Geshe Kelsang Gyatso – Kadampa Life

How is your meditation going?

05/18/2013 By Luna Kadampa 16 Comments

Meditation is the way to access our own pure potential for mental freedom and happiness, gain deep experience of Buddha’s teachings, and really change for the better.

My tradition, the New Kadampa Tradition, is a meditator’s tradition – every sentence we hear in the teachings is intended to be an object of meditation, to be taken into the heart so that it becomes part of us. This Buddhist tradition stems from Buddha Shakyamuni, who clearly was the master of meditation. Later Je Tsongkhapa mastered all Buddha’s teachings of Sutra and Tantra, spent many years in meditation retreat, and taught immensely practical, experiential, and profound methods for gaining all the realizations of Lamrim, Lojong, and the union of bliss and emptiness (Mahamudra) revealed by Buddha. As a result of this, many of his disciples gained enlightenment in 3 years and 3 months.

The founder of the New Kadampa Tradition, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, has also spent about half of his life in meditation retreat on these same methods, much of it solitary, and has been meditating since he was a child. Many of Geshe Kelsang’s disciples are very proficient meditators too. We have no shortage of powerful examples showing how far meditation can take us.

Sometimes this tradition can be a bit talky – we talk a lot about the teachings but may not get round to meditating on them as much as perhaps we could. And over the years I have heard a number of people say that they find meditation hard and that they are not making as much progress in meditation as they’d like. They love the teachings, but find they can’t make them stick, and are sometimes discouraged to find they not really changing much. Some people even give up altogether.

Geshe-la meditating on a rock

I have thought about this quite a lot because I believe that we can make meditation harder than it needs to be even though, thanks to Buddha, Je Tsongkhapa, Geshe Kelsang, and their students, we, unbelievably, have access to the same liberating methods. I have always loved meditating, and I have already written a few things that I thought might be helpful here based on what I like to do (see end of article). But the other day in England, an old friend dating back to the early years of the NKT came to visit me. She told me that in the last couple of years her meditations had improved exponentially, and we discussed why. She volunteered all the things she had been doing “wrong” over the years and, with her permission, I thought I’d share this with you.

How not to meditate

(1) Start by feeling inadequate, insecure, limited, perhaps even depressed, and think: “I really should meditate because I am so inadequate, insecure, limited, perhaps even depressed.” ie, identify with being a limited person from the outset, rather than identifying with your pure potential.

(2) Do a few minutes half-hearted breathing meditation to try and settle the mind and get rid of at least a few of those strong distractions and delusions, but know really that it is a hopeless cause to try and get rid of all of them because, after all, I can’t meditate.

(3) Perhaps do some prayers if we haven’t already done them distractedly at the beginning of the session – find it hard to stay focused on them as we’re not really in the zone, and thinking it doesn’t really matter as at least we’ll be creating some good karma.

(4) Follow the guidelines for meditation – intellectually follow and repeat lines of reasoning that should lead us to our desired object, which is something we are not feeling at all at the moment; and, if we don’t get to our object, make it up. When the object fades, talk to ourselves some more. (Perhaps spend most of the meditation talking to ourselves and practically none of it absorbed.)

(5) Push for blessings. I am inadequate etc and can’t meditate, but bless me anyway to get this object.

(6) Feel slightly exhausted and make yourself a cup of coffee. Try and be good all day, but not from a natural place of deep inner peace and connectedness but because you know you’re supposed to be.

(7) Result = no taste. Guilt. No fun. No progress. Commiserate with others experiencing the same thing. “I really can’t meditate!” “Don’t worry, nor can I!” Eventually stop trying at all.

Some solutions

My friend was not alone – she told me she found many people with whom to commiserate! Morten helped a lot of them when he led meditations in the new year at Manjushri Centre. As he and I have a long connection and practice in a very similar way, I thought I’d share some of these solutions. (Then please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments.)

(1) Tune in to what you have

Bear, recently died.

Relax into your meditation posture and then start where you are, allowing yourself to just sit there feeling positive and happy for a few minutes. Connect to any of the positive feelings you already have inside you, such as love for a cherished niece, compassion for a suffering animal you saw online, or a happy feeling you had when you understood that everything was dream-like. Enjoy that for a while. Don’t identify as a limited person and then take this into your meditation, “I am a terrible meditator, but here I am about to try and meditate”; this is self-defeating. Your good feeling is part of your Buddha nature, your endless capacity for kindness and improvement; you are going to meditate with this mind.

(2) Settle the mind effectively

Start with one of the methods for overcoming distraction (see below), but to make this effective, recognize from the outset that you are just getting back to who and what you actually are. Your mind is naturally at rest and concentrated. Below your chattering thoughts, it is spontaneously pure, spacious, warm-hearted, vast, even blissful. But we don’t appreciate this. We are addicted to movement, skitting around on the surface of our minds with our constant inner chatter, babble, and anxieties, forgetting, if we ever knew it, who we really are and of what we are capable.

