How do we get to the pure land?

Kadampa Ryan Uncategorized
Escaping from samsara or attaining enlightenment often feels beyond reach, and so while we talk about it, we don’t really believe we can do it, so we never fully apply ourselves to the task. But attaining the pure land is entirely doable. If we are clear on what we need to do, it is not hard to generate the necessary effort. As Venerable Tharchin explains, if we know that Dharma is doable, effort comes effortlessly.
So what, exactly, do we need to do to reach the pure land? There are four main things: We need to want to for the right reasons, have unwavering faith in Guru Heruka or Vajrayogini, have sufficient merit, and we need to use our life to train in how to die. These will now be explained in turn.
First, we need to want to. Christians explain at the time of death we will go to one of two places, heaven or hell. As Buddhists, we scoff and say, ‘ah, but there are six realms of samsara, countless pure lands, liberation and enlightenment.’ But from a practical point of view, the Christians are basically correct. Statistically speaking, 99.99% of the karma that remains on our mind from our countless past lives is negative, and if this karma ripens at the time of our death, we will fall into the lower realms. Once in the lower realms, it is almost impossible to get out and just as all rivers end in the ocean, all paths in the lower realms end in hell. And if we make it to the upper realms, we will burn up all our merit on meaningless pleasure, and then fall into the lower realms after that. Virtually all paths in the upper realms also end in hell. The only exception is a precious human life, but the odds of us putting our head through the golden yoke again are infinitesimally small. So while there may be exceptions, the Christians are basically right. We should feel either at the end of our life, there are basically only two possibilties, the pure land or hell. But it is not enough to just want to reach the pure land to escape hell. Geshe-la is very clear, to reach the pure land we must die with a mind of compassion wanting to take rebirth there so we can complete our training and then fulfill our bodhichitta wish to free all beings from samsara. If we attain the pure land, our eventual liberation and enlightenment is assured. Reaching it is like entering in a slip stream that inexorably leads to the city of enlightenment. A pure land is like a bodhisattva’s training camp. There, we can complete our spiritual training. Then, we can help all others.

Second, we need unwavering faith in Guru Heruka and Vajrayogini. Once again, the Christians basically got it right. They say if faithful practitioners remember Jesus at the time of death, they will be reborn in heaven. We essentially say the same thing, except we try remember Guru Heruka or Vajrayogini with a mind of faith at the time of death. Why is this important? To reach the pure land, pure karma must be activated at the time of our death. Negative minds activate negative karma, leading to lower rebirth. Positive minds activate positive karma, leading to upper rebirth. Pure minds activate pure karma leading to a pure rebirth. Just as merely seeing a Buddha image creates pure karma regardless of our motivation, so too remembering Guru Heruka or Vajrayogini with a mind of faith at the time of our death activates pure karma on our mind. Our mind of faith opens up our mind to be able to receive the sun-like blessings of our guru, which then enter our mind and activate the karmic seeds to take rebirth in the pure land. Buddhas attained enlightenment to guide living beings out of samsara. We can be certain our remembering them at the time of our death will invite them all to accompany us through death and to the pure land. Doing so is why they attained enlightenment in the first place. They then take us by the hand and lead us to their home.

Third, we need sufficient merit. Nothing can happen without first creating its cause. Every action has four karmic effects, one of which is the ripened effect. The ripened effect is the substantial cause of a future rebirth. Once again, negative ripened effects result in lower rebirth, positive ripened effects result in upper rebirth, and pure ripened effects result in a pure rebirth. If we do not have pure karma on our mind, we will not be able to take rebirth in the pure land. Therefore, we need to accumulate a vast reserve of pure karma so there is lots of material on our mind that the Buddhas can bless. How do we create such pure karma? There are many different ways, but they all come down to connecting with something that exists outside of samsara. Seeing an image of a Buddha creates pure karma because Buddhas exist outside of samsara. Relying upon the spiritual guide creates pure karma because he is a portal connecting our mind to all of the pure lands. Engaging in actions motivated by renunciation or bodhichitta create pure karma because the final intention of the action is beyond samsara. Making mandala offerings or self-generating as our highest yoga tantra deity create pure karma because we are quite literally creating pure worlds with our mind. Geshe-la teaches in multiple places that making mandala offerings is the most effective way of creating the karma to be able to take rebirth in a pure land. This makes sense because generating a mandala is a mental action of generating a pure land, and offering it to our Spiritual Guide invests that merit in the portal out. The practice of self-generation itself is, for all practical purposes, a mandala offering, the only difference is the basis of the offering is ourself transformed into the pure land.

