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.

Everything is equally good, just in different ways

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the key to daily happiness is having the right purpose.  If our purpose is to strive to satisfy our desires for wealth, power, pleasure or a good reputation, then some situations we face will seem good and others will seem bad.  If instead our purpose is to train our mind then every situation is equally good, just in different ways.  Since every circumstance we encounter is equally empty and since every circumstance provides an opportunity to oppose delusions and train ourselves in virtuous responses, from the point of view of wishing to train our mind, every situation is equally good.  With such an outlook, we can be happy with anything, anybody, anywhere and anytime.

It may not be immediately obvious to us how every situation is equally useful from the perspective of training our mind, but we at least can know for sure it is.  This is especially true if we have surrendered our karma to Dorje Shugden.  If we have done this, not only is every situation equally good for training our mind, every situation is equally perfect.

So how can we realize how every situation is equally good for training our mind?  There are five things I do (any one of which can work).  First, I ask myself, “what delusions does this situation give me an opportunity to oppose?”  Second, I ask myself, “what virtues does this situation give me an opportunity to practice.”  Third, I ask myself, “what does this situation teach me about the truth of the Dharma.”  Fourth, I ask myself, “what skills does this situation give me an opportunity to build within myself?”  And the fifth thing I do is I request wisdom blessings from Dorje Shugden asking, “please reveal to me how this situation is perfect for training my mind.”  With our reliance on Dorje Shugden, we want to get to the point where we feel within ourselves we have completely surrendered control to him and we say “please do with me what you wish” confident in the knowledge that we are in his care and protection.

Of course, none of this will work if in our root desires we do not value training our mind more than we value our pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure and a good reputation.  This only works if our deepest desire is to train our mind.  So how do we develop this desire?  For me, there are several thoughts which work to help me stay centered in this desire or purpose.  First, I consider how the only thing I can take with me from life to life is the karma I create and the habits of mind I cultivate.  Everything else I have to leave behind.  Second, I consider how happiness depends entirely upon whether my mind is peaceful, not whether I have satisfied my worldly desires.  The less my mind is deluded and the more my mind is virtuous, the more my mind is peaceful and thus the happier I will be.  Third, I remind myself I am working for a purpose larger than myself.  My Spiritual Guide is seeking to forge me into the Buddha I need to become to be able to benefit the beings with whom I have the karma to lead to enlightenment.  The situations he is giving me now are designed to cultivate within me the realizations I need to be able to help these beings.  Knowing that the happiness of countless others in the future depends upon me gaining these realizations now, for their sake I need to learn what needs to be learned and gain experience with what needs to be experienced.

Sometimes it will take a long time before we have reached the point where we are equally happy with every situation, but it seems clear to me if we work in this direction we will get there.  And once we are equally happy with the situation we are currently in, it will be time to move on to the next situation and the next spiritual assignment.

Your turn:  Explain how some “obstacle” in your life is actually “equally good, just in a different way.”

Why people have affairs

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

At the beginning of many relationships, there is this special magic you feel with the other person.  Your heart naturally feels warm when you think about them, they appear to you to be just a wonderful person, you see good in them, and every once in a while, they also feel the same way about you!  Magic!  This feels so good because in our heart of hearts, we all long to be linked with others by love.  It is as if our heart knows that this feeling of separation and isolation we feel is not the natural state of our relationship with others and we get a glimpse of the experience of loving interconnectedness.

The reason why people have affairs is because they lose this feeling with the person they are with (more on that below).  They then meet somebody (or refind a long lost love from earlier in life), feel that magical spark again, and since it feels so good they start heading towards it.  If there are sexual feelings towards this new person, and especially if the feelings are reciprocal, it is almost an irresistable combination.  They see the difference in the feelings towards their regular partner, become increasingly dissastisfied, and gradually the relationship erodes away.  Affairs are often not just sexual flings, they are usually a by product of having lost that special feeling with the one we are with, and then being hit with it with somebody else.

All of these dynamics occur because we mistakenly think these special feelings reside in and are dependent upon the other person.  We relate to the other person like we relate to any other samsaric object, really, where we believe that happiness resides within the other person and by “consuming” the other person we can get some of it.  The problem is as soon as we start relating to other people like they are samsaric objects that have the power to give us happiness, things start going south!  We start to relate to them like a drug, where we are trying to get our fix, and we need more and more of them to get the same high.  But then they are no longer able to provide us with the same good feelings they once did, and we become frustrated with them because they are not living up to our expectations.  We lose the magic.  We then are willing to do anything to get it back.  We start acting in all sorts of goofy ways towards the other person, alternating between being a sychophant to being a raging lunatic, and then back again.  The relationship grows increasingly dysfunctional, we increasingly blame the other person, and we start to hate ourselves for how we are stuck in such a dynamic.  We blame them for how we are, and so we start hating them.  We have invested so much in chasing the end of the rainbow with them we become willing to do anything to get some good out of the relationship to justify all that we have done.  But the more we run after the mirage, the more it escapes us.  Eventually, we decide to end it.  But we go back – again and again – caught in a vicious cycle.  Eventually, though, we realize it is a cycle and start to break free completely.  At some point we walk away and don’t fall back in.

