The dangers of allowing negative karma to remain on your mind

Kadampa Ryan 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Our personal world is a dream world arising from our karma.  Because the karma that is ripening on our mind is contaminated karma, when these dream worlds ripen, they appear to us as being ‘real’ worlds.  Out of ignorance, we believe this appearance and experience our world as such.

The problem is this:  we have spend at least 99% of our previous lives in the lower realms, and 99% of our actions have been negative actions (while in the lower realms, basically all of our actions were negative).  It is true that in this life we are not engaging in significant negativities, though we are still engaging in some.  But this life is an exception, a brief period of relative non-negativity in an infinite history of non-virtue.  It is also true that I have done next to nothing to purify my negative karma.  Out of a false arrogance from the fact that little negative karma is ripening right now, I arrogantly assume that I do not have a lot of negative karma which remains on my mind.  Or I ignorantly become lulled into a false sense of security because things are OK right now. 

The reality is the only reason why I am not being crushed by my negativity is I am being protected by Dorje Shugden.  His protection circle holds back the fires of my negative karma.  He has provided me with the space necessary to create more virtue and to purify the negativities which plague my mind.  But the point is this:  for as long as these negative seeds remain on my mind, I remain in extreme danger of falling into the lower realms.  Once I fall, I will engage in almost exclusively negative actions, and I will be forced to undergo unimaginable sufferings for incalculably long periods of time.  I will lose everything I have worked so hard for.  Even if the risk is only 1% that this will happen, because the impact of it happening is infinite, this is an infinite risk.  It is just too dangerous to remain.  If I don’t use the space that Dorje Shuden has provided me to purify my mind of its negative karma, then the risk is always there. 

I must take the time and apply effort to purify my mind before it is too late.  It does not take much.  All I need to do is generate a strong regret about my negativities before I engage in my daily practice and then intend to engage in my practice as a means of purifying that negative karma.  It adds one minute to my contemplations before I start, but could save my life.

I just joined Facebook! Strange (but pleasantly meaningful) experience.

Kadampa Ryan 1. Reflections on doing this website/blog

Well, I did it!  I made the plunge.  I joined the virtual world.  I just created a Kadam Ryan Facebook identity (is that what you call it?  Perhaps it is “profile.”) and I reconnected with a Twitter identity I briefly created out of curiosity about a year ago.  I then went looking for “friends”, and I found my (real) friends, my Sangha buddies!   

One of the hardest parts about my new life is not having daily or regular contact with my Sangha.  For me, Facebook then becomes a sort of virtual lifeline to (and eventually meeting place to be with) my Sangha.  I was actually (pleasantly) surprised when I found how many Kadampas are already in this world.  When I saw each name, I was able to remember my time with them, and in this way I could reconnect with them and all that they mean to my life. 

Then a couple of days passed by, and I have really only just now been able to reopen my Kadam Ryan gmail address.   I then saw all of the people who “confirmed me” as their friend.  Seeing this was, for me, like those first few hours when we arrive at a Festival at Manjushri and we run into everybody we know and it is like one big family reunion. 

The reality is we are moving into a digital world.  Not completely, but quite significantly in terms of the number of hours of our day will be engaged with it.  When you consider the number of hours a day we are in front of our computers plus our time in front of the TV plus our time in front of our smartphones plus out time listening to music, virtually ALL of our waking experience time is taking place in this digital world.  The rest of the time we are either tending to the needs of our body (cleaning it, feeding it, putting it to sleep) or in the dream state.  Even during a good hour of our non-digital waking time, we are meditating so not really engaging all that much with physical reality. 

It seems to me our interactions in this digital world now will define the culture and parameters of the Kadampa experience on the digital world for generations to come.  If we do it right, we can create the feeling of a global festival of all digital Kadampas all of the time!  This is really important. 

I see the tremendous potential for creating a global digitial Sangha (maybe the Kadampa IT people can create an internal “Sanghabook.org” which functions exactly like Facebook but where it is an all Kadampa environment).  Eventually all of the different Kadampa blogs could be transferred to a host owned by the NKT, etc., etc., etc.  Each center will develop a digital identity and community.  People could blog and chat and share from the festivals in real time like people do for political or sporting events, so that the whole world can participate no matter where they are.  Of course all of this has to be done right, and it will take a long time before it matures to that level, but it does seem inevitable.