We are like droplets of water constantly thrown up on a vast, deep, boundless ocean, glinting and glittering and sometimes dancing around, but with no idea that they are water. We are so busy focusing outward that we forget or neglect the wellspring of happiness we already have inside. We have to remember this, our Buddha nature, if we are to allow ourselves to go deep and make progress. As Geshe Kelsang says in the chapter What is Meditation?:

“When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subsides and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and contentment naturally arises from within…. We shall experience a calm, spacious feeling in the mind, and many of our usual problems will fall away. Difficult situations will become easier to deal with, we will naturally feel warm and well-disposed toward other people, and our relationships with others will gradually improve.” ~ Introduction to Buddhism

Notice the expressions “naturally” and “fall away” – there is no pushing here, you are just allowing those droplets of water to dissolve back into the profound stillness and clarity of your own root mind.

There are various methods to settle the mind, such as the different types of breathing meditation (eg, sensation of breath at nostrils, breathing smoke-like problems out and light-like blessings in, taking and giving, OM AH HUM), clarity of mind meditation, turning the mind to wood, transforming enjoyments. (More on the last two in future articles.) We can all experience relative peace of mind by just focusing on the breath for a few minutes and letting the mind come to rest — then we pay attention to this experience. This is your own inner peace, you don’t need to add anything.

(3) Identify with who you are, not who your ignorance says you are

Identify with this peace and spaciousness at your heart, thinking:

“This is who I actually am. Any peace I have, however slight, is my potential for lasting peace and happiness.”

It is the peaceful, happy mind we liberate, not the agitated mind. Our inner peace is our Buddha nature or Buddha seed. Give yourself permission to experience this inner peace. Then enjoy this mind and deepen the experience. (You don’t need to grasp at the experience of inner peace and get tense, or you’ll lose it. Just sit back and relax.)

The inadequate, insecure, limited, perhaps even depressed you is not in fact you. This self is part of samsara, and is created by your ignorance. This self is just a thought, an hallucination, an idea – and a bad idea at that, so let it go. Don’t believe it. This is not the self that is going to become enlightened. Relate to yourself as inner peace and endless potential. Don’t relate to a limited self; you are limitless. You are not intrinsically a loser at meditation or anything else. Remember the lack of intrinsic characteristics, understanding that the only limitations you have are the ones you are creating.

(4) Tune in to enlightened reality, blessings

Our peace and happiness are actually related to enlightened reality, its very seeds; and we naturally open ourselves to blessings if we understand this. Once you have realized your full potential you’ll become a Buddha, just like the Buddhas whom we can remember in front of us, around us, and/or inside us. Faith in the Buddhas necessitates faith in our own enlightened potential.

Also, others have this same potential and I want to help them realize it – you can remember that you are surrounded by living beings, those you’re already feeling connected to next to you, and tune into love and compassion.

As we’re in the presence of enlightened beings, we can think we are already in their vast, blissful, pure land, filled with offerings that we’re all enjoying. (This is included explicitly in the first 2 verses in Essence of Good Fortune, “May the whole ground become completely pure” and “May all of space be filled with offerings”.) If you do this, you’ll probably then have fun doing the prayers either verbally or mentally, and find it easy to focus on their meaning.

If you set your meditation up right, you will have no need to push for blessings because you’ll be receiving them naturally and can simply enjoy them. Your happy mind is a natural conduit for them. You can visualize them as lights and nectars if it’s helpful. Although Buddhas are blessing everyone all the time to bring them any measure of inner peace (it’s Buddha’s function), you can’t receive so-called “special” blessings to grow the seeds of your realizations if you’re holding tightly onto a limited sense of who you are and therefore feeling separate from them and miserable – trying vainly to feel the sun without opening up the shutters.

At any point in the meditation, right at the beginning even, as soon as it feels right and you’re ready, dissolve Guru Buddha into your heart, let your mind mix with his like a stream flowing into a vast, blissful ocean; and he can do the meditation with you.

(5) Make it your own idea through contemplation and meditation

Feel you already have the object of meditation for a few moments, eg, “I think others are important and their happiness matters.” Pause to feel that. “Now I need to make this insight stronger and more stable.” We already have the seeds for every single realization needed for enlightenment; through contemplation and meditation we are now watering these to grow them, not adding them from elsewhere to our mind.

Contemplate skillfully by asking yourself questions to make the meditations relevant to your own background, “Is this true for me? What examples do I have of this? Is today’s body really a result of others’ kindness?”, for example. Tune into your own experiences and build on those. Be creative in your meditations, use examples and analogies that move you. The idea is to make this your own idea, not just a good idea that someone else has had. Don’t dryly repeat things to yourself.