Finally, we need to use our life to train in how to die. Just as water consistently flowing can eventually create grand canyons, so too our persistent training in how to die and take a controlled rebirth in the pure land will carve within our mind a spiritual Grand Canyon leading all of the waters of our mental continuum inexorably to the pure land when we die. There are three things in particular we should do. First, is practice the yoga of sleeping every time we go to bed. Falling asleep and dying are very similar processes, so as we fall asleep we should strongly believe we are now going to die, generate the compassionate wish to take rebirth in the pure land so we can complete our training, engage in the yoga of sleeping, and then fall asleep with that mind. By gaining familiarity with this every night, we will know exactly what we need to do at death. Second, we should train in the three bringings of generation stage. The three bringings are really a method of self-powa of exactly what we need to do at the time of our death to take rebirth in the pure land. We are essentially practicing how to die and take rebirth in the pure land. Third, we should practice powa for others every opportunity we get. Doing powa for others not only creates the karma to take rebirth in the pure land ourselves, it also creates the karma for others to do powa for us. And let’s be honest, we will need all the prayers we can get. If we do these three – yoga of sleeping, three bringings, and powa for others – throughout our life, when death comes we will be ready.

Through almost impossibly good karma, we have encountered these methods through which we can guarantee our eventual enlightenment. Perhaps we doubt we can complete all the grounds and paths in this life, but it is not hard to understand how it is doable to attain the pure land. If we attain the pure land, we can complete the rest of our training. We have the opportunity and we have the methods. What more important thing could there possibly be for us to do with our life?

Setting limits: Dealing with difficult people is not easy, but still necessary

Kadampa Ryan Uncategorized

Dealing with difficult people is not easy. But learning how to do so is how we develop skillful means. 

Much of it comes down to learning how to establish limits. We avoid doing so because we know when we do, it will provoke a fight with the difficult person, and we don’t want to deal with that, so it seems easier to just go along. But because we just go along with their dysfunction, it keeps coming again and again and again. The sum of all these little dysfunctions far outweighs the more extreme, but short-lived problem of them being upset when we establish limits. 

It also doesn’t help them for us to allow them to continue to create negative karma for themselves; so setting limits, if done correctly, can be an act of compassion. 

“Everybody welcome” is the essence of the Kadampa way of life, but that does not mean their delusions and harmful behavior are welcome. There is no contradiction between saying “you are welcome, but these delusions or negative behaviors are not” because we make a clear distinction between the person and their delusions. If the other person says, “if you are going to establish such limits on me, then I’m outta here,” you can say, “that is your choice. If you change your mind, you are always welcome back.” 

All of that being said, of course we need to pick our battles. It’s usually best to focus on small things that are highly representative of larger patterns. But if that is too hard, start with the most harmful and the most disruptive behaviors.

Dorje Shugden is a miracle worker

Kadampa Ryan Uncategorized

Dorje Shugden is a miracle worker. If we understand how he works, we can develop unwavering faith. And it is our unwavering faith in him that unlocks his power.

First, he has the power to optimize the ripening of karma for our swiftest possible enlightenment. Sometimes people misunderstand this as he is like some external god who can arrange anything, and so if something bad happens, we think Dorje Shugden is either evil or punishing us. It is impossible for us to experience anything we have not created the karma for. We each have extremely diverse good and bad karma on our mind, and all he can do is work with the karma we have given him. Negative things happen to us because we have negative karma, lots of negative things happen because we have lots of negative karma. But what Dorje Shugden can do is manage the ripening of that karma so that what karma ripens when, in what dosages, and in what order leads us to develop the inner realizations we need when we need them, in what dosages, and in what order for our swiftest possible enlightenment given the karma that we have. The better karma we create for and offer to him, the better material he has to work with. Eventually, the karma we offer becomes purer and purer and we align ourselves more and more with him, and he quite literally builds the pure land around us.

Second, he is a wisdom Buddha that has the power to bless our mind to realize how whatever ripens is exactly perfect for our spiritual development. From its own side, we can say every appearance is neutral – neither good nor bad – it is nothing from its own side. It’s just a mere karmic appearance to mind. Dorje Shugden has the power to bless our mind in such a way that when something we would normally think of as terrible (the ripening of some negative karma) is in fact exactly what we need for our spiritual growth or the fulfillment of some pure wish. He likewise has the same power with the ripening of “good” karma, which if we are honest is sometimes more dangerous to our spiritual development than the ripening of negative karma. The point is, regardless of what appears (what ripens), we are blessed with a special wisdom to see it as “perfect.” If we see it as perfect, then it is not a problem for us. This wisdom quite literally solves all of our “problems.”