But if we still grasp at other people as samsaric objects, it is just a question of time before we fall into a similarly dysfunctional dynamic with somebody else.

So how do we protect ourselves against this?  Simple, we need to realize that the magic is within us and within our own mind, and it is in no way dependent upon the other person.  This magic is called affectionate love, and we can cultivate it within our mind with training.  We can feel this magic towards everyone all of the time.  Our affectionate love can become like the sun which radiates out towards all around us.  The sun does not need the objects it illuminates to be a source of warmth, it simply radiates from its own inner fire.  It is the same with affectionate love.  When we know it comes from within and is not dependent upon or sourced in others, then we stop chasing the rainbow and instead we start becoming a loving person.  We learn how to feel affectionate love for everyone around us.  Of course we will express this love differently with different people depending upon our karmic relationship with them, but the warm, magical feelings within us remain within us all of the time.  We must apply effort to cultivate and sustain these feelings, but it is an internal project, not one of stalking and manipulating others to get them to do what we want them to do so we can regain the feelings.

So how do we generate these feelings?  Simple:  take the time to identify and appreciate the good qualities of others.  Each being has within them Buddha nature, so each being has within them all of the qualities and potential for all goodness.  We need to appreciate others.  See the good in others, draw it out, transform all of their faults into opportunities to practice.  Then you will appreciate all that they do, good and bad, and your feelings of affectionate love will be stable and ever lasting.

(Please note, no, I am not having an affair!  I am just reflecting on what I have observed and understood.  Just thought I needed to clarify that!  hee hee)

Your turn:  Describe how relating to others as an object of attachment has created problems in your life.

The middle way of career ambition

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

It is not easy for a Kadampa to get career ambition correct.  But it is very important that we try if we are to thrive as a tradition in this modern world.  In my view, there are two extremes when it comes to career ambition.  First, is the extreme of not living up to our full professional potential.  Second, is the extreme of becoming attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  The middle way is pursuing your career fully as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to forge you into the Buddha you need to become.

Before we encounter the Dharma, many of us have a well-developed sense of career ambition.  I wanted to be a high-powered engineer, then lawyer, then banker.  We then encounter the Dharma, learn about abandoning worldly concerns, learn how the only thing that matters is gaining realizations, and then we start to think that pursuing a career is inherently mundane.  We look around us at the various examples in the Sangha and see that “to be committed to the spiritual path is to do the minimum amount of normal work as possible so that we can do retreats, etc.”  We come from a historically monastic tradition, so as a tradition we have few examples of professional Kadampas.  This is something new we are learning as a tradition.  There is a cultural bias within the Kadampa community that looks down on those pursuing a normal career, as if doing so is necessarily somebody preoccupied with worldly concerns and not really committed to their practice.  For others, some of us are naturally lazy, not really wanting to do much or accomplish much.  With such a mind, when we encounter the Dharma it provides us the perfect excuse for not pursuing our professional careers!  We now (mis)use the Dharma as our pretext for being lazy and doing nothing.

It is a big problem if, as a tradition, we shun professional life.  We will then evolve into and be perceived as a collection of losers and misfits who only pursue their spiritual lives with full vigor because we have nothing better we are able to do or accomplish with our lives.  Competent, intelligent and professionally capable people will then shun the tradition or certainly not feel at home amongst us.  We will have little chance to thrive and succeed for the long-term if we are a collection of societal “rejects” and “losers”.  People will conclude the Kadampa path is only for those with no life.  And once people start to develop a “life” they will then falsely feel they need to choose between their spiritual life and their newly emerging normal life.  We will become a tradition of people living far below their professional potential, implicitly grasping at professional life as inherently worldly.  Such ignorance is rooted in the unsaid belief that the Dharma cannot be practiced in certain circumstances or ways of life.

The other extreme is to become attached to worldly success as an end in itself.  We pursue worldly goals of wealth, power, reputation for their own sake.  We allow ourselves to become distracted with the concerns of this life.  We start to mistakenly believe our happiness depends upon worldly success in our career.  We allow ourselves to start engaging in negativity in the name of getting ahead.  We start to value our own happiness above that of our colleagues, clients or competitiors.  There is no doubt that the professional, working life is dominated by worldly mentalities.  We can very easily get swept away by such mentalities and come to possess them ourselves.  We start to view every professional setback as an obstacle or a problem, becoming despondent when we don’t achieve what we want.  Later in life, when we are no longer rising in our careers and we start to have to take old people jobs, we become depressed as if our best days are behind us.  When we retire, we feel as if our life has been robbed of all meaning since the only thing we have ever known is our professional careers.  We become sad, depressed individuals, frustrated with our dwindling potential, staring into an increasingly steep descent into irrelevance.

