We continue with our discussion of our relationship with our Spiritual Guide and life after we have entered the second phase of our practice, namely after we know how to more or less be happy all of the time in this life.  In the first post, we talked about the two phases of our spiritual; in the second post we looked at how teachers can be effective with students in the second phase.  And in this final post, we will look at what we need to do as students to avoid some of the common pitfalls a “happy life.”

From our side as students, what do we need to do?  Three things:

First, we need to take the lamrim as our main practice.  We need to have a daily, formal lamrim practice where month after month we cycle through the lamrim.  This helps us come to a definite decision as to what it is we want out of our practice.  Are we interested in simply having a happy life in this life alone or do we want something more?  If we are interested in just this life, we will fall into the trap of the crisis Dharma practitioner – where we practice earnestly when there is some crisis in our life, but then slide back into non-spiritual life when the crisis passes.   If we break the ‘this life’ barrier, we will naturally become much more motivated AND we will have an even happier life.

We should recall the dream I mentioned in an earlier post.  I was on a floating disk surrounded on all sides by the hell realms.  The disk represents our precious human life.  The disk was crumbling, but there is a life line of our Dharma practice which can take us to the pure land.  We don’t realize that we are on this disk, and agents from the hell realms come up to distract us and keep us preoccupied with this life.  They will give you everything you ask for in this life to keep you distracted and prevent you from completing your path.  Until the very end when it is too late and they say ‘gotcha’ and then you fall.  The conclusion is it is either hell realm or pure land at the end of this life, with essentially no in between.  We need to feel this as our reality and live our life accordingly.

Second, we need to accept ourselves without judgment.  We project expectations onto ourself that we should already be at a certain level, and then when we confront that we are not, we think that it is a problem.  We don’t look at our faults because we feel bad about ourselves.  The key here is to make a distinction between ourself and our contaminated aggregates.  Our contaminated aggregates are faulty and we are trapped within them, so we use this to increase our renunciation.  We take manifestation of a fault as a sign from Dorje Shugden that he wants us to practice a specific thing so we can create the causes we need to create.

Third, we need to overcome defensiveness when our teacher points out our faults.  I want to talk about a specific instance of when we feel our Spiritual Guide thinks badly about us.  We need to identify the attachment/aversion in our minds, where we think our happiness and suffering depends upon what others think.  This is a mistaken mind, our happiness depends only upon whether we respond to the situation with virtue.  When our teacher criticizes us there are three possibilities:  If we are doing something wrong, we admit it without guilt and change.  If we are doing something correct, we continue to do it.

The third possibility is we think we are doing something right, but the teacher thinks we are doing something wrong.  We need to make sure we are not going to the other extreme of exaggerating the bad of what our teacher supposedly thinks.  We often exaggerate thinking the teacher thinks only bad about us, and doesn’t see our good qualities.  We then become defensive and try to justify why we are right and the teacher is wrong.  This shuts down the learning process.  We need to stop projecting that the spiritual guide is viewing us the way we are viewing ourselves.  We think they are judging us and thinking bad about us and not liking us because of our faults because that is how we are relating to ourselves.

Instead, we need to seek clarification until we have clarity about what is correct.  We need to be more concerned with doing what is right than in being right.  Motivated by this, we seek clarification through external and internal methods until all doubts are resolved.  If after clarification we conclude that we are right and teacher is wrong, then we keep an open mind that our view could change later and  we might discover that we were wrong all along.

In the last post we explored how our relationship with the Spiritual Guide generally has two phases.  The first is we go from our life being a total mess when we first come into the Dharma to reaching the point where we know how to be happy most of the time in this life, regardless of what curve balls life throws at us.  While good, that is not good enough.  Once we reach the stage where we are more or less happy all of the time in this life, we quickly become complacent, lazy or full of pride.  So how does our relationship with the Spiritual Guide change when we enter into this second phase?

