Happy Tsog Day: How to Practice the Song of the Spring Queen (part 1)

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 24 of a 44-part series.

Song of the Spring Queen

HUM All you Tathagatas,
Heroes, Yoginis,
Dakas, and Dakinis,
To all you I make this request:
O Heruka who delight in great bliss,
You engage in the Union of spontaneous bliss,
By attending the Lady intoxicated with bliss
And enjoying in accordance with the rituals.
AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO
May the assembly of stainless Dakinis
Look with loving affection and accomplish all deeds.

The Song of the Spring Queen is for many practitioners the highlight of the tsog offering. Not only is the song beautiful and a delight to sing, it also explains how we engage in the practice of relying upon a wisdom mudra according to Highest Yoga Tantra. As explained above, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the nature of tantric practice. Many people feel it is simply a method for having better worldly sex. The purpose of tantric practice is to explain how to transform pleasant experiences into the path to enlightenment. With our Lojong practice, we learn how to transform unpleasant experiences into the path to enlightenment. By learning both Lojong and tantra, we will be able to transform any experience into the path.

Our ability to engage and qualified Lojong or tantric practice depends upon whether our motivation to progress along the path is stronger than our worldly concerns. For example, if what we wish for is to never experience unpleasant experiences, then our practice of Lojong will lack power because we will not care that it is a cause of our enlightenment, we simply do not want to experience unpleasant things. But if our wish to progress along the path is stronger, then we will be able to accept our unpleasant experiences and use them to advance along the path. The experience will still be unpleasant, but it will no longer be a problem for us. In the same way, if our wish to experience worldly pleasures is stronger than our wish to progress along the path, we will not be able to use tantric technology to transform pleasant experiences into the path. Instead, our experience of pleasant experiences will just fuel our attachment. Thus, our motivation for engaging in tantric practice must be to end our attachment, not use tantra as an excuse to indulge in our attachment. This is very important. We should not underestimate the ability of our mind to hijack our Dharma understandings to do what our delusions want us to do.

The first four lines and the last three lines of each verse of Song of the Spring Queen are the same. The explanation that follows can be applied to every verse. With the first three lines, we recall the visualization of our spiritual guide in the aspect of father Heruka and mother Vajraygoini in union, surrounded by all the deities of Heruka’s body mandala. We likewise recall all the other Buddhas and holy beings filling the ten directions. We recognize all these holy beings as emanations, or limbs, of our principal spiritual guide Heruka. We additionally recall that all these appearances are like waves on the ocean of our definitive spiritual guide, dharmakaya Heruka, which is the nature of indivisible bliss and emptiness. Thus, every holy being is like an aspect of the Truth Body. With the fourth line, we generate a faithful mind requesting all the holy beings to perform the action we are about to describe with the next four lines of the verse.

With the ninth line of every verse, AH LA LA, LA LA HO, AH I AH, AH RA LI HO, we imagine that we are Heruka engaged in union with Vajrayogini who is riding up and down on our vajra. As a result of this movement, we should imagine that Vajrayogini’s pure winds flowing through her central channel enter into our central channel flowing upwards, igniting our inner tummo fire, causing the white bodhicitta at our crown to melt through our central channel giving rise to an experience of great bliss. The great bliss we generate as a result of engaging in union with a wisdom mudra functions to loosen the knots at our heart chakra. When these knots are completely loosened, all our inner winds can enter, absorb, and dissolve into our central channel at our heart, which then gives rise to a direct experience of the eight dissolutions, the last of which is a fully qualified mind of clear light. With this clear light mind, we can then meditate on the emptiness of all phenomena, and in particular of our very subtle mind of the clear light itself. This meditation functions to purify our very subtle mind of all delusion obstructions and obstructions to omniscience. When our mind is completely purified of the two obstructions, we attain enlightenment. Thus, the purpose of this meditation is not to enjoy union with Vajrayogini – though that is certainly a pleasant experience – rather it is to loosen the channel knots at our heart so that we can complete our spiritual training. We must be very clear with our motivation for engaging in this practice. More explanations on how to engage in tummo meditation and how to rely upon wisdom and action mudras can be found in Oral Instructions of Mahamudra, Essence of Vajrayana, Clear Light of Bliss, and Tantric Grounds and Paths. All the explanations explained in these texts can be incorporated into our practice of Song of the Spring Queen.

With the last two lines of each verse, we imagine that all the Tathagatas, heroes, yoginis, Dakas, and Dakinis generate great delight knowing that we will soon attain enlightenment. Everyone is collectively enjoying a festival of great bliss!

The fifth through the eighth line of each verse of Song of the Spring Queen is slightly different, emphasizing different aspects of the practice and calling upon different aspects of the visualization to strengthen our practice of relying upon a wisdom mudra. With the first four verses, we can imagine we generate the four joys in serial order, then with the fifth verse we imagine we attain the union a bliss and emptiness, and finally with the last verse we attain the union of Vajradhara.

With this first verse, we focus on the outer aspects of our self-generated as Heruka and our consort generated as Vajrayogini. We imagine that we are engaging in union with her and that she is completely filled with great bliss, as if her mind has been intoxicated thoroughly by this experience. She then concentrates all her great bliss into her central channel, which she then blows lovingly into our central channel through our engaging in union. “Enjoying in accordance with the rituals” refers to the 64 arts of love which are explained in Great Treasury of Merit. Recalling all this, when we engage in union and ignite the tummo fire, we imagine the white bodhichitta at our crown melts and descends down into our throat chakra where are we experienced the first of the four joys, called joy.

