, just two different aspects or shapes the emptiness of the ocean of our mind might take.

In short, we practice the ultimate perfection of seizing our precious human life by realizing that our freedoms and endowments are mere karmic appearances of mind, and in dependence upon that understanding we make the mental decision to reshape our mind in the ways indicated by the Dharma instructions for the purpose of creating the karmic potentialities which will ripen in the future in the form of the emptiness of the ocean of our very subtle mind of great bliss assuming the aspect of Heruka or Vajrayogini liberating all the other waves of living beings.

Once again, every stage of the path is a mental action.  Just as the act of giving becomes a “perfection of giving” when the act of giving is motivated by bodhichitta, or the wish to become a Buddha, so too any stage of the path becomes an “ultimate” stage of the path when it is practiced from the point of view of ultimate truth, emptiness.  The ultimate perfection of any stage of the path, therefore, is to engage in the conventional action of that stage of the path motivated by bodhichitta and conjoined with and infused by the wisdom realizing emptiness.  Or more succinctly, the ultimate perfection of any stage of the path is engaging in that stage of the path motivated by ultimate bodhichitta.  The purpose of the next 30 posts is to explain my understanding of how to engage in the ultimate perfection of all of the stages of the path.  In this post, I will begin with the root of the path, reliance upon the spiritual guide.  This post is quite long, and for that I apologize, but taking the time to understand it will enable you to understand more easily all of the remaining posts in this series.

From a conventional point of view, reliance upon the spiritual guide is a two-fold mental action:  first, we generate a conviction that the spiritual guide is a Buddha (and therefore completely reliable), and second, on the basis of this faith, we put his/her instructions into practice to the best of our ability.  The perfection of reliance upon the spiritual guide is to rely upon the spiritual guide so as to become a Buddha with the ability to lead all beings to the same state.  The ultimate perfection, therefore, of reliance upon the spiritual guide is to rely upon the spiritual guide to become a Buddha understanding that the spiritual guide, ourselves, all beings and our reliance itself are all empty.

The emptiness of the spiritual guide can be understood as follows:  the “spiritual guide” is the mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation that is “a person who is the synthesis of all three jewels.”  This is very profound.  As will be explained in a later post, according to Buddhism, the three jewels are the three main objects we turn to – namely, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha – in order to solve our inner problems of delusions and their karmic imprints.  “Buddha” is the mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation of “a person that has purified their mind completely of delusions and their karmic imprints and thereby realized fully within their own mental continuum all good qualities.”  “Dharma” is the mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation of “all of Buddha’s advice for how to become a Buddha ourselves.”  “Sangha” is the mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation of “all those who are striving to put the Dharma into practice.”  The “synthesis of all three jewels” is the mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation that is “the synthesis of all of the Buddhas, all of the Dharma and all of the Sangha fully in mutually reinforcing harmony with one another.”  Synthesis, here, means “fully in mutually reinforcing harmony with one another.”  The synthesis of all three jewels in turn is comprised of “the synthesis of all of the Buddhas”, “the synthesis of all of the Dharma” and the “synthesis of all of the Sangha.”  So the synthesis of all of the Buddhas is how all of the Buddhas mutually reinforce one another in their common task of liberating all beings.  The synthesis of all the Dharma is an understanding of the resolution of all apparent contradiction between any of Buddha’s instructions combined with an understanding of how each instruction mutually reinforces every other instruction.  The synthesis of all the Sangha is the resolution of all conflict, even the most subtle, within the Sangha combined with the perfect harmonization of all of their efforts aimed at practicing the stages of the path and supporting one another in this endeavor.   So building back up, upon the basis of imputation that is the synthesis of all of the Buddhas, all of the Dharma and all of the Sangha we impute “synthesis of all three jewels.”  A person who realizes fully the synthesis of all three jewels as their basis of imputation for their “I” is a “spiritual guide.”   If we contemplate this fully we begin to glimpse the sheer magnificent splendor that is a spiritual guide and it is difficult to not start to cry.  The Spiritual Guide is simply the synthesis of all that is good.

