Loving others as we do our own children

Kadampa Ryan Cultivating healthy relationships with others

Just before I was to get married I was at the Summer Festival in England.  I went up to what was then the Protector Gompa (a special meditation room dedicated to the Dharma Protector).  I felt like getting married was the right thing to do for my spiritual practice, but I still had doubts.  So I made as sincere of a request as I could that my path be revealed to me.  What happened next was the only time something like this has ever happened to me.  I was meditating, my eyes were closed, but in my mind a Buddha who I understood to be Tara approached me.  She was made of a silvery metalic liquid, but very much alive.  In her hands was a baby – in normal flesh and bones that I could see as clearly as I could see any person out of meditation.  She then handed me the baby and said, “this is where you will find your heart.”  And then everything vanished.  I can still vividly remember and see this within my mind.  All doubt was then dispelled and I knew what my path was to be.  Thirteen years later, I now have five kids!

Prior to my being a parent, I was very much a Vulcan – heart-felt emotion wasn’t really part of my personality, and I was very intellectual in my approach to the Dharma (I still am, unfortunately, but it is slowly changing…).  I really struggled with feeling any Dharma realizations like love and compassion in my heart, and as a result I tended to shy away from such meditations and instead to focus on emptiness and other philosophical or technical topics.  “Finding my heart” was (and still is), in many respects, my greatest spiritual challenge.

To my surprise, the love I have for my children is not some sappy, mushy sort of thing, but is rather very active.  It can best be described as “there is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.”  It is a feeling of a fortunate assuming of personal responsibility for their welfare – I am glad it is me who is responsible for them, because I wouldn’t trust that anybody else would look after them the way I would and I very much want them to be taken care of.  It is a love that ‘knows them’, in many ways better than they know themselves.  I know and understand how they work and think, so I am always sensitive to what is best for them.  It is a love that happily works for their benefit.  It is a love that would rather me have the hardest tasks or the worst things so that they can have the best.  It is a love that somehow can see past all of their faults and understand where those faults are coming from and develop compassion wishing to protect them.  It is a love that literally laughs out loud when I see their summer portraits and the unique goofiness in each of their expressions!

And here’s the thing:  all of this comes naturally.  I haven’t worked to develop this love, I just naturally feel it.  Venerable Geshe-la explains the reason for this is because we have special karmic connections with these particular beings from our previous lives where we now spontaneously feel a pure love towards them.  Of course there are times when our minds are full of delusions towards our kids, but compared to everyone else we feel the most natural love for our kids.  It is thanks to my kids that I ‘found’ my heart, I realized what it means to feel an active love for somebody.

The work and spiritual training of a Kadampa parent is to learn to extend and replicate this feeling we naturally have towards our children with everybody else.   I had a very good friend who once said, “I only need two things to attain enlightenment, my son and my Spiritual Guide.  On my son, I impute all living beings, so by caring for and loving him, I am caring for and loving all living beings.  On my Spiritual Guide, I impute all of the Buddhas, and by relying upon and receiving blessings from him, I am relying upon and receiving blessings from all the Buddhas.”  There is actually tremendous wisdom in this statement.  Practicing in this way is really the doorway for extending our love to others.

Then, when we see others, the trick is to impute “this is my child too, so therefore I should love them as I love my own kids.”  How can we understand this to be true?  We all know the meditation of all living beings are our mothers.  Well, by extension, this also means that all living beings are our children.  If our child died, would we think the person is no longer our child?  Of course not.  In the same way, all of our children have died but they have all been reborn as the beings around us.  So we can correctly say that each and every person we meet not only was our child, but still is our child.  Therefore, we should cherish them as we do our own children.

Another more profound way we can consider all living beings to be our children is to consider their emptiness.  The teachings on emptiness explain that everything is a mere appearance to mind arising from our karma, including others.  Basically, emptiness says that everything we see is all a dream.  If we dreamt of having a family and children, where do these children come from?  Likewise, where do the various people we encounter in our dream come from?  They all come from our own mind (and karma).  In the same way, if our waking reality is simply the dream of our waking mind, if we are ‘dreaming’ our current family and we likewise are ‘dreaming’ of the other beings we encounter in our world.  Where do all of these beings come from?  Our own mind (and karma).  They are all, quite literally, the offspring of our karma and the nature of our own mind.  What is our child if not our offspring?  Seen in this way, we can understand Venerable Tharchin’s statement that “all beings are our spiritual children.”

