First be likeable, then be right

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

I have been having a debate at my work about a policy question.  Even though I am right on the substance, I am losing the debate because the others involved in the discussion do not like me.  This has been a very valuable lesson for me.  It is not enough to be right, you have to be likeable first.  The reality is people will reject what you have to say if they don’t like you, even when you are right.  It is useless to be right if your message is rejected.  I could bemoan how unfair it is and become indignant about the whole thing or I can accept that this is how things work and do something about it.

So why don’t they like me?  Several reasons.  First, I am new so I have not yet proven myself to them.  Second, I am stepping beyond “my place” by doing things that normally somebody in my position would not do.  Third, I am publicly taking positions that run counter to their positions, and so therefore I am undermining their message.  Fourth, I made the mistake of calling into question others’ intentions, blaming them, and accusing them of arrogance (not the people I am actually debating, but those they are defending.  But since they are defending those people, indirectly it is as if I am questioning those I am debating with).  So I actually come across as the one who is arrogant and unprofessional.  Because they don’t like me, they then are motivated to find reasons to reject what I have to say or they are more inclined to believe arguments against me because they don’t want to see me win the argument.

In situations like this, it is sometimes best to just accept defeat and offer the victory.  But when the question being debated is important and affects the well being of many people, sometimes you have to continue and make your case.  But before people will re-engage you on the substance, you first have to address the likeability question.

How do you make yourself likeable?  You have to first admit your mistakes as perceived by the other person without being heavy or dramatic about the whole thing, then demonstrate your pure intentions, then acknowledge where the other person is right, then recontextualize your arguments in a different light, then take a position that fully accounts for all the different ways the other person is right yet you have a bigger view on the question.  So they are right from one narrower point of view, you are right from the larger point of view.  Oh, and it helps to make arguments that are irrefutable!

Another very useful tactic is to change the nature of the game from being a debate between two or more sides to being a common project aimed at reaching a consensus.  In Tibet, apparently spiritual debate was quite common and everybody knew how to relate to it as a process of finding deeper truths.  But here in the West, debate usually becomes about a clash of egos with clear winners and losers.  I believe it is for this, and many other reasons, that Venerable Geshe-la eliminated spiritual debate as such from the tradition and replaced it with more of a consensus driven discussion.  The goal of our discussions during the foundation program, teacher training and international teacher training programs is to reach a consensus that we can all agree to.  This changes the goal of the exercise from being conflictual to being useful and consensual.  Then, instead of fighting with people, you can work with them on a common project, they can realize your nature, come to appreciate and like you, and thereby become more amenable to your point of view.  If you acknowledge and fully incorporate their insights and point of view into your own, then they will be far more open to do the same towards you.

Your turn:  Describe some situation where because you were likeable somebody gave you the benefit of the doubt and let you have your way.

Staying focused exclusively on the Dharma, as revealed through your life

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

As Kadampa’s who realize we have a precious human life, it is relatively obvious that we should focus 100% of our attention and effort on practicing the Dharma.  If we truly realized how we have been trapped in the self-imposed insane asylum of our delusion-created samsara since beginningless time and that by some miracle of miracles we have found the doorway out, not only for ourselves but for all of our fellow patients, and we realized that we could lose at any moment this opportunity to get out through either become distracted by the shiny things inside samsara or by simply dying unexpectedly, we would realize it is really foolish to do anything other than concentrate on practicing Dharma 100% of the time.  If we genuinely realize the truth of our circumstance, this is the only sensible conclusion one can draw.

Our biggest problem is grasping at a fixed conception of what it practically means to concentrate on practicing Dharma 100% of the time.  We have such a narrow conception that this only means renouncing our friends, family, jobs and normal lives and instead moving into a center, becoming ordained and doing pujas, attending classes and working for the center all day.  Then, when we realize that practically we can’t live such a life due to the other karmic constraints we face (such as responsibility to our family, student loan debt to repay, retirement to plan for, etc.), we start to become frustrated with our life, we start to view our family, friends, finances and jobs as obstacles to our spiritual life, and paradoxically, the more we meditate on our precious human life and our impending death, the more miserable, neurotic, stressed out and frustrated we become.

Just to be clear, there is of course nothing wrong with somebody who dedicates their life to formal practice in a center.  Such practitioners are to be praised and appreciated, their lives rejoiced in.  But we shouldn’t mistakenly think that this is the only way to concentrate on practicing Dhama 100% of the time.  Since every life is equally empty, every life can equally be transformed into 100% Dharma practice.  In every situation, we should always remain focused exclusively on the Dharma, but as revealed through our life. 

Every life situation, one way or the other, reveals the truth of the Dharma.  This is true for the lives of the lowest beggar to the highest king.  If we trust that this is true and we keep our mental attention focused exclusively on how this is true, we will quite naturally discover in every moment a hidden gem that reveals to us the truth and meaning of the Dharma.  We will come to understand how the life we have, with all of its challenges and constraints, is actually a “gift from the Gods” (or more specifically, a gift from our Dharma Protector), and is, for us, the most perfectly tailored spiritual life we could possibly imagine.  Instead of being frustrated and discouraged, we will be inspired and energized to probe deeper into the mystery and magic that is our life.

If we only relate to our life on its most surface levels, we will quickly become bored and feel as if our life is empty of meaning.  We need to get fully involved in every activity of our life, no matter how mundane or no matter how challenging.  Life is to be lived fully – only in doing so can we derive the maximum spiritual benefit from the opportunities we have been given and that we have created for ourselves.  So paradoxically, it is by fully engaging yourself in your personal and professional lives – while maintaining laser-like focus on how the Dharma is revealed through your life –  that you can discover the deeper spritiual lessons your life has to offer.  You then wake up each day like a joyful adventurer who can’t wait to see what’s in store for today.  With this approach, you can be both 100% engaged in your family and professional lives while remaining 100% engaged in your Dharma practice.