He has exactly this same power for helping others we pray for. Others are empty, meaning they too are mere karmic creations of our mind – they are the beings of our karmic dream. What is a prayer? It is a pure wish conjoined with wisdom faith. A pure wish is a spiritual wish for somebody, such as wishing they grow spiritually from some adversity, that they escape from some delusions, that they purify some karma, that they take rebirth in the pure land, that they be led to enlightenment, etc. Faith has three interlocking parts. Admiring faith is able to see a glimpse of purity. Believing faith is a confidence that purity is attainable. Wishing faith is a pure wish to want to attain that purity. Wisdom faith is faith informed by the wisdom realizing emptiness. In reality, prayer is emptiness in compassionate action. Buddhas accomplish all of their good deeds through the power of their prayer. Taken together, this means we can pray pure wishes for others, requesting that Dorje Shugden care for others as he cares for us. It is only our grasping at others as somehow being separate from us that makes it seem like we can’t equally invoke Dorje Shugden for the sake of others.

So how do we access his power? Very simple. Through prayer. His power in our lives is a dependent arising – dependent upon the purity of our wishes, the depth of our faith, and the extent to which we realize emptiness. We first generate pure wishes for ourselves or for others. The purer and stronger then wish, the more powerful our prayers. With deep faith, especially believing faith understanding how Dorje Shugden works his miracles (explained above), we make our prayer, or pure wish, for ourselves or others. As we pray, we recall emptiness – that everything is a construction or imputation of mind. Our karmic dream is infinitely shape-able. These three – pure wish, deep faith, and wisdom – set the prayer in motion, like sending a ship out to sea. We then try maintain the continuum of our prayer in our mind until it is eventually fulfilled. If we never abandon our prayer, it is gurantanteed it will eventually be fulfilled – in this life or in future lives. To accelerate the fulfillment of our prayers, we can add merit (create good karma we offer) and purify negative karma to remove obstacles. We should also, of course, do whatever practical, external things seem appropriate to move things along.

I have been relying upon Dorje Shugden now for 25 years. Quite literally, from the very first day I started relying upon him until today, he has been my best friend, my closest companion, and my spiritual father. I pray that he becomes the same for you.

Progressing through increasingly pure realities

Kadampa Ryan Uncategorized

In my meditation this morning, I realized the generation stage mandala is actually like a phase transition progression.  I imagine Dorje Shugden’s protection circle around the Charnel Grounds of the self-generation, so that the entire mandala is inside his protection circle, and everything that happens within it is perfect for the enlightenment of all beings.  Outside his protection circle, I normally imagine the completely still, radiant Dharmakaya, which I understand to be Chakrasambara – all of samsara gathered and purified into the clear light emptiness.  I imagine I have purified all of samsara for each and every being within it.  But let’s assume I haven’t done so and samsara as we normally see it appears.  This sets up a progression:

  1. Samsara for all living beings, the things we normally see as the outermost ring.  This is reality 1.0.
  2. Once we enter Dorje Shugden’s mandala, we phase into the charnel grounds.  What was before seen as samsara is now seen as the charnel grounds.  What appears may still be whatever normally appears, but we understand it to be the charnel grounds where everything is teaching us the profound truth of Dharma.  This is reality 2.0.
  3. After having spent some time in Dorje Shugden’s mandala, we are gradually led into the paths of Highest Yoga Tantra.  This is symbolized by Heruka’s wisdom protection circle which is in between the charnel grounds and his mandala.  When we bring our mind into that, it is impossible for negative karma and delusion to arise because they have no basis for doing so.  We are in the pure land.  Just inside Heruka’s wisdom protection circle, we have the completely pure three thousand worlds in the aspect of the different continents of the mandala offering.  Beings who live here are in the pure land, but they are still part of the three thousand worlds – just a purified version of them.  These worlds are like a city surrounding the central castle, but inside the protection of the city walls.  This is reality 3.0.
  4. In the center of these worlds is Mount Meru.  Mount Meru itself is layered with all of the different pure lands of the four classes of Tantra, and I would say other religions as well.  Beings who live in these worlds are firmly centered in the spiritual progression aspects of the pure land.  This is reality 4.0.
  5. On the top of Mount Meru is Heruka’s celestial mansion.  From Heruka’s perspective, this is the highest of all the pure lands.  This is like the castle on the top of the hill in the center of the city of enlightenment.  All of the different Kadampa temples sprouting up around the world are actually emanations of Heruka’s mansion, and serve the same function.  Within his celestial mansion, all beings are gathered where they are taught the Kadam Dharma and their subtle bodies are completely purified by the body mandala deities.  Entering this mansion temple is reality 5.0.
  6. We then receive highest yoga tantra empowerments and learn how to impute our I onto the body mandala.  We enter into and become one with the Guru Deity and his retinue.  But it is not just us as an individual doing this, we long ago exchanged self with others and we experience the body mandala as us “as all living beings” identifying with the self-generation.  It feels as if we are directly purifying the channels, drops and winds of all living beings who have been gathered into the body mandala with us.  This is reality 6.0.
  7. We then enter into Heruka Father and Mother and center ourselves (again, as the synthesis of all living beings) within the deity.  Heruka Father and Mother are experienced as the completely purified indestructible drop not only at our heart, but at the heart of all living beings.  All beings are experienced directly as being connected at the heart, where we have gathered all impure winds.  Within this drop, all impure winds of all living beings are completely purified in the aspect of Heruka Father and Mother of the body mandala.  This is reality 7.0.
  8. At Heruka’s heart is the seed letter HUM and the nada.  This is our indestructible wind, our Enjoyment Body, our vajra body.  All living beings have been completely purified into the nada.  This is our life raft we want to be in when we die so that death has no hold on us.  We attain the immortal body.  This is reality 8.0.
  9. Inside the nada is the clear light emptiness.  This is our indestructible mind, our Truth Body, our vajra mind.  All living beings and all impure worlds have been dissolved into Chakrasambara.  When we mix our mind with this Dharmakaya, it functions to purify the contaminated karma of all empty beings.  This is reality 9.0.
  10. As we delve deeper through the layers of the clear light, our mind becomes purer and purer until eventually it is so pure the union of the two truths of a Buddha appear directly to our mind.  The entire mandala, from the samsaras that beings normally see through to inside the nada are all seen as inseparable from our Truth Body.  The duality between pure body and pure mind are completely dissolved away and we experience ourselves and all living beings as having been always enlightened.  This is reality 10.0, or full enlightenment.

