In praise of Jesus!

Kadampa Ryan My Kadampa understanding of the Bible

Anybody who knows me well knows that one of the things I take most seriously is the advice to follow one tradition purely without mixing.  The actual instruction is while respecting and appreciating all other traditions, we should follow our own tradition purely without mixing.  This is the middle way between fundamentalism on one hand (only I am right, everyone else is wrong) and inventing your own religion on the other (mixing and matching many different traditions according to your own views).  Both of these are extremes which lead to problems, whereas respecting and appreciating all other traditions while following one’s own tradition purely without mixing leads to harmony and personal spiritual progress.

But sometimes I see Kadampa’s forgetting the first half of this advice to genuinely respect and appreciate other traditions.  Many people who come into Buddhism do so from having been raised in and subsequently rejected Christianity.  Some people come with very hostile views, even, towards Christianity.  Others may have some arrogance thinking that Buddhism is just hipper and smarter because of the teachings on emptiness, so they speak disparagingly and arrogantly towards other religions.  I have done all of these things myself in the past, and all of this is wrong.

Last night I watched a movie on the life of Jesus.  There is an entire DVD collection on the main stories of the bible that won someting like 11 Emmy awards that was really well done, and I watched the one on Jesus.  While I was watching, my daughter came down and was wondering why I, as a Buddhist, was watching something about Jesus.  She thought because I follow one path I am somehow prevented from believing in and appreciating other paths.  She was relieved to know this was not the case because it helps resolve a tension within herself of having lots of Christian family and being raised in Christian cultures, yet I am Buddhist.

So I thought I would write some of the things I really appreciated about the life of Jesus.

  1. He had to do all that he did while being only human.  While being the son of God, he accomplished all of his deeds as a human, with human constraints and limitations.  He had to face the same temptations of lust, power, the opportunity to kick off the Roman oppressors, etc.  He faced the same challenges of people trying to undermine him, dealing with relationships, etc.  He endured all of his sufferings as a man.  This is an inspiring example that if he can do all that he did as a man, then so can we.
  2. He healed through the power of others’ faith.  Very often when he was to perform some miracle, he always asked whether the other person believed.  When they did, then they or their loved ones were healed.  It is not that he had the power from his own side to heal, but the healing occured in dependence upon other’s faith.
  3. At several points in the story, he or others were obliged to expereince some suffering or dificulty to expose their doubts so that others could come to believe.  Examples include him turning water into wine, walking on water to save the disciples on the boat in the storm, Lazarus being raised from the dead, his being crucified to take on the sins of all, and his resurrection to show that he can overcome death.  His power comes primarily from other’s faith in him, so much of what he did was designed to increase others’ faith.  Of course different things work to increase others faith today, but at the time, that was how things were done.
  4. He said “blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.”  It seems the essence of the Christian way is to identify those in greatest need, those who are the most lost, those who are the most outcast, and to bring them into the fold.  He cared for the poor and the sick, he did not judge the prostitutes or the tax collectors, He said, “he is the way”, and I think this is a large part of what he meant.  He was not afraid to take on the rich and powerful (the temple marketplace, the Jewish establishment at the time, etc.).  It is not surprising that Christianity is dying in Europe but being reborn in Africa and Latin America.  It is a theology that liberates the oppressed and downtrodden, and sadly the powerful have a tendency to hijack religion for their own worldly ends, often giving religion a bad name (when in reality, the fault lies not with the religion but by those who misuse it).
  5. At one point, he asked his followers, “what do you want from God?”  And somebody said, “forgiveness.”  So he said, “then forgive others.”  Then somebody said, “love.”  So he said, “then love others.”  Bascially, whatever we would want from God (however defined) we need to give to others.
  6. He was always quite playful with others, not stuck up and tight; yet he always submitted to the will of God, even when that meant the ultimate price, never putting his own preferences first.  This is an extraordinary subtle balance to attain.
  7. Even though he only taught for a very short period of time, his example and teachings have inspired billions for thousands of years.  Who amongst us can say the same?  Even a very short period of pure deeds by one small man from a destitute family can change the world.
  8. He said he lives in the hearts of men and will be with us until the end of the world.  This is extremely profound and reveals his nature.
  9. He spoke of bringing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the pure land is not somewhere else.