Phase 1 is easy – we feel terrible, we call up the teacher, receive some Dharma and go away laughing and feeling better.  Phase 2 is very difficult.  We feel really good, we call up the teacher get the bubble of our pride or complacency popped, we feel attacked and then go away feeling unhappy and deluded.  Then we get all upset at the teacher and lose our faith in them.  Then we lose everything, because when we think the teacher is bad, we question everything the teacher has to say.  Even when we receive pure instructions all we think about is how the teacher is not following their own advice.

So what is the teacher to do when we respond in this way?  There are two extremes.  The first is the extreme of controlling.  Here the teacher guilt-trips the students or manipulates or controls them into doing the right thing.   The fundamental assumption of this method is people are lazy and just need to be cajoled into doing what they want to do anyway but their delusions are getting in the way.  The main strategy here is – Marpa-style – to to do things which provoke delusions in the students to give the students things to work on and overcome.  The problem with this method is the students do virtue for all the wrong reasons, namely driven by guilt or wishing to make the teacher like them (and so the karma created is worldly, even when doing spiritual things) and gradually they build up all sorts of resentment and go away.

The other extreme is doing nothing.  Here the teacher just leaves people to do as they wish and as they feel motivated to do, and works with that motivation helping in the way the students want the teacher to help.  The fundamental assumption of this method is people are only going to do what they want anyway, so if you push them it will yield short term results but at a long term cost.  The long term is more important.  The main strategy here is it is better to keep people connected to the Dharma than push it and lose them, so just work with motivated people and keep everybody else happy.  Take people as far as they want to go.  The problem with this method is without the system being jolted, people easily fall into low level equilibriums.  They have a happy relationship with their teacher, but that’s all they have got.  At some point our compassion doesn’t let us do this anymore.

The middle way here is to not be afraid to ruffle feathers, but do so in a laughing and transparent way.  Here the teacher points out the faults and mistakes of the student, but does so in a laughing way.  The teacher points out our delusions at the point of absurdity and so puts them on the table but in a humorous, rather than an accusatory way.  So we all have a good laugh about ourselves.  It is totally transparent with respect to what they are doing and why they are doing it.  For example, the teacher warns the student in advance, “I am going to destabilize you because I want you to work through it so that you can overcome X problem.”

The fundamental assumption of this strategy is people are ignorant and take themselves too seriously.  We are not aware of what mistakes we are making, and so we don’t know.  We take ourselves too seriously and so get guilty or defensive when we find out about our mistakes as opposed to laugh at ourselves and learn.  The main strategy here is to believe in the student that once they become aware of a problem without the baggage of guilt and defensiveness they will eventually come around to wanting to get rid of it.

When we take the Bodhisattva vows, we do so in the presence of our Spiritual Guide, whether in the form of a Kadampa teacher or with the Guru visualized before us in the context of our meditations.  Either way, we should feel like we are actually in the living presence of our Spiritual Guide and we are making these commitments and promises before him.  We should be careful to avoid the habit of just saying the words, without realizing we are giving our Spiritual Guide our word that we will do our best to work with these vows to put them into practice.

For this reason, I thought it would be beneficial if I spoke a bit about our relationship with our Spiritual Guide and how it evolves over time.  I will do so over the next three posts.

When we first come into the Dharma, our life is usually a mess.  But it doesn’t take long before we feel we have enough Dharma experience that we know that no matter what happens to us in this life, we will be able to deal with it.  It may still be challenging, but we know we will work through it in the end.  Some people may have already reached that point, and some others are fast approaching it.  In my view, reaching this point is potentially the most dangerous point of our spiritual practice.  Let me explain.

First of all, what got us to where we are today?  It was our ‘practice of Dharma.’  What does it mean to practice Dharma ?  It means to use the Dharma as the solution to whatever we consider to be our biggest problem, understanding that our problem is our mind and not the external situation.  We have been doing this very well.