To really take this to the next level, we must also move beyond the simple mechanical and work-horse like aspects of getting on with what needs to be done.  We need to develop a deep sense of marvel at the magical beauty of the life our Dharma Protector has created for us.  As an economist by training, I have rececently come to realize I have a very poorly developed sense of appreciation of beauty.  I arrogantly dismiss such sentiments as a waste of time.  I couldn’t be more wrong.  Instead of always being in such a hurry (which I always am), I need to learn to take the time to appreciate the beauty, elegance and sheer genius of the conditions that have been arranged for me.  I can’t imagine cities more beautiful than Paris and Rome.  But is we develop a sense of appreciation of the spiritual beauty that is our life, we will discover that we are actually abiding in the most spectacular city of enlightenment – right where we are in the life that we have.  I don’t believe we can truly reach the pure land in this life before we die without developing the mind of a spiritual artist – someone who can transform their life into spiritual art.

Cultivating these perspectives takes time and effort, but doing so brings a great joy and satisfaction.  Our life becomes a fully experienced Joyful Path of Good Fortune!

Your turn:  Describe how some major condition in your life can be viewed as Dorje Shugden’s greatest gift to your practice.

Our vows as the keys to our future happiness

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Normally we relate to our vows as things that restricts or constrains our freedom and happiness.  But this is only because we are confused about what makes us unfree and what makes us unhappy.  We normally think freedom is the ability to do whatever we want without constraint and we think happiness is worldly pleasure.  As a result, we view any constraints as making us unfree and anything that deprives us of worldly pleasure as a cause of our unhappiness.

The reality is what makes us unfree is our delusions.  Delusions function to render the mind uncontrolled.  We have no choice but to do what our mind tells us to do.  If our mind is uncontrolled due to delusions, then we are uncontrolled in all that we do, and as a result we are unfree.  The ability to indulge all of our delusions unconstrained is not the peak of freedom it is the quick path to total slavery to the demons of our delusions.  The more we pacify and abandon our delusions, the more we bring our mind under control, and as such the more true freedom we create for ourselves.  We free ourselves from the iron chains of our delusions.

The reality is what makes us happy is a peaceful mind.  If our mind is unpeaceful, even if we have the greatest worldly pleasures we will still be unhappy and unsatisfied.  But if our mind is peaceful, even if we are deprived of any worldly pleasures, we will still be happy and fully contented.  Having a peaceful mind does not mean we need to abandon our worldly pleasures, rather having a peaceful mind is what enables us to enjoy them!  Wordly pleasures themselves are the natural karmic result of good karma, so it is actually clearly impossible to follow the path to enlightenment and not experience an increase in worldly pleasure.  But what we abandon is our attachment to these worldly pleasures, mistakenly thinking that they are themselves the causes of our happiness.  No.  The question is not our encountering worldly enjoyments, the question is whether or not our mind is peaceful and so therefore capable of enjoying them.

Moral discipline is for all practical purposes choosing to turn away from wrong paths that lead to suffering and instead to apply effort to choose to follow correct paths that lead to happiness.  Due to countless aeons of being under the influence of our delusions, virtually all of our natural tendencies are to follow our deluded ways of being.  If left unthethered, we normally fall apart and become increasingly unhinged.  With the practice of moral discipline, when deluded tendencies arise we us our wisdom to recognize how following that deluded tendency leads to suffering and how instead applying effort to follow the opposite virtuous tendency leads to happiness.  On the basis of seeing the difference in costs and benefits, we then make the decision to follow the correct path.  The strength of this decision depends upon the clarity of our wisdom and the strength of our spiritual will power.

Our spiritual will power itself depends upon the strength of our true self-confidence and the depth of our previous experience in exercising it.  True self-confidence primarily arises from the ability to tell ourselves what we are going to do, and then following through with what we set out to do.  If everytime we make a commitment to ourselves, we know we are not going to follow it, then our making the commitment has no power within our mind to change our behavior and we will lose all confidence in our ability to change ourselves.  If instead, everytime we make a commitment to ourselves, we make a point of following through with our determination, we will grow in self-confidence and eventually reach the point where we know we can bring about any change in ourselves that we desire.  This is true self-confidence.  Spiritual will power is like a muscle.  And like any muscle, the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.  In the beginning, we start with small things like brushing our teeth every day or apologizing when we get angry at others.  But over time, we gradually build up the strength of our experience to be able to make harder and larger commitments.

Moral discipline is the cause of higher rebirth.  Higher rebirth is the cause of having the outer, and indeed inner, conditions for happiness.  There are many different levels of rebirth we can take, from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  Our ability to move from the lower to the higher states depends primarily upon our practice of moral disicpline.  It is not enough to just attain a higher rebirth, we need to attain precious higher rebirths.  What makes a particular rebirth precious is whether we can use it to follow spirtual paths which lead to the supreme happinesses of liberation and enlightenment, for both ourselves and for others.  So basically, it is not enough to have any higher rebirth, we want one in which we are following a spiritual path.

The main cause of attaining precious higher rebirths is the practice of our spiritual moral discipline, or in particular our spiritual vows and commitments.  There are literally hundreds of different vows and commitments within Kadampa Buddhism.  I will later post a study guide to all of them, but complete explanations of these vows and commitments can be found in the various Kadampa books.  But to simplify matters, we can say that there are five levels of Kadampa vows:  the refuge vows, the pratimoksha vows, the bodhisattva vows, the trantric vows, and the uncommon vows of Mother Tantra.

The essential practice of each of these vows can be understood in terms of what wrong path the vows abandon and what correct path the vows follow.  The refuge vows abandon turning to worldly objects for our happiness and protection from suffering and instead turn to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  We make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, make effort to put the Dharma into practice and make effort to turn to the Sangha for help.  The pratimoksha vows abandon harming ourselves or others and instead start doing what our wisdom tells us is good for us.  Our bodhisattva vows abandon selfishly working for the self that we normally see and instead start working (eventually solely) for the welfare of others.  Our tantric vows abandon ordinary appearances and conceptions and instead choose to generate pure appearances and assent to pure conceptions.  Our uncommon vows of Mother Tantra abandon the contaminated happinesses of samsara and instead choose to experience all things equally as manifestations of the union of bliss and clear light emptiness.