Unrelated to his example, I find it interesting that much of world history of the last 2000 years has been driven by a family fued amongst the sons of Abraham.  Jesus emerged from within the Jewish community, yet revitalized it by exposing how it has become corrupted by power.  The Jewish establishment sought compromise with Rome as the means of preventing the people and the temple from being wiped out.  They were not necessarily wrong or corrupt, but didn’t know what else to do.  The relationship between the Jews and Christians has always been an interesting one, sometimes tragic as in the holocaust, sometimes familial as in Western support for Israel.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve as power in the world shifts, for the first time in a very long time, from the Abrahamic nations to the East. Our job as Kadampas is tied up in this process.  I have lived my whole life in the Western world, dominated by Christianity but evolving into a pluralistic society based on the freedom of religions as the resolution of the last 2000 years of conflict.  Yet, internally, I am 100% Kadampa.  So I must fully learn to undertand and appreciate Christian society if I am to live within it as a Kadampa.  Learning how to do this is part of this larger transition the world is going through.

In any case, I think there is much to appreciate and respect in pure Christianity, and coming to appreciate and respect it, while following my own tradition purely without mixing in my own practice, is part of my path.

Your turn:  Explain what inspires you about Jesus or Christians, and how this has helped you become a better Kadampa.

Knowing when and how to help

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

We all know the story of the guy who saved the fish by putting him in a nearby pond, but then that fish ate all the other fish in the pond, and when the owners of the pond found out what happened they killed the fish that was saved.  The moral of the story is it is not enough to just be compassionate, we need to have wisdom knowing whether our help is actually helpful and beneficial.  When we look at most of the challenges in the world today, how to respond to them often turns to this question of when and how to help so that our help doesn’t make things worse.

If we look at the debate between conservatives and liberals in the U.S., this is the fundamental question.  When we look at the debate on how to respond to the Eurozone crisis, this is the fundamental question.  When we look at the debates about how to raise responsible children, this is the fundamental question.  Therefore, understanding the nature of the problem and having an answer to this question is very important.

Imagine you are confronted with somebody who has a big problem because they have made wrong choices (be it Greece, a rebellious teenager, or people failing to succeed in the modern world).  How should we help this person?  One extreme is creating a moral hazard.  If we just solve the other person’s problems for them, then they never face the consequences of their wrong choices and are therefore never forced to learn to make correct choices.  If we always clean up their mess, they face no consequences and will know we will always be there to clean up their mess, so they will continue to make wrong choices again and again.  The other extreme is letting them drown.  If the harmful consequences of their wrong decisions are so severe that experiencing them actually decreases their capacity to be able to solve their own problems even if they choose to do so, then letting them drown and face the music condemns them.  They will likely give up trying because they know even if they did, they will still fail, and they will fall farther and farther down (blaming you along the way).

So what is the middle way?  It is show solidarity for capacity building.  This proceeds in several steps.

First, you need to distinguish between problems within their control versus problems outside of their control.  Ultimately, of course, from a karmic perspective everything that happens to us is the karmic result of our past actions, so you could say that everything is within our control.  But conventionally speaking, this is not the case in the short run.  In the short run, certain karmic seeds have already ripened and there is nothing we can do about it.  These are things that are outside of our control.  For example, if we have been born into a poor and dysfunctional family, karmically this is of course the result of our past actions, but for purposes of our life that karma has already ripened, and now we have to deal with it.  For problems outside of somebody’s control, as bodhisattvas there is no fault in doing whatever we can to mitigate against whatever external problems the person is facing all while holding them responsible for what they do have control over.  While the external circumstance is something they might not have control over, we should help the other person not use that external circumstance as an excuse to not try for the things they do have control over.

For the things that are within the control of the other person, the next step is to identify whether the other person is trying their best to dig themselves out of the hole they have fallen into.  How will we know if they are trying their best?  Usually, we just know.  We can tell.  There is no magic formula here, just go with your gut instinct and request wisdom blessings to know.

If the other person is trying their best, then you focus your help on equipping them with the tools and capacity to solve their own problems.  This is the classic, give a man a baguette you feed him for a day; teach a man to bake his own baguette’s, you feed him for life.  For a country, this may mean helping them rebuild their administrative and institutional capacity; for an unemployed person, this may mean retraining them in employable skills; for a struggling teenager, this may mean getting them a tutor.  But while they are retraining, yes, it is necessary to also feed them baguettes!  You can’t just teach him how to bake if he starves while he is learning to do so, you also need to feed him while he is learning.  Teaching people to stand on their own two feet, and indeed to enter into a virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating personal growth is the final goal.  How far should we go with this?  All the way to taking them to enlightenment.