But there are two different ways we can do this:  as a ‘crisis Dharma practitioner’ or as a ‘Kadampa practitioner.’  A ‘crisis’ Dharma practitioner is one who uses the Dharma to overcome whatever crisis they are in.  Their primary concern is getting out of the crisis, and they use whatever Dharma they have to get out.  The danger here is when there is no crisis, there is no motivation to practice and they can get trapped in a low level equilibrium.  During tough times, they use their practice to solve it (which is great); but then during normal times they see no need to practice, and they return to samsara (which is not so great).  I have seen this happen to many people.

A Kadampa practitioner will specifically use the lamrim to overcome their problems.  What makes a Kadampa a Kadampa is they take the lamrim as their main practice.  We view our problem within the context of the lamrim and thereby use the objects of lamrim meditation to change our mind towards our situation.  By doing this, our orientation naturally expands to move beyond being interested in simply happiness in this lifetime, which is all the crisis Dharma practitioner is trying to do.

I have seen the spiritual birth and death of hundreds of Dharma practitioners and the difference between those who get trapped in a low level equilibrium and those who continue on is whether they have a consistent practice of lamrim.  Some people find themselves thinking they are drifting a bit in their practice, others feel like they have already left their Dharma life behind as an old chapter in their life.  We need to investigate why this is happening.  A big reason for this is related to whether our motivation is genuinely concerned with happiness beyond this life or not.  Lamrim is all about changing our motivation beyond this life.  So we need to check.

So what are the two phases of our practice?  Phase 1 is when our main task is getting our life under control where we are able to deal with our life and have a happy life.  In this phase our main problems are gross delusions such as attachment, anger, etc.

Phase 2 starts when we have enough Dharma to have a happy life.  In this phase our main problems are complacency, laziness and pride.  With complacency, we are satisfied with what we have accomplished.  We know we can go the rest of our life and be happy combining our external and internal methods.

With laziness, we lose the joy in our practice.  We see the value of practicing when things are difficult and we appreciate it when it gets us out, but when things are going well we want to enjoy the happiness we have worked so hard for and we let our practice linger on.  We derive our happiness from something other than creating good causes.  We ‘do’ a lot of Dharma stuff, but we don’t ‘actively change/heal our mind’ with the Dharma.  We don’t ‘seek out and destroy’ our delusions on increasingly subtle levels.

Pride comes in many forms.  We become like an adolescent child who knows a bit about the world and is convinced he knows everything and certainly more than his parents.  We become unteachable because we are seeking only confirmation that we are right, and become very defensive when we are told we are wrong or that we have certain delusions or things to work on.  Finally, it can take the form of us thinking only our own happiness matters.  We become attached to our happiness we are enjoying, and when a teacher comes a long and pops our bubble we get really upset at them.  We are only concerned with ourselves and don’t really care about the fact that countless others are still suffering and depending on us.

(3.15) Therefore, in whatever I do,
I will never cause harm to others;
And whenever anyone encounters me,
May it never be meaningless for them.

(3.16) Whether those who encounter me
Generate faith or anger,
May it always be the cause
Of their fulfilling all their wishes.

(3.17) May all those who harm me –
Whether verbally or by other means –
And those who otherwise insult me
Thereby create the cause to attain enlightenment.

Such altruism!  It is concern only for the welfare of others, only the happiness of others. We want only what is best for others.   We do whatever others want us to do.  We stop doing whatever others want us to stop doing.  Maybe that feels extreme.  There’s a mind that says “you need to be sensible.” Generally such a mind is self-cherishing.  Because we’re not willing to make such sacrifices as merely part of our training.

We all feel that such a practice is perhaps one we’ll be able to carry when we’re actual Bodhisattvas.  Can we develop this attitude now?  Giving all?  Even this body? Are we prepared to do whatever it is that people want from us?  If I’m doing something that may harm someone, even give rise to an unpleasant feeling in their mind, I have to stop, don’t I?  Should we do whatever we can to make others happy, to free them from unhappiness?  At whatever cost to ourselves.  We generally think there’s some danger.  What about my spiritual practice, my spiritual life?