On Accepting Deluded People – Including Ourself – in Kadampa Communities

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

It’s odd how as Kadampas we sometimes (oftentimes?) feel a reluctance to admit we are hurting or deluded, even to Sangha. Strangely, this problem seems to grow worse the more years we are in the Dharma.

I think this comes from three things. First, our pride in wanting to pretend we are this great practitioner, perhaps even for seemingly “good reasons” like we are a teacher or senior practitioner and we want to set a good example.

Second, is attachment to being accepted by Sangha and feeling that if they knew how messed up we still are inside, they will no longer accept us, love us, or look up to us.

And third a collective delusion within the Kadampa community that does not really accept fellow Kadampas who are still deluded, sometimes heavily. There is in part a culture of victim blaming – you’re still suffering or deluded because you are a bad practitioner. We even blame people who take things as victim blaming – saying it is their fault they are taking things this way; which sadly, is a perverse form of gaslighting fellow Sangha as we deflect blame because we can’t admit Kadampa communities or ourselves still have a lot of work to do. Or it comes from a misunderstanding of faith, projecting onto our objects of refuge that they need to be perfect from their own side, and then we lose faith in them when they seem to still be deluded. This destroys our own faith and puts unrealistic pressure on our more senior practitioners.

For the first one, if we have pride, we don’t have refuge, it is as simple as that. We are just pretending to be a practitioner. Kadam Morten once said the best example is the one who shows the journey, not the end result. We need to peacefully accept it is perfectly OK to be where we are at and we grow from there.

For the second, attachment to what Sangha thinks of us or attachment to them accepting and loving us is still attachment and an object to be abandoned. Dharma communities are not social clubs, they should be healing clinics – with doctors, medicine, nurses, and we are all patients – and it is up to us to make them so.

For the third, we need to remember the essence of the Kadampa way of life is a mind of “everybody welcome.” This is not just a rule for who we accept into our centers, but how we position ourselves towards everybody in our life. If we have aversion to being around deluded people, our so-called bodhichitta is nothing but a sick joke. We are suffering because we are still in samsara. Our delusions are our mental sickness, like a broken leg or cancer, not a personal failing. We also need to make sure to not confuse projecting expectations of perfection onto the three jewels with faith. Pure view does not expect the three jewels to appear perfect from their own side, rather it is viewing and relating to the three jewels in a perfect way. Venerable Geshe-la taught that we should view our teachers as Sangha jewels, not Buddha jewels. For ourselves as fellow Sangha, we should view ourselves as loving nurses, not finger-waggers. Gen Tharchin said our primary refuge should be in the Dharma, not the person. If we put our primary refuge in the person, when they do something stupid, we lose everything; but if we put it primarily in the Dharma, when they do something stupid, we learn powerful lessons.

Once again, best to have the mind of a beginner. Best to have an open heart, including towards ourself.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Emptiness of the Big Bang

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

Now the refutation of production from other, that is the general principle.

after a brief refutation on the assertion of production from partless particles.

(9.126ab) The assertion that the world and living beings are produced from permanent partless particles
Has already been refuted.

Modern science claims everything arose from The Big Bang. The Big Bang essentially started with a partless particle. Much of modern physics is also about trying to identify partless particles that are the basis appan which reality is constructed. Belief in the fiction of partless particles is quite widespread in modern society.

But production from partlets particles is actually impossible. As described extensively in earlier posts, the basic argument as to why partless particles cannot create anything relates to the problem of contact.  Does a partless particle come into contact with that which it supposedly produces?  If what is produced comes from the partless particle then it implies part of the partless particle somehow separates off from the partless particle, at which point it would not be partless since it has part of it that can separate off. If one partless particle comes into contact with another partless particle, then it implies there is part of that particle that is in contact with another partless particle. If there is part of the partless particle that is in contact with part of another partless particle, that implies there is part of the partless particle that is not in contact with the other partless particle, at which point the partless particle is no longer partless. If there is not only one part of the partless particle in contact with another part of a partless particle, it implies that the two partless particles are in fact one in the same, at which point what sense is there in talking about two different partless particles coming into relationship with one another? When we think even superficially about this, it is quite absurd.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: Embracing Our Responsibility for Everything

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

From these debates what we need to develop is conviction that effects are created by their own causes and conditions, including karma and intention.  In dependence upon this conviction, we will realize that we have responsibility, a great responsibility for all the effects in this world. 

Perhaps we can go so far as to say, the responsibility is entirely ours.  What kind of world we live in, what kind of people we live with, inhabitants of that world, whether we’re happy or whether we suffer, is entirely our responsibility. Mine, it is my responsibility.  There’s great resistance to this, because perhaps we feel this world was already in a mess, even before I arrived.  But when we dream, our dream world comes with a complete past.  We want to blame others for everything that is wrong in the world and, above all, how they treat us.  Why should I take responsibility?  We think, I’m hardly responsible for what’s happening on the other side of the world.  In what way am I responsible for any of those things?  Of course, from the perspective of circumstantial causes, we are only indirectly responsible at best.  But because these things are empty, they arise from our karma.  They are created by our mind.  They are occurring within our dream. 

In what way are these things, these effects, in any way dependent upon me sitting in my room doing nothing?  Hmm, we are doing nothing, perhaps that is why our world is degenerating.  When we don’t understand what are the causes and conditions, we have a tendency to say it is caused by something other than ourself, like an external God.

One of the main differences between Buddhism and many other religions is that we take full responsibility, we don’t blame anyone or anything other than our own mind for what happens in the world.  If everything really is created by mind, then it is each individual’s responsibility, isn’t it, for what happens in their world.  Every effect that appears to our mind we must have been involved in in some way, in its creation, surely.  If not, then that thing would be inherently existent.  If there is nothing inherently existent, arising separately from our mind, then we are indeed responsible for everything.