But for me and for now, the realities of my life are such that I will, despite a sincere effort, probably be pretty bad at being a good digital friend.  But please know it is not because I don’t love you all very much.  You are my Sangha, my vajra family.  I take refuge in you.  We are the planets that orbit the sun of our Guru, and as long as we stay in each other’s orbit we will all pull, push, surf each other to enlightenment.  We all hold on to Venerable Geshe-la and enjoy the meaningful (and blissful) ride!

OM VAJRA WIKI WITRANA SOHA

How the Spiritual Guide can “be there” for each and every being all of the time

Kadampa Ryan Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

From an external point of view, I have very bad karma when it comes to being able to be with my spiritual guide.  It is hard for me to go to festivals, everytime I have tried to physically meet with him in the past, something has happened where it hasn’t been possible.  It is even very difficult for me to have much interaction with those teachers he has formed.  It is very easy to become discouraged thinking we must be doing something wrong or feel like we have insurmountable obstacles and we will never be able to attain enlightenment because we can’t receive this direct interaction. 

Other times we can have the doubt, how is it possible for him to help directly each and every being all of the time.  Yes, he can help those around him and they in turn can help others like ripples on a pond, but that is him helping all beings indirectly – not directly. 

When I did my Heruka close retreat, my main conclusion was the answer to these doubts – and I need to remind myself of this conclusion again and again so that I never lose it.  The way in which it is possible for the spiritual guide to be able to “be there” for each and every living being all of the time is he resides at the center of the sphere of all living beings.  Technically speaking, and perhaps more poetically, he resides simultaneously in the heart of each and every living being.  How? 

All hearts of each and every being have a common intersection point, like the hub of a wheel or the center of a sphere (of emptiness).  Each being is like a spoke on this wheel.  If you are inside an individual spoke, you can only see what is inside that spoke.  But if you can move yourself to the hub, then you can simultaneously reflect yourself inside every spoke.  This is where the Spiritual Guide resides.  By being present there, he is present everywhere for everyone all of the time.  Beings can even die and be reborn, and he remains equally “right there the whole time.”  For him, it is like a parent watching their child fall asleep and then waking up again.   He is able to stay with us in life after life.

If we can understand this, then we will never feel alone, we will feel we can always access him, and that he has never and will never abandon us in life after life.  Even when the reflection that is Venerable Geshe-la’s present body dies, it is really our karma to have that appearance which has exhausted itself, but he is still there.  He will never abandon the NKT and he will always be there because he is not the body of VGL, rather he is the eternal Je Tsongkhapa, like the Living Christ for Christians.  The body of VGL is an echo or a reflection of a much deeper, eternally abiding being.  We do not need to fear, he will always be with us.  In fact, he will always be within us eager to fill us with his wisdom and respond to our prayers.

While it is beyond the scope of this blog, this understanding also has tremendous benefits for our self-generation practice.  We are able to feel as if we are doing our practice inside the hearts of each and every living being, directly and profoundly blessing and healing them.

How we abuse the Dharma and destroy our relationships at the same time

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

An extreme I often fall into is the extreme of trying to change others with the Dhama motivated by attachment. 

Bodhichitta is the wish to become a Buddha so that we can lead all other beings to the same state.  We talk all the time in the Dharma about how everything we need to do needs to be for others and how it is only by abandoning our delusions that any being can find happiness.  I have a highly inflated sense of how much wisdom I actually possess and how I know exactly what everybody else’s delusions and problems are and what they need to do to overcome them.  Call this pretentious wisdom!  As with all prides, this pretentious wisdom is often accompanied by an attachment to everyone else sharing my exalted view of my own wisdom, and so I feel the need to go around and “save everybody” by getting them to realize how I am right about everything – “if only they saw things as I did, they would not suffer…”

At the same time, I am still very much controlled and dominated by my delusions, in particular I still have a strong aversion to people being deluded around me and a strong attachment to people “succeeding” around me, in particular with my family.  If I am honest, I still have a “need” for others to change around me.  I still think my happiness depends upon whether those around me are happy.  Out of an attachment to a life of ease, I wish those who I interact with often had no problems so that I didn’t need to deal with their problems.  In short, I also have a strong attachment to those around me changing.  Additionally, an attachment to others changing actually functions to block any wisdom knowing how to help others from arising in our mind.  Instead of thinking about how to help others motivated by compassion, we “meditate” on their faults motivated by an anger wishing them to change.  Any “solutions” to their problems that such “meditations” produce, no matter how much they sound like Dharma wisdom, will not be the right ones.