If the other person is not trying their best, then things become more complicated.  The first thing you need to do is stop making excuses for them.  You need to refuse to assent to their narrative that all of their problems are because of other people or some external circumstance.  You need to help them identify which areas they do have control over, and you need to make very clear that they are responsible for those areas and if they fail in those areas, they have nobody to blame but themselves.  If you doing this fairly and with skill, inside they will know you are right even if externally they would never admit it to you.

The second thing you need to do is give them a warning.  You say, “look, I will stand by you to help you develop the skills and capacity you need to dig yourself out of your hold, but you need to do all the work – I can’t do it for you.  But if you choose to not do so, this is what the natural consequence of what your bad choice will be…”  Then you just explain to them how the world works and what will happen to them naturally in the world if they don’t do what they need to do.  For the country, this could mean them going bankrupt.  For the unemployed worker, this could mean them finding themselves on the street.  For the rebellious teenager, this could mean failing to graduate with all of the consequences.  You give them one more chance – saying next time you are not going to bail them out if, after your explaining to them the consequences, they continue to make the wrong choices.

Then, if they nonetheless make the wrong choice, you need to then not bail them out fully.  You bail them out only enough so that their capacity is not permanently destroyed by the consequences, but nothing more.  You don’t need to punish them, the world will do that for you naturally.  When they face the consequences of their bad choices, they will kick and scream and blame you, but this is just how the world works and the only way they will learn is by getting burned.  Again, I am not saying let them drown, but I am saying only prevent them from doing so completely.  Throughout this time, you should make clear that your offer of helping them dig themselves out always stands.

Allowing them to sufer the consequences of their wrong choices will often mean you yourself will have to experience some negative consequences, such as them blaming you or seeing them sufer or perhaps when they fall, they bring you down with them.  These consequences you just need to accept as the price of you helping the other person by not helping them (unless doing so destroys your capacity permanently, at which point the calculation is different).

If, despite facing the negative consequences of their wrong choices, the person still does not decide to start trying their best to dig themselves out, then there is little else you can do than pray for them.  You should continue to protect them from such extreme consequences that their facing them would permanently destroy their capacity to ever dig themselves out, but it may mean you having to watch them waste their life.  You should never stop requsting Dorje Shugden to arrage whatever conditions are perfect for them to attain enlightenment.  Request him to bless their minds so that whatever they are experiencing becomes a cause of their enlightenment.  Your offer to help them grow in capacity should always stand, but it might not be until future lives that you can execute on it.  During all of this time, you should request wisdom blessings to try better understand how you can break through to the other person, but nonetheless accept that at present there are things also beyond your control.  You can explain the way, but they must make the journey themselves.

Your turn:  Share some wisdom you have learned about knowing when and how to help others.

Always take the broader view

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Kadam Bjorn once said there is not a single Dharma mind is narrow or closed, they are all open and vast.  Most of our daily problems and wrong attitudes come because we are too tight, too narrow, too closed in our thinking and outlook.  I have had several experiences over the last 24 hours, all of which have pointed to the same conclusion:  “always take the broader view.”

First, yesterday I attended a conference by a group of young Muslim activists here in Belgium.  They are putting together an umbrella organization of all of the different Muslim associations that target empowerment of the Muslim community, whether it be for the young, for women or for entrepreneurs.  We brought in some really high-calibre American Muslim activists to exchange experiences, etc.  What really impressed me was how each time they took the high road.  One of them was a woman who founded a chic Elle-style magazine for Muslim women.  The goal of the magazine is to help break the stereotypes and show there is no contradiction between being a fully empowered woman and being a Muslim.  She said something that really struck me, she said, “Excellence is the best defense against discrimination.”  She encouraged them to strive for excellence in everything they do and in doing so, all wrong stereotypes will fall away with time and by force of the example.