The emptiness of ourselves is explained extensively in every book written by Venerable Geshe-la.  Quite simply it is realizing that our “I” is a mere mental label we impute upon the basis of imputation of our body and mind, but if we remove our body and our mind completely there is nothing remaining that is the “I”.

The emptiness of others is also quite profound.  Normally we conceive of others as separate, independent beings.  I am here, they are there, and their is this unbridgeable chasm that stands between us.  We grasp at others existing inherently separate from us.  This is completely wrong.  In reality, each being, including ourselves, is a wave on the ocean of all living beings.  Out of ignorance we grasp at each wave as being inherently distinct from all of the others, but in reality they are all by nature the same ocean and thus inseparable from one another.  While we can nominally distinguish one wave from another, we cannot separate them from their underlying unity.  It is the same with all living beings.  My ignorance tells me I am just the wave called Ryan.  I grasp at this wave as being separate from all of the other waves, and on this basis I engage in actions which put the interests of the Ryan wave above the interests of all of the other waves.  And everybody else in samsara is doing the same thing.  No wonder the waves of humanity are so choppy, full of conflict and turmoil like in a violent storm.  But when I realize “Ryan” is just one wave on the ocean of all living beings that is my true self, then I seek what is best for the harmony and mutual stillness and peace of all of the waves.  When I conceive of myself as the ocean, as opposed to any individual wave, then each and every living being, including Ryan, becomes but a single aspect or part of my larger self.  If I kick the dog, it is one part of myself kicking another part of myself.  How senseless is that?  To see the emptiness of all living beings is to see how we are all part of one indivisible whole, and upon this basis harming others becomes non-sensical and dedicating our life to leading others to full enlightenment becomes entirely natural.

The emptiness of the mental action of reliance itself is at first difficult to understand because it is very difficult to understand the relationship between emptiness and action.  Normally we think if something is empty it can’t act and we think if there is action it must inherently exist.  But this too is completely wrong.  In reality, action is only possible because the actor, the action itself, the object of the action and the fruit of the action are all empty.  If the actor was inherently separate from the object of the action, how could it possibly act upon the object when there is no point of contact?  If the action itself was inherently separate from its fruit, how could it possibly produce any fruit since there is no connection between the two?  It is only because the actor and the object of action are part of the same entity that they can interact with one another, and it is only because the action and its fruit are part of the same continuum that cause and effect can exist.  If we conceive of the mind as a body of water, by changing our mind (the mental action) we change the shape of the body of water and thus cause one wave (the actor)  to interact with another wave (the object of the action) producing a new pattern of waves (the effect or fruit).  This too is very profound.  If we understand the empty relationship between actor, object of action, action and its effect then our understanding of emptiness is very qualified and there is great hope that we will be able to engage in the ultimate perfection of each of the stages of the path to enlightenment.

As this relates to the ultimate perfection of reliance upon the spiritual guide, the conventional action of reliance upon the spiritual guide is to first generate the conviction that the spiritual guide is a Buddha and to then, on the basis of that faith, put his/her instructions into practice to the best of our ability.  The actor, here, is ourselves.  The mental action is to put any Dharma instruction into practice with the wisdom conviction that the instruction is completely reliable.  The object of the action is the instruction itself.  And the effect, or fruit, of the action is to make the ocean of our mind more peaceful and calm.  The conviction here is particularly important because it is this mental conviction that gives our mental action force or power.  The greater our conviction or belief, the more power or force there is in the mental action.  Since the object of the action is the instruction and all instructions when practiced function to make our mind more peaceful and calm, the more power with which we engage in the action the more complete will be the resulting inner peace.  Venerable Geshe-la once told Venerable Tharchin that if he fully believed that his spiritual guide was a Buddha, he would attain enlightenment in an instant!  Such is the force-multiplying power of this conviction on all of our spiritual actions.  Understood in this way, the ultimate perfection of reliance upon the spiritual guide is not a singular mental action, rather it is a way of engaging in all of the other mental actions that are the stages of the path.  This is why reliance upon the spiritual guide is a transversal practice, in other words it pervades all of our other practices making them dramatically more powerful.  It is the root of the path because there is no path without it.  Why?  Because if we lack any conviction that the mental actions we are engaging in are reliable then our mental actions themselves will lack any power and thus produce no fruit.