Surely any effect that appears to our mind, we must have been involved in some way in its creation. If we acknowledge that, then really we will take full responsibility.   Not just for ourself but for others too, won’t we?  From the point of view of emptiness, we have to take full responsibility for ourselves and for others.  Even in the section on exchanging self with others, we concluded that others’ faults, whatever fault there is, is ours. It is my fault.  Whatever goes wrong in this world is my fault? That is taking full responsibility, isn’t it?  It is my responsibility to change what happens in the world?  My sole responsibility?  As soon as we include someone else, god-like or non-god, we share the responsibility, it’s not entirely my responsibility, not entirely my fault, which self-cherishing would be quite happy with.

How to make our sadhana practice qualified and powerful

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Much of our training in meditation is actually sadhana practice, so it is important to know how to do it well.  

The literal translation of sadhana is “method for receiving attainments.”  By engaging in the sadhanas purely and sincerely, with a good motivation and an understanding of emptiness, we will receive attainments within our mind.  Essentially, this means that we will realize directly by personal experience the benefits of the practice.  

When Venerable Geshe-la introduces any meditation, he first begins by explaining the benefits of engaging in that meditation.  This inspires us to do so.  Ultimately, since we are desire realm beings, we do what we want.  Right now, we want samsaric happiness.  But by contemplating the benefits of Dharma in general and sadhana practice in particular, we can change what we want to be spiritual attainments.  When we want spiritual attainments and we recognize that our sadhanas are methods for receiving them, we will be very motivated to engage in the practices purely and sincerely.  

Practically speaking, sadhanas are guided meditations that we take ourselves through.  The sadhanas themselves were written by our lineage gurus.  They give us these sadhanas so we can then train in them throughout our entire life, gaining deeper and deeper experience of them.  They lay out a sequence of minds we should generate and, when we do, we forge a path within our mind from our current state to the final state promised by the sadhana. One shortcut for knowing the main benefits and final destination of any sadhana is look at the dedication prayers. They explain the principal function of the sadhana and then we dedicate our engage in that practice towards the attainment of those goals. 

To make our sadhana practice qualified, it is important that we make every word count.  I have found practically this has two dimensions:  what we focus our visualization on and what is conceived by that appearance.  In this way, we unite three things:  the words, the meaning, and the appearance.  And we do this for every word of the sadhana.  As we recite each word of the sadhana, we focus on an aspect of the visualization that corresponds to it and then generate in our heart the realization implied by the meaning of the word.  It is important to not just do this intellectually understanding the meaning, but instead we generate the meaning of each word in our heart so the words are the song expressing the feelings in our heart and spontaneously appearing as the aspect of the visualization that corresponds to those words.

The power of our sadhana practice – well really the power of any of our Dharma practices – depends upon four things.  First, the degree of our faith in both the deity of the sadhana and the sadhana itself.  We can view each word of the sadhana as a subtle emanation of our guru’s mind coursing through our mind mixed inseparably with our inner winds, purifying them at a very deep level.  Since our spiritual guide is the synthesis of all Buddhas, by viewing both the deity and the sadhana as an emanation of our spiritual guide, all the Buddhas will enter into our practice, multiplying the power of the blessings by the number of Buddhas, which is countless.

Second, the power of our practice depends upon the purity of our motivation in reciting the sadhana, ideally bodhichitta.  When we engage in practices for the sake of ourself, the practice has a power of one.  But when we engage in our practices for the sake of others, the power of our practice is multiplied by the number of beings on whose behalf we engage in the practice.  If we engage in our practices with a bodhichitta motivation, it multiplies the power of our practice by infinity since there are infinite living beings.  Bodhichitta is the true quick path to enlightenment.

Third, the power of our practice depends upon the extent of our single-pointed concentration as we recite the sadhana.  If our mind is wandering everywhere, there will be little power because our mind is only fleetingly engaging with it.  But if we have single pointed concentration, bringing the full force and attention of our mind into each word, then it is like gathering all the lights of the sun into a single powerful laser that cuts through the darkness of our mind.  According to Sutra, we try engage in our practices with a mind of tranquil abiding.  But since that is a very high attainment, we do our best to gradually train in the different stages of tranquil abiding.  Simply reaching the fourth mental abiding is also a stupendous attainment which will bring great power to our practice.  According to Tantra, we try engage in the practice with our very subtle mind of great bliss.  The mind of great bliss is many, many times more powerful than the mind of tranquil abiding, primarily because it is a subtle mind and thus closer to our root mind and because it is blissful, so it is naturally free from distractions.  Once again, it is an extremely high attainment to generate the very subtle mind of great bliss, so in the beginning it is enough to correctly imagine we are meditating with the mind of great bliss.  Like all meditations on correct imagination, the more we engage in it, the closer we become to it being our reality.

And fourth, the power of our practice depends upon the thoroughness with which we combine all of this with an understanding of emptiness.  Emptiness makes everything possible.  We understand that all living beings are aspects of our mind.  We understand that the deity is not separate from our mind.  We eliminate the duality between our mind and its object.  Emptiness makes everything subtle and a delicate dance.  It is naturally blissful.  In particular, we train in the union of appearance and emptiness with every word of the sadhana.  Instead of seeing the deities and mandala we normally see, we imagine we see everything directly as emptiness in the aspect of the different visualizations.  I sometimes find it helpful to imagine there is basically only the clear light, but it is refracted along the contours of the visualized object like seeing the outline of things that are invisible to others.  We see the dance of emptiness.  We perceive only emptiness, but it is in motion according to the visualizations of the sadhana.