Later in the day, I was debating with somebody about the Eurozone crisis, and they were looking at it purely from the German national view, and from that view, everything the Germans are saying makes some sense.  But when looked at from the broader European and macroeconomic view, their conclusions no longer make sense.  Then later I was thinking about those who work on issues related to international organizations.  At that level, you are thinking about things from the perspective of the planet as a whole, so again, have a higher view.  And then this lead me to think about how Buddhas have the highest, broadest view of all because they look at things from the perspective of what is best for the enlightenment of all living beings.

Then later in the evening, I was watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he had the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on.  He was talking about the millions of homeless people in America.  He talked about people “losing their home”, not just single kids on drugs, but whole families.  When we think about it, having the appearance of a “home” is incredible karma.  When many people look at the homeless, they think “its their fault, they need to work and get a job.”  Yes, people need to take responsibility for themselves, but that does not mean we do not, as a society, also need to assume our responsibility to our community and others.  Many times people try to justify not helping others on the grounds that helping them doesn’t actually help them.  They say, “give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.”  But then they use this phrase as justification for not giving him a fish, but they also don’t teach him to fish either!  When an earthquake, flood or tsunami wipes out an area, we can all see it is not their fault and we rush to aid.  But a financial crisis, like we had in 2008 and are continuing to have with the Eurozone crisis, is also like a natural disaster, it is a financial disaster which wipes out everyone, the guilty and innocent alike.  Imagine how you would feel if for no fault of your own your employer went bankrupt due to the crisis, you lost your job, couldn’t find another job, and lost your home and found yourself on the street with your family with nowhere to turn for help?  The Secretary took the broader view.  He said they have found that in the long-run it is actually cheaper to eliminate homelessness than it is to allow it to continue.  It costs society about $40,000 per year for a homeless person between shelters, clinics, etc.  Of course most of that money comes from charitable donations, but it is much cheaper in the long run to take them in, help them get back on their feet, give them training and help them find a job than to year after year keep them homeless.  In the old days, they told homeless people “if you sober up, we will find you housing.”  This seems like wisdom, but it fails to understand the trauma of being homeless.  When they reversed this and pursued a “housing first” policy, the people then had enough societal support to begin the work of sobering up and those with psychiatric problems started taking their medicines again.

In Europe, there is a whole community of homeless called the Roma.  It is incredibly sad and anger-provoking at the same time.  You see these mothers on the street with their very small children, and they are teaching their kids how to look pathetic and how to beg and even how to trick people into giving by pretending to be doing Red Cross petitions.  You can’t help but get angry at the parents, why aren’t they putting their kids in school.  But then when we take a broader view, you see a different story.  Is it the kids fault that they were born into such a family?  They grow up and are raised in such an environment so they never learn how to do anything else.  As a people they face tremendous discrimination and are never trusted, so they are never given an opportunity to get on a different track.  If all you have ever known how to do is scrape by on the streets, when later you have kids, you will do the same thing.  So it perpetuates generation after generation.  Those who do manage to escape never look back and try to hide the fact that they are Roma because there is so much discrimination, so all the best escape and only the least capable remain without any support.  They become enculturated into crime and begging, which then causes people to discriminate against them even more in a vicious cycle.  It is very sad, and there is no real solution that I know of other than massive investment in retraining.

I think in any situation, we will find the wisdom view by taking the broader view.  When our mind feels spacious and has space for both wisdom and compassion for everyone, then we know we are on the right track.  If we find ourselves judging, being defensive, feeling tight, narrow, stressed out, etc., then we should try take the broader view.

Your turn:  Describe some problem in your life, and how by taking the broader view you realize a wisdom view of that situation.

 

Change is inevitable – don’t resist, rather learn to adapt

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Most of the problems and frustrations we have in our life come as a result of our attitude towards change.  The cycle is usually some change happens, we become upset about the things we lost in the change and we develop aversion towards some of the new things that have come about as a result of the change.  Then, usually after some drama and a fair amount of time, we come to let go of what we have lost, we come to accept our new inconveniences, and we even come to discover some new good things in our changed environment.  Just when we get comfortable and happy with our new situation, some new change will come about and the whole cycle starts over again.  This cycle occurs with basically everything:  our friends, our jobs, our kids, our surroundings, our enjoyments, etc.