Engaging in normal virtuous actions creates the causes for a higher rebirth.  Practicing our refuge vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the Buddhist path.  Practicing our pratimoksha vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice at least the path that leads to permanent liberation.  Practicing our bodhisattva vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the path that leads to full enlightenment.  Practicing our tantric vows creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the tantric quick path to enlightenment.  Practicing our uncommon vows of Mother Tantra creates the causes for higher rebirths in which we meet and wish to practice the tantric quick paths of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  In so doing, through our practice of the different levels of vows and commitments, we can create the causes to maintain the continuum of our practice in life after life without interrruption:   for our higher rebirth, our Buddhist path, our path to liberation, our path to enlightenment, our tantric quick path to enlightenment, and out tantric quick path to enlightenment as Heruka or Vajrayogini.

Seen in this way, we can really understand how our vows and commitments are the keys to our future happiness and we can realize their central importance in our spiritual development.  What we do with this understanding is up to us…

Your turn:  Describe how your practice of moral discipline has set you free from some destructive habit or dysfunctional situation.

Dealing with attachment to what other people think

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Cultivating healthy relationships with others

Attachment to what other people think is, in my view, one of the biggest problems in the modern world.  We basically think our happiness depends upon what others are thinking, and when they think something we don’t want them to think, we become unhappy.  This is ridiculous self-torture!

First, we can’t really say with any certainty what they are actually thinking becasue we  cannot read their minds.  More often than not, we simply project what they are supposedly thinking and then get upset about that.  Second, what they think does not in any way harm us, it harms them.  If somebody thinks I am great or somebody thinks I am a jerk, it has no power whatsoever to affect me, so why become upset by it?  We all know the phrase, “sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  But with what people are thinking, they are not even verbal words!  So how can it affect us?  Third, what other people are thinking is nothing more than a karmic echo of what we ourselves have thought about other people in the past.  So if you want people to stop thinking bad things about you, stop thinking bad things about others.  Additionally, their thinking bad things gives you a chance to purify your past negative thoughts towards others, so by learning how to accept and transform it, we set the stage for a much better future.

For me, one of my biggest problems is I do not worry so much about what other people think of me (well, I do, but I am also so arrogant that I often don’t care what other people think – but that is a different problem).  Rather, what really bothers me is when people are angry around me.  This takes three forms:  they are angry at me, they are angry at those I love or they are just angry at the world.

In all of these cases of other’s anger, there are two things in particular I need to focus on.  First, a doctor does not get upset about the fact that her patients are sick, rather helping heal them of their sicknesses is what gives meaning to her life.  Anger is a mental illness, the victims of which I need to develop compassion for.  Second, I need to accept that the very nature of samsaric life is to be surrounded by deluded people.  Why would it be any other way?  To expect otherwise is to not understand and truly accept the nature of samsara.  How can I pretend to be an aspiring bodhisattva, wishing to lead all beings to freedom from their delusions, if I can’t handle or stand being around deluded people?  That’s absurd!

If they are angry at me, I need to accept this as purification, use it as an opportunity to identify and overcome my own faults, and realize their anger is not my problem.  When they are angry at those I love, I need to do what I can to protect the person who is the victim of the other’s anger while accepting that it is also their karma and there is very little I can do about it.  I do what I can, but accept the rest.  When the other person is just angry at the world (or some annoyance in life), I need to view the other person as a mirror showing me the faults of anger, encouraging me to overcome it within my own mind.  It is particularly hypocritical to get angry at those who are angry simply because they are getting angry!

Overcoming our attachment to what other people think is not easy, but it is one of our principal trainings as a practitioner in this modern world.

Your turn:  Describe how you are attached to what other people think of you, and how this creates problems for you.

Increasing your spiritual gravity

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

The dynamic of the physical universe is largely governed by the law of gravity.  The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational pull on other masses.  The same is true of the economy (economic gravity) and politics (political gravity).  Likewise, spiritual progress and development is largely governed by the law of spiritual gravity.  When you think of the great spiritual masters of this world, such as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, Ghandi, etc., you can see that these beings have tremendous spiritual gravity which pulls the beings of this world in a virtuous direction.  Even those these beings have long ago passed away (physically, at least) their legacy in this world (or as Shantideva would call it, their reliquary) still remains drawing beings into the orbit of these great masters, pulling them in towards enlightenment.

As bodhisattvas, our goal is to lead all beings to enlightenment.  Our ability to do so depends largely on the extent of our own spiritual gravity, which in turn depends upon our own spiritual mass.  The question, then, is how do we increase the power of our spiritual gravity?

Strive to gain useful realizations for others.  Everyone has problems they want resolved.  If we have useful answers to these problems, then people will naturally be drawn to us and want to seek our advice.  Our job, then, is to gain realizations that are useful for others.  We can do this by viewing every situation in our life as emanated for us by our Spiritual Trainer, Dorje Shugden, so that we gain the realizations we need to help those beings with whom we have the karma to lead to enlightenment.  If we go through our life with the intention of gaining realizations which will be useful to others in the future, then that is what we will learn, and this intention will also create the karma for us to have opportunities to share these realizations with others in the future.  When, we don’t know.  But at some point, it is inevitable.

Improve the quantity of your quality karmic relationships.  Our ability to help others is largely dependent upon the karmic relationship we have with them.  The quality of our karmic relationships is a function of the strength of the bond, the expected duration of the relationship, the extent of mutual respect and support within the relationship, and how harmonious and healthy the relationship is.  We then should strive to increase the quantity of these quality karmic relationships.  The highest relationship we can have with another living being is a spiritual relationship.  But we need to know how to have healthy non-spiritual relationships before we will be able to have healthy spiritual relationships.  So we should view our non-spiritual personal and professional relationships as part of a continuum of our relationship with the given person that will last countless lifetimes and eventually evolve into a spiritual relationship (perhaps not in this life, but that doesn’t matter).  We manage all of our relationships through the lens of eventually becoming ones of shared enlightenment!