In other words, by training in these four aspects, we bring the entire Lamrim into each word of our sadhana practice – faith, bodhichitta, pure concentration, and the wisdom realizing emptiness.  

How deeply our sadhana practice goes depends upon at what level we are engaging in it.  In the teachings on mantra recitation, it explains there are three main ways we engage in mantra recitation – verbal, mental, and vajra. Roughly speaking, we can say that verbal recitation purifies our gross inner winds, mental recitation purifies our subtle inner winds, and vajra recitation purifies our very subtle inner winds. Vajra recitation is supreme. Here, we imagine our guru is reciting the mantra in our mind for us, like performing some sort of spiritual surgery on us, and we are basically hearing him do so. We take everything we know about relying upon the guru’s mind alone and activating the inner spiritual guide and bring that into our mantra recitation.

In exactly the same way, we can engage in our sadhana practices at these same three levels – verbal, mental, and vajra.  Verbal recitation occurs when we verbally sing the sadhana.  Mental recitation occurs when we recite the sadhana within our mind.  This is why it is helpful to memorize the sadhana.  Vajra recitation is when we imagine that our guru is engaging in the sadhana for us in our mind and we are allowing him to carry us along its current to enlightenment.  Vajra recitation of sadhanas is supreme.

Finally, we can also increase the power of our sadhana practice by engaging in it as all living beings.  Our “I” is just a label that we can impute on anything.  If we impute our I onto all living beings and then engage in our practice, we will feel like we are the entire universe of living beings engaging in the practice.  Alternatively, we can dissolve all living beings into our heart and then, as them, engage in all the practices strongly believing that by doing so they are receiving the same karmic benefit as if they were engaging in the practices themselves.  This way of practicing is extremely powerful for not only multiplying the power of our practice by the number of beings we are imagining we are, but also in terms of creating a very, very close karmic connection between ourself, the deity, the practice, and all living beings.  This functions to ripen their karma to find, enter into, progress along, and ultimately complete the path.  

Taken together, when we engage in our sadhana practices, we should imagine that we are all living beings, engaging in vajra recitation of the sadhana, with deep faith in our guru, a pure bodhichitta motivation, single pointed blissful concentration, all conjoined with a realization of emptiness of ourself, the practice, all the Buddhas, and all living beings.  If we bring these recognitions into each word of our practice, it will be like rocket fuel powering us quickly to the final goal.  It takes training, but with familiarity, it can become entirely natural. 

How Samsara Ends

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Gen Tharchin says each step we take towards enlightenment, we bring all beings with us in proportion to their karmic connection to us. So we need to do two things: take steps towards enlightenment and forge close karmic bonds with others. This works because everything and everyone is empty. Unobservable compassion.

The beings we bring along with us then start to do the same for the beings karmically close to them. The most powerful method for doing this is imagining all living beings are all engaging in our tantric practices with us. This correct imagination karmically reconstructs the beings of our empty dream into tantric bodhisattvas and spiritual guides doing the same for others.

This is how we empty samsara and populate our pure land. This is how we create a force of spirtual gravity that counters the karmic gravitational pull of hell being exerted on all beings.

The more beings we bring into our pure land, the stronger the pure spiritual gravity grows until eventually it becomes so powerful, it sucks all beings out of samsara almost in an instant and into the eternal peace of universal enlightenment.

Then, atop Mount Meru and in all the pure continents of our pure land, we party, feasting on samsara’s carcass with our inner, torma, and tsog offerings and enjoying magnificent delights as we all sing and dance to the Song of the Spring Queen.

A Pure Life: How to Skillfully Train in the Eight Mahayana Precepts

Kadampa Ryan Precept Days

This is part two of a 12-part series on how to skillfully train in the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  The 15th of every month is Precepts Day, when Kadampa practitioners around the world typically take and observe the Precepts.

Most of us know the teachings Geshe-la has given on the correct attitude to have towards our vows and commitments, but sadly we sometimes don’t really believe him when he explains it.  We still tend to think of them in absolutist, black and white terms, when in reality each vow has many, many different levels at which we can keep it.  We think in terms of our ability to “keep” our vows instead of viewing them as trainings we engage in. 

When we go to the gym, there are all sorts of different exercise machines.  Each one works out a different muscle, and each person who uses the machine uses it at a different level (different amounts of weight, different number of repetitions, etc.).  But everyone in the gym uses the same equipment.  It is exactly the same with our vows.  Each vow is something we train in, not something we are already expected to be able to do perfectly at the maximum.  Each vow focus on strengthening different mental muscles, but doing all of them strengthens the whole of our mind.  We each train in the vow at different levels according to our capacity, but we know the more we train, the more our capacity will grow.  Everyone in the spiritual gym trains with the same vows regardless of our level.  In almost every way, the correct attitude towards a physical exercise regimen is exactly the same attitude we should cultivate towards our spiritual exercise regimen of the Eight Mahayana Precepts, and indeed all of our vows.  I often find it helpful to read the sports training literature, especially that of long-distance tri-athletes.  Our journey is very long and will require almost unthinkable stamina, but we must recall every Iron Man Champion was once a baby who couldn’t even lift their head. 