These two together, namely pretentious wisdom and an attachment to those around me changing, are a very dangerous cocktail.  I tell myself I am being the good bodhisattva trying to bring wisdom to others, but in reality I am trying to change others with the Dhama motivated by an attachment to them changing.  People are not stupid.  They know when we are trying to change them, and they know when we are doing so motivated by an attachment.  Unless the other person already possesses great wisdom (and if they do, who are we to try chang them?), if we try change others motivated by attachment the only thing it does is cause them to reject the very advice we are trying to give and to resist the “help” we are trying to offer. 

Using the Dharma in this way is quite simply abusing the Dharma.  It is using it for our own purposes to fulfill the wishes of our attachment.  It also destroys our relationships with others because we start fighting with them and having all sorts of problems.  It is also the exact opposite of the bodhisattva path because it causes people to reject the Dharma.

So what should we do instead?  Just focus on changing ourselves and working on our own delusions.  This can still be bodhichitta in that the main activity of the bodhichitta wish is improving ourselves.  It is only after we have actually acquired some wisdom and skilful means and are completely free from the need for others to change that we can then start helping others.  Who we are is a far more effective “teacher” than anything we have to say, so it is only by ourselves living the example of somebody working on improving themselves without trying to or needing to manipulate or change others that we can help bring about change in others.  In short, if we are saying all the right things but still trying to change others motivated by attachment, we will create only problems and help nobody.  If we say nothing, but just be the example (not try “show” the example) of somebody working on themselves, we will help everybody around us.

We therefore very easily fall into the extreme of trying to change others with the Dharma

“I’ll change honey, I promise…”

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

There are certain interpersonal dilemmas which come up again and again in modern life.  It is very important for Kadampas to learn how to respond to these situations with wisdom.  I don’t pretend to know what is the best way to respond to these situations, but I figure it might be useful for me to share some of the dilemmas which I have observed and what lessons I have learned for how to respond to them.  If other people have other examples and lessons learned, I am sure we could all benefit from learning from one another.

One of the most common such dilemmas is the “I’ll change honey, I promise…” dynamic.  Very often people find themselves in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.  The dynamic is as follows:  one person consistently mistreats the other and the other just generally accepts and goes along with it because they do not want to lose the relationship with the abusive person because sometimes there are “good times” that they don’t want to lose.  The abused person eventually realizes that it is unhealthy and they have had enough, so they say, “I am leaving.”  The abusive person then starts acting all nice, offering flowers (metaphorically or literally), and tells the other person that they will change, they promise.  The abused person then “sees the good” in the abusive person and decides to take them back.  But as soon as they do, the abusive person then starts to (gradually or quickly) relapse back into thier old ways and becomes abusive again.  Then the cycle starts all over again. 

Clearly, it does not help people to allow them to abuse us.  They are engaging in negativity against us, and if we allow them to continue to do so, we are enabling them to create bad causes for themselves for the future.  Likewise, it is not good for us because like a drug addict it erodes our sense of self-worth as we become increasingly ready to sacrifice all that is healthy and good in our lives in a desperate attempt to hold on to what little good remains.  I have a cousin who was once in an abusive relationship, she told the guy “If you hit me one more time, I am leaving.”  He became nice again for awhile, but then hit her again.  Without saying a word, she packed her bags, grabbed her kid, and never looked back!  Not only is that the right thing to do, it also is a powerful lesson to her daughter that we do not allow people to do these things to us.  In contrast, I know many people who for years allow these things to drag on, to the detriment of all.  Of course, physical violence is an extreme case, but the same dynamic plays itself out in many lesser forms.

So does this mean we should just leave and show total non-cooperation with any and all dysfunction in our relationships?  Of course not.  If we did, we would very quickly find ourselves without any relationships at all since everybody in samsara, at one level or another, is under the influence of their ignorant delusions and so is necessarily acting in deluded and dysfunctional ways. 