Cultivate smart spiritual power.  The karmic cause of power is protecting others.  Spiritual power is the ability to protect others spiritually.  We protect others spiritually by helping them gain their own spiritual wisdom.  Smart power is the optimal combination of hard and soft power.  Hard power is your actual authority over somebody, such as being a supervisor or a parent, which enables you to compel their compliance (if necessary).  Soft power is the wish of others to emulate or follow you.  Most people exercise their hard power in a way that undermines their soft power by engendering resentment in those controlled.  This arises when we use our power for our own selfish benefit as opposed to using our power to help empower those under our control.  As Hegel said, the categorical imperative is “free will must will freedom.”  We need to use our power to empower others.  When others know we are using our power to help them advance and become more empowered, they will gladly submit to our authority.  Practically speaking, the key to using hard power skillfully is “discreation within a box.”  You give people a box within which they can act freely.  If they use this freedom wisely and responsibly, you expand the size of the box.  If they use this freedom unwisely or irresponsibly, you contract the size of the box.  We increase our soft power by transforming ourselves into an example worth emulating.  The most important component of this is practicing what we preach.  Nothing undermines our example more than hypocracy.  We also need to be respectful, kind, fair, strong, flexible, decisive, light-hearted, not-arrogant, wise, successful, generous, fearless, controlled, organized, focused, have our life together and have a promising future trajectory.  For those over who we have no authority, we can only exercise soft power.  If we try exercise hard power over those who have not voluntarily submitted themselves to our authority, it usually just breeds resentment and rebellion.  True power is the ability to leave all those around us free to make their own choices and yet the choies they make are the right ones.

Create a lasting spiritual legacy.  The most important component of our spiritual legacy is the extent to which we have passed on the lineage to the next generation of practitioners.  We are all, to varying extents, holders of the lineage.  The true lineage is the continuum of authentic spiritual realizations from generation to generation.  So our task is two-fold:  first, download within our own mental continuum the realizations of those spiritually upstream in the lineage; and then second, help those spiritually downstream in the lineage acquire within themselves those realizations.  We do this primarily through our example of how we live our life, but also through our words, writings, and the institutions we leave behind.  Institutions can be formal, such as the internal rules, and informal, such as the spiritual culture of our communities.

The more spiritual mass we acquire, the greater the power of our spiritual gravity, which will then pull in more and more beings who enter into spiritual relationships with us, which will then increase our spiritual mass further in a virtuous cycle.  Eventually we become a vajra-like force of spiritual gravity – one that can never be destroyed and which, like a magic crystal, will eventually have the power to purify the entire universe, gathering and dissolving all beings and worlds into complete purity.

Your turn:  Describe some things you can do to increase your spiritual gravity.

Spiritual Gravity: the theory of everything

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life, 3. Tantra, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I once watched Stephen Hawking’s The Story of Everything.  In it, he explained how gravity is the fundamental force driving the evolution of everything.  The law of gravity states that matter attracts matter according to the relative mass of the objects.  In other words, the apple falls to the earth because the earth has a larger mass relative to the apple, though both the apple and the earth each exert some pull.  The entire universe, from the big bang to the big crunch and everything in between is governed by the laws of gravity.  There are similar concepts in the social sciences, such as political gravity, economic gravity, and the theory of the transition of great powers.  The fundamental point about gravity is understanding it’s dynamic process.  A bigger mass attracts a smaller mass, and as a result the bigger mass gets even bigger, thus attracting in yet another smaller mass in a continuous cycle.  This continues indefinitely resulting in a cycle of creation.  But creation and destruction are simply two different perspectives on the same process.  Schumpter coined the phrase “creative destruction.” Buddha called it subtle impermanence.

The exact same process occurs at a spiritual level.  There is the physical level to reality, the verbal level to reality and the mental level of reality.  Emptiness explains that the physical and verbal arise from the mental – everything is created by the mind.  But emptiness is just a fact of how things work, and the union of karma and emptiness is the supreme view according to Sutra, and the union of the Chittamatrin and Madhyamika-Prasangika schools the supreme view according to Tantra.  But even these are just facts governing the mental plane.  The inner core of the mental plane is the spiritual.  The spiritual unites and harmonizes the bodily, verbal and mental planes (hence the deities of the body mandala).  All spiritual paths have reliance upon the Spiritual Guide as the core of the spiritual path.  A spiritual guide is like a star in the universe, or more accurately a super black hole at the core of a Galaxy cluster.  At the core of reliance upon the Spiritual Guide we have faith, the essence of spiritual life.  Qualified faith is a trusting based upon a valid reason.  It is not blind.  The core valid reason in Kadampa Buddhism is the fact of emptiness according to the Tantra-Prasangika view.  From this, all other valid reasons emerge.

Faith then has three levels:  believing faith, admiring faith and wishing faith.  First we develop a believing faith in wisdom (virtuous intelligence).  Then we develop an admiring faith, marveling at the beauty of wisdom.  From this arises wishing faith, the wish to embody in ourselves the beautiful wisdom we admire.  To embody this wisdom, we must attain the perfection of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom.  We perfect these types of action through generating bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of all.  The core of bodhichitta then strives to become not just any Buddha, but to become one with our Spiritual Guide.  To voluntarily wish to unite with the Spiritual sun of the Spiritual Guide, to surf the laws of spiritual gravity towards the center.  So we wish to unite with the guru.  We accomplish this primarily through the practice of guru yoga, where we mix our mind inseparably with that of our guru.  First we come into contact with his outer emanation body, or the Spiritual Guide we meet in this world.  Then we come into contact with his inner Emanation bodies, or the Buddhas he introduces us to.