By training in the recognition that all beings are in fact our children, and recalling the love we have and actions we engage in for our children, we then apply effort to do the same for others.  In the beginning, yes, it is a bit artificial, but with training it becomes habit and more and more natural.  Gen Losang said, “What is natural is simply what is familiar.”  With effort, we make it familiar, and then it feels and becomes natural.

When we understand all of this we will feel so lucky to have our children.  We will cease to view them as obstacles to our spiritual practice.  Yes, it is harder to go to festivals and teachings when you have kids, but every day is a spiritual training.  We see how they are a stepping stone for our enlightenment and how without them it would be impossible for us to really progress along the spiritual path.  Our feeling lucky to have them will then increase our love even further, creating a virtuous circle of greater and greater love and progress along the spiritual path.  Fantastic!

And this is not even to speak of how we can use the love we have for our children in the context of our Tantric practice.  We train to be the Vajra Father (or Mother as the case may be) of all living beings.  We can bring all of our parenting experience into our self-generation practice.  This will not only help our self-generation practice, but it also creates a virtuous feedback into becoming a better parent too.

Your turn:  Take the most difficult person in your life right now.  How does viewing them as your child change your mind towards them?

Dealing with in/laws and family members who think you are in a sect

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

We live in a post-religious society, where in general people have little or no interest in spiritual matters.  Most of our families, likewise, have few spiritual inclinations, at most going to church on Christmas or Easter.  So when we start to develop interests in spiritual matters, it naturally raises a few suspicions or concerns.  Doubly so if we show interest in something non-traditional, like Buddhism.  When our family members see us becoming very interested, then their radar goes up and their immediate assumption is we have joined a sect.  This dynamic in particular comes out from our parents (who naturally assume we have no idea what we are doing) and from our in-laws (who fear for their loved one that is now linked with us).  Once they start becoming concerned, there is really no limit to how far they are sometimes willing to go to create obstacles for us in our practice.  They may resort to all sorts of blackmail, ultimatums, threats, insults and general mayhem.  I personally have experienced all of the above.

So the question is how should we deal with this?  I suggest the following as a multi-layered approach (if the first one fails, try the second; if the second fails, try the third, etc.):