Geshe-la explains there are four main causes of the degeneration of our vows and commitments.  These are known as the ‘four doors of receiving downfalls’.  He says to close these doors we should practice as follows:

  1. Closing the door of not knowing what the downfalls are.  We should learn what the downfalls are by committing them to memory.  We should learn how they are incurred.  We should make plans to avoid such situations.  In this series of posts, I will try explain all of these things for each of the Eight Mahayana Precepts.
  1. Closing the door of lack of respect for Buddha’s instructions.  We can protect ourselves from this primarily by training in the refuge vows.  Refuge is not a difficult concept.  When we have a toothache, what do we do?  We turn to the dentist.  When we have a legal problem, what do we do?  We turn to a lawyer.  When we have an internal problem with our mind, what do we do?  We turn to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  Dentists can fix our teeth and lawyers can solve our legal problems, but only the three jewels can help us with our inner mental problems.  In particular, we need to contemplate the benefits of each of the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  We need to think about how much better our life would be and all the karmic fruit that flows from training in them.  When we see the value of keeping the Precepts, we will naturally have respect for them.  Geshe-la said we should contemplate as follows:

“Since Buddha is omniscient, knowing all past, present, and future phenomena simultaneously and directly, and since he has great compassion for all living beings without exception, there is no valid reason for developing disrespect towards his teachings.  It is only due to ignorance that I sometimes disbelieve them.”

  1. Closing the third door of strong delusions. The reason why we engage in non-virtuous actions is we are currently slaves to our delusions.  They take control of our mind and then compel us to engage in harmful actions.  We may voluntarily participate in the process, but that is only because our delusions have so deceived us, we actually believe their lies.  Largely, the Eight Mahayana Precepts oppose our delusion of attachment.  Our attachment does not want to keep the precepts, and frankly views them as standing in the way of our fun.  We cannot keep our vows through will power alone.  Perhaps we can for Precepts Day itself, but if in our heart we still want to engage in these behaviors, what we will really do is simply do slightly more negativity before and after Precepts Day, so for the month as a whole, it is exactly the same amount of negativity.  That’s obviously not the point!  Our goal should be to train in the Precepts and gradually expand the scope of keeping their meaning throughout the month and indeed throughout our whole life.  To do this, we need to want to keep them more than we want the objects of attachment they oppose.  We are desire realm beings, which means we have no choice but to do whatever we desire.  The only way to sustainably train in moral discipline is to change our desires away from delusions and towards virtue.  This is primarily accomplished through a sincre and consistent practice of Lamrim.  Lamrim is a systematic method for changing our desires from worldly ones to spiritual ones. 
  1. Closing the fourth door of non-conscientiousness.  We should repeatedly bring to mind the disadvantages of incurring downfalls, and the advantages of pure moral discipline.  These have been explained in the previous post, and the specific karmic benefits of each Precept will be explained in the explanation of each Precept.

In brief, Geshe-la explains, we prevent our vows from degenerating by practicing the Dharma of renunciation, bodhichitta, correct view, generation stage, and completion stage. 

It is important to be skillful in our approach to all of our vows, including the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  We should not have unrealistic expectations or make promises we cannot keep.  It will happen to all of us in the early stages of our Dharma practice that when we are at some festival and feeling very inspired, we make these outlandish vows that we (at the time) intend to keep our whole life.  Then we get home, try at first, but eventually are forced to abandon the vow.  Gen Tharchin says when making promises, we should ask ourselves, “what can I do on my absolute worst day?”  We promise only to do that.  On any given day we will most likely do better than our promise, but then we will not actually break it.  It is a bad habit to make spiritual promises which we later break.  We will all make all sorts of what I call “beginner’s errors” with this one.  It does not matter.  When you break the promise, realize your mistake, recalibrate your promise and try again.  Eventually you will get the right balance. 

We should adopt our vows gradually, as each can be kept on many levels.  In this way, we can gradually deepen the level we are able to keep the vows.  If we are a teacher, we should explain the vows well and not encourage our students to promise to keep them all perfectly from the beginning.  Getting the correct attitude towards our vows is well over half the battle.  But keeping the vows gradually does not mean that we can temporarily put to one side the vows that we do not like.  We have to work with all the vows, gradually improving the way we observe them.

Finally, Geshe-la says we should begin to practice all the vows as soon as we have taken them.  Then we practice them to the best of our ability.  Geshe-la says we should never lose the determination to keep our vows perfectly in the future.  He says by keeping the intention to keep them purely in the future we keep our commitments, even if along the way we repeatedly fall short.  I can’t remember who, but some wise person once said, “the day you can keep all of your vows and commitments perfectly is the day you will no longer need them.  It is because we can’t keep our vows and commitments perfectly that we do need them.”  This is useful to always keep in mind.

All of that being said, the Eight Mahayana Precepts are unique in our training in moral discipline because on Precepts Days we do strive to keep them perfectly. On Precepts Days we make a point of emphasizing the practice of moral discipline and we strive our best to observe the the vows as purely as we can. The literal meaning of many of the precepts is quite black and white, we either keep the vow or we do not. In this sense, we can say it is an exception to the otherwise gradual approach we take to our practice of moral discipline. But if we look beyond the literal meaning of the precept, we realize that they all also have many different levels at which they can be kept. Further, we can gradually expand the scope with which we engage in our precepts practice by observing their essential meaning throughout the month, not just on Precepts Days. In any case, we should not worry but always simply try our best. If we break our precepts, we can learn our lesson, retake them, and try again.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: The Impossibility of an Independent Creator of All

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(9.121ab) Precisely what is it that Ishvara is supposed to create?
(Naiyayika and Vaisheshika) “ “He creates the world, living beings, and his own subsequent continuum.”

This is quite similar to conceptions of God held by many religions. Again, our goal in examining these views is not to refute other religions, but rather to identify within our own mind how we still hold onto these views we may have been enculturated into by virtue of living within societies that hold such views. If other people want to believe in such things, we respect that and rejoice in their faith and spiritual path.