The test I use is the following:  if the other person is genuinely aware of their problems, is actively trying to change themselves (on their own, not due to your outside pressure), and you are providing some sort of positive influence in their process of change, then it is perfectly appropriate to remain in a relationship and to support the other person in their path of personal change, even if that means sometimes having to serve as the object of their abuse and dysfunction.  But if the other person is oblivious to their problems and doing nothing to change (except in response to your threats to leave), then it is better to let the relationship go and move on.  Of course, you still should always love the person and pray for their well-being, but you can do so without having daily intereaction with them. 

Will this mean you lose the “good” that you sometimes get from the relationship?  Yes, it does, but only in the way that a drug addict has to give up the “good” that comes from drugs – the honey they lick off of a razor’s edge.  So yes, you will have to give up some good feelings or times, but what you gain is self-respect, self-confidence and freedom from the constant troubles inherent in a dysfunctional relationship. 

When the other person realizes that they have permanently lost you due to their abusive behavior, there is a chance that they will then genuinely change.  We should pray that they do, but even if they do, we should never take the person back because doing so will just reproduce the old pattern.  But sadly, more often than not, even our absence in their lives is not sufficient to change them because they are completely possessed by the demons of their own uncontrolled delusions.  Their not changing when we cut the relationship does not mean we made a mistake to do so – it was and still is the right decision both for them and for ourselves – but rather it is a commentary on how powerful delusions can be and therefore it serves as a powerful reminder of the need for us to not allow ourselves to remain under the influence of our own delusions and for us to never abandon our bodhichitta wish to become a Buddha so that we will be able to have the time, wisdom and skilfull means to gradually and eventually lead these people we love to freedom.

Qualities of a Kadampa in the workplace

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

The professional world is full of temptations to engage in negativities in order to professionally get ahead.  I would argue that as a long-term prospect even in professional terms, such actions are short-sighted and ultimately will fail even if they produce some short-term gains.  Karmically, if one succeeds in a professional environment, it has much more to do with whether they have previously created the karma for success than their current actions.  For example, somebody will become rich if they have given a lot in the past, not how hard they work today (though of course hard work is a circumstantial condition most of the time).  Somebody will become powerful if they have protected others in the past, not whether they are willing to assert themselves today. 

Further, if we engage in negativities today in the workplace, it actually increases the likelihood that good things will not happen for us even in the short run.  Why?  Because negative minds activate negative karma.  So if we are generating negative, selfish minds thinking this will get us ahead (the peak of delusion), then this will activate negative seeds on our mind which will bring about more misfortune and obstacle.  The only exception to this is when we are subject to massive spirit interference where malevolent spirits actually activate karmic seeds for ‘success’ in an effort to fool us into confusing cause and effect (namely negative actions bring about success).  This is quite similar to the mythical ‘deals with the devil.’  Even if they are not formal deals, karmically they are quite similar.

Finally, from simply the perspective of being happy while you work, engaging in negativities in the workplace is self-defeating.  Even if you ‘succeed’ more, you do so at the price of your own inner peace, so you are not able to actually enjoy your success.  Inner peace is an essential condition for being able to enjoy anything, and without it even if we become the richest and most powerful person in the world, we will not enjoy any of it.  So what is the point? 

Given all of the above, what then are the qualities of a Kadampa in the workplace?  First and foremost, we should be like my former boss Dr. Sahliyeh who has as his operating principle that he wants what is best for his employees, even if that means something not good for him.  He demonstrated this to me two times.  The first was when I was interviewing, and instead of saying something bad about other employment opportunities I had, he said he hoped I got Gonzaga and that he wanted what was best for me.  Then he suggested my name for the job in Dubai, even though that meant he might lose me which he didn’t want to do.  When our employees know that want what is best for them, even if it means it comes at our own expense, then they will naturally respect us and give us their all.  Dr. Sahliyeh was also an outstanding boss in that he always makes a point of asking how the family is and how our personal lives are going before he addresses the professional issues.  He does not view us just as workers, but as people with lives first, and he takes that into account in what he demands.  For example, he allowed me to only work mornings for the first couple of months when we arrived in Dallas so I could help get my family established in their new lives here.  All of these things are really amazing.  He is about as good of a boss as they come.