We’re nervous, aren’t we?  What Shantideva is describing seems extreme. We’d probably feel comfortable with having the attitude without having to act on it.  If that’s the case we haven’t even got the attitude.  What Shantideva is concerned about is not what we’re concerned about.  We want to be the condition for their enlightenment.  We should be concerned about being the object that makes others’ lives meaningful.  What a lead-up to the Bodhisattva Vow!

We need to learn to thrive and love difficulties.  Normally we are very attached to things going well and we quickly become despondent every time things are difficult.  We have an extreme sensitivity to anything going wrong, either externally or internally.  We are reluctant to engage in our practices because we know that will entail some difficulties, and we don’t want to undergo any difficulty.  We have an extreme attachment to our happiness right now.

This attitude is a huge obstacle to our spiritual development.  If we are too attached to the short term happiness, we never get to the long term ultimate happiness.  We have to be willing to endure difficulties now to have less problems in the future.  We do this all the time with our studies, with our work, etc.  If our alternative were to experience the difficulties of the path or to experience no difficulties at all, it could make sense to not bother with the path.  But in reality, our choice is between experience the difficulties of the path and thereby avoid all the difficulties of samsara or avoid all the difficulties of the path but experience all the difficulties of all of samsara.  No matter how hard it is to attain enlightenment, it is infinitely harder to remain in samsara.  We have already fallen into the hole, to get out will be difficult, but it is less difficult than remaining in the hole forever.  Once we fully accept this reality, we will naturally find the energy necessary to endure the difficulties on the path.

We need to learn to accept our difficulties.  Difficulties are going to come no matter what, the difference is whether these difficulties drag us down or push us out.  If we are attached to worldly concerns of experiencing happiness now, then when things go up and down, we will become a yo-yo and we will suffer.  If we can learn to wholeheartedly accept everything, then everything will instead function to push us out of samsara.

Patience is a mind that is able to accept, fully and happily, whatever occurs.  It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things.  It means welcoming wholeheartedly whatever arises and giving up on the idea that things should be other than they are.  The main idea here is we change our perception of what is pleasant:  with our wisdom minds we make what our samsaric minds thinks is unpleasant circumstances into pleasant ones.  Then the unpleasantness of the situation goes away, and with it the anger.

To accept wholeheartedly means to welcome.  Right now we have a problem with everything.  There are certain people or situations which we would rather avoid and we push them away or resist them.  We live in samsara.  We resist these things because we think they cause us suffering.  If we can instead learn to use all of these situations, then we wouldn’t need to resist them but we could accept them wholeheartedly.  As our ability to use difficult people to accomplish our spiritual goals increases, so too does our confidence because difficult situations no longer pose a problem for us.  We will fear nothing.

How does this mind of acceptance enable us to be in a pure land right now?  A pure land is a place where there is no manifest suffering and everything leads us to enlightenment.  Through the mind of acceptance, we can use everything, so nothing is a problem for us – just an opportunity to grow.  In this way there is no manifest suffering.  Everything functions to push us out of samsara.  Everything confirms the Dharma and propels us further on our path, so all energy put into the system gets channeled into pushing us out.  So it is just like a pure land.  We can then be like the Buddhas who are able to remain in samsara and joyfully use everything to help beings get out.

Slowly, we are inching closer to having our mind ready to take the bodhisattva vows.  First we will discuss what it means and how we can offer ourself to all living beings and talk about how we can generate the mind that wholeheartedly accepts the difficulties involved with the path.  Then we will talk about what exactly is the Bodhisattva’s promise and how to overcome being a neurotic in our Dharma practice. Later, we will talk about the role of the Spiritual Guide for a Bodhisattva and how to take our relationship with him from first having him help us get out of the mess that was our life to the next phase of him knocking us out of our pride and complacency.  Then, we will also talk about how we should think about our vows.  Then finally we will be ready to discuss the actually Bodhisattva Vow ceremony.