For our family, this cycle primarily plays itself out in the form of being sent to new postings.  Every two to three years, we will be sent someplace new in the world and have to start our lives all over again.  But this cycle started long before I became a diplomat.  In the last 21 years, I have moved a total of 18 times!  Not always to different cities or countries, but to different homes or contexts.  I never seem to remain…

In reality, this is the natural state of affairs in samsara.  Everything is constantly changing.  This is a fact of life, whether we accept/like it or not.  Some people use all of their energy trying to resist this inevitable change.  They do everything they can to keep everything the same.  When we approach life this way, we begin to fear everything, view everything as a threat, and we increasingly enscone ourselves in an artificially static world.  It eventually grows harder and harder to hold back the tide of change, our mental strain grows and grows, we become increasingly grumpy, dissatisfied and picky.  We get stuck in our habits and can’t imagine life any other way.  The radius of our world gets smaller and smaller, the information and new perspectives we become exposed to narrower and narrower, until eventually we find ourselves in a single chair in an informational echo chamber of things confirming what we already believe.  We become completely stuck, enmeshed in what is for all practical purposes a karmic straight jacket.  To do anything out of our normal routines becomes inconceivably hard.  But even then, like it or not, change comes – and for us, it becomes all the more traumatic and wrenching. This is no way to live a life!

Since change is inevitable, instead of resisting it, we need to learn to embrace and adapt to it.  We should view each major change in our life as if we have died and been reborn in a new life.  We take from our old life the lessons we have learned, and we enter our new life with a mind eager to discover what is around the corner.  Each new change will force us to grow in some way, to change ourselves, to learn how to be equally happy in any and all circumstances.  The reality is all worlds, all lives are equally empty.  So no matter what new world or circumstance we find ourselves in, we have an absolutely equal chance of being perfectly happy.  This is simply a fact.  Our job as a Kadampa in this ever-changing world is to gain the ability to be equally happy everywhere.  Each new world is an opportunity to expand the envelope of our capacity to transform new and different circumstances into something we consider to be “ideal.”  As we tell our kids, “every situation is equally good, just in different ways.”

This is also where reliance upon Dorje Shugden becomes so important.  Through relying upon him, we can know with absolute certainty that whatever changes have happened in our life are exactly what we need.  We can know that our new circumstance is exactly perfect.  Knowing this, our only remaining task is to realize how and why.  If we don’t know, we just request wisdom blessings from him that he reveal to us how and why our circumstances are indeed perfect.  We might not get an answer right away, but before the end, it will all fall into place and we will realize how amazingly skilful he is in shepparding us to enlightenment.

It will sometimes be hard, it will sometimes take longer than we would like, but through embracing this task of learning to be equally happy in every new situation we find ourselves in, we will develop the ability to always be happy.  From this, an enormous confidence comes which knows we will be able to take this ability with us in life after life.  It is not enough to just be happy in this life, we need to learn how to be happy in every life, life after life.  Learning to embrace and adapt to change is, therefore, not only the key to happiness in this life, but to happiness in all our future lives.

Your turn:  Describe some change that you have resisted.  How did you eventually learn to adapt to it?

Some key ideas I am thinking about

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Every once in awhile, I have a whole bunch of ideas, each one of which could be a column, but the conditions are not such that I can do a whole column on each.  When this happens, I just post a list of the main point of each of the ideas.  Perhaps later these can become full posts.