We should also be extremely competent in all that we do.  I think some Kadampas make the mistake of thinking that because our ordinary work is largely mundane that it does not matter, so we don’t really apply ourselves.  But even if the work we do is mundane, the personal skills we acquire by working are only mundane if we only intend to use them for mundane purposes.  But if instead we wish to acquire these skills for the sake of spreading the Dharma, then such skills are vital for the welfare of all living beings.  We will not be able to help all living beings if we are incompetent at all that we do!  This is one of the things that appeals to me about being a diplomat.  A diplomat needs to be the embodiment of virtually every good professional quality – smart, hard working, competent, diplomatic, good organizational skills, good communication skills, presents well, represents well, etc.  Kadampa teachers and practitioners in this world are, in effect, the diplomats of all the Buddhas.  Hard power is the ability to force people to do what we want, soft power is the ability to get people to aspire from their own side to do what we want, and this largely comes through the power of emulation.  Why would people want to become a Kadampa if they see us all as a bunch of incompetent losers?  Ambassador Chung was to competence what Dr. Sahliyeh is to personal qualities.

We used to watch Celebrity Apprentice.  This too was revealing about professional conduct.  Bret Micheals never said anything bad about anybody, he worked really hard, he was creative, he did not fight people or try advance his own agenda at their expense, he was just a genuinely good guy.  Since he was such a good guy, you cannot help but want him to win.  In contrast, Holly was a back-stabbing, self-serving, two-faced (sorry to say) b**ch.  But she is really competent at all that she does and she fights for a good cause.  But despite that, you can’t help but want her to fail because of the way she is.  As Thomas Friedman says we are in the age of ‘how’.  How we do things is more important than what we do.  Curtis was smug and too much of a pretty boy, so people also did not want him to succeed.  Cindy Lauper was brilliantly creative, but was such a wierdo that had no time management skills that, while you liked her and she was right on the personal side of things, couldn’t inspire the respect of others.  Sharon Osborne was really good at what she did and she clearly ‘got it’ in terms of the human skills, but she was either too tired, too sick or too emotionally involved to make it.  It just overwhelmed her.  Some people made it far simply by not rocking the boat and quietly operating under the radar.  Not being remarkable, either too good or too bad, just quietly doing a good job.  But if you don’t stick your neck out and lead you won’t make it all the way. 

The point is this:  as Kadampas we need to embody every good quality, but we develop these qualities for the sake of helping and inspiring all beings to enter into and complete the path.  We need to never say anything bad about anybody ever, work hard, be competent at all that we do, be fair, put our employees or clients interest firsts, not be smug, be creative, be a risk-taker, manage our time well, be diplomatic, etc., etc., etc.  Dorje Shugden arranges for us to be in a working environment for a reason.

Spiritual decision making for daily life

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

The bottom line is this:  our ordinary minds are completely under the control and influence of our ignorance and self-cherishing.  Ignorance is our root view, and self-cherishing is our root value.  Therefore, if we rely upon our ordinary mind to make our daily decisions, the decision will be a product of these two deluded minds.  Ignorance functions to keep us trapped in samsara, and self-cherishing has one goal:  to put us in the deepest hell as quickly as it can.  Thus, it is quite foolish to make ANY decisions, even the most mundane, with our ordinary mind, because what good could come from that.

In contrast, our guru’s mind is omniscient, perfectly compassionate, omnipotent (within the constraints of karmic possibility) and possesses perfect skilfull means.  Wisdom is its root view and compassion is its root value.  The guru’s mind and our ordinary mind are completely opposites and take us in completely opposite directions.  One takes us out, the other takes us deeper in. 

Since every situation is equally empty, every situation is an equal opportunity to either plunge deeper into samsara or surge towards enlightenment.  There is no moment, no situation in which we do not face this choice and possibility.  We think many of our daily moments have no particular spiritual significance once way or the other.  We consider them to be mundane moments, or neutral moments.  We are not engaging in negativity, but we are not creating virtue either.  Every such moment is a total waste of our precious human life!  Through the most incredible good fortune, we have found a set of instructions that can get us our of samsara once and for all and through the greatest of miracles we are actually motivated to put these instructions into practice.  But through ignorance of the possibility pregnant within each moment, we flitter away the little time we have to purify and train our mind. 

Therefore, it is of paramount importance that we rely upon the guru’s mind in every moment of every day for every decision, even the most mundane such as brushing our teeth or when to wipe. We need to make our ordinary mind completely still and allow the guru to completely take over every moment of every day of our life.  We need to put him completely in charge of everything.