Although we know all our meditation objects through conceptual thought to begin with, this doesn’t mean that we have to over-think things or be exaggeratedly intellectual. When you want to protect your beloved dog, you are knowing him through a generic image; but that is not any kind of obstacle nor a dry intellectual thought — you still know him and love him viscerally, in your heart.

A lot of our meditation objects are hidden in that they depend upon reasoning for us to discover them. So, let’s say you are meditating on emptiness, contemplating that all the things we normally perceive do not exist because they are analytically unfindable and whatever cannot be found cannot exist from its own side (and, if you like, throw in an example, like a mirage). We do gain our initial realizations of emptiness through correct beliefs and inferences, through such conceptual reasonings as this, but we still do realize our object and it does appear to us, and we need to stop thinking around it and just absorb into it.

For example, fire is a hidden object that we can know through the existence of smoke because we have reasoned correctly that wherever there is smoke there is fire. But let’s say you see smoke and know there is fire. Are you earnestly repeating to yourself: “Wherever there is smoke, there is fire; here there is smoke, therefore there is fire. Wherever there is smoke, there is fire; here there is smoke, therefore there is fire etc.”? No. You just know fire. You can stay with that knowledge; stop reminding yourself about how you came to know it. Also, its consequences are implicit, eg, you need to run get a hose! But in the case of emptiness, we don’t need at this point to run do anything, we can just sit with it and its extraordinary implications will sink in without the need for further analysis.

It is similar with all our meditations – as Geshe Kelsang says, for example, we start off by using the rounds of reasoning for realizing that death is definite and its time is uncertain, and we conclude: “I may die today, I may die today”, but then we concentrate on the feeling that it evokes. We stop repeating the reasoning and the words to ourselves and, like an eagle flying with barely a movement of its wings, we stay with the object in a spacious environment, identifying with it, enjoying it. Feel like you’re home. You’ve just arrived in your holiday cottage by the sea and can sit back and put your feet up. (And you’re not alone – the enlightened beings are right there on holiday with you.)

Bear in mind that it’s easy to generate any Lamrim mind when we are connected to our happiness and our potential. It is actually impossible to generate any Lamrim mind when we are identified with the self that we normally perceive, in other words when we are identifying with our limitations. See this article for examples.

(6) Take your happiness for a walk

In the meditation break, keep connecting to that peaceful mind and insight so that when you return to your meditation seat you can quickly get back to it as there has been no real gap. Morten uses the analogy of walking a dog – take your happiness for a walk with you, remembering your happiness in and out of meditation. “Enjoy your mind”, he says, keep bringing the mind back to peace. Familiarize your mind with this source of happiness, then you’ll become a happy person. Don’t stamp on the small seedlings of peace/good experiences like a bad gardener stamping on tiny shoots of plants by identifying yourself with any delusions that arise. Protect your small seedlings of peace and happiness, go for refuge in them as your Dharma Jewel, and they will grow naturally. As the Kadampa motto goes:

“Always rely upon a happy mind alone.”

If you understand that your happiness is your inner peace and you identify where it is and connect to it, and then you combine this knowledge with your constant, spontaneous wish to be happy, you will naturally go for refuge in your own inner peace both in and out of meditation.

I hope this helps. If we become good meditators, we can help others become good meditators too, and what a gift that will be.

Your turn: please share your own methods for being a happy, successful meditator. Or if you have any questions or doubts you want to clear up, please spell them out too.

Want quicker results from your meditation? Start where you are.

Meditation in the pursuit of happiness

How to avoid stress and burn out at work

Do you ever feel discouraged?

What are blessings?

Filed Under: Meditation, Overcoming discouragement Tagged With: breathing meditation, Buddha nature, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, how to meditate, identifying with potential, Je Tsongkhapa, New Kadampa Tradition, overcoming discouragement

What’s YOUR problem?! :-)

04/28/2013 By Luna Kadampa 27 Comments

A recent survey discovered that people in the UK “feel fully fit and well only 61 days of the year”. Some Australian commentators apparently reacted to this report as typical of the “whinging Poms”, but the fact is that other studies show that this level of health worry is just about normal throughout the Western world (including the land of giant deadly insects and combative kangaroos).

And these are not the seriously ill or dying people who are in hospital, say, but people who are out and about. Based on this survey, people claim to be suffering 304 days a year from colds, backaches, bitten tongues, cricked necks, headaches, heartburn, old sporting injuries, ear infections – you name it, and we’ve got it.