  1. Appreciate how they are coming from a position of loving.  At the end of the day, their main concern is for our happiness.  They are not trying to create problems for us, they think they are protecting us.  When we assume they are being hostile and we respond defensively, then it feeds their narrative that we have been brainwashed, and then they redouble their determination to deter us from the wrong path we have taken.  If instead, we respond with understanding and appreciation for their concern, then we disarm the hostility and conflictual nature of the exchange and there is a chance we can have a healthy, rational discussion about the matter.
  2. Show them you yourself have already had all of the doubts and questions they raise, and then even show you have gone farther.  Explain to them how you too were skeptical at first, and how you too had many doubts and questions.  Show them that you are going in with your eyes open with a healthy skepticism.  Talk about all of the questions you yourself have asked and explain to them the satisfactory answers you have received as to why this is the real deal and not some sect.  When they see that you have already taken their objections into account and come up with reasonable answers to them, then they know that you are not being blinded.  It is important to even go further than they did in your doubts and concerns that you have addressed.  Show them that you have done even more due diligence than even they call for.  When they know that you have checked things out, their concern will be less.
  3. Completely and totally abandon trying to get them to appreciate Buddha’s teachings themselves.  Sometimes we fall into the mistake of thinking they need to appreciate the power of Buddha’s teachings for themselves, and then their resistance will go away.  But if we start to try to do that, they will feel us trying to ‘convert’ them and it will only feed their view that we have gone off the deep end.  Rather, you should take the approach of saying, “to each their own, you have your food, I have mine.”  You need to show total respect for their views, even if their views are completely hostile to you having your views (“it is your right to think like that”).  When you show respect for the diversity of beliefs people can adopt, and they show intolerance, then it becomes apparent to all who is being reasonable and who is not.
  4. Figure out what they want from you, and show with your actions (not your words) how the more you practice Dharma, the more they get what  they want from you.  For example, imagine your mother-in-law is creating trouble for you.  Why?  Because she is concerned about her daughter.  What does she want from you?  She wants you to be a good husband, who treats her daugher with respect and makes her daughter happy.  So use your practice to become a better and more loving husband.  While it may take time, you will become a better husband, your spouse will become happier, and your mother-in-law will come to see that actually your practice has made you better for her daughter, not worse, so she will come to accept it and even appreciate it.  But you should never say what you are doing because that ruins the whole thing.  Just let your actions speak for themselves.
  5. Patiently accept the obstacles that come your way.  Why are others creating obstacles to your practice?  Because you have created obstacles to others’ practice in the past and now it is coming back to haunt you.  You created the karma for this and you have not purified it, so now you must patiently accept it.  If you accept it as purification, then you will gradually purify this negative karma until eventually it exhausts itself.  If you start to retaliate and create obstacles for or fight with your family members, then the cycle starts all over again.  It may take years, even decades, even lifetimes before people come to accept, but if you sincerely accept the obstacles as purification, eventually the obstacles will pacify.  Two useful things you can do to help speed the process:  first, generate a specific bodhichitta motivation towards whoever is creating the biggest obstacles for you (I need to become a Buddha so I can help this person in the future).  If done sincerely in a qualified way free from any attachment, this will very quickly purify the negative karma you have with that person.  Second, make sincere requests to the Dharma Protector that he arrange whatever is best with respect to these obstacles – if they are harmful, may he pacify them; but if they are helpful, may he make them worse!  Then, whatever happens, accept that this is what has been emanated by the Dharma Protector as being what is best for your practice.
  6. If all else fails, don’t give into the blackmail, but don’t rub their faces in it either.  If your family members blackmail you saying ‘if you don’t quit, then I will … (insert emotional penalty)’, and then you give into that blackmail and do what they say, then you will remain forever trapped in their manipulations, you will lose your practice, and you will allow them to create the karma of successfully creating obstacles to the spiritual practice of another person.  This will then be bad for them in the future when they experience similar obstructions.  Yes, we are supposed to cherish others and fulfill their wishes, except when their wishes are wrong.  Assuming you have done your due diligence and you are on a qualified spiritual path, then their wish for you to abandon it is wrong.  To indulge them in that wish does not help them, it does not help you, and it does not help all the countless beings who you would otherwise help if you were to become a Buddha.  So you need to let them throw whatever emotional penalties they want at you, but you still keep going – you never abandon your practice.  Eventually, they will realize that no matter what they do, you will not give in and they will give up trying.  But you should also avoid the extreme of rubbing their face in it – “ha, ha, I am going to practice and you can’t stop me, na ni na ni na ni”.  Dharma practice is, above all, an internal thing.  We don’t need ostentatious external displays of our spiritual-ness!  Be skilfull so that they are not forced to confront it, but just quietly do your thing.  There are no rules with this, just be skilfull.

Your turn:  Describe some obstacles you have had with those close to you and how have you overcome them?

Dealing with temptation

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

We all have things we are tempted by, whether it is cigarettes, alcohol, porn, drugs or even just wasting time watching too much TV or playing video games for hours on end.  It could be any number of other things.  The thought arises in our mind that it would be great to indulge ourselves in one of these things.  We think it would bring us happiness and there wouldn’t really be any negative reprecussions.  We think back to times when we did these things in the past and we romanticise how great it was, somehow forgetting the bad that came with it.  We think we can get away with it and nobody would ever know.  We try rationalize to ourselves why doing so is not all that bad.  We start to make plans for how we will do these things to test them out to see if they are workable and if we can find a way to do them that has minimal fallout or chances of getting caught, but that still enables us to get what we want.  Since we know we can’t and we shouldn’t, but we still want to, we experience a good deal of mental pain wrestling with this.  We feel pain at not being able to have what we want and we feel pain of the struggle within ourselves to not execute on our plans.  We think the way to eliminate the pain is to say ‘screw it’ and to go ahead and indulge ourselves.  We tell ourselves we will just do it once (or twice, or three times…) to get it out of our system, and then “that’s it”, afterwards we will be good (even though our past experience has taught us that giving in now just makes it that much harder to say no next time, so we keep giving in again and again).  Sometimes we will have unique circumstances where we can do these things with minimal external impact, and we tell ourselves “if I don’t do it now, the window of opportunity will close on me and then I won’t be able to do it again for a long time, if ever.”  It starts to become the only thing we can think about, and every time we have a spare mental moment we start thinking about this again.  If we are already a Dharma practitioner, when we go to sit down to meditate and our mind starts to become more quiet, it seems as if these calls become even louder (they don’t, we are just becoming more aware of the deep currents running underneath the surface).  We might even try rationalize things with the Dharma, such as by misusing the tantric teachings.  Even though there can be extraordinary risks of losing everything we hold dear, we think the risk is minimal and it will be OK.  Does any of this sound familiar to anybody?