Some may say that this is a denial of free will, but it is in fact the very expression of our free will.  What makes us unfree is the fact that our mind is completely a slave to our delusions.  Delusions funciton to make our mind uncontrolled.  Delusions are what make us unfree.  Rather, it is with our free will that we examine the relative merits of relying upon our ordinary mind compared to relying upon the guru’s mind, and we make the decision to abandon the former and adopt the latter.  This is an expression of our free will, the very means of acquiring free will (because we gain freedom) and it is the wisest thing we can do with our free will. 

At the end of the day, we face a choice:  have to make a myriad of decisions on the basis of ignorance and self-cherishing or make one decision again and again on the basis of wisdom.  If we make the decision to rely in every moment, then the guru will make all other decisions for us, and each of these decisions will be the reflection of his omniscience and compassion, and they will function to swiftly take us to enlightenment.

So how do we rely on his mind at all moments?  Very simply. 

  1. Make your ordinary mind completely still
  2. Generate the wish for him to take over every moment of our life motivated by the wisdom that knows he will make the best possible decisions which have as their goal the swiftest possible enlightenment of all beings.
  3. Make the request that he please take over, decide and act through us.
  4. Be prepared to do whatever he says, regardless of how much our self-cherishing and other delusions may howl!

Constructing alternate karmic realities with our mind

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

Reality as we know it is nothing more than a particular set of appearances arising from our karma.  It is one dream, amongst countless possibilities.  There is no underlying reality to speak of, only emptiness.  Currently, the reality that appears to us is the fruit of our contaminated karma.  It is nothing other than a mere appearance to our mind, but it is a particularly tricky one in that it ‘appears’ to not be one.  It appears to be ‘real’.  It appears to be something that exists independently of the mind, not created by the mind and not dependent upon the mind.  Not knowing any better, we ignorantly assent to this appearance, believing it to be the case.  Since everyone within this particular set of appearances likewise relates to it as if it were real, we don’t even put its ‘reality’ into question.  As a result, all of our actions we engage in become contaminated by this view.  They are mistaken actions based upon a mistaken view.  These contaminated actions then plant contaminated karma onto our mind.  Our delusions then activate these karmic seeds, giving rise once again to contaminated appearances which we once again ignorantly assent to and act upon.  In this way, it continues as an uninterrupted cycle.  This is samsara.  What is particularly horrible about samsara is its gradient – it is steeply tilted towards extreme suffering.  When our appearances are horrible, we grasp more tightly at them, engage in negative actions in response and this keeps the nightmare going.  When our appearances are pleasant, we grasp more tightly at them, burning up all of our positive karma quickly, leaving us only with negative seeds leading to our fall.  When we lose good things, we grasp at them more tightly, also leading to a fall.  So basically no matter what is appearing, the final destination of all samsaric minds is the deepest hell.  Yet, when we are in the human realm, enjoying temporarily pleasant conditions, we fool ourselves into thinking these will last forever.  We stupidly do not realize that we are just burning up what little merit we have.

But through some miracle of good fortune, we have had somebody enter into our contaminated dream to explain to us what is going on, and how samsara works, and how to get out.  As soon as we realize that this world is nothing more than a mere karmic appearance of mind, one karmic possibility, then whole new possibilities open up.

When samsara appears, we should recognize it as simply one karmic possibility of mere appearances.  And a bad one at that!  If we do not assent to its appearance of being real, but recognize it as just a hallucination, a mere appearance, then we cut its power.  If we cease to pay attention to it, then it will gradually whither away on the vine.  Instead, with our generation stage practice, we dissolve the contaminatedly appearing world into the clear light Dhamakaya, and then from that we intentionally appear with our mind the pure land and ourselves as a deity.  We intentionally appear with our mind all beings abiding in the pure land, engaging sincerely in all of the stages of the path.  We intentionally appear with our mind ourselves guiding, healing and liberating all beings.  We construct an alternate karmic reality with our mind.  Then, understanding that it is a better karmic possibility of mere appearances, we choose to focus our attention on this new world and we choose to abide within it motivated by renunciation, compassion and bodhichitta.  Every moment that we maintain this appearing world, understanding its function and nature, we plant new, pure karmic seeds on our mind.  In the beginning, there are only a few such pure seeds, but the more we engage in this practice the more seeds we plant.  Eventually, we start to reach a critical mass of such seeds and they start ripening more and more.  It begins by having qualified experiences within our daily practice of actually being in the pure land.  But gradually the scope of this appearance grows and grows until eventually we will come to experience it all of the time as our living reality just like we currently do with our contaminatedly appearing world. 