In my meditation, I sit with this awareness, strongly believing it all to be true.  In many of our meditations, Geshe-la says, “and then strongly believe“ something that is (conventionally) objectively not true, such as believing we have taken on the suffering of others, believing in our divine pride etc. There is always then this part of our mind that doesn’t believe what we are imagining, and our meditation lacks power. How can we overcome this doubt? We do not believe these things are true in the sense that they are objectively, inherently true, because nothing is. Rather, “believing something to be true” is a mental action which functions to complete the karma of our meditation. This karmic seed will ripen at a later date in the form of others appearing to be freed from their suffering or ourselves appearing as the guru deity. Why do beings appear to us now to be suffering sentient beings? Because in the past we assented to contaminated appearances, believing them to be truth, and that karma is now ripening in the form of our present appearances. If we start to believe our generated pure appearances, we will create karma which will ripen in the future where things appear to us directly as being pure. This is how samsara is created, and it is how the pure land is created. This is why generation stage is called a creative yoga.

How to heal the whole world

Kadampa Ryan Uncategorized
Lately I have been recalling something that came to me very strongly during a Heruka retreat I did long ago. Namely, since I have practiced taking and giving, I can correctly view everything that happens to me externally and internally as what I have taken on from others. And by working through it, externally and internally, in my own life, I purify it for others. Since others are just a reflection of my mind anyways, simply healing what I have taken on is sufficient to heal the whole world.
I feel as if my inner vision of the world is like a cloud of appearances that themselves are a reflection – like a microcosm – of all of the delusions of all living beings that I have taken on. By healing them, I heal everything for everyone.
When I do my self-generation practice, I imagine that I am transforming this cloud-like reflection of others’ minds into something completely pure. When I purify my channels, drops, and winds; I am purifying theirs. When I dissolve everything into emptiness in my mind, I am gathering and dissolving all of their contaminated appearances into the clear light. When I self-generate, I feel like I am shining a powerful healing light in the inner core of the minds of every living being, like shining a light in the hub of a wheel illuminates all of the spokes. This light functions to draw everyone inwards towards the pure land. They don’t necessarily see it with their gross minds, but it is in their minds nonetheless, drawing them in towards purity.
For me, doing my self-generation practice feels like I am performing spiritual surgery on the minds of all living beings. I am harmonizing and healing their subtle bodies and bestowing upon their minds all of the realizations symbolized by the different aspects of the self-generation. In particular, the Eight Lines of Praise of the Father is how I activate my pure self to perform Heruka’s function in the world. Reciting the mantras is an act of healing of their minds, performing the function of each mantra on their minds.
Outside of the charnel grounds, I imagine Dorje Shugden’s protection circle, which functions to bless the minds of all living beings to see everything as a cause of their enlightenment – again, they might not yet see that in a manifest way, but their inner cloud of conventional appearances is now appearing purely and so having that effect. Outside of Dorje Shugden’s protection circle is the clear light emptiness, with all contaminated phenomena – not only appearing to my mind, but appearing to anyone’s mind – completely gathered and purified into the Dharmakaya, so that the only thing that appears is the universal yet microscopic self-generated mandala. I feel as if all of this is inside the root mind of all living beings, directly and simultaneously. Everyone’s root mind is connected in the clear light at our heart. By going there, we go to the hearts of everyone.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:  There is nobody to get angry at

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.32) “If all things were like illusions, who would restrain what?
Surely, any restraint would be inappropriate.”
On the contrary, it is precisely because things lack inherent existence
That it is possible to assert the continuum of suffering can be cut.