Here’s the thing:  all of this is completely normal.  This is the normal struggle faced by anybody who has chosen to adopt some form of personal moral discipline.  Here’s the other thing:  there is a way we can turn this process to our great advantage!  But our ability to do so depends on one thing:  we have to have more faith in the law of karma than we do faith in our object of attachment.

One of the laws of karma says that the practice of moral discipline is the cause of higher rebirth.  In particular, there is a practice of moral discipline called the “moral discipline of restraint.” Basically it says we restrain ourselves from giving into our negative impulses.  Everytime we successfully practice the moral discipline of restraint, according to the law of karma, we create the cause for a higher rebirth.  In other words, with one moment of saying no (and yes, this means “depriving” ourselves of the “happiness” we think our object of attachment will give us), we create the causes for an entire lifetime in the upper realms.  Even at an ordinary level, we will have far more happiness in an entire lifetime in the upper realms than we will in that one moment of indulging ourselves.  So the choice is a little bit of enjoyment now or an entire lifetime of enjoyment in the future.  It is like a dollar today or a million dollars tomorrow?  The choice is not a hard one.

The reason we use to say ‘no’ is very important in determining the karmic consequences of our having said no.  If we say ‘no’ because a lifetime of enjoyment is better than a moment of enjoyment, then that is what we will get – an ordinary upper rebirth (still, not bad…).  But if the reason we say ‘no’ is a spiritual reason, the karmic consequences are far better.  If we say ‘no’ because we want to avoid falling into the lower realms, then we create the causes to have not just an ordinary upper rebirth, but a precious human life in which we will encounter instructions on karma and moral discipline and we will have an interest in practicing them.  If we say ‘no’ because we have made the decision that we are going to get out of samsara and indulging ourselves in this object of attachment takes us in the wrong direction (back in vs. getting out), then we not only create the causes for a precious human life where we can continue with our practice of moral discipline, but we also create the cause for a rebirth outside of samsara as a liberated being.  If we say ‘no’ because we have made the decision to transform ourselves into a Buddha so that we can liberate all countless living beings from samsara then it really starts to get good.  Not only do we create the causes for a rebirth as a Buddha, but we create countless such causes.  Engaging in moral discipline for countless living beings is karmically equivalent to engaging in moral discipline for one being countless times.

The point is this:  each time the temptation to break our moral discipline arises within our mind, it provides us with an opportunity to create the causes for up to countless precious human lives and even countless causes to become a Buddha!  If transformed in this way, each time temptation arises within our mind it is like we are winning the spiritual jackpot.  If temptation arises in our mind 20 times every five minutes, if we stay with our practice we just won 20 spiritual jackpots.  You can even go so far as to say without these temptations arising in our mind we would not be able to engage in this practice.  So instead of fearing and suffering from the internal struggle of moral discipline, like a seasoned warrior, you will relish the battle!

If we have more faith in the law of karma than we do faith in the ability of our objects of attachment to give us real happiness, then we will succeed in our practice of moral discipline because we will clearly know there is more to be gained from saying ‘no’ than by giving in.  How do we develop such faith?  You can read the chapter on Karma and the faults of attachment in Joyful Path of Good Fortune.  How do we improve the scope of our spiritual reasons for saying ‘no’?  You can engage in a daily practice of lamrim as explained in the New Meditation Handbook and once again in Joyful Path of Good Fortune. 

If the doubt arises, “if I only need one cause to be reborn as a Buddha, why do I need countless of them,” the answer is because we need to get that one seed to ripen at the time of our death.  If we have countless negative seeds and only one pure one, statistically speaking which one is more likely to ripen?  If we have the doubt, “saying no is just repression of/suppressing my negative impulses.  Won’t the desire to indulge just come back even stronger next time until eventually it overwelms me and I give in,” the answer is there is a difference between repression and a qualified practice of moral discipline.  Repression says “I want to indulge the negative impulse, but I shouldn’t”, whereas a qualified practice of moral discipline says, “I do not want to, because it is just not worth it.  I have much more to gain by saying no than I do by giving in.”  If we have a qualifed practice of moral discipline, the tendencies to indulge in negativity will grow weaker and weaker until eventually they have no hold over us at all.  It takes time and it is a long training, but it is doable and if we perservere we will get there in the end.