But within our own mind, we strive to identify how we are still holding onto different forms of grasping at inherent existence and refute them. One of the areas where we have the most difficulty an understanding emptiness is the relationship between our grasping at inherent existence and production. This is why Shantideva focuses like a laser on demonstrating the contradiction between inherent existence and production of anything. When we dis entangle these two contradictory views our mind naturally opens up into a correct understanding of emptiness.

(9.121cd) But if this is so, how did such an independent creator himself develop?
Moreover, consciousness is produced from its previous continuum,

(9.122) And, since beginningless time, happiness and suffering have been created by karma, or actions.
So, tell us, what does Ishvara create?
If the cause has no beginning,
The effect must also have no beginning.

(9.123) So why, if their production does not depend upon other conditions,
Are effects such as happiness and suffering not constantly produced without interruption?
And if, as you say, there is nothing other than phenomena created by Ishvara,
Upon what conditions does Ishvara depend when he creates an effect?

(9.124) If a collection of causes and conditions produces an effect,
That effect is not produced by Ishvara.
If the causes and conditions are assembled, even
Ishvara does not have the power to prevent the effect being produced;
And, if they are not assembled, he cannot possibly produce that effect.

(9.125) If effects such as suffering are produced without Ishvara’s wishing for them,
It follows that they are produced through the power of something other than him.
You say that all effects are produced according to Ishvara’s wishes,
But those wishes have no power to produce all things, so how can Ishvara be the creator of everything?

Shantideva’s reasoning is like standing in front of a machine gun firing wisdom bullets at our wrong views. His actual reasoning is not difficult to understand. The spiritual practice here is to not intellectually appreciate what he is saying, but rather deeply contemplate each one of these points within our own mind to arrive at a clear and definitive valid cognizer that the view grasping at an external creator of all is completely impossible.

Venerable Tharchin explains that 80% of the meditation on emptiness is identifying correctly the object of negation within our own mind. This is not a philosophical exercise asking ourselves whether inherent existence could exist in the abstract, rather it is a deeply personal investigation of the views held within our own mind to realize how we innately grasp at inherent existence. Only when we fully unearth the different ways in which our mind, perhaps even subconsciously, grasps at inherent existence will contemplating Shantideva’s words produce a profound transformative effect upon our mind. When Shantideva explains the views of the other schools, what he is actually doing is engaging in an extended explanation of the object of negation.

All of us, unless we are already enlightened, still grasp at there being externally existent creation. Intellectually, we call ourselves Kadampas and say of course I don’t think that way.  But denying we still have grasping is a form of laziness, indeed it is a form of deluded pride. It is much better to assume that yes indeed we still have deep grasping about these things, then honestly look within our mind and realize how we hold onto such views, and then contemplate Shantideva’s points. If we practice in this way, it is definite that our mind will change. We will feel our mind unlock and open up as our wrong views are definitively left behind, not simply intellectually refuted as if these views were somehow separate from us.

I could provide commentary on each one of these points. But I do not believe I need to because I think most of them are self-evident if we take the time to contemplate them. It is therefore better for us, on our own, to pause and contemplate deeply each reason to arrive at a clear conclusion that yes it is impossible for there to be an externally existent, permanent creator as we normally grasp at.  

Even if we do not grasp at an external creator of all, we do still grasp at external creation. There is an extent to which our mind is still holding onto these sorts of views. It is not enough to just simply say there is not an external creator of all. We have to realize there is no external creator of anything.

How to Help our Non-Dharma Loved Ones

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life

Once we start loving others, we will begin to find their suffering unbearable and the desire to help protect them from their suffering will naturally arise.

Our first instinct will be to jump in to rescue them by offering all sorts of Dharma advice about how they can change their mind. But this usually proves counter-productive. They can find our Dharma advice as blaming them for their troubles, giving a pass to all those harming them, or not understanding their external problems. Our advice can also sometimes come across as proselytizing or cult-like. This in turn causes them to reject the Dharma – advice they needed – and us.

So how can we help? There are six steps I have found helpful and can be used in almost any situation.

The first thing we need to do is become at peace with them suffering – we need to accept they are suffering and it does not disturb our peace of mind. It is important to make the distinction between attachment to our loved ones not suffering and compassion. Both find the suffering of others unbearable, but the former believes they need to be free from suffering for us to be happy. The latter is able to peacefully accept they are suffering without it diminishing in any way our desire to help. If we are attached to them not suffering, we then start trying to control them so they get better so we don’t suffer from them suffering. If we have compassion, our happiness or peace of mind does not depend upon them not suffering. So, like a good doctor, we can offer advice without needing them to follow it. We leave them free to make their own choices and to ignore our advice if they wish.

The second thing we need to do is find within ourself the delusions the other person appears to be suffering from in their problem. Mind is the creator of all. This means the others we perceive are nothing more than reflections of our own mind and karma. They appear to have these delusions because we still have the same delusions within our own mind. We can view them as a mirror of Dharma revealing back to us what still needs to be healed within our own mind. They are helping us “train in the first difficulty,” namely identifying our own delusions.

By removing their same delusions within our own mind three magical things happen. First, we then naturally show the best possible example to others of somebody who lives free from the delusions that trouble them. Second, by removing their delusions from our own mind, we will gain the wisdom to know how to do so, thus enabling us to offer better advice based upon personal experience. Third, their delusions will actually start to dis-appear because ultimately they are coming from our mind anyways. This is a special spiritual technology for helping others – it is a scientific method that will work for any who try it for long enough. At a minimum, by abandoing the delusions within our mind, we will become that much closer to enlightenment, the only real way we can provide lasting benefit to them.