  1. The Dharma is in perfect accordance with and perfectly describes how things actually work.  The laws of physics are able to describe and govern physical reality to an incredibly high degree of accuracy.  But the laws of Dharma, most notably karma and emptiness, describe and govern all of reality, physical, mental and the relationship between the two.  They describe and govern the relationship between all phenomena and beings.  Bodhichitta is the synthesis of all Dharma, so living our life in accordance with bodhichitta is to live in perfect alignment and harmony with all things, past, present and future.  With our tantric practice, we actually build our enlightenment, and thus practically fulfil the bodhichitta intention.  So first we learn all Dharma, then we synthesize it into bodhichitta, then with bodhichitta we build our pure alternative self and world for all.  Because the Dharma describes and governs all of reality, it reveals itself perfectly and equally in all circumstances.  Our job as a practitioner is to become in tune with how the Dharma is revealing itself in our lives.
  2. When great spiritual masters like Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, etc., come they speak the perfect truth in the context of the world of their time.  But the context of the world changes all of the time.  Religious fundamentalists seek to mold the world back into the context that reigned at the time of their respective spiritual master so that the perfect truth can be realized.  Such an attempt is hopeless and ultimately will result in behavior completely contradictory with the teachings of that religion.  The better approach is to realize that perfect truth is equally true in all contexts, so instead of trying to shape the world back into a long-gone context, we should strive to express and realize that same perfect truth in the context of the world we inhabit today.  This is the true meaning of lineage – a lineage keeps the truth of the teachings fully alive and perfectly expressed in a constantly changing external context generation after generation.  We do not need to invent new traditions, rather we need to express and realize the truth of the tradition in the modern context.
  3. The mind of extended vacation.  Even though one is working very hard, there is no reason why one cannot always be on vacation.  If you have the mind of vacation, you will experience your life as a vacation, even while working.  For example, we can view our time in each country we are posted at as an extended vacation in different places of the world.  Touring is only part of vacationing.  The best and most meaningful vacations are working vacations, where you take the time to live and work in a different country/culture.  This shapes you far more and so therefore you get much more out of your “vacation.”  When you are on vacation, the goal is usually to explore and appreciate the best of an area.
  4. The mind of building a home.  Home is your home base, where you are able to retreat to, recharge, relax and grow.  In our fast paced, highly mobile socieites, we often times neglect building a healthy and happy home.  The environment that is our home shapes our kids and ourselves tremendously.  If we create a clean, healthy, happy, harmonious, hard-working, generous home then this is what our kids will become socialized into and revert back to when they create their own homes.  So even if we are traveling all of the time to different countries, we also need to make a point of building our own home environment.  We may not own the physical home we live in, but that does not mean we cannot make it home.  We may move to other places, but that does not mean we can’t bring our ‘home’ with us.
  5. Investing in your family relationships.  The relationships we have with our families are extremely important for our overall well-being and happiness.  Very often people start entering into conflict with their families, and then they avoid them by doing other things, then because they are not investing in their families the relationships grow worse and the people enter into a vicious cycle.  We need to take the time to invest in our family life, building harmonious and mutually supportive relationships with our family members.  We need to take the time to hang out with, appreciate, enter into the lives of and love those in our families.  The relationships we have with our family members are often amongst the deepest we will have in this life, so it is through those relationships that we can work on the deepest delusions within our mind.  A happy family life very often leads to a happy everything life.
  6. The extremes of arrogance and playing dumb.  One extreme people fall into is arrogance, pretending they know things they do not.  Another extreme people fall into is playing dumb, pretending they know and understand less than they actually do.  Both are extremes and need to be avoided.  The middle way is accepting that you know what you know, but always wishing to learn more.  You take this approach with yourself and with others.
  7. The essence of German culture.  We have visted Germany a few times in the last few months and obviously Germany is calling the shots on the Eurozone crisis.  My observation is as follows (and yes, it is a gross generalization, so not too much should be read into this):  The essence of German culture is “precision quality.”  They are are culturally focused on this in all that they do, in all spheres.  The problems come when they have a moralistic chip on their shoulder looking down on all those who do not do things as well as they do.  Different societies value different things, and so therefore will organize themselves differently.  We cannot say one is right and the other is wrong, they are just different.  The Frech maximixe “living well.”  Americans maximize “comfort and efficiency” (though our best side maximizes making the American dream accessible to all).
  8. We saw “The Iron Lady” recently.  Thatcher was powerful because she firmly believed in and was willing to work for her principles no matter what the price, and there was a certain degree of truth to the principles she believed in.  She failed because she did not realize that her principles were not the only ones worth valuing, including respecting the validity of the points of views of others.
  9. We saw “the Descendents” recently.  George Cloney lived in perfect paradise, had money, beauty, fantastic surroundings, power, etc., yet even in paradise samsara is unrelenting.  He confronted an almost impossible situation which just kept getting worse and more complex.  But no matter what came his way, he more or less responded by doing the right thing.  In doing so, we won back the respect of his kids.
  10. Even though it may sometimes/often do so in unskilful ways, the driving force of U.S. foreign policy is to spread and protect freedom in all of its forms – relgious freedom, economic freedom, political freedom, and social freedom.  It does so because it believes in freedom as a matter of principle and because it believes its interests are best served in a free world.  It shoots itself in the foot when the sometimes self-righteous means it employes in the advance of freedom engender resentment causing people to reject the message of freedom and when it forgets that there is an institutional foundation and context necessary for freedom to flourish for society as a whole.  The same is true for religious traditions in the world.
  11. Much of history can be understood through the lens of the history of religion in this world.  Problems come when one imposes one’s own views on others.  The truth will reveal itself in many different ways and many different contexts.  We don’t need to mix all of these different truths for ourselves, but we do need to respect that the truth will reveal itself and express itself differently to different people.  Respect for religious freedom is an essential ingredient for world peace.
  12. In this new world we are entering, one which will largely take place within a virtual world, we need to create an environment of internet freedom.  But freedom is different than anarchy.  Freedom is underwritten by clear institutions which balance and protect the equal rights of everyone, not just the most powerful.