Amongst the Buddhas he introduces us to, there are three in particular that are the synthesis of all the others.  These three deities are Guru, Yidam and Protector.  (Note, there is a trinity in many different religions).  Within the context of Kadampa Buddhism, Guru is Je Tsongkhapa, Yidam is Heruka/Vajrayogini, and Protector is Dorje Shugden.  There are other Spiritual Guides also rotating around our Spiritual Guide, such as the Dalai Lama or Lama Yeshe, etc.  These in turn are all students of Trijang Rinpoche.  The “fued” between Kadampas and the followers of the Dalai Lama is actually inter-vajra-familial dispute viewed from the wrong perspective, where we agree on who the Guru is, but have slight differences on who the Yidam is and especially who the Protector is.  This is why resolving within ourselves the apparent contradictions about the Kadampa view versus the Dalai Lama’s view is so important.  Of course different people will resolve this differently – some will resolve it in the direction of Venerable Geshe-la, some will resolve it in the direction of the Dalai Lama, and some will try stay on the fence forever!  Actually beyond all of those are those who seek to resolve both views simultaneously.  My resolution is they are right for them, we are right for us, and neither one of us is right for the other.  Anyways, I digress.  Back to Spiritual gravity.

So the root is guru yoga, ultimately as guru, yidam and protector.  The synthesis of these three is actually the real guru.  This in tern synthesizes down from Protector into Yidam, then Yidam into indestructible drop, then indestructible drop into the seed letter.  From the seed letter into the nada.  From the nada into the 8 dissolutions.  From the 8 dissolutions into the clear light (the other side of the black hole of black near attainment just before the clear light on the other side).  The clear light is not just emptiness, but the union of the mind of great bliss realizing the truth of emptiness directly with our very subtle mind.  This is the Dharmakaya (or Truth Body) Spiritual Guide.  The guru yoga/self-generation as the Dharmakaya takes us straight into perfect union with the Spiritual Guide (who himself is the synthesis of all the Buddhas).  This is our final destination (for now at least…).  Sadhana practices are then the methods for accomplishing these unions.  Offering to the Spiritual Guide, Tantric Self-Initiation and Melodious Drum condense into the Yoga of Buddha Heruka, which is my daily practice.

So how can we accelerate this process of spiritual gravity?  By increasing our own spiritual mass.  We do this by gaining realizations ourselves for the sake of others.  The more realizations we gain, the more we attract other spiritual mass, drawing others closer to us.  This is Sangha.  From Sangha’s emerge teachers.  Amongst teachers emerge Resident Teachers.  Amongst Resident Teachers emerge National Spiritual Directors.  From amongst those emerge General Spiritual Directors.  Each of these three words has great meaning.  General means they are a generalist – they have sufficiently mastered and synthesized all of the different Dharma practices that they are a generalist (or equally balanced towards all expertises).  Director means they are a manager of others and their activities.  And Spiritual qualifies both General and Director.  The subject matter that they are a generalist towards and the group of human beings they are a Director for are others of the same spiritual tradition.  We are now entering the Facebook generation, so it only seems fitting that the model of Spiritual Guide in this world is transitioning from a unitary entity to a social network of potential, actual and former General Spiritual Directors and their students.  But all retain the same root guru, namely Venerable Geshe-la, who arises from Trijang Rinpoche all the way back in the lineage to Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara.

Buddha Shakyamuni is the fourth of the thousand Buddhas of this fortunate aeon.  This does not mean there will only be one thousand Buddhas in this aeon.  Rather, this means there will be one thousand “founder Buddhas” in this aeon.  A founding Buddha is one that arises from a time in which there were no Buddhas in this world, then one came and established the Dharma, this Dharma flourished for a period, then it dissipated and finally disappeared for a long long time until a new founder Buddha comes.  A thousand of these will come in this fortunate aeon.  An aeon is about the time of a big bang cycle or the lifespan of earth, depending on your perspective.  But there will also be non-fortunate aeons, and clusters of such aeons, etc.

The transition of birth, ageing, sickness, death, intermediate state, and rebirth into a new life is a process/cycle we must master and transcend.  Enlightenment is the permanent and irreversible transcending of this process/cycle.  Are there steps after that?  Probably, but that will probably be for after we attain enlightenment…

We master birth, ageing, sickness and death through the Sutra practices, and we master death, intermediate state and rebirth with our Tantric practices.  The union of Sutra and Tantra, then unties and purifies this entire cycle of birth, ageing, sickness, death, intermediate state and rebirth.  When this process is completely purified for the first time, we ourselves are reborn into the pure land.  A state from which we will never fall again.  But it is not enough to just attain the pure land for ourselves, we then need to build our own pure land which will function like a giant sun in the spiritual cosmos, drawing in more and more beings.  One meaning for Chakrasambara is the gathering and purifying of all phenomena into the Dharmakaya.  We seek to become that.  From there, we spontaneously liberate all beings continuously until they are all completely purified.

In the process of moving towards this state of continuously liberating others (like a limitless self-regenerating spiritual fusion reaction), we will leave behind a legacy of our deeds as a bodhisattva.  This legacy of deeds can take bodily, verbal and mental forms.  Bodily in terms of our students and their descendents, verbal in terms of our written and spoken words, and mental in terms of the specific realizations we have attained for the sake of others.  Even after we have passed into enlightenment, these legacies continue to spotaneously liberate all beings.  This legacy is our spiritual reliquary.

A reliquary is something that exists in the world that continues to provide benefit long after the person who left the reliquary has passed on.  Reliquaries can also take digital form.  The blogs and virtual community which are arising are such a digital form.  This is the virtual sangha.  From this will emerge virtual teachers, virtual resident teachers, etc., just like occured in the physical world (but perhaps with different names).  Just as Venerable Geshe-la now tweets and has a Facebook page, soon so too will all of the General Spiritual Directors (past, present and future).  It will be how they emanate themselves into the virtual world, much in the same way Buddhas emanate themselves into countless other worlds.