The third step is we need to check, “what are they asking of me?” It’s quite possible they are asking for nothing from us, they don’t want us involved at all. If they are not asking, offering any advice or help is almost invariably counter-productive. They reject what we have to say and us. This does not help them, indeed it creates the conditions for them to create the karma of rejecting Dharma and us. If they are asking for something, we need to check, “do they just want me to compassionately listen or do they also want advice?” If we are not sure, we can simply ask. I would say 80% of the time, people just want us to listen and understand. Providing them a safe environment in which they can verbalize their struggles often gives them the space they need to process their difficulties and find their own solutions. It is particularly helpful to share back with them what we have heard and understood from their story, showing that we get it and their feelings about it are normal. In sharing back with them, try not to implicitly give them advice – remember, they are not asking for that. And if they don’t think we understand their problem, they will assume all of our advice is misplaced. So check in with them to see, “am I understanding your situation correctly?”

Fourth, if they are also asking for advice, after you have listened empathetically to their struggles and repeated back to them what you heard to demonstrate you understood their situation, we should first provide them practical advice for how to address the external dimensions of their problem. Remember, for them, their outer problem is their problem. They don’t know yet about the difference between the outer problem and the inner problem. There are almost always external things we can change which can make the external situation less bad or even a little better. Sometimes Dharma practitioners wrongly think there is some fault in also providing practical advice, as if we should only give Dharma advice. That’s ridiculous and the opposite of what Geshe-la encourages us to do. We help in every way we can, both practically and spiritually, depending upon the capacity of the other person.

In the fifth step, if they are open to it, you can begin to provide some advice on how they can address their inner problem – the delusions that are arising in their mind in relationship to the situation. You can do this according to the teachings on “training in the three difficulties” from the book Universal Compassion. First, help them identify the delusions within their mind. Since at present we lack the ability to read others minds, we need to be very skillful at this stage. If you did the second stage above well, you can simply share your own experience how when you find yourself in situations like theirs, your mind starts generating this or that delusion, suggesting perhaps something like that may also be happening in their mind. Pause to see if they relate to that. If they do, then you can move to the second of the three difficulties – applying the opponents to reduce the delusions. Help them accept it is normal that they have these delusions so they avoid falling into the extreme of beating themselves up or self-hatred. Delusions are not us, they are clouds in the sky of their mind. We are the sky itself. From the space of their pure potential, help them realize this difficult situation gives them an opportunity to grow internally in some way. Almost all good Dharma advice has this as its common denominator – remember, bodhichitta is the quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma. Share your own stories about how you have dealt with similar inner difficulties and ways of thinking that have proven helpful for shifting your point of view. The external situation is still what it is, but instead of it being a problem, it is an opportunity to develop ourselves into a better person. Err on the side of giving them too little advice than too much that they can’t process. Very often, less is more. Finally, you can move to the third difficulty – applying the antidote of the wisdom realizing emptiness. Most people aren’t ready to view everything as a creation of their mind, but most people can accept that their opinion about the situation depends upon how their mind relates to it. That’s a good enough start.

When offering advice, especially to non-Dharma loved ones, it is very important to express yourself in language that they can accept and understand. Avoid Dharma jargon. Dharma words may mean something to you, but if they don’t have prior exposure to the Dharma teachings, it will mean almost nothing to them. Use analogies, examples, and wisdom that they can relate to based upon their life experience. The great Dharma translators are not just those in the past who went to India to bring back the Dharma to Tibet, they are every day Dharma practitioners who are able to transmit the essential meaning of the Dharma in ways people of the modern world can relate to and understand.

It is also quite important when giving advice that you have no personal need whatsoever for them to follow your advice. Leave them completely free to take it or leave it, without the slightest trace of emotional penalty if they don’t. If they feel manipulated into following your advice, they will most certainly rebel against it, defeating the whole purpose of offering advice in the first place. If they find your advice helpful, great; if not, that’s OK too – you can just empathize with their struggles and let them know you are there for them if they need you.

Sixth, finally, you can pray for them. Buddhas accomplish virtually all of their virtuous deeds through the power of their prayers and dedications. Since we are training to become Buddhas ourselves, we should do the same. We are spiritual people, so of course prayer is actually our principal method for helping others. We may not yet be Buddhas ourselves, but we know the Buddhas and if we make pure prayers with deep faith free from any attachment, they can definitely help. Generally speaking, we don’t emphasize making prayers that people’s external problems go away. We can, but it is very easy for that to lead to all sorts of attachment and aversion, grasping at the external situation as the real problem. Instead, we should direct the bulk of our prayers to helping them overcome their inner problem. We can pray that they find strength, compassion, and wisdom. Above all, people need wisdom. I have found the most effective prayer is to Dorje Shugden, “please bless their mind so that this situation becomes a powerful cause of their enlightenment.” Dorje Shugden wastes nothing. It may not be immediately obvious how he will do so, but we can be certain he is on the job. If we have unshakeable faith in Dorje Shugden we can be certain he is working to accomplish our pure prayer – if not in this life, in future lives. We can also pray that their situation becomes a cause of our own enlightenment so that we can one day help our loved ones perfectly.

We can use these six steps with virtually anybody – our kids, our family members, our friends, our students, our co-workers, and even sometimes somebody we see crying alone on a bench. At first, we might not be very good at it, but with practice and familiarity, it will get easier and flow more naturally.

Geshe-la says it is not enough to know the Dharma, we need skillful means. The above is what I have personally found useful as I have tried to help those I love in my life. I don’t pretend to have mastered the method or that it always works – or that it is the only way to help – but it is hard-won experience that I hope others find helpful.