Quite simply, we cease assenting to the contaminted world, choose to construct an alternate, pure karmic reality with our mind.  Then, motivated by compassion and bodhichitta, we choose to pay attention to or focus our mind on assenting to the appearance of abiding in this pure world.  The more we do this, the more pure karma we plant on our mind.  As this karma begins to ripen, we then begin to accelerate our transition into this new world because it is easier to assent to the pure world if we are experiencing it as our living reality.  We create virtuous feedback loops which gradually transport us or move us to the pure land.  Eventually, we come to abide in the pure land at all times. 

Then, we help others do the same!

The power of prayer

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, Activating our inner Spiritual Guide

Bodhisattvas and Buddhas accomplish most of their virtuous and enlightened actions through the power of prayer.  This is one of the most important abilities we need to develop on the spiritual path.  Very often we neglect this, thinking it superstitious or not really believing that it works.  But if we can understand how it works, then we will see that it is possible to develop this power, and then we will be very motivated to do so.  The power of prayer lies behind most miracle powers, we become a spiritual “magic-user” (sorry, I did too much Dungenons and Dragons when I was a kid!!).

What is the power of prayer?  A Buddha has the ability to have all of their prayers fulfilled, whatever they pray for becomes a reality (within the constraints of how it works which will be described below).  It is the principle means by which bodhisattvas and Buddhas help living beings.

So how does it work?

  1. Deep and stable realization of emptiness, specifically the tantra-prasangaika view.  The TP view has two main recognitions:  first, like the standard prasangika view, that all objects are mere mental projections of the mind; and second, like the Chittamatrins, that the nature of these projections of the mind itself (all things are only mind).  When we have an experiential understanding of this view (how things actually exist), when we experience the entire universe as the body of our mind.  The entire universe is a single, fully integrated organism of our mind.  We experiences all objects, the whole universe, as parts of the body of our mind.  Our mind is in the shape of the world, and we realize by changing the shape of our mind we can change the shape of the whole world.
  2. Rich in merit.  Rich people have lots of resources, and with these resources they can make a lot happen.  They simply spend or deploy their resources to bring about whatever it is they want to see happen.  Some rich people only spend their resources on themselves, fulfilling the wishes of their self-cherishing mind.  But some rich people become philanthropists who spend their resources on helping others as much as they can.  They actively acquire more wealth so that they can use this wealth to help others.  Bill Gates is a good example of this.  A bodhisattva is a spiritual philathropist, but instead of external wealth, they rely upon internal wealth of merit and realizations.  They actively acquire as much inner wealth as they can so that they can share it and give it to others.  Just as externally rich people can accomplish their external wishes, internally rich people can accomplish their external and internal wishes.  Why?  Because ultimately all things are mere karmic appearances of mind.  Their merit gives them the karma to make any good thing appear.
  3. A pure motivation.  At present, we lack the power of prayer.  But Buddhas already have this power.  We can, in effect, have this power as well by tapping into and harnessing their power of prayer towards the ends of our own prayers.  But this will only work if our motivation is aligned with theirs.  They will not fulfill any non-pure prayers, because that is not their function.  They will, however, spontaneously fulfil all pure prayers because that is their function.  So our job is to align our motivation with theirs.  It is like aligning the sails of a sail boat.  If the sails are aligned right with the winds, then the boat will move forward.  In the same way, if our motivation is aligned with that of the Buddhas, then their pure winds will push our spiritual prayers forward.  To align our motivation, we simply need to think about a given situation we would like to pray for, and then ask ourselves “what would the Buddhas want from this situation?”  Then, once we understand what they would want, we then from our own side try to generate the same wants and desires in the situation.  In general, what do Buddhas want?  They want living beings to gain realizations.  Worldly beings want to be free from unpleasant feelings.  This is what sometimes puts our motivation at odds with that of the Buddhas.  For them, unpleasant feelings are an important condition for many different Dharma realizations (patience, renunciation, compassion, the wish to purify, etc.).  But we do the internal work to want what they want, realizing that what they want out of the situation is more infused with wisdom.  In terms of how to generate merit, the three most important things to do are:  (1) generate a bodhichitta motivation for your every action which multiplies the power of your actions by the number of countless living beings, (2) engage in every action conjoined with guru yoga, seeing all aspects of the situation as aspects of your spiritual guide, the synthesis of all the Buddhas – this multiplies the power of your action by the number of countless Buddhas, and (3) make mandala offerings, recognizing the pure world you are offering as an offering of a promise that you will work for as long as possible to transform your dream into the pure world you offer for the benefit f all of the beings in your dream.  Mandala offerings in particular are powerful in that they lay the karmic potentialities on your mind to transform your world into a pure world, where everything that arises is perfect for the enlightenment of all beings.
  4. Deep faith.  Buddhas are as powerful as we make them.  Their power for us does not exist from its own side, but arises in dependence upon the power of our faith.  The more pure faith, the more power they have to fulfil our prayers.  To develop a qualified faith, we primarily need to understand the mechanism by which Buddhas can accomplish their deeds.  When we understand how it works, it seems perfectly doable.  When it seems doable, we believe they can do it.  Then faith is not fantasy wishful thinking, it is a knowledge of what is possible.  So what is the mechanism by which they work?  First, they are empty, in other words, they are not separate from our mind but are rather parts or aspects of our mind.  Second, they have the power to activate karmic potentialities.  This is their essential function.  Just as water and sunlight will activate ordinary seeds to produce a crop of plants, the water and sunlight of our pure motivation and faith spontaneously function to activate the pure karmic seeds we have planted on our mind (see above in the section on merit).  When this karma activates it produces karmic appearances that are the nature and function of our prayers.