Sometimes the objection may arise in our mind that if things lack inherent existence then there is no “us” who can practice Dharma and there is nothing for our Dharma practice to oppose, so what is the point?  Both of these objections arise from grasping at the extreme of non-existence – in other words, going too far with our understanding of emptiness to wrongly assert that things don’t exist at all.

Who is practicing Dharma?  A self that is imputed on a mind that has received Dharma instructions and gained a certain degree of control over one’s mind.  We have received Dharma instructions, we have practiced them in the past, this has given us a certain degree of control over our mind.  With that control, we then choose to practice Dharma.  What are we resisting when we practice Dharma?  In practice, we are disassembling the causes and conditions which cause delusions to appear.  If a rainbow is appearing, but suddenly the sunlight is blocked out, the rainbow simply disappears because the causes and conditions which give rise to it are no longer present.  The same is true with our delusions.  Another way of looking at it is with our choice of mind we create new conditions of the opponent to the delusion which then functions to neutralize the delusion within our mind.

Suffering can come to an end because its causes can be ended.  If you end the cause, the effect cannot arise.

 (6.33) Thus, whenever an enemy, or even a friend,
Commits an inappropriate action,
Such behaviour arises from other conditions.
Realizing this, I should remain with a happy mind.

Once again, this is reminding us how we can use emptiness to oppose our anger.  Normally we hear the teaching on emptiness and quickly become lost in the contemplations and lose the point.  This is why we need to make a point of directly connecting our understanding of emptiness to specific delusions that arise within our mind.

When we become angry with somebody, we should take the time to ask ourselves, “who precisely am I angry at?”  When we look, we find nobody.  We can ask, “what exactly am I angry about?”  When we check, we find nothing.  It’s all just a variety of causes and conditions coming together with nothing behind any of it.  Conventionally, we can’t blame the other person because it is not their fault these causes and conditions have come together.  Ultimately, we can’t blame the other person because there is nobody there to blame.  Realizing this, there is no longer an object of our anger and the anger disappears.  The same sort of reasoning can be used against any delusion.

(6.34) If things occurred independently, out of choice,
Then, since no one wishes to suffer,
How would suffering ever arise
For any living being?

This is actually an important point.  Nobody wishes to suffer.  We all wish to be happy all of the time.  Yet we suffer without choice and find it difficult to secure even a modicum of happiness.  We are all in the same boat.  When somebody harms us, they too are a victim of their delusions.  They do so without freedom or control.  As a result, they accumulate negative karma for themselves, which will ripen later in the form of suffering for them.  We may view ourselves as a victim of their harmful actions, but in reality they are equally a victim because in the future they will have to experience the suffering consequences of their actions.  Why are we experiencing this suffering now?  Because we had the karma to do so arising from our own negative past actions.  So what really is the difference between our attacker and us?  Nothing.  We are both victims, separated only by time.

We want to be happy and so do they.  Unfortunately, they are confused about the causes of happiness.  They are lost.  Instead of getting angry with them, we should generate compassion for them.  We are all the same, therefore there is no basis for loving some and being angry at others.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:  We don’t blame the stick for hurting us

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.29) Clearly, if the self were permanent,
Then, just like space, it could not perform any actions;
And, even if it could meet with other conditions,
It would still be unable to do anything.

(6.30) Since, even when acted upon, it would remain as it was,
What effect could an action have on it?
If you say that something else affects the self,
What relationship could the self have with that?

(6.31) Thus, all effects arise from other conditions,
Which in turn depend upon previous conditions.
Therefore, all things are like illusions – they are not independent.
If we realize this, we shall not become angry with anything.

The main point of all of this is anger needs an object – there has to be someone or something to get angry at.  Anger depends on some external thing to be angry with that we consider to be the cause of our suffering.  Everything that arises in dependence upon various causes and conditions, so there is never anything that we can point to that we can get angry at.  If we try get angry at the thing, we realize we can’t because it just arises in dependence upon causes and conditions.  If we try get angry at the causes and conditions, we realize we can’t because they too just arise from different causes and conditions.  So we never find anything that we can get upset at and our anger subsides because anger needs an object.  When we look, we find no such object that we can point to.  Finding none, our anger has nothing to latch on to and it falls away.