Every once in a while it is worth it to compare our present state of mind to how we felt when we were at our last festival.  When we are at the festivals, it all seems really clear.  We see our incredible good fortune to have found the path and we are extremely motivated to dedicate our life to following it.  But then life gradually creeps back in and our good intentions fade until they are little more than a distant memory of how we once thought.  It’s useful, then to check and see how far has our mind slipped back into samsara?  It’s scary isn’t it how far and how fast we can fall back in?

(3.13) Since I have given up this body
For the happiness of living beings,
It will always be theirs to beat, to revile,
Or even to kill if they please.

(3.14) Even if they play with it,
Mock it, or humiliate it,
Since I have given this body to others,
What is the point of holding it dear?

Our body is not just for Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, our spiritual guide, it is for everyone. We have a great deal of attachment to our body.  We are so concerned with its appearance, its health and we identify with it so strongly. We need to drop attachment to and grasping at it by giving it to others.  Giving away our body is an ‘attitude’ of mind, we don’t need to go around telling everybody we are offering them our body!

We should be prepared to sacrifice this body for the sake of others.  This attitude is what is important.  Even in the animal realm there are many beings who possess such an attitude.  Soldiers are ready to give their lives to protect others and go through difficult training and situations to be able to do this.  We are the same, except we are seeking to protect them from samsara.  We are ready to work through their obstacles for them so that they do not have to.  In actual practice, of course, we shouldn’t go around putting our body in unnecessary danger.  We have a precious human life with which we can accomplish limitless spiritual goals, and out of compassion for others, we should guard and protect our body to be able to fulfill these aims.  But mentally, we should be willing to sacrifice even our body if we needed to.  We should be like the soldier who is spontaneously prepared to throw himself on the grenade to protect his squad and its ability to complete the mission.  Do we have such a mental attitude?  If not, why not?  At the very least, it is an ideal we can strive towards.

How can we offer our body to others right now?  Normally we say that we are not ready to offer our body to others because we still need it, but mentally we can offer our bodies right now.  We can view ourselves as the ‘asset manager’ of our body, and the real owner is all living beings (or even better, the spiritual Guide).  We have a ‘fiduciary duty’ to manage the asset of our body and mind for the maximum benefit of all living beings.  The best thing we can do with it is transform it into a Buddha.  Doing so yields the highest returning investment on their asset, it is the most useful thing for them, even if they don’t realize it.  To use it for ourselves is to steal from all living beings because we are no longer the owner of it.

One powerful way we can offer ourselves to others is to adopt the view that our every experience is actually what we have taken on ourselves from those we love.  We take on their suffering so that they don’t have to, we allow ourselves to become karmic ‘echo chamber’ for others – we take all their difficulties and give them all the good.  All the delusions that arise in our mind are theirs.  They reflect into our own mind, and we overcome them for them.  We imagine that by doing so, the delusions are overcome in their mind.

If we make requests to Dorje Shugden that this be the case, it will be.  He can organize where the delusions that arise in our mind and the problems we have are those that our loved ones suffer from.  He can also organize where by overcoming them in our mind we gain the realizations necessary to be able to help them overcome the same problems.  Technically speaking, we can’t actually take on the substantial causes of others suffering, but we can take on the circumstantial causes.  We have within our mind the seeds to have delusions similar to what they are experiencing.  By them ripening in our mind, we are able to better understand what they are going through and are better able to help them.

(3.11) From this moment on, without any sense of loss,
I shall give away my body and likewise my wealth,
And my virtues amassed throughout the three times
To help all living beings, my mothers.

(3.12) Through giving all, I shall attain the nirvana of a Buddha
And my bodhichitta wishes will be fulfilled.
I give up everything for the sake of living beings,
Who are the supreme objects of giving.