Generating the conviction that our spiritual guide is a Buddha is actually easy when we understand his emptiness.  He is a Buddha because we have mentally constructed him as such (see above).  A person constructs themselves as a Buddha by imputing their I on a mind that has realized all of the stages of the path.  A person constructs themselves as a spiritual guide by imputing their I on the synthesis of all three jewels.  We construct someone as a Spiritual Guide by viewing not the person as an I imputed upon the ordinary contaminated aggregates of body and mind, but rather by viewing them, their instructions and their actions as the unfolding manifestation of the synthesis of all three jewels within the ocean of our mind.  This view alone functions to bestow upon our mind a wisdom that interprets them, their instructions and their actions as this synthesis of all three jewels unfolding within our mind, and as such we receive the wisdom and blessings of the synthesis of all three jewels  through this person even if from their own side they are a completely ordinary being!  As Venerable Geshe-la said, if we view our spiritual guide as a Buddha, we will receive the blessings of a Buddha; if we view them as a bodhisattva, we will receive the blessings of a bodhisattva; and if we view them as ordinary we will receive nothing.

In summary:  first we construct the mental object “spiritual guide” which is the synthesis of all three jewels.  Then we impute “spiritual guide” on everything.  From this, we will receive teachings from and the blessings of our spiritual guide through everything.  Powered by this, we put into practice what we have learned and the result will be a gradual calming of the waters of our mind until eventually it becomes the completely still and translucent clear light omniscience of a Buddha.

The fundamental reason why I am a Kadampa Buddhist is because I have been convinced of its merits on the basis of weight of argument.  In the Kadampa teachings, I have found valid and indeed definitive reasons establishing its truth.  On the basis of being convinced of its validity, I have put the instructions into practice and found them to be reliable – in other words, they work as advertised.  The definitive reason for every Kadampa teaching is the truth of emptiness.  Emptiness can be logically and experientially established as true – it does not require a leap of faith to believe, it can be shown to be true.  From this, the entire Kadampa path can be established as true.  Practicing the path conjoined with an understanding of its emptiness is the ultimate, or definitive, way of practicing it.  Therefore, it is quite important to understand the emptiness of each main aspect of the path.

Every stage of the path is a mental action.  Just as the act of giving becomes a “perfection of giving” when the act of giving is motivated by bodhichitta, or the wish to become a Buddha, so too any stage of the path becomes an “ultimate” stage of the path when it is practiced from the point of view of ultimate truth, emptiness.  For example, reliance upon the spiritual guide becomes “ultimate reliance upon the spiritual guide” when we engage in the conventional action of reliance upon the spiritual guide conjoined with and infused by the wisdom realizing emptiness.  The ultimate perfection of any stage of the path, therefore, is to engage in the conventional action of that stage of the path motivated by bodhichitta and conjoined with and infused by the wisdom realizing emptiness.  Or more succinctly, the ultimate perfection of any stage of the path is engaging in that stage of the path motivated by ultimate bodhichitta.  The purpose of the next series of posts is to explain my understanding of how to engage in the ultimate perfection of all of the stages of the path – specifically, the ultimate perfection of the 21 lamrim meditations, of the 6 perfections, of the two stages and of the final result.

For this reason, over the next series of posts I will explain my understanding of the emptiness of each stage of the path of both Sutra and Tantra.  I do not in any way claim that this explanation is correct, rather I am just sharing my understanding as it is in the hope that if there is some validity to what I am saying it might prove useful to others; and if it is wrong, somebody will correct me so that I can improve my understanding.