In one sense it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of anger within their mind.  But if anger were able to speak up for itself, would it not say the same thing?  “I’m sorry, I have no choice. It is due to inappropriate attention in this person’s mind that I’m here.”  Just as the person can’t help it, the anger can’t help it either.  There is a classic analogy given of somebody hitting us with a stick.  Do we get angry with the stick?  No, youwe get angry with the person because the stick was controlled by the person.  In the same way, if youwe don’t get angry with the stick, we should also not get angry with the person because they too are controlled by their anger.  If we get angry with something, we should get angry with their anger.  But their anger is controlled by their inappropriate attention.  So we should get angry with their inappropriate attention, and so on.

On an easier to understand level, the situations that give rise to our anger do not exist from their own side.  They can be viewed in any way we choose.  Right now our anger is casting this elaborate story about how all these things are the causes of our suffering, and so to be happy we need to destroy these things.  With emptiness we realize that this is just a fictional story projected by my mind that has no truth.  I can view the situation in any way – it is not fixedly any one thing.

So instead of viewing this as samsara, we can view everything as the charnel grounds.  What appears is horrific, but we understand these things to be completely pure teachings arising from the Dharmakaya that are perfect for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  We do can do this with external situations, including anything that normally gives rise to our anger.  We accept it fully as a pure teaching arising from the Dharmakaya.  We can do this internally, where we find even the arising of suffering and delusions as perfect for us because it gives an opportunity to create certain causes, namely practicing their opponents.  In this way, we can have a real equanimity towards all effects that happen, either externally or internally.  We can accept everything as perfect.  When everything is perfect, there is no basis for anger.

We very often blame others and situations for why we get angry, but this is not fair.  Nobody or nothing has the power to make us angry, other than our own deluded mental processes.  It is not fair to others to blame them for what is the fault of our own mind.  This is actually a very liberating thought, because it means that no situation has any power over us.  By accepting responsibility for the problem, the solution falls into our hands.  Nobody or nothing needs to change for us to get better, we just need to change our mind.  Yes, it is a long training, but what is the alternative?  Remain angry forever and fall into terrible states of suffering?

 

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:  Nothing creates itself

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.27) Neither that which is asserted as the “independent creator of all”
Nor that which is asserted as the “independent permanent self”
Can come into being through intentionally thinking,
“Now I will arise.”

There tends to be two extremes when thinking about God, either he inherently exists or he doesn’t exist at all.  Those who assert he inherently exists say he is the creator of all.  But then the question arises, “what created God?”  If something else created God, then that thing is the creator of all.  Some say God created himself, but that denies the fundamental tenet that all causes must precede their effect (how can the effect exist before its cause?).  Some say God is permanent, but if that were the case how could he create anything since to create something is necessarily to change?  Clearly all of these conceptions of God are illogical.  People then wrongly conclude God does not exist at all.

Geshe-la himself refuted this at a festival many years back.  He said Kadampas do not deny that God exist, they simply have a different understanding of what that means.  We say mind is the creator of all, and the contemplations on emptiness prove why this is so.  Quantum physics is gradually catching up to what Buddha explained 2,500 years ago when it says objects come into existence when the mind engages them.  If we understand God to be the Dharmakaya, which is itself inseparable from our own mind of bliss and emptiness, then we can easily believe in God, understand the mind is the creator of all and appreciate the religious teachings of other traditions.  Many people come into the Dharma by rejecting Christianity or the like, but if our understanding of the Kadampa teachings is correct we will later come to appreciate their beauty.

Just as there is no independent creator of all, so too there is no independent creator of ourself.  We did not bring ourselves into existence, rather we emerged from a variety of causes and conditions.  Some people think that our very subtle mind which goes from life to life is our independent self, but that too arises in dependence upon causes and conditions, namely the substantial cause of the previous moment of mind and the circumstantial causes bring about change in that mind.  While the very subtle mind changes continuously, it always remains equally empty.  But this emptiness does not exist independent of the very subtle mind, rather it is the very nature of that mind.  Emptiness itself cannot exist in a vacuum, it is always the emptiness of something.  Without an object, you cannot have its emptiness.

 (6.28) If the independent creator itself is not produced,
Then how can it produce anything?
If the self were permanent, then it would follow
That experiences cannot be changed from unpleasant to pleasant.

Permanent in a Dharma context means unchanging.  If something is unchanging, how can it produce anything?  To produce something is to act in some way upon something else, which necessarily implies some change of the thing acting.  If the thing doing the acting doesn’t change, then how does it go from a state of not creating to something to a state of creating that thing?  It would have to either eternally be creating it or eternally not creating it.  The same is true with all things:  nothing creates itself.