Your turn:  Describe a temptation that you have struggled with and how have you overcome it?

Understanding the three wisdoms and the three lineages

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

I am adding this post to the “about this blog” page because I think it helps clarify its nature and purpose.

Some people confuse reliance upon the spiritual guide with fundamentalism.  Venerable Geshe-la explains in Clear Light of Bliss that we should not rely on just the words of Dharma, but rather their meaning.  If we rely on just the words of Dharma, there is a danger that we can become fundamentalist in our understanding of the Dharma.  Fundamentalism arises when we become attached to the literal words of the Dharma at the expense of its meaning.  The literal meaning of the scriptures are correct when interpreted through the lens of how those words are understood by the people who live at the time they were written.  But as cultures change with the flow of time, those same words in a different cultural context produce different meanings.  Our job as practitioners who wish to carry the lineage forward is to gain an understanding of the meaning of the Dharma and carry that forward.  The words that express that meaning will vary from culture to culture and time to time, but the meaning itself is universal and timeless.  Understanding this distinction protects us against the extreme of fundamentalism.

Those who authorize themselves to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma, meaning they test the Dharma they have heard (or read) against their own experience and who develop their own examples, analogies and wordings of the meaning of Dharma, can sometimes be accused by those who remain tightly attached to the literal words of scripture of causing the Dharma to degenerate.  I respectfully disagree.  In fact, I would argue that such a literalist approach in effect causes the degeneration of Dharma because it stunts the growth of the Dharma in the minds of living beings.

To understand this, we must make a distinction between the definitive Dharma and interpretative Dharma.  The definitive Dharma is the inner meaning of the Dharma as understood validly by the minds of superior beings.  It is universal and timeless.  The interpretative Dharma is how the definitive Dharma is expressed in a given cultural-temporal context.  The meaning of the Dharma in ancient Tibet and modern New York City is exactly the same.  But its interpretative presentation can be quite different.  If we fail to make this distinction, there is a risk that we can reject and criticise a perfectly valid interpretative presentation because it doesn’t correspond with our own culturally literalist understanding of the Dharma.  In my view, Venerable Geshe-la’s greatest contribution is he has perfectly transmitted the definitive meaning of the Kadam Dharma into a completely new cultural-temporal context (the modern world).  The book Modern Buddhism is, in my view, the culmination of his efforts.  It is the crown jewel of all of his works.  This doesn’t mean all of the other books are not the transmission of the timeless wisdom of the Kadampa into the modern world, rather it means we can fruitfully interpret all of the other books through the lens of and following the presentation of Modern Buddhism.

This logic also applies at the level of an individual practitioner.  Just as there are those who criticise a modern presentation of the Dharma, there are others who accept the modern presentation of the Dharma but then make the same mistake as the literalists within the context of their own tradition.  These people misinterpret reliance upon the spiritual guide alone as meaning they are not authorized to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma.  When confronted with an insight that is not explicitly in Venerable Geshe-la’s teachings they say, “I don’t remember Venerable Geshe-la ever saying that” and they reject the insight on those grounds alone.  Likewise when they come up with their own insights through their own practice they fail to do anything with them because they are not certain they are reliable because they never heard Geshe-la explicitly say the given idea.  Such an approach to our Dharma practice is safe and good, but it is not good enough.  Taken to an extreme, such an approach can make our Dharma understanding quite rigid, and we develop within ourselves a “parrot like Dharma” not a “heart-felt Dharma.”  A parrot like Dharma is good, but it is not good enough.

To understand this, it is useful to understand the three wisdom and the three lineages.  The three wisdoms are the wisdom arising from listening, the wisdom arising from contemplation and the wisdom arising from meditation.  These three can be understood as follows.  First we listen to (or read) the Dharma and gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  For example, when we listen to Venerable Geshe-la teach or read his books, we can become very familiar with all that he says and that understanding will give rise to a certain level of wisdom within our mind.  This is very good, but it is not good enough.  We shouldn’t stop there.

Just as there are different cultures and temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner has a different personal mental context and experience set.  Somebody who has spent their whole life in modern America has a different mental context and experience set than somebody who has spent their whole life in modern Brazil or modern China.  Even two people who both spent their whole life in modern America will have two very different mental contexts and experience sets.  Every individual in fact has a unique mental context and experience set.  Just as the great lineage holders like Atisha, Je Tsongkhapa and (I would argue) Venerable Geshe-la took the definitive meaning of the Dharma and expressed it interpretatively in different cultural-temporal contexts, so too each individual practitioner must take (their understanding of) the definitive meaning of the Dharma and make it their own as understood through their own individual mental context and experience set.  We do this through our own contemplation of and meditation on the Dharma.