So from our practical perspective, our task is to increase our spiritual mass by gaining more realizations.  This will draw people to us, who we help unite in families (biological or spiritual), creating a self-accumulating process of growing spiritual mass.  We keep doing that until we unite with the biggest spiritual mass near us, the Spiritual Guide, etc.  In this way the entire cycle repeats itself in an endless process of spiritual accumulation until all has been united in the perfect harmony of endless spiritual creative destruction.

Within the Kadampa Tradition, we have certain days which form the Kadampa calendar.  They are Tsog Days, Heruka and Vajrayogini Month, NKT Day, Buddha’s Enlightenment Day, Turning the Wheel of Dharma Day, Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day, Je Tsongkhapa Day, then International Temples Day.  I believe it is Venerable Geshe-la’s intention that we view International Temples Day as our spiritually most holy day.  It is our Christmas Day where we give the world the gift of Kadampa Temples, much like we give our normal family presents.  What are international Kadampa Temples?  They are spiritual centers of gravity.  Around temples orbit main centers, around main centers orbit branch centers, around branch centers orbit students, around students orbit their families and loved ones endlessly until eventually all spiritual beings are gathered and dissolved into complete purity.  The temples themselves rotate around Manjushri center, the mother center of the Kadampa Tradition.  That in turn revolves around the legacy Venerable Geshe-la is leaving for us to serve as cutodians of the lineage.  On top of Mount Meru is a Kadampa Buddhist Temple.  This is the real mother center where our Spiritual Guide resides.  International Temples Day is ultimately a giant family reunion of all temples into this varja temple on top of Mount Meru.  It is here that we do Tantric empowerments.

This post is posted on International Temples Day.  Today is a ten million multiplying day, so the spiritual power of all that we do is multiplied by ten million times (like a karmic pulsar).  I dedicate any merit accumulated from writing this post to the rapid accumulation of spiritual mass inside the minds of all Kadampas and ultimately all living beings.

Your turn:  Describe what are the major sources of spiritual gravity in your life, and what you are doing to stay close to them.

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Are you adding value or consuming merit?

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Every moment of every day, there is one fundamental question we need to ask ourselves:  “are we adding value or are we consuming merit?”  If we had even the slightest understanding of how precious our current human life is and how we have spent countless lives accumulating only negativity, we would not waste a second of this life using up our merit.  We have arrived at the treasure island – now is the time to gather up riches and resources for the future, not indulge ourselves in whatever pleasures we can find.

Every moment of every day we should be seeking to add value to the world.  Every situation we encounter, we should leave it better than we found it.  Every person we meet, we should leave them better off than we found them.  If there is something to be cleaned, clean it.  If there is something that needs doing, do it.  If there is someone that needs caring for, care for them.  If there is something that needs saying, say it.  If there is someone who needs help, help them.  If there is a job nobody else wants to do, do it.  If there is someone in your company, engage with them (get off the computer or your phone).  If there are commitments or promises you have made, keep them.  If there is work that remains to be done, do it.

When it comes to what needs to be done, I usually fall into one of two extremes.  The first extreme is I leave things for other to do.  One thing we all do (or at least I do) is I leave things undone in the hope that those around me will do it instead of me.  For example, if the kitchen needs cleaning or a diaper needs changing, I might go do something else and leave it in the (sometimes unconscious) hope that someone else will clean it or do it.  One of the commitments of training the mind is to not transfer your burdens onto others.

The other extreme I fall into is I will do what needs to be done, but I will do so with a resentful and bitter mind, like some martyr who sacrifices himself for others.  Yes, I am doing what needs to be done, but I am upset or unhappy about it – bitter that I am doing all of the work while others are lazily indulging themselves.  This is really stupid of me to do!  Anger functions to burn up whever undedicated merit we might have.  So here I am, accumulating merit onlyto burn it up immediately afterwards.  Karmically speaking, it is as if I get no benefit or credit from doing the work I am doing.  At the very least, if I am doing the work I shouldn’t then sabotage it with my anger!

We all know when we are actively adding value to the world versus when we are consuming our merit.  We just ask ourselves:  “am I making the world a better place right now?”  If the answer is no, then you have your answer.  We also always know when we are consuming our mierit.  We just ask ourselves:  “am I having somebody else do something for me that I should more appropriately be doing for myself?”  If the answer is yes, then you have your answer.

We should also be careful about the passive burning up of our merit through taking the favorable conditions we have around us for granted.  There are two tests we can check our mind with.  First, are we imputing “mine” on anything in our possession?  Do we think “my house”, “my car,” etc.?  If we do, that thought functions to burn up our merit when we experience our house, car, clothes, etc.  We should view everything we have as being temporarily in our keeping.  It has been given to us so that we can improve it to pass on to the next person.  We are like an asset manager who seeks to optimise the value of the assets of their clients for the sake of the clients.  It is not my house, it is the house I am providing my kids.  It is not my car, it is the car I use to drive my family around.  These are not my clothes, they are for others do they don’t have to look at my ugly body.  This is not my soap, it belongs to others do they don’t have to smell me.

A second test we can use is are we feeling grateful to those who provided us with what we enjoy?  We did not build our house, make our car, grow our food or sew our clothes.  When we enjoy these things, our focus should be on mentally generating a feeling of gratitude towards those who provided them.  The fact that we paid for these things is irrelevant, others still provided them for us and if we had to make them ourselves, we couldn’t.

Now none of this means we should not rest.  Of course we need to rest, but only so that we can work more.  We do not rest for rest’s sake.  We rest  because we understand if we do not then we will burn out and be able to work even less in the long run.  We rest not to waste our precious human life, but so that we can make the most out of it.  Again, if we are honest with ourselves, we know when we are resting to be lazy versus resting up so that we can get back to work fresh.