Likewise, if the self were indeed permanent then how could it possibly experiencing anything different?  How could it go from not experiencing an object to experiencing it?  Wouldn’t that imply a change of state?  But a permanent object never changes.  If the self were permanent, it couldn’t experience anything, or if it did, it would have to experience the same thing in the same way forever.  Since clearly that is not our experience of the self, a permanent self cannot exist.

Why does any of this matter?  The point is two-fold.  First, all anger requires an object.  The object of anger we grasp at is permanent others, the harmed object is a permanent self, or maybe we blame a permanent God.  But none of these things exist.  By removing the object of anger, the mind of anger has nothing to hold on to and leaves our mind.

The second point is these sorts of contemplations quite often give rise to all sorts of feelings of discouragement and misunderstanding.  Shantideva uses these verses to help us identify within our own mind our impatience associated with thinking about Dharma.  We don’t understand, and this makes us unhappy.  Or we read the words, but fail to grasp their meaning and conclude it is a bunch of intellectual masturbation.  Or perhaps we just fall asleep because it seems so boring.  All of these reactions are examples of the impatience of thinking about Dharma.  By bringing this impatience to the surface, we can then work on generating a mind of patience towards profound topics.  It takes time, and that is OK.  If we contemplate them again and again with a positive mind, and we do so in the context of applying this sort of reasoning against the delusions that arise in our mind, then we will train in the patience of definitely thinking about Dharma.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:  Everything is like a rainbow

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.25) All the shortcomings there are,
And all the various non-virtues,
Arise through the force of other conditions –
They do not govern themselves.

(6.26) The assembled conditions have no thought
To produce a suffering result;
Nor does the resultant suffering think,
“I was produced from conditions.”

At the core, anger is a response to unpleasant feelings within the mind.  It seeks to blame something outside the mind for what is taking place inside the mind.  Here, Shantideva seeks to pull the rug out from underneath that anger by showing, in fact, there is no object of blame outside the mind.

Every phenomena, internal and external, arises like a rainbow in response to causes and conditions.  I remember once I was in the area that used to be the Creperie at Manjushri.  The Mexican sangha came in with a bunch of bags of groceries.  They proceeded to unpack them and being chopping up all sorts of things, like carrots, cheese, apples and the like.  Other people were washing the lettuce, others making dressing.  Everybody was at their own table doing their own thing.  Then, they started putting it all in a common bowl.  When they were done, a “salad” appeared clearly to everyone’s mind.  But where did the salad itself come from?  What was it?  The lettuce, cheese, carrots and dressing are not the salad, yet when you take them all away there is no salad to be found anywhere.  A “salad” simply appears to everyone’s mind when the causes and conditions come together to see it.  The same is true for all other phenomena.  Nothing is actually there.

When the mind of anger arises, it necessarily has an object it is blaming.  But if we perform a salad-like analysis of this object of blame, we will realize nothing is actually there.  The thing we blame is just an appearance that arises when various causes and conditions come together.  Do we blame the carrots?  No, they too come from various causes and conditions.  There is nothing we can point to and blame for our anger.  When we do this, our anger loses its object to hold on to; without an object, it is impossible for the corresponding mind to arise.

The things that supposedly cause us suffering have no intention to do so; rather it is just a series of causes and conditions that come together.  This is easy to understand when we are talking about inanimate objects of harm, but it is likewise true for animate ones.  The person who harmed us isn’t actually there, the delusions which control him aren’t really there either, all are just the coming together of causes and conditions.  And we shouldn’t forget the most important causes and condition of all – ourself!  If we did not have a body, could it be harmed?  If we did not have delusions, would anything be a problem for us.  So if we blame the other person, then we likewise have to blame our body and our delusions.  To blame our body is to blame our parents, and their parents before them.  To blame our delusions is to blame the entire cultural environment we live in and all our previous lives and everyone we ever encountered.  But if we check these things, they are not there either.  We can search to the end of the universe and never find anything to blame – and if we blame one thing, we have to blame everything equally, so what sense is there is being angry at the person who harmed us?

Nothing governs itself.  Everything is like one giant ocean, with various currents flowing in all directions.  Everything affects everything else.  But if nothing governs itself, how can we say we have free will?  Free will itself arises from causes and conditions.  Delusions render our mind uncontrolled, free will emerges from a mind free from delusions.  We don’t intrinsically have free will, we need to create it within our mind through abandoning our delusions and gaining control over our mind.  Somebody whose mind is wholly consumed with delusions (which is pretty much everyone) has no free will at all.