If we can develop the power of prayer, there will literally be nothing we cannot do.  It is the primary means of helping living beings, and thus should be our primary focus in terms of building up the skills of a Buddha.

What is samsara?

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Samsara is nothing more than the turbulant waves of the ocean of my mind.  Delusions are like violent winds which create rough karmic waves on the ocean of my mind.  The winds of delusion activate contaminated karmic seeds on the ocean bed of our mind.  When these seeds activate they push up, creating contaminated waves.  These waves then create distorted appearances on their surface, appearances of objects that exist from their own side independent of the ocean.  In fact, they mask and obscure the ocean completely where we are totally unaware of the fact that everything is, in reality, only mind.  When we assent to these appearances, we come to believe in a world of objects that exist from their own side, totally separate and independent from the mind.  We believe that our mind simply observes a world that exists out there, independent from the mind itself.  We believe this because this is what appears to us and we never put it into question.

But when we realize that the entire universe is actually nothing more than the ocean of our mind, and every object is like a wave on this ocean, then everything becomes possible.  To cause samsara to subside, we simply need to allow the waters of our mind to become completely still.  By opposing, reducing and finally eliminating our delusions, the wind stops blowing, and the waters of our mind calm.  When this happens, contaminated appearances subside and our mind settles into the clear light Dharmakaya.  It is like choppy water that becomes increasingly still, and as it does so, the water becomes increasingly clear and transparent, less and less obstructed, until it becomes completely clear and without obstruction.  Before, the ocean of our mind was in the shape of samsara.  Now the ocean of our mind is in the shape of a perfectly still and obstruction-free clear light. 

From this clear light, we can then intentionally choose to put the ocean of our mind into the shape of the pure land with ourselves as the deity.  We emerge new, pure waves in the aspect of the pure land.  All beings, which were previously imprisoned by our mind into contaminated appearances have now been freed as pure beings abiding in the pure land, inseparable from the ocean of clear light emptiness.  The mental action of emerging a pure land out of the ocean of our mind plants new, pure karmic potentialities on the ocean bed of our very subtle mind.  These seeds will later ripen due to the pure winds of compassion and bodhichitta, causing the ocean of my mind to actually transform into a pure land within which all beings can take rebirth and complete their training.

The best way to cause the ocean of our mind to subside into the clear light is to connect with the emptiness of each object, recognizing them as distorted, contaminated, falacious appearances.  While they appear to be there, they are in fact illusions or distorted reflections on the ocean of my mind.  Recognizing them as such, I can then let go of them and allow them to dissolve and subside back into the ocean of my mind.  I keep doing this with every object that arises until eventually I abide in the completely still pure, clear light Dharmakaya.