Our bodies are pain machines. Sometimes I see people on the jogging trail outside my window in Liverpool run past with an incredible spring in their step, smoothly and effortlessly, and I like it; but this level of fitness and health seems to be the exception. Sometimes the body cooperates, sometimes you just feel you have to lug it around with you — you know that thought when running, I’m sure it is not just me, “Please, can I stop now?!” Most of us have aches, pains, and a lack of energy a lot of the time. Have you ever met anyone who can say that they always feel comfortable in their bodies? I sometimes marvel at how well the body functions at all, given that it is made of meat, bones, skin, fat, and a bunch of weird organs squashed really tightly together. (I used to think there was loads of space inside me, between, eg, my kidneys and my heart, but that was before I went to the Body Worlds exhibition about 15 years ago – quite the wake-up call.)

I work at editing and project-managing medical magazines, which daily reveals to me bizarre symptoms it is apparently possible for humans to get, some of them exceedingly awful. I try not to look at my Dorland’s medical dictionary too much – a fat tome full of all the things that can go dreadfully wrong, many in body parts I’ve never heard of! This week I was editing a dermatology article on a rare autoimmune blistering disease affecting the subepidermis called bullous pemphigoid, and musing how I had never met anyone with this, which is perhaps just as well as it sounds really nasty. But then today I just happened to visit a poorly bed-ridden friend of my parents who has been itching like crazy for months… her husband said no one has ever heard of what she’s got, so I said “try me”, and guess what. Maybe it’s just me, but the sheer unexpectedness of having things go horribly wrong in layers of skin you never even knew you had (and your painful condition possessing a daft, no-one’s-ever-heard-of-it name like bullous pemphigoid) strikes me as a tad, oh I don’t know, unreasonable …?

Buddha pointed out that greater or lesser suffering is normal in a contaminated body (that arises from ignorance and delusions, and the karma created by these). The 4 “great rivers” of suffering are birth, ageing, sickness, and death, and we’re constantly being tossed around in their cruel waters. And this is not even taking into account the mental pain and agitation we feel every day as a result of our uncontrolled, oversensitive minds!

The point of looking at this physical and mental suffering head on is to decide we don’t want any of it anymore and to ask the question, “What can we do about it?”

Samsara

The seventh Dalai Lama, who lived in 18^th century Tibet, said:

Whoever I behold, of high position or low, ordained or lay, male or female, they differ only in appearance, dress, behavior and status. In essence they are all equal. They all experience problems in their lives.

Buddha identified 7 categories of suffering for every human in what he called “samsara“: birth, ageing, sickness, death, having to part with what we like, having to encounter what we do not like, and failing to satisfy our desires.

Our problems are neither unusual nor special, but part of a monotonous pattern.

If I were to ask you: “Have you had any problems today?”, I’m almost prepared to bet that you’ll say yes. If you don’t mind, could you recall today’s problem for a moment…

Does this problem fall into any of the 7 categories described by Buddha – does it have anything to do with sickness, say? Or ageing? Or failing to satisfy your desires? Or losing something you liked?

Or is your problem in a category all of its own? Such as “bullous pemphigoid” perhaps? Nope, even bullous pemphigoid is part of sickness.

Again, I’m prepared to bet that any problem you care to name can be placed in one or more of these 7 categories.

Normally we labor intensively to solve one problem at a time – thinking “If only I didn’t have this splitting headache, I’d be so happy! Look at all those lucky people without headaches, they must be sooo happy!” (Are they?) Or “There is no way I can relax with all these money problems — I have to have more money so I can finally stop worrying!” (Would you?)

It’s not that we don’t try to fix our problems and experience temporary reliefs. However, there is wisdom in recognizing that just trying to solve one external problem at a time is an endless process because as soon as one problem is solved another arises to take its place, like waves in an ocean. Even on a relatively good day we may get rid of our headache, only to find that someone at work says something annoying; then we deal with that problem, only to find ourselves stuck in traffic on the way home; and then we get home eventually, only to find that the Internet is down and we can’t go surfing. We may earn some more money for our family, which is a relief for a while, until the next big problem such as a major teenage rebellion comes along to occupy our thoughts. We may take a medication that fixes our itchiness for a while, but then our liver starts to play up from the toxicity. There is literally no end to problems in samsara. There is also no end to worries while we have a mind to worry. This is not even factoring in the really BIG wave-like sufferings of life, such as bereavement, terrorist attacks, and collapsing buildings, which can literally knock us flat.

Renunciation

According to Buddhism, we have to wake up to problems every day in life after life – many of them far more hideous than those we face now. The wave-like sufferings of samsara’s ocean can never stop rolling in; samsara has to stop first.

As my teacher Geshe Kelsang often says:

“Temporary liberation from a particular suffering is not good enough.”

Never a day goes by when we don’t want to be rid of our problems — big or small they fill our minds. As someone on Facebook posted the other day:

“I want more problems today!” said nobody ever.