Fundamentally, though, our “problems” come from our delusions.  Delusions come from the meeting of deluded tendencies similar to the cause with inappropriate attention.  Our inappropriate attention grasps at an object as being inherently pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, then exaggerates these qualities and then ignorantly grasps at these objects actually existing in this way.  If we want to free our mind from all “problems” we have to remove from our mind the causes and conditions which create this appearance.  To do so, we need to purify our deluded karma and abandon inappropriate attention.  Just as a rainbow will not appear without sunlight and rain, so too delusions cannot arise without deluded karma and inappropriate attention.  By removing the causes, the effect never arises.

Modern Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:  Without choice, delusions take over

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life

(6.23) Although it is not wished for in the least,
Sickness nevertheless occurs.
In the same way, even though they are not wanted,
Delusions such as anger forcibly arise.

(6.24) People do not think, “I will get angry”,
They just get angry;
And anger does not think, “I will arise”,
It just arises.

Delusions are the sicknesses of our mind.  When we become physically sick it it not desired, but it just arises due to the assembling of certain causes and conditions.  In the same way, delusions arise in dependence upon certain causes and conditions coming together.  When somebody gets angry with us or harms us as a result of their delusions it is not because they want to get deluded, the delusions just arise.

Anybody who has dealt first hand with depression or been with a loved one who is suffering through it knows the truth of these verses.  No depressed person wants to be depressed.  People tell them to “snap out of it” or “focus on the good.”  And try they do, but the force of the dark minds within them is (temporarily) much, much stronger.  Even though they want to have a good attitude, they can’t; but since they think they are supposed to be able to just flip a switch and be better, they feel like a failure when they are unable to.  Then their lack of self-confidence makes them feel powerless to get better.  There are many physiological reasons for this, namely depression affects the hormonal balances in the brain.  This shows the power of our mind.  Our mental actions are so powerful they can literally alter the wiring and chemical balance of our brain.   Just as an accident can cause great injury to our body, so too delusions can cause physical injury to our brain which can take months, or even years to heal.

Even though we have heard the teachings that delusions are like a sickness, Buddha is like a doctor, Sangha is like a nurse and Dharma is like medicine, we still don’t have the same attitude towards mental sickness as we do physical sickness.  We think it is a metaphor, not a definitive fact.  When somebody breaks their leg, we naturally generate compassion and we understand that it will take time to heal.  But when somebody becomes sick with delusion, such as jealousy, anger and so forth, we blame the other and person and view them as a failure.  We think that just because delusions are mental people can just turn them off, and the fact that they don’t means the continuation of their delusions is their fault.  We blame them and view them as a failure.  Why the difference in attitude between these two types of sickness?  The real reason why we have this attitude is we have not yet – even after so many years in the Dharma – actually begun the work of trying to root out our delusions.  We attend many festivals, we can recite our book outlines, we begin every sentence with “Geshe-la says,…” but we haven’t actually really begun the work of changing our mental habits.  Anybody who has sincerely tried to do so knows how hard it really is, and they don’t have such judgmental attitudes towards those struggling with their delusions.

A Bodhisattva is somebody who has promised to remain in this world for as long as it takes to gradually lead each and every being out.  This necessarily means we will have to spend a lot of time with highly deluded people.  Yet if we check our present attitude, we try avoid deluded people.  We try justify it with “we don’t want to come under their influence,” but our real motivation more often than not is an aversion to spending time with deluded people.  We have simply replaced our ordinary aversion to people we don’t like to an aversion to deluded people.  Mother Theresa actively sought out to spend time with the poorest and the sickest because that is where she could do the most good.  A Bodhisattva does the same those sick with delusions.  It is a real balance to spend time with the sick while accepting them fully as they are.  Normally, we try to change them.  Our job is to accept them.

This attitude of judging the deluded is particularly common among Dharma practitioners, but it takes a particularly destructive form when the judgment gets directed at oneself.  When delusions flare up in our mind and we know we should not be deluded, we usually respond in one of two ways:  either we pretend that delusions are not arising in our mind or we acknowledge that they are but feel guilty about it, and start beating ourselves up for it.  Kadam Lucy says we will never really overcome our anger until we first overcome our self-guilt.  Guilt is anger directed against ourselves.  We blame ourselves and become angry with ourselves because we are deluded and we feel like a failure because despite our best efforts we can’t stop it.  Such attitudes are completely wrong and are easily removed if we correctly understand delusions as a sickness, no different than any physical one, that arises when certain causes and conditions come together.  The teachings on karma explain that once negative karma has ripened, there is nothing that can be done but ride it out until it exhausts itself.  The arising of delusions within our mind is simply the ripening of a particular karma.  Every karmic seed has a certain duration to it, and we don’t know what the duration is.  Sometimes these delusions can last days, months, years or even lifetimes.  This is not our fault and there is no reason for us to feel guilty about it.  We need to accept that we have simply fallen ill with a particular delusion and we should take special care of ourself, nurturing ourself back to good health.  It is not selfish to do so.