When we contemplate the Dharma we take the wisdom we have gained through listening and we test its validity in the context of our own life experience and understanding.  For example, I am an early middle-aged American economist diplomat father of five.  This is the context of my life experience, so I test the validity of the Dharma in the context of my world and experience.  When I do this, the Dharma becomes true for me.  I will develop my own examples, analogies and interpretative expressions (wordings) which generate within my own mind the actual meaning of the Dharma in my own mind.  I will have transferred what was the wisdom of somebody else (my teachers) into my own wisdom.  The Dharma will be true for me.  This is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  Venerable Tharchin says that our own examples, analogies and reasonings developed through our contemplation of the Dharma are actually more powerful for us because they make the Dharma true for us.  This does not mean they are more powerful for others, though.  Each practitioner must develop their own understandings through contemplating the Dharma they have heard (or read).

The insights we gain from our own contemplation of the Dharma, these insights that make the meaning of the Dharma come alive in our own mind, are our actual objects of placement meditation.  Just as contemplation functions to transform the wisdom arisen from listening into the wisdom arisen from contemplation, so too placement meditation on the wisdom arisen from contemplation transforms the wisdom arisen from contemplation into the wisdom arisen from meditation.  Put in more practical terms when we listen (or read) we gain an understanding of the wisdom of others.  When we contemplate we transform this wisdom into our own personal wisdom.  When we meditate we make this personal wisdom, as Venerable Tharchin describes it, “an acquisition of our personality.”  For example, first we generate an undertanding of what is compassion.  Then we generate compassion in our own mind.  Then we become a compassionate person.

Understanding the three wisdoms helps us understand the three lineages of Kadam Dharma.  The true lineage is not the words written on paper or uttered by the guru, rather the true lineage is the continuum of direct realization of the definitive meaning of Dharma from teacher to disciple.  There is probably a technical name for it, but I call the three lineages the outer lineage, the inner lineage and the secret lineage.  The outer lineage is the wisdom arisen from listening (or reading).  I call it the outer lineage because its basis is a manifest object, namely the words on paper or the words of or examples set by our lineage gurus.  The inner lineage is the wisdom arisen from contemplation.  I call it the inner lineage because its basis is a hidden object, namely the personal examples, analogies and experiences within the mind of an individual practitioner.  The secret lineage is the wisdom arisen from meditation.  I call it the secret lineage because it is only open to those who gain personal experience of the Dharma and make the realization of it an acquisition of their personality.  The definitive secret lineage is the Dharma as directly realized with our own very subtle mind of great bliss.  This lineage only arises in the minds of qualified highest yoga tantra practitioners.

How do we know whether our understandings or insights gained through contemplation or meditation are reliable?  There is of course the danger when we contemplate or meditate on the Dharma that we can generate wrong understandings and mistake them for being definitive meanings.  So how do we protect ourselves against that?  Like a good scientist testing their hypotheses, there are several tests we can perform.  First, we can ask ourselves, “does this insight or understanding contradict any known instruction?”  If yes, try again.  If no, we can apply the second test, “is this insight or understanding the natural consequence of all known instructions?”  If no, try again.  If yes, we can apply the third test, “Dorje Shugden, if this understanding is reliable may it flourish within my mind, if it is not please reveal to me how it is wrong and what is in fact correct.”  Dorje Shugden is a Dharma protector.  He does not only protect the outer pure lineage of Je Tsongkhapa, but also the inner and secret lineages.  We request him to confirm correct understandings and to sabotage incorrect understandings.  If we replace our own attachment to our own views with a faith in Dorje Shugden, he will ensure we always stay on the correct inner and secret paths.

How does all of this relate to this blog?  This blog can be understood as me putting into my own words my understanding of the Dharma.  It is my interpretative expression of the inner universal meanings I have understood.  It should NEVER be misinterpreted as me attempting to poffer definitive meanings of the Dharma.  The only truly reliable Dharma texts are those provided to us by our lineage gurus.  The meanings gained from contemplating and meditating on those are reliable.  In the spirit of Shantideva, this blog is my putting into my own words what I have understood.  For me, putting the meaning of Dharma into my own words is a method for clarifying, deepening and consolidating my own understandings.  If other people receive some benefit from it, then all the better.  But no reader should ever confuse the words written in this blog as being intended to be offered as definitive, qualified Dharma.  Rather, it is a sharing of my own experience and understanding.