This precious opportunity will end very soon.  We do not know how long we have before our time on the treasure island comes to an end.  Everything we do should be aimed at gather up resources and good conditions for the future, not sacrificing our future on the alter of our present needs.  It does not get any better than what we currently have, so we need to stop making excuses, stop lying to ourselves, stop justifying our delusions and just joyfully get on with the task at hand of gathering up riches for our future lives.  The spiritual road in front of us is long, we don’t want to run out of provisions along the way.

Your turn:  Give one example of how you are adding value to the world.  Give another example of how you are consuming your merit.

Looking forward in life – always!

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Our life loses its meaning and becomes increasingly depressing to the extent that we are always looking backwards at what happened before, good or bad.  We cannot drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror!  Of course we need to learn from our past, but if we have nothing we are looking forward to, no destination we are heading towards, our life becomes one empty of meaning.  We can liken it to old people who feel as if they have nothing left to look forward to, who feel their best times are all behind them.  How sad.

In contrast, the more we are forward looking in our outlook, the more our life has meaning and purpose.  We become more willing to accept difficulties and hardships because we see how overcoming them serves a larger purpose and they are simply the mountains we must climb to reach our final destination.   Being forward looking gives us something we are working towards, it gives our life direction.  We feel like we are building towards something great.  We feel forever young.  We can let go of worrying about the past or being nostalgic for it, but rather use it as the foundation for where we are going.  When we have a future we are building towards, we know how to use whatever life throws at us.  When you have direction in your life, you know clearly in which way you need to pivot when life’s curve balls come our way.  Gen Lekma once said, “Dorje Shugden wastes nothing of our life,” in other words, he knows how to use everything that happens to us as building towards the final goal.

The most valuable side effect of realizing the truth of countless future lives is we are able to always be forward looking in our thinking, no matter what our age.  The more forward looking we are, the younger we feel.  The paradox of old age then becomes the older we get, the more we look forward to our future lives, the more pure our intentions become, the happier we become, the younger we feel.  We feel like we are on the cusp of our next great adventure, like setting off for college for the first time.  We take stock of what we have learned from our past to prepare ourselves for the adventures to come.

One of the central differences between the way economists and politicians look at problems is how they reason.  An economist thinks things through to their logical end conclusion, and then works backwards to figure out how to get there.  A politician is always just focused on putting our fires and uses short-term ad hoc solutions which enables them to live another day.  But if we are always pursuing short-term solutions to everything, we are in reality just deferring our biggest challenges to later.  At some point, these challenges catch up to us and overwhelm us.  When we know our final destination, we know what we need to do and we stop sacrificing the long-term on the alter of short-term crisis management.  The more far forward we can see, the more effective we are at understanding what needs to be done and what direction we need to go.

Along the same lines, the difference in the different scopes of being, initial, intermediate and great, is how far forward they think.  An ordinary small scope being can’t see beyond this life.  A special small scope being sees beyond this life but can’t see beyond samsara.  An intermediate scope being sees beyond samsara, but can’t see beyond themselves.  A great scope being sees beyond themselves to the final result of full enlightenment for all.

The tantric practitioner goes one step further by envisioning not only what the final result looks like but how we practically get everyone there.  We must first build our pure land so that beings may take rebirth there and complete the path.  We then extend the limits of the pure land until it encompasses the entire universe and all living beings.  This is a cosmic project which will take lifetimes to accomplish, but adopting it as our purpose enables us to be as far forward thinking as possible, and therefore it gives us the greatest meaning and joy throughout our life.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where because you were looking backwards, you got stuck; but when you started looking forward, you became free.

“Bringing life into the path” through reliance

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Samsara is uncontrolled rebirth.  The main point of virtually all of our Dharma practices is to gain control of our mind so that we can gain control over the process of death and rebirth.  Our main practice in Tantra is to bring death, intermediate state and rebirth into the path through the three bringings in Generation Stage and through the various mixings of completion stage.  But our ability to do any of these depends upon sufficient preparation.  Luna Kadampa said our ability to go to the pure land at the time of our death depends upon our ability to bring the pure land into our living reality every day.  In short, in order to do the three bringings at the time of death we need to first “bring life into the path.”  We can call this the fourth bringing!

Our job in life is to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.  Virtually all of us still grasp at a gap between our Dharma lives and our normal lives, like they are two separate things.  This dicotomy must eventually fade away to where our normal life is our Dharma life and our Dharma life is our normal life.  Our normal life can take any aspect, from the lowest beggar to the highest king, from the ordained person in solitary retreat to the working parent.  Regardless of our external circumstance and vocation, our task is always the same – to bring the Dharma fully and completely into every aspect of our life.

We all know “the path begins with strong reliance,” but at a deeper level we can say not only does the path begin with strong reliance, the entire path is strong reliance.  The Guru is the synthesis of all Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha.  Many people misunderstand this to mean the appearing form of Venerable Geshe-la that we normally see is the synthesiss of all Buddhas, Dharma and Sangha.  Despite our best efforts, the Spiritual Guide that we normally see appears to be an ordinary being (though wise, cute and cuddly, to be sure).  It would be wrong to say that this ordinary form that we normally see is the synthesis of all three jewels.  Rather, what we need to do is first gain a complete understanding of all of the Buddhas, all Dharma and all Sangha, and then we just “name” that entire collection “my Guru” or “my spiritual Guide.”  We take the entire collection of the three jewels as they are appearing in our life, and we think this entire collection is “my Guru.”  Once we have some experience of conceiving of the collection of all three jewels in our life as that which is guiding us to enlightenment (our Guru), then we start to delve deeper and we begin tracing the source of all of the three jewels in our life, and we find the source to be Venerable Geshe-la.  Then, we will see all of the three jewels emanating from him and we will understand him to be the projector of the three jewels into our mind (karmically appearing world).  He will be, for us, the synthesis of all three jewels.