We rarely if ever wake up and think, “Hey, bring it on! I want loads of things to worry about today!” If you think about it, this means that we actually want permanent freedom from problems.

For this, it is not enough to tinker about with the various symptoms as they arise; we need to work to overcome the actual causes of all our problems, which lie within our mental continuum in the form of delusions and negative karma. Only then can we experience permanent liberation from every type of suffering, called in Buddhism “liberation” or “nirvana”.

Having studied and understood this, if we develop a wish for actual, permanent liberation from physical and mental suffering, we have “renunciation”. This is described in the scriptures as a “light and happy mind”. Not getting mentally stuck to one heavy problem after another is liberating in itself. With less attachment and aversion — kept at bay by our renunciation — our daily moods are happier. With this uplifting wish front and foremost, everything we think or do will take us in the direction of liberation – we will be working our way out of samsara even as we take a headache pill, lie ill in bed, cart the kids to school, sip our latte, or strive to drum up business on the Internet.

Bodhichitta

We can also know that everyone equally experiences these problems. Ask a room of people, “Did anyone have a problem today?” and the chances are that pretty much everyone will say “Oh, yes!” Whatever problem we are having, we can guarantee that everyone else also has to experience it sooner or later. We are all in this together. And, as Jim Morrison of The Doors said, “No one here gets out alive.” This understanding can lead to compassion and then “bodhichitta” and, with this empathetic, empowering, meaningful wish front and foremost, everything we do will be taking us in the direction of enlightenment.

Filed Under: Happiness, Problem-solving Tagged With: bodhichitta, Body Worlds and Buddhism, dealing with death, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, liberation, New Kadampa Tradition, nirvana, renunciation, samsara, sickness

Doped up on the 8 worldly concerns?!

04/14/2013 By Luna Kadampa 15 Comments

This continues from this article, In praise of integrity. And talking of pedestals, a good friend of mine went to the same high school as John Cleese, and told me this tale about him. In front of the school is a tall pillar, on which Field Marshall Haig had stood for almost a hundred years, until parents and guests turned up to graduation one year to find footsteps leading from the pillar to the school and back again… Even famous commanders can’t live on a pedestal, but have to get down to use the restroom sooner or later.

The 8 worldly concerns (attached to receiving praise, pleasure, a good reputation, and gain, and aversion to their opposite) are insidious and very damaging. Practicing Buddhism, or Dharma, under their influence, with an impure motivation, is said to be like eating healthy food mixed with poison – we might derive some short-term benefit but in the long-term we’re going to be in pain. In his book Joyful Path, Geshe Kelsang says:

If we have been practicing Dharma for some time but cannot feel any of its benefits, the reason is that we are not yet practicing pure Dharma.

What’s more, as the scriptures say, the higher we are in the tree of ambition, the thinner the branches, and the further we have to fall.

You do know this is not it?

“That was good, but you do know this is not it?” The words spoken by his friend to a prominent teacher in my Buddhist tradition, the New Kadampa Tradition, after he had just finished teaching at a large Festival. The teacher was telling me this, saying how glad he had friends around him to keep him real so that he did not become “doped up” on praise, love, or prostration mudras. Teaching success is no substitute for spiritual success.

We were also chatting about what happens when we become so unused to criticism by dint of a high position that, if we’re not careful, it becomes harder and harder to handle criticism when it does come our way – clearly the opposite of what is supposed to happen for a Kadampa!

Praise etc doesn’t help us while we have it, and once we’re off our pedestal it quickly dries up as well. If we have come to depend on it we’re in trouble, and if it has become part of our self-image we’ll have to pretty much reinvent ourselves.

I believe that the 8 worldly concerns stop spiritual progress. It is easier to make progress when you feel normal, like everyone else, rather than special. Lucky, yes, perhaps, but special, no. Pride drives a wedge between us and those we are trying to help, which is one reason there’s so much emphasis on humility for Bodhisattvas.

I like this Alanis Morrissette lyric as it speaks to me of genuinely spiritual people, such as a Bodhisattva, who are the only ones who really deserve to be on a pedestal, though you’ll never catch them up there:

And I am fascinated by the spiritual man;
I am humbled by his humble nature.

The main job

Always being in performance mode can be bad for one’s own practice. The Buddhas can take us wherever we want to go, but we don’t need to keep looking over our shoulder to see if others are watching us. I once visited Geshe Kelsang seeking advice on something, and just by way of preamble I stated what I thought was the obvious: “I know that my main job is to teach Dharma, but …”

I could not get another word out of my mouth as he interrupted me, quite forcibly:

overcoming the 8 worldly concerns

Your main job is practicing Dharma. Everything else will follow naturally from that.