It’s worth recalling everything that has been discussed in Shantideva’s Guide up until now has been preliminary practices for actually taking the Bodhisattva vows and formally entering the Bodhisattva’s path.  A Bodhisattva is somebody who commits themselves to working tirelessly for the sake of living beings until everyone has been lead to enlightenment.  A Bodhisattva does more than this – they promise to become whatever it is that living beings need in order to fulfill that aim.  What do living beings need?  They need us to become a Buddha for them.

Beings are lost.  How do we know this?  Because we are lost ourselves.  But through our incomparable good fortune, a holy being has entered into our life and introduced to us the possibility of entering into, progressing along and completing the Bodhisattva’s path.  There is nothing in this world that points us towards that destination, in fact everything points in the opposite direction.  Yet here we are.  We have found a perfectly reliable presentation of the Dharma, a fully qualified spiritual guide, a global sangha of practitioners eager to help, and all of the means necessary to complete the path.  We lack nothing except one thing:  ourselves.  Our full, unaltered, unflinching, unhedged commitment.  We cannot become a Buddha and hold something back for ourselves.  There is no middle ground.  What is the last thing we must do before we enter the Bodhisattva’s path?  We must give it all way, including ourself.  We must burn all of our bridges back into samsara and never look back.

Shantideva is giving away everything for the sake of living beings. He holds nothing back for himself.  This is the example we should try to follow, especially as Mahayanists trying to follow the Bodhisattva’s way of life.

This does not mean we need to stop enjoying ourselves.  What it means is that we give up ‘simply’ enjoying ourselves.  Of course enjoyment is important, but if we ‘simply’ enjoy ourselves then we’re using up our merit.  Of course we need to relax and recharge our batteries, but we derive our enjoyment from another source.  There is saying, “if you enjoy your work, you will never have to work a day in your life.”  This is how a Bodhisattva feels.  From one perspective, they work tirelessly, but from their perspective, they feel as if they never work a day in their life.  Who could not enjoy confidently progressing along a path that leads to freedom for all?  We don’t experience this enjoyment only because we lack faith in the law of karma.  We know worldly cause and effect, we are not so sure about the inner workings of karma.  But we need not doubt.  If the external world obeys the laws of physics, why should we doubt the internal world obeys the laws of karma?  In the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Je Tsongkhapa says our understanding of emptiness and karma are correct when our knowledge of one confirms the truth of the other.  If things were not empty, karma would not work; because things are empty, karma must be.

One of the best ways to accumulate merit is to give it away to all living beings, just like Shantideva.  We hold nothing back for ourselves, we want nothing for ourselves,   Keeping and enjoying anything for our own sake is an obstruction to developing Bodhichitta.  It is an obstruction to fulfilling our own and others’ wishes.  Even when we enjoy ourselves, we should give it away to living beings and to the Buddhas in our heart.  Are we prepared to do that?  Give it all away, even our enjoyments?  Do we feel a sense of loss at the thought of doing so?  If we do, we still have work to do on improving our wisdom.  As it says in the Tao Te Ching, “if you want to be given everything, give everything up.”

By giving all we shall fulfill our own wish to experience the lasting happiness that we actually seek.  We’ll be able to fulfill our wish.  We must be prepared to give everything. Only by giving everything will we be able to fulfill these wishes.  We give everything and to everyone.  We should try to carry the thought in our mind when we’re with others — “whatever I have is yours.”

There are many things at present that we feel are ours, and we’re not willing to let go of them.  It is important that absolutely nothing is ours, even happiness.  We need to ‘feel’ nothing is mine to keep, to enjoy. I’m happy with nothing. Feel homeless, liberated.  Venerable Tharchin says, the mere thought that something is “ours” functions to burn up our merit.  We should feel as if nothing belongs to us, it all belongs to others, including ourselves.