Happy Tsog Day: Offering Tsog to All Sentient Beings and All Buddhas

Kadampa Ryan Tsog Days

In order to remember and mark our tsog days, holy days on the Kadampa calendar, I am sharing my understanding of the practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide with tsog.  This is part 23 of a 44-part series.

HO This ocean of tsog offering of uncontaminated nectar,
Blessed by concentration, mantra, and mudra,
I offer to please the assembly of mother sentient beings.
OM AH HUM
Delighted by enjoying these magnificent objects of desire,
EH MA HO
May suffering and mistaken appearance be pacified.

In this final verse, which Gen-la Dekyong said is her favorite, we make the tsog offering to the assembly of mother sentient beings. When we do so, they receive special blessings that cause all suffering and mistaken appearance to be pacified. According to Highest Yoga Tantra, the roots of samsara are ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions. Ordinary appearances are the things that we normally see, such as computers, cars, food, and so forth. All these things appear to exist from their own side, independent of our mind. Ordinary conceptions are when we mentally assent to ordinary appearances, believing that the objects exist in the way that they appear. When we free our mind from ordinary conceptions, we attain liberation from samsara. But it is only when we free our mind from ordinary appearances that we attain enlightenment. When we say, “may suffering be pacified,” we are referring to ordinary conceptions that are the root of all our samsaric suffering; and when we say, may “mistaken appearance” be pacified, we are referring to ordinary appearances that prevent our full enlightenment. In other words, after partaking of the tsog offering, we strongly believe that all living beings have now attained enlightenment. This mental action of believing that they have done so creates the karma for them to appear to do so in the future. To strongly believe something in the Dharma does not mean to strongly believe the thing we are imagining inherently exists, rather it means we engage in the mental action of believing something conventionally exists because this mental action is how we create the karma for the thing we are imagining to later appear. In this way, we can understand how engaging in the tsog offering is a method for fulfilling our bodhichitta wish to lead all beings to everlasting freedom.

Making the tsog offering to the Vajra Master

EH MA HO Great circle of tsog!
O Great Hero we understand
That, following in the path of the Sugatas of the three times,
You are the source of all attainments.
Forsaking all minds of conceptualization
Please continuously enjoy this circle of tsog.
AH LA LA HO

Here we make the tsog offering directly to our spiritual guide Buddha Vajradhara at the heart of Lama Losang Tubwang Dorjechang. In making the offering, we remember that Vajradhara is the source of all attainments. Geshe-la explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune that all happiness comes through the kindness of Buddha. The reason for this is all happiness comes from virtue, and virtue arises only in dependence upon receiving blessings from Buddha. If Buddha is the source of all happiness, then certainly he is the source of all spiritual attainments which depends upon both his teachings and his blessings. When we make the offering to the spiritual guide in particular, we recall non-conceptual bliss and emptiness of all phenomena. The spiritual guide himself arises non-conceptually and we view everything that appears to our mind as manifestations bliss and emptiness. When we recite AH LA LA HO, we imagine that the spiritual guide partakes of our tsog offering through a straw of wisdom light.

The Master’s reply

OM With a nature inseparable from the three vajras
I generate as the Guru-Deity.
AH This nectar of uncontaminated exalted wisdom and bliss,
HUM Without stirring from bodhichitta
I partake to delight the Deities dwelling in my body.
AH HO MAHA SUKHA

This verse is particularly blessed. After our spiritual guide has partaken of the tsog offering, we imagine that he replies directly to us with the above words. We should strongly feel that we are in his living presence and he is speaking directly to us. With the first line, we understand that the spiritual guide is inseparable from the visual body, speech, and mind of all the Buddhas. With the second line, we recall his outer form as they guru deity – in this context he generates himself as Heruka. With the third line, we imagine that as a result of enjoying the tsog offering he generates a non-contaminated experience of exalted wisdom and bliss. With the fourth line, we recall that his motivation is bodhichitta. Sometimes we may wonder why a Buddha would need to generate the mind of bodhicitta. Aren’t they already a Buddha, so therefore why would they wish to become one? There are two answers to this doubt. First, the principle wish of bodhicitta is to lead all living beings to enlightenment, the wish to become a Buddha ourselves is simply a secondary wish or the assistant wish that enables us to fulfill our primary wish. When a Buddha attains enlightenment, they do not abandon their bodhichitta, but rather their bodhicitta continues to inform all their actions. Second, the spiritual guide generates within his mind all the realizations of the stages of the path as subtle emanations that we as practitioners can mix our mind with. He generates bodhichitta so that when we mix our mind with his we are also able to generate bodhichitta. The same is true for all the other realizations of the stages of the path. With the fifth line, we imagine that all the deities of the body mandala inside our spiritual guide’s body also partake of the tsog offering. As a result, we create a special karma for them to fulfill their function, which is to bless the subtle body, speech, and mind of ourselves. And with the last line, which means “oh what great bliss,” we imagine that our spiritual guide experiences not only himself but all phenomena as great bliss.

One of our refuge commitments is to offer the first portion of whatever we eat to the three jewels. In the eleven yogas of Vajrayogini explained in Guide to Dakini Land and Modern Buddhism, we are encouraged to recite this verse whenever we ourselves eat. This is a method for fulfilling our refuge commitment according to Highest Yoga Tantra. Since we eat many times every day, by memorizing and subsequently practicing this verse we will be able to recall our tantric practice day and night. The way to engage in the practice can be understood from the explanation above. More detail can be found in Guide to Dakini Land.