That has been true for me on many levels, and it makes more sense to me with each passing year. My main job is being a practitioner first and whatever else second.

If we feel that our job is inherently worthy, and feel carried along by it, this can make us lazy in training our minds and undermine our inner development by allowing worldly concerns to creep in. And the worst part? We might not even realize this is happening, while the precious years for practice pass us by.

There are numerous stories in the Buddhist scriptures of people being expelled or otherwise leaving their high or cushy positions in the monastery or society to go off on their ownsome to gain realizations, and to me these are an inspiring example of the need to let go of the eight worldly concerns even whilst we stay amongst others.

Flavor of the month

It really doesn’t matter whether or not we are flavor of the month. It does matter whether or not we stick to our principles of compassion and wisdom. And if these are our principles, rather than the 8 worldly concerns, this allows a lot of room for flexibility in accordance with the changing needs of others. For example, Geshe Kelsang has shown extraordinary month-by-month flexibility in adapting Buddhism from the reclusive monastic situation in Tibet to the connected, transparent modern world without sacrificing his principles and seemingly caring not a jot for the 8 worldly concerns.

Humility helps us remain flexible even as we stick to what we know is right, not just fashionable. Also, true change comes from inside, not from changing others; so we can be tolerant of others’ shortcomings whilst overcoming our own. As Atisha says, in what I regard as one of the most helpful all-time Buddhist quotes:

Since you cannot tame the minds of others until you have tamed your own, begin by taming your own mind.

Don’t you think this means not just in general, but also on a rigorous daily basis, knowing what our mind is doing and taming our own delusions before we go trying to tame others?

Shrinking or expanding world?

The 8 worldly concerns shrink our world and I think can make us institutionalized if we take our small world a little too seriously — whether this is the world of our family and friends, our business or workplace, or even our place of worship. To expand our world again we can remember that we’ll be leaving this life soon; we have at most a few hundred months left before we find ourselves in our next life. Remembering death and impermanence is the antidote to the 8 worldly concerns.

Can you remember back to this time last year, what were your overriding concerns/anxieties/things you really wanted? Are they the same today? Fast forward to this time next year, will the concerns/anxieties/things you really want today still be the same then? If the answer is no, as it pretty generally is, I find this helps me let go of worrying about whatever I happen to be currently worrying about, for it seems a waste of mental energy! We can relax instead into what endures year after year, our spiritual journey.

Kadampa Buddha 2 We can also broaden our horizons by developing bodhichitta, changing what we really want out of life by contemplating every day how wonderful it would actually be to have freedom from all mistaken, suffering appearances and the ability to help each and every living being. (With bodhichitta motivation, putting a crumb on a bird table is far more valuable and satisfying than giving a diamond out of attachment to the 8 worldly concerns. That example from Joyful Path shows how, if we change what we want, life can actually become simpler and deeper at the same time!)

Everything is deceptive, except for…

Wisdom: Everything is moreorless deceptive while we have ignorance – things are never exactly as they appear, and when we have strong delusions or agitated minds, such as the 8 worldly concerns, we can be sure that what we are seeing has very little resemblance to what’s really going on. Therefore, we need to rely on the wisdom of emptiness to do away with the false appearance of inherent existence, understanding that the things we normally see do not exist.

Compassion: The other day, I mentioned to J on the stairs in passing: “Everything is deceptive except wisdom.” He looked at me with his big eyes and asked, “And love?” And he is right. Love itself doesn’t grasp at an inherently existent person, its object is simply wishing others happiness, which is the great protector against suffering for ourselves and the people around us. Compassion is our love focused on others’ suffering, wishing them to be freed from it. Our so-called “method” minds of renunciation, love, compassion, patience, and so on are entirely more trustworthy than our attachment and aversion, and they keep us sane and happy, hence the Kadampa motto:

Always rely upon a happy mind alone.

I count myself lucky to know people with lots of integrity, who’re trying their best to change for the better, every day. They are flexible, but not blown about by the changing winds of how things are done or not done this week, month, or year, at the expense of common sense or indeed basic human kindness; they are not sticklers for rules for rules’ own sake. They are more inspired by the enduring rules of wisdom and compassion.

We can always find our way if we stick to wisdom and compassion.

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: 8 worldly concerns, Atisha, attachment, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, institutionalized, integrity, Joyful Path of Good Fortune, kindness, New Kadampa Tradition, wisdom and compassion

In praise of integrity

04/07/2013 By Luna Kadampa 22 Comments

I recently re-read a good article on Heart of Compassion on honesty and keeping it real, well worth reading twice. It has also prodded me to finish writing down some thoughts on integrity that I’ve had up my sleeve for a while.