(3.9) May a rain of food and drink descend
To dispel the miseries of hunger and thirst;
And during the great aeon of famine,
May I become their food and drink.

(3.10) May I become an inexhaustible treasury
For the poor and destitute.
May I be everything they might need,
Placed freely at their disposal.

We all know that it is better to dedicate our virtues and make prayers towards enlightenment because only that will provide lasting help for all living beings.  We correctly say it is more beneficial to meditate on bodhichitta than to help living beings in worldly ways.  But sometimes we misunderstand such comparisons to mean it is somehow not good to help others in worldly ways, that we are doing something wrong when we help in a homeless shelter or pray that somebody feel better because it is worldly.  This is totally wrong.  A bodhisattva works for the benefit of living beings in this life and in future lives, in worldly ways and in spiritual ways.  Just because the spiritual ways are better doesn’t mean the worldly ones are somehow bad.  One is good; the other is even better.  But both are worthwhile.

Of course we pray that somebody be healed of their cancer as we simultaneously pray that they are able to transform their having cancer into a cause of their enlightenment.  We do both, always.

The reality is this world is filled with the poor, the destitute and the infirm.  We should do everything we can to help them, both in terms of giving them fish and in terms of teaching them how to fish.  We should do everything we can to help living beings, both in this life and for all their future lives.  It is true meditating on bodhichitta is more beneficial, but what stops us from helping those in need with a bodhichitta motivation?  Surely that is the best of all.

Our dedication functions to transform our merit into pure karma which ripens in pure results.  If we generate contaminated virtues (virtues mixed with delusions), but we subsequently dedicate that merit towards pure spiritual ends, then it functions to transform what was contaminated virtue into completely pure virtue.  It is worth recalling if we don’t dedicate our merit it will be destroyed by our subsequent anger, so it is as if we never engaged in the good action to begin with.  If we don’t protect our merit, it is guaranteed our anger will soon destroy it.  The only reason why we have anything good is because in the past we dedicated.  So every time something good happens we should thank our past self for dedicating.  If we do this, then it will not be long before we establish a clear connection in our mind between our practice of virtue and our good fortune.

Dedication works because the goals we are dedicating for don’t exist outside of our mind, so we are essentially directing the merit to ripen in a particular way.  Sometimes we can think, how can my mentally wishing my merit ripen in certain ways actually function to bring about that outcome?  We think this only because we still grasp at things existing outside of our mind as something more than mere imputation by mind.  The more we understand emptiness, the more we realize dedication and prayers not only can work, essentially only they can work.

Dedication protects the virtuous imprints in our mental continuum, and allows for growth.  As its nature is a virtuous intention, it acts as a cause directing our virtue to the effects that we’d like. As they are dedicated, intended for particular goals, the virtues in our mind will increase until they ripen as the effects that we’d like.  As Bodhisattvas we must primarily direct our virtue to attaining enlightenment and the freedom and happiness of others.  This is our final aim and purpose towards which we direct all of our virtues.  But again, this does not mean we do not also dedicate and pray for temporary happiness and freedom from suffering.

We cannot keep whatever merit we have gained for ourselves.  Miserliness with respect to our material possessions is a delusion; miserliness with respect to our inner wealth of merit is truly misguided.  Externally, it may seem like when we give something away we lose it and it is not entirely clear how we will get more in the future.  But merit, unlike outer wealth, is almost immediately replenished within our mind as soon as we give it away.  We must dedicate ours to others.  Dedicating our merit to enlightenment is actually giving away our merit to others.  Perhaps dedication is an aspect of giving that we overlook.    Giving away even the cause of one’s own virtue and happiness — what a mind!   It is the complete opposite to self-cherishing.