My hope is simple:  If what I write in this blog is wrong, I hope others will help point out the errors of my thinking so that I can improve my understanding.  If other Kadampa practitioners are coming to similar conclusions through their own listening to, contemplating of and meditating on the Dharma, then the blog can provide a platform for the sharing of such experience.

Reflections on key requests/dedications

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden
It is not just ’May I take my place in VGL’s mandala,’ it is “May I fulfill my role within VGL’s mandala.”
I make requests as follows:
1.  I entrust my life to you, please do with me what you wish.
2.  Please protect and guide my retreat.
3.  Please help me to be ready to leave by the end of this life.
4.  May my every action be aimed at building my pure land, so that I may guide ALB1 from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.
5.  May I take my place and fulfill my role within VGL’s mandala.

 

Reflections on emptiness

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
Since all things are equally empty, it does not make any sense to be happy about one appearance but unhappy about another.  Every appearance is, from this perspective, equally neutral.  Instead, each appearance is what you make of it.  It is a form of laziness to just allow our opinions and experiences of different appearances to be that which naturally arises when we encounter them.  Our natural reactions are attachment and aversion, and if we assent to these reactions we will remain forever trapped within them and we will never know real freedom.  If instead we realize that all appearances are equally empty, then we are free to do with each of them what we wish.  We can equally use all appearances, and come to equally enjoy all appearances.  Then nothing will have the power to interfere with our freedom of perfect happiness.  In explaining this to kids, or to anybody else for that matter, it can be reduced down to a very simple phrase which can be repeated again and again:  “life is what you make of it.”  Every situation is “what you make of it.”  If kids and people can learn this fundamental lesson, then everything else will take care of itself. 

Reflections on skilful means

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
My ability to help anyone first and foremost depends on my not needing them to be any different.  First I need to get rid of my own delusions about how they are before I will be able to help them change.  This need for them to be different will obstruct the wisdom I need to help them from coming through.  When I do try help them it will not be well received because theyw ill sense my attachment to changing them and they will reject/rebel against my advice.  
 
It is my own inner realizations of Dharma that functions like a force of gravity drawing people in so that I can help them and invite them into my pure land.  I need to create a sun of realizations within my mind to draw people into my orbit.  Even more so, I need to create a black hole of Dharma realizations within my mind, at the center of which is a wormhole to the pure land (Heruka’s heart).
 
I should not blind copy people on very private correspondance.  This causes them to not trust me and to not confide in me.  If they cannot confide in me, then I cannot help them.  People need to be able to trust in me, and when I do this it weakens that trust because they assume I will do it to them as well.  My intention in doing so is I want the other person to skillfully help or to learn how to deal with different situations so they become more helpful to others.  I guess it is a balance, but one that I should err on the side of not doing.  

Reflections on observations of other cultures

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
(This was written when I was in Texas)

Texas is a place with high pride, low capacity people.  Need to channel pride into a confidence that if you work hard you can accomplishing anything combined with equanimious humilty accepting where you are at.  You can do what you can do, work hard to learn the rest.
 
American culture is based on individualism, so show how practicing Dharma is a natural conclusion of that.  Self-made Buddhas.
 
One of the reasons I am here in Texas is to help build within my mind the bridge between Kadampa Buddhism and the Christian world I inhabit.  To be able to express the meanings of Kadampa Buddhism in terms Christians can understand, and ultimately to show how the essential meaning of Christianity is Kadampa Buddhism.  If I do become a diplomat, and come to abide in different worlds (Islamic, Hindu, etc.), then I will have the opportunity to build similar bridges.  In this way, I will gain the realizations necessary to be able to transmit Kadampa teachings effectively to this whole world.  One of the biggest Western conceits is to grasp at their point of view as the universal one.  I need to break free from this uni-cultural straight jacket and do as VGL is doing, namely learning to transmit the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma through the different cultural logics of this whole world.  When we take the larger, more broad understanding of JTK in this world, we see he has many different bodies sent throughout the world bringing the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma and learning how to transmit them in different cultural contexts.  It is a limitation to require others to adopt my cultural logic before I can then explain to them the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma.  Rather, I need to come to understand their cultural logics, meet them where their minds are at, and then through these logics transmit the meanings of Kadam Dharma.  I am not talking about mixing here.  I am talking about remaining centered within the hub of the essential meanings of Kadam Dharma and from this hub being able to radiate out into the spokes of every religion and every culture this meaning in a way they can understand, appreciate and put into practice.  In this way, I can draw them in and deliver them to freedom.  This is what VGL is trying to do in this world, and it is amazing.  May I do the same.  