The dictionary definition of integrity is:

Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

One of the things I love most about the old Kadampas is their integrity. They seemed to practice Dharma as if no one was looking, totally for its own sake, with no side-tracking worldly concerns. (The 8 worldly concerns are attachment to praise, pleasure, a good reputation, and gain, and fear of or aversion to their opposite.)

A few years ago, when I was about to go on quite a long retreat, a friend said: “You’ll be setting a great example!” I remember thinking, and replying, “I don’t want to set an example, though. I just want to practice as if no one is looking.” I don’t know if that thought was a cop-out or not, but I know at the time it helped me enjoy the retreat a great deal.

Although it can obviously be helpful to set a good example, it is counterproductive if there is pretension or concealment involved. (Perhaps it is better to be a good example than to set one?) If I look to someone for inspiration or advice, for example, I am not worried about their faults per se because we all have those. What will destroy my confidence in their ability to help me is if they don’t seem to be doing anything about these faults, particularly if they don’t seem to believe or care that they have them, and even more so if they are trying to cover them up or being prideful. (Others probably evaluate our advice using similar criteria.)

A Bodhisattva promises to work for the welfare of all living beings without pretension or deceit. Here are some useful definitions from Understanding the Mind (where you can read all about them) that have helped me understand what integrity is and aspire to it, since it seems free from these faulty attitudes.

The definition of pretension is a deluded mental factor that, motivated by attachment to wealth or reputation, wishes to pretend that we possess qualities that we do not possess.

The definition of concealment is a deluded mental factor that, motivated by attachment to wealth or reputation, wishes to conceal our faults from others.

If we have wealth or reputation, we have to be particularly careful because we have the grounds for attachment to arise every day – trying to hold onto our wealth or popularity, fearing their loss. Our behavior will no longer have integrity if it is motivated by these concerns and results will not be as good as they could be, even if we are ostensibly helping a lot of people.

Here’s another good one, self-satisfaction:

The definition of self-satisfaction is a deluded mental factor that observes our own physical beauty, wealth, or other good qualities, and, being concerned only with these, has no interest in spiritual development.

If we count among our “other good qualities” the fact that everyone right now loves us, praises us, and does what we ask, we develop a spiritual smugness that means after years of supposed practice and example we have not taken an actual step forward toward liberation or enlightenment.

Crabs in a bucket

If you put a crab in a bucket and it can climb out of that bucket, it will climb out. But if you put two crabs in the bucket, when one of the crabs tries to climb out, the other will pull it back in. (Apparently. I’ve never tried this.) Neither will ever escape. It doesn’t matter that it is possible to escape; the crabs will hold each other back from doing so.

Atisha, founder of Kadampa Buddhism

Sometimes we may not believe in the idea of our own limitless potential and instead have a jealous or insecure sense that someone else’s success somehow diminishes our own. With that mentality, even if we are not fully aware of it, if we see others improving we will naturally if unconsciously reach out to hold them back, or at least experience that most ignoble of feelings, schadenfreude, when we see them fall back.

However, we don’t only hold each other back by criticizing each other, putting each other down, or rejoicing in their misfortune. Actually, I think we are more effectively held back in samsara when people shower us with praise, power, and gifts, especially if we take it seriously and buy into it. Words of fame and praise do nothing to advance us spiritually, especially if we become dependent on them for our self-image and self-esteem. As Venerable Atisha says in his quintessential Advice for all wannabe Kadampas:

Words of praise and fame serve only to beguile us, therefore blow them away as you would blow your nose.

Profit and respect are nooses of the maras, so brush them aside like stones on the path.

Geshe Kelsang in Tibet

I was once on a little pedestal by dint of my position – not a huge pedestal like Nelson’s in Trafalgar Square, more like one of those plastic pillars a foot high in a MacDonalds playground, but still not quite on the level playing field. When I was pushed off my pedestal (as we all are sooner or later), I took incredible inspiration from the old Kadampas, and still do. The real Kadampas would hide their best qualities in plain sight. On the outside they were a pure example by observing moral discipline motivated by non-attachment and contentment, on the inside they were motivated by a fiercely kind bodhichitta, and, even more deeply and secretly on the inside, they were relaxing in the bliss and emptiness of Tantra.

It is not what you do but why you do it. There is no such thing as ordinary activity without an ordinary mind. With an ordinary mind, even seemingly pure activities will have ordinary results.

Part 2 coming soon to a blog near you. Meanwhile, over to you, do you agree with this or not?

Filed Under: Love & compassion, Wisdom Tagged With: 8 worldly concerns, Atisha, Bodhisattva, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Heart of Compassion blog, integrity in Buddhism, New Kadampa Tradition, old Kadampas, pretension and deceit, Understanding the Mind

Wherever you go, there you are

03/24/2013 By Luna Kadampa 27 Comments

Buddhism 101 explains how happiness and suffering are states of mind, and how external conditions can only make us happy if our mind is peaceful. Even if we are in the most blissful surroundings and have everything we need — the one time we might reasonably expect to be deliriously happy — we’re still not if any agitation is arising in our mind for any reason.