(3.7) Thus, through the merit I have collected
From all these virtuous actions,

Sometimes people let a false understanding of humility get in the way of their dedication.  They think, “my virtues are small and insignificant, there is nothing really to dedicate,” so they don’t dedicate at all.  Any virtue, no matter how small, is better than no virtue at all.  Vajrayogini’s mandala is an inverted double tetrahedron to symbolize that the greatest attainments of enlightenment are built upon the foundation of the smallest of our virtues.  We should never think our virtues are too small, because without them it is impossible to build something even greater.

Others fail to dedicate because they don’t understand how easily it is to lose our merit.  We work hard to make and then save our money.  If you left your wallet full of cash lying on the ground in a crowded square, how long do you think it would be before you would lose it?  Not long.  If instead, you put that money in the bank, no matter what happened outside, the money would be safe.  Merit is like internal wealth.  It takes tremendous effort to accumulate it and save it up.  But if we are careless with it and fail to put it into the bank through dedication, it won’t take long before we lose it all.  Delusions burn up merit, anger in particular.  Why?  Because delusions and virtues are opposites, when a -1 wave hits a +1 wave, the end result is zero waves.  Just one moment of anger towards a bodhisattva can burn up in just one instant the merit we have accumulated over countless aeons.  Dedication, however, functions to protect it.  We invest the merit in a good cause, and once invested in this way it can’t be subsequently destroyed.

Instead, we should rejoice in our virtues and really appreciate what a cosmic miracle it is that we engage in any virtue.  Our virtues, even the smallest ones, are like priceless jewels.  They are our initial spiritual capital which, when carefully invested, will eventually become an inexhaustible fountain of good fortune which we share freely with all living beings.  In finance, there is a concept called the “miracle of compound interest.”  For example, just $100 put into the stock market in 1915 would be worth about $300,000 today all through the power of compound interest.  Dedicated merit works in the same way.  If we said, “oh, it is just $100, it is not worth anything” before, then we would have nothing now.  Realizing how precious our virtues are, we then carefully engage in dedication.

May the suffering of every living being
Be brought completely to an end;

(3.8) And until all those who are sick
Have been cured of their illness,
May I become their medicine,
Their doctor, and their nurse.

When we dedicate, on the one hand we want to dedicate for the vastest possible goal, namely the enlightenment of all beings.  But the problem is when we dedicate towards vast goals it is easy to lose any heart-felt feeling for the meaning of the dedication because it feels too abstract.  On the other hand, if we dedicate for narrow, close to home purposes, it is easy to get a good feeling for it, but the goal is so small that the potential benefit of our dedication is cut short.  So we want to try find the optimal point where our dedication is vast enough to have meaning, but not so vast that we lose all feeling for it.  To keep it simple, I try dedicate across a range of purposes, vast, middling and narrow.  For example, every day I make prayers that everything be arrange for all beings to attain enlightenment as swiftly as possible (vast), I dedicate that everything I touch or have some control or influence over be used for this purpose (middling) and I make specific dedications for my family whom I naturally love with all my heart (narrow).

Here, Shantideva reveals how a bodhisattva dedicates.  They don’t simply dedicate towards some good end, rather they dedicate that they themselves become whatever others need.  What distinguishes a bodhisattva from merely compassionate people is their superior intention to take personal responsibility for fulfilling their compassionate wishes.  While Shantideva gives the example of transforming ourselves into medicine, doctors and nurses for the sick, we can apply the same spiritual logic for any and all good purposes.

It is important that this is not just some idea, but rather becomes our way of life.  We need to look around and ask ourselves, “what do these people need?”  Then, we need to apply effort to become that for them.  What I try do is focus my efforts on “making things easier for those who follow.”  Whatever I do in life, I try leave behind some clear instructions or advice on how to get to the same point easier.  Whatever lessons I learned, I try share so others don’t have to struggle as I did.  Or, when you are in a group of people, ask yourself, “what can I do to help?”  Then do that.  When this becomes our reflex habit in all situations, it won’t be long before we spontaneously transform ourselves into whatever living beings need.  Ultimately, the form body of a Buddha does precisely that in all three times.  That is our final goal.