Your turn:  What are some key ideas you are working with now?

Guru Yoga as our main practice

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

There are so many instructions on the Kadampa path it is very easy to lose sight of what is important or how it all fits together.  I believe it was Kenneth Galbraith, one of history’s most famous economists, that said there is no concept too complex that cannot be explained in two words; and that there are no two words you cannot give a discourse on for two hours!  So if we are to look at all of the Kadampa path and need to reduce it down to two words, those two words would be “guru yoga.”  All of the path can be understood as one single practice, namely guru yoga, and everything else is in support of that.

The logic is simple:  the guru is already an enlightened being, so instead of reinventing the wheel and going through the laborious process of building from scratch within ourselves every quality of a Buddha we simply import the final product within our mental continuum.  We simply replace the basis of our self from being the ordinary, deluded being we currently are with the enlightened body, speech and mind of the guru.  There is one activity on the path:  changing the basis of imputation for our I from our ordinary self to that of the guru.

Here, guru does not merely mean the external appearing form of our Spiritual Guide, rather, here guru means all of the different levels of the guru.  There is the external spiritual guide who teaches us, writes books, grants empowerments, etc.  The practice with the external spiritual guide is to learn and to emulate.  The external spiritual guide introduces us to the internal spiritual guide who has many many levels and aspects.  One meaning of a “Buddhist” is “an inner being.”  So it follows that a Buddha is a being that lives within the realm of our mind.  The guru, by definition, is the synthesis of all of these Buddhas.

First we are usually introduced to Je Tsongkhapa, who we understand is the same mental continuum of Buddha Shakyamuni.  We are introduced to his three principal qualities:  wisdom, compassion and spiritual power which assume the forms of Manjushri, Avalokitehshvara and Vajrapani respectively.  We are also introduced to his Sangha.  The principal function of Sangha is to arrange the conditions for our practice.  The inner sangha assumes the form of Dorje Shugden and his retinue.  While by nature Dorje Shugden is the wisdom Buddha Manjushri, he accomplishes the function of inner Sangha within our mind.  This is why he appears with the Sangha jewel in the field of merit.

Through learning from and relying upon these inner emanations we are eventually introduced to the Guru in the aspect of the Yidam, which in the context of the Kadampa tradition assumes the form of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  The Yidam is like our ultimate role model.  The Yidam is like our new car!  Our main practice is to let go of our old, ordinary car of our body and mind and instead to hop into and identify with our new spiritual all-performance vehicle of the Yidam.  We basically adopt the body and mind of the Yidam as our own.  But then we go even deeper.  Just as we went inside our ordinary mind and met certain Buddhas, when we go inside the Yidam’s mind, we discover new Buddhas assuming different aspects and we start the whole process over again.  These Buddhas assume the form of the seed letters of the principal and supporting deities (the body mandala) of the Yidam.  We then do the same thing of coming to identify with the seed letters, in particular the nada. What is inside the nada?  The Dharmakaya, the final nature of the guru, the ocean where all enlightened waters find their final destination.

All throughout this process of admiring, emulating and finally identifying with the different levels and aspects of the guru we need positive mental energy (merit) we need to remove obstructions (purification) and we need to the strength to make these transitions (blessings).  These three are our preparatory practices.  We need to have the motivation to become the guru, in all of his forms, so that we can then liberate all beings – this is bodhichitta.  We need to realize that our self does not inherently adhere to our ordinary body and mind, these are the meditations on the emptiness of the self, body and mind.

Viewed in this way, we come to understand that in reality the entire path is guru yoga, and all of the other practices support that main practice.

Your turn:  Take some difficult situation in your life, now view it as an emanation of your guru for your practice.  How does your mind change towards your difficult situation when you view it in this way?

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.