Reflections on overcoming fear of abandonment

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life
“Just because certain delusions are big within our mind does not necessarily make them complicated to understand or overcome.  We have a tendency to rationalize our failures to overcome certain delusions by over-complicating and over-dramatizing them.  In the end, the problem is not that our delusions are particular complicated or dramatic, it is just an issue of them being currently stronger than the opponents we have built up within our mind to oppose them.  We basically need to ‘bulk up’ our opponents through repeated exercise until eventually they are strong enough to overcome our delusions.  We need to be patient with this process.  It can take a long, long time for us to build up new sufficiently powerful virtuous mental habits to overcome our aeons-old deluded mental habits.  The Great Pyramids were built one stone at a time through back-breaking labor of thousands.  When it comes to building our own Great Pyramids of virtue within our mind, we work alone, and must place the bricks one at a time ourselves. The Buddhas can help give us strength, but we must do all of the work ourselves. 
 
While we are in this building process, we must accept that there will be times that our delusions will overwhelm us, arise within our mind and there will be nothing we can do to stop them.  We are simply not there yet.  We should not feel guilty or beat ourselves up when this happens, but we should also not fall into the other extreme of allowing this to happen unopposed or think that it doesn’t matter.  It does matter that delusions are running rampant in our mind, and this must eventually stop.  We lose many battles, but we use each defeat to strengthen our resolve that we must win the war.  If we never give up trying, eventual victory is assured.
 
As far as opposing the delusion itself, it primarily comes from two things.  First a very strong ignorance of grasping at an independent existence of our self.  If we realized that we are in reality an universal membrane of which each appearance is an inseparable aspect, then we experience first hand the impossibility of abandonment.  The fear of abandonment is the quite natural pain we feel arising from the false view of our separateness.  When the iron cage of our self-grasping melts away, we feel ourselves merge inseparable into an infinite ocean of everything from which we have, in reality, never been separate from.  It was only our ignorance that tricked us into thinking we were separate.  But we never have been.   We then rest comfortably in the knowledge that abandonment is an utter impossibility, a painful reflection in the distorted mirror of our self-grasping.
 
Second, it comes from plain vanilla attachment that, despite everything we know intellectually about the Dharma, still believes that our happiness depends upon ‘being with’ certain others.  We feel their presence provides us with some security against being alone.  We do not need anything from others, we need to do things for others.  When we  are becoming attached to somebody, especially as a Dharma practitioner, we tell ourselves all sorts of lies that we are not becoming attached, somehow everything is pure this time, etc.  In the beginning that may be true, but when we start to get those good feelings coming from being close to somebody, we start to grasp at them, consider them to be valuable, and mistakenly believe that they are coming from our relationship with the other person.  Since these feelings are good, and they are temporarily relieving the pain of our insecurity (coming from our grasping above), we then start to fear losing the other person, and with them our good feelings.  As soon as we assent to this mistaken view, we are doomed.  This is the pivotal turning point in the process.  If this lie arises in our mind, but we recognize it as wrong and deceptive, it will have no power over us.  But if we are not mindful and allow it to arise and we unconsciously assent to it, then it will sneak in and come to possess our mind.  The sad reality is when this happens, it is this very view that will 100% guarranteed destroy the very relationship we are so desperate to protect.  We then become high maintenance and needy, and nobody likes that.  It becomes annoying and a pain to be around us, and eventually people will leave us.  When we are in such a state, it really doesn’t matter what others say or do, nothing will convince us or prove to us that they love us, and the more we insist on such proof, the more annoying we become and the more quickly we bring about the very thing we fear – them leaving us.  
 
 
How do we convince ourselves that they love us.  Some would say it comes down to just choosing to trust them.  Certainly that is better than trying to have them prove it.  But the best solution is to give up even trying to convince ourselves by realizing it does not matter at all what they feel.  They do not need to love us, we just need to love them.  Full stop.