I have explained previously my understanding of emptiness.  You can find it under the “emptiness” category on the right.  But briefly emptiness says there is nothing other than mere creations of mind.  Everything is constructed by mind, and there is nothing real behind any of these constructions.  Everything is a mere karmic appearance of mind.  They nonetheless function as the dance, or inner workings, of the mind.  The key to understanding the Prasangika view of emptiness (the ultimate view according to Sutra) is to make the distinction between “the basis of imputation” and “the imputation itself.”

This can be illustrated with a couple of simple examples.  The basis of imputation of a “fleet” is “a bunch of ships.”  The collection of the ships is the basis of imputation and upon this collection my mind imputes the mental label “fleet.”  The fleet itself is nothing more than a mere mental projection or imputation.  If I go looking for a real fleet, I find none.  None of the individual ships is the fleet and if I take away all of the ships there is no fleet to be found anywhere.  From this, we can see that the “fleet” is nothing more than a creation or projection of mind.  Using the same logic, a “forest” is nothing more than a mere mental imputation on “a bunch of trees” and an “army” is nothing more than a mere mental imputation on “a bunch of soldiers.”  The fleet, forest and army are all mere imputations by mind.

We might object, “OK, yes, I see how fleet, forest and army are mere imputations by mind, but there are nonetheless ships, trees and forests that are actually there.”  But closer examination reveals this is incorrect.  What is a “ship”?  It is a mere mental imputation on a collection of “hull, engine, deck and interior rooms.”  The ship is not any one of these things individually and if I removed them all there is no ship to be found anywhere.  The same is true for the “engine”, it is a mere mental imputation on some pistons, belts, frame and spark plugs.  Each of these in turn is also just a mere mental imputation on the collection of even smaller parts.  We can continue this way until we get to the “atom”, which is just a mere mental imputation on “a collection of electrons, protons and neutrons.”  And even these are being smashed these days into smaller and smaller parts by particle accelerators.  No matter how small we go, we never find anything other than once more a mere mental imputation imputed on the basis of some collection of even smaller parts.  There is no end to this.  From this we can see that the entire world is nothing more than a giant Christmas tree of mental labels.  When you strip away everything that you can validly identify as just a mental label, you find absolutely nothing!  There is nothing there behind any of the labels – everything is dream-like creation of mind.

What then are these mental labels themselves?  They are the individual waves on the ocean of our mind.  In the ocean, there are many different waves which we can mentally distinguish one from another.  But in reality, they are all by nature the same ocean.  There are not actually distinct waves, rather it is just our mind that labels them as such.  It is the same with everything else.  Every phenomena, every person every thing, is just a different wave on the ocean of our mind.  They are not actually distinct from one another, rather it is just our mind that labels them as such.  As explained in the Tantric teachings, the conventional nature of our mind is omniscient great bliss and the ultimate nature of our mind is emptiness, so the final nature of the ocean of our mind is the union of great bliss and emptiness.  The Sutra Prasangika view establishes that all things are mental waves, the Tantra Prasangika view (the final, ultimate view according to Tantra) says the nature (or ocean) of these waves is our mind of great bliss and emptiness, and the two are inseparable – you cannot have a wave without its underlying ocean.

So what creates the individual waves?  Our karma.  Karma is mental action.  Each time we engage in a mental action, it reshapes in some way the ocean of our mind creating different waves.  By definition, virtuous mental actions function to make the waves of our mind more tranquil, peaceful and calm;  and non-virtuous mental actions function to make the waves of our mind more turbulent, unpeaceful and agitated.  Each and every stage of the path is a mental action.  Our training in the stages of the path is nothing more than a training our mind in abandoning those mental actions that make the ocean of our mind unpeaceful and agitated, and instead training our mind in engaging in those mental actions that make the ocean of our mind more calm and indeed translucent.

What follows over the next 30 posts will be an explanation of how we train in the 29 main mental actions on the path conjoined with ultimate bodhichitta, and how doing so functions to make the ocean of our mind increasingly peaceful until eventually it settles into a complete inner stillness of a blissful meaning clear light.  From this, we then arise as a “great wave” of a  Buddha that effortlessly functions to lead all beings to the same state.