At Venerable Geshe-la’s last Summer Festival before he retired, he spoke of how we can view our resident teachers as “temporary emanations”, where when they are on the throne and when they are teaching, we can view it as the living Guru Je Tsongkhapa enters into the teacher, gives the teaching through them like they are a stereo speaker, and then after the teaching, our teacher goes back to being a normal being.  This will enable us to receive the blessings as if we are receiving teachings directly from Je Tsongkhapa without falling into a wierd cult-like extreme out of the sessions.  We relate to our teachers as normal people in normal circumstances.  We had all heard this before.  But then he said something new (or at least new to me) – that we should do the same with Venerable Geshe-la.  This was a pivotal moment in my understanding of the spiritual guide.  My Spiritual Guide is Je Tsongkhapa – the living Je Tsongkhapa.  The appearing form of VGL is simply his tool for projecting the three jewels into my karmically appearing world.  The form of VGL will eventually die, but my guru, the living Je Tsongkhapa, will always be there simply projecting through different forms.  When I conceive of all the three jewels, as appearing in my life, to be my guru, then even when the form of VGL dies, my guru is still with me, helping me, guiding me, blessing me in the aspect of the entire collection of the three jewels as appearing in my life.  Viewed in this way, the Spiritual Guide never dies, he just changes aspect according to the evolution of karma.  This is the real meaning of the Kadampa tradition.  This is the real meaning of our spiritual lineage.  It is the continuum of Je Tsongkhapa in this world.

What is the essence of reliance on the Spiritual Guide?  It is to regard our Spiritual Guide as a perfectlyreliable Buddha and to put their instructions into practice.  When you check this closely, the essence is faith.  But what is the essence of faith?  It is “trusting.”  When we trust, we let go of our fears, we let go of holding ourselves back, and we just “go with it” into the unknown confident in the knowledge that we are entering into a joyful water slide whose end is the ocean of the Dharmkaya.  The Dharma is completely trustworthy and reliable.  It will never deceive us, never lead us down the wrong road.  We may misinterpret or misunderstand the Dharma, but that is not the fault of the Dharma.  The Dharma itself is perfectly reliable.  We can trust it.  The Buddhas and the Sangha, as appearing in our life, are like road signs pointing us in the direction of how to practice the Dharma.  This doesn’t mean they do things perfectly, rather it means we can learn perfectly from everything they do – some show us what to do, and some show us what not to do.  But in doing so, all show us the way.

Eventually, our practice will lead us to the point where we come to the conclusion that it would be far better to have the Spiritual Guide live our life than for our ordinary selves to do so.  When we reach this conclusion, we can then begin “bringing life into the path.”  In the normal three bringings, we dissolve the guru into ourself, then identify with the guru in various aspects like a life boat guiding us through each stage of the death process.  We need to do exactly the same thing when we bring life into the path.  For me, for example, I ask myself the question:  who would make a better U.S. diplomat – ordinary me or my Spiritual Guide?  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if living Guru Je Tsongkhapa were influencing and guiding U.S. diplomacy?  In a similar way, who would make a better father?  Clearly, he would do a better job on both counts than ordinary Ryan!  So I generate the strong wish that he take over, that he enter into me and work through me and my circumstance.

On the basis of that wish, I then dissolve him into me, engage in self-generation, and try to let go and indeed forget ordinary Ryan.  It is like I put my ordinary self in the back seat, I withdraw my ordinary self from the picture and create the space for the guru to arise and act.  The more we forget our ordinary self (and I mean completely forget) and the more we identify with the guru-deity being the actor in our life, at some point we will make a transition where we actually “feel ourselves as being the guru-deity living our life” (every word here has meaning).  It is very subtle, very blissful and very magical.  Eventually, this feeling refines further and further, functioning to gather and purify more and more of our reality into the guru-deity’s body, mind and deeds.  Eventually we merge completely into the clear light Dharmakaya while simultaneously the reliquary we have created as a bodhisattva continues to function to liberate beings in the world.

If we practice in this way, doing the three bringings during our morning meditation, doing the fourth bringing during our daily life, then once again doing the three bringings as we go to sleep, then soon enough our entire life will be one continuum of bringing the pure land into the here and now.  Once we have attained some experience of this, death will have no hold on us – we will have already passed beyond.  Death will be no different than discarding some old clothes or an old car.  Of course we will need new “clothes” and a new “car” (our next life, or our next emanation body), but we will continue as an extension of the transcendental being, the living guru, Je Tsongkhapa.

Happy Je Tsongkhapa Day everyone!

Your turn:  Describe how through relying upon Je Tsongkhapa you can solve the biggest problem you are facing in your life today.

Whatever life throws at you, make something good out of it

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

At the end of the day, we all want what is good all of the time.  The mistake of samsaric thinking is grasping at some things as being inherently good and other things being inherently bad.  This is a problem because there are far more problems in samsara than there are good things.  Difficulties come effortlessly, whereas good things usually take tremendous effort and are very short-lived.

The Dharma takes as its starting point that problems are inevitable (samsara is the nature of suffering).  Paradoxically, it is by accepting this reality that we can completely change our strategy in life to one that will really work.  Our focus shifts from trying to avoid the inevitable to learning how to adapt to and transform the inevitable.  My Grandmother would always say, “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”  This is exactly right, and the Dharma simply gives us a palet of tools with which to do so.  Things are good or bad depending upon whether we can use them to accomplish our purposes.  If our purposes are worldly, then most of what happens in samsara is bad.  But if our purpose is to train our mind, then everything that happens becomes useful.

Our job as a Dharma practitioner is to learn how to make something spiritually good out of whatever life throws at us.  So when adversity hits, instead of vainly wishing it was otherwise, we accept things as they are and get down to the business of making something good out of it.  If this becomes our focus, we will gain more and more skill and experience at doing this until we reach the point where we can effortlessly and joyfully surf life’s waves to the beach of enlightenment!

Your turn:  Describe some particularly difficult curve ball life has thrown at you, and how you made something good out of it.