The middle way is to view our professional lives as a skill-building training regime organized by Dorje Shugden to help us develop the skills we will need to become the Buddha we need to become.  We must live up to our full professional potential.  Why?  Because it is in doing so that we will develop the skills we need.  Operating at a higher professional level requires a higher level skill set – working with people, being able to communicate effectively orally and in writing, analytical skills, managerial skills, problem solving skills, creativity, innovation, managing risk, inspiring others, transforming setbacks into opportunities, etc.  We need these skills to be able to help the tradition flourish and to be most effective at helping people.  As a tradition, we also need to gain the realizations for how to maintain a 100% kadampa life in the context of any professional life, from the highest king to the lowest beggar.  To run centers and to enable the tradition to flourish, we need to know how to get things done in this world.  We need the world’s best and brightest not only helping the tradition flourish but occupying the world’s most important and powerful positions so such power and wealth is being used with compassionate, bodhisattva intentions.  And yes, there is a financial component to this.  We need the wealth and resources necessary for the tradition to flourish at a material level.  We do not pursue material development for its own sake, but because we realize there is a material foundation and infrastructure required for the tradition in this world.

Dorje Shugden, our Dhama protector, knows what skills and realizations we need to become the Buddhas we need to become.  We should trust that if he has arranged for us to have certain professional skills and potential that he has done so because it is in developing those skills and living up to that potential that we will gain the realizations and skills we need.  To not live up to our fullest possible professional intention is to waste the conditions he has given us and to deny the fruit of our past virtuous deeds.  We do not seek these things for their own sake, but rather by having them we can help more people.  If we view things through the lens of eventually we need all of the skills and qualities of a modern Kadampa Spiritual Guide, then we will view our professional circumstance as part of our spiritual training.  We will simultaneously live up to our professional potential and our spiritual potential as part of the same continuum.  All contradictions between our so called worldly life and our spiritual life will dissolve away and we will become inspiring examples to all.

Reliance on Dorje Shugden in the context of our careers also enables us to let go of worrying about what happens.  From an ordinary perspective, certain things will be a setback for our career and others will be good; but from a spiritual perspective when we know Dorje Shugden is arranging everything, good or bad, everything that happens to us will be a spiritual boon!  Both success and setbacks in our career give us opportunities to develop spiritually, so we will be able to take in stride (indeed joyful stride) whatever happens in our career.  This takes the stress out of career progression and enables us to focus on the journey.

While I don’t know enough about the Mormon and Jewish communities, and I am sure there are things not worth emulating, we can nonetheless take inspiration from these communities.  Both are minority religious groups who are nonetheless very successsful professsionally.  They possess disproportionate power and wealth relative to their numbers in the world.  Culturally, they value hard work, discipline, and living up to their full professional potential.  Externally, we should be just as professionally successful as they are, but internally our motivations are 100% Kadampa.

Your turn:  Describe a situation where have fallen into one of the extremes of career ambition and what you learned from that.

Cherishing others enough to listen to them

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

Our self-grasping ignorance falsely convinces us that we are just our ordinary body and mind.  It seems natural to cherish ourselves, but what we are confused about is who we really are.  In reality, we are the fully inter-dependent mandala of all living beings, of which our ordinary body and mind are but one small part, like one of countless limbs on the body of life.  We cherish all living beings not out of self-martyrdom but rather because doing so is simply more accurate in terms of cherishing who we really are.  Instead of seeking to optimize what is best for the small, ignorant conception of self; we seek to optimize what is best for our full selves, namely the ocean of all living beings.

People will not be open to your perspective if they do not feel you understand them.  If you speak without first demonstrating that you fully understand where they are coming from, they will dismiss what you have to say and they will spend their time trying to explain to you their perspective.  As banal as it is to say, it is impossible to demonstrate you understand somebody if you do not know how to listen to them.  People know when you are really listening and when you are actually just planning on what you are going to say.

If you look at all of the great examples within ours and other traditions what you find is people who actually know how to listen to others as an act of cherishing them.  How do we do this?  I would say there are four key elements to effective listening:

  1. Shut off completely your own inner commentary and just try to understand where the other person is coming from.  Generate a sincere desire to understand the other person.
  2. Accept the other person without judgement, regardless of what it is they are saying.
  3. Have no ulterior, selfish motive where you are in any way attached to or dependent upon what choices the other person makes.  In other words, you only want what is best for them.
  4. You filter everything you hear through the lens of how everything that is happening to the other person is actually perfect in terms of giving the other person an opportunity to work on improving themselves.

Developing the skill of listening well is one of the most important qualities we need to develop along the bodhisattva path.  Fortunately, this is a skill we can practice developing all day, every day.  Very often the mere act of really listening to somebody is all we need to do to help them.  They are able to verbalize what is happening to them, and by doing so they can better see and understand their own situation and how they should proceed.  When we accept them without judgement, they are able to accept themselves.  By seeing how what is happening to them is perfect, they miraculously start to see things the same way without us even having to say a word.

Your turn:  Give an example from your life where simply listening to somebody helped them.