Let’s say you’re having a particularly amazing experience. It’s your birthday party, your devoted friends have been planning it for months, and it is taking place on an exotic island. Every single one of your best friends since early childhood has been invited and can be there; it’s a miracle! The food is incredible and none of it has any calories. Wafting scented breezes, lapping waves, soft lighting, your favorite music, the perfect temperature…. It’s paradise, isn’t it? What’s the problem? There isn’t one!

But then one of your childhood friends says something a bit off color, like “You’ve put on weight!” or “So you haven’t done much with your life, then…” And you immediately think, “That was cruel!” and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but it’s a little dagger in your heart. It could be anything, and it doesn’t have to be much. All that has to happen is for you to get a bit upset, a little irritated, and the happiness starts to seep out of the whole event.

“I wish I hadn’t invited you!” you think to yourself. This is followed by a spontaneous recall of all the mean things they’ve ever said to you, and suddenly you can’t let it go. All the magic and fun of the party has been sucked out, it’s gone. Your experience has changed because now you’re in a bad mood. Now you’re having an ordinary, boring day, just as if you were chained back at your desk.

You can run, but you can’t hide

As they say, you can run but you can’t hide. We’ve taken our same old states of mind to this paradise, so our happiness can be destroyed in a moment, just as the tranquility of an ocean can be destroyed by a sudden storm. As my teacher puts it:

Even if we are in the most beautiful surroundings and have everything we need, the moment we get angry any happiness we may have disappears. This is because anger has destroyed our inner peace. ~ Transform Your Life, p. 6

I bet all of us can think of examples like this – we were having the time of our life and then it just collapsed.

We can see from this that if we want true, lasting happiness we need to develop and maintain a special experience of inner peace. ~ Transform Your Life, p. 6

We need to find a way to keep a happy mind regardless of what happens because s*** happens. Even today I’ll wager that a bunch of annoying things have already happened? And that some of the things that you wanted to happen didn’t happen?

Did you have a problem today?

A long time ago I was doing a Post Graduate Certificate in Education in York, UK. Soon after we arrived, we were all asked to sit in a large circle, and I was sitting to the right of the moderator. Starting from her left, she went round each person in turn, asking solicitously: “What problems are you having?”

Now, weirdly, when she started, I had no problems. I was feeling very happy. I had been meditating for a few years already, so I also knew that problems were not as fixed as they had once appeared. But as she worked her way around the group, and everyone came up with their dreadful and seemingly intractable problems, I did start to feel nervous. “What the heck am I going to say when she asks me?!” I now had a problem, albeit a small one. I cast around wildly in my memories for something that had gone wrong that week, and think I gamely came up with something in the nick of time.

I found it quite interesting that every single one of these cool young people, however together and sorted they looked on the outside, had a major problem. It is something I remember when I have problems in order to gain perspective — I am by no means alone. I have tried out the same market research quite often since then in a shortened form, and by all means try it yourself if you like. If you ask a group of friends, “Did you have a problem today?”, I bet 99% will say yes (and then look at each other in surprised recognition).

Things are always going to go wrong, one way or another, so if this throws us off balance we’re going to be unhappy — a lot. Therefore, we’ve got to find a way to be peaceful and positive no matter what’s going on.

Baby steps to nirvana

As Geshe Kelsang says:

The only way to do this is by training our mind through spiritual practice—gradually reducing and eliminating our negative, disturbed states of mind and replacing them with positive, peaceful states. Eventually, through continuing to improve our inner peace we will experience permanent inner peace, or nirvana. Once we have attained nirvana we will be happy throughout our life, and in life after life. ~ Transform Your Life, p. 6-7

Nirvana (a Sanskrit word) means liberation, permanent inner peace, or true mental freedom. But nirvana is not some pie in the sky thing. The way all the so-called Foe Destroyers (who have destroyed the inner foes of their delusions) and enlightened beings have come to experience this forever inner peace is through developing moments of inner peace and learning to connect them.

For example, every once in a while we feel a state of deep well-being, a feeling of peace or connection—life is good! This usually lasts between a few seconds and half an hour ~ it doesn’t last that long, does it? But at these points we really get a glimpse of what our life could be about. Why don’t we just stay here, seeing as we like it so much? It’s because some negative thought interrupts as we’re not in control of our mind.

Buddha’s point is that those moments we get of joy, peace, and contentment, even bliss, are a manifestation of our own Buddha nature, our boundless potential for lasting peace, universal love and compassion, omniscient wisdom, endless joy and flexibility, incredible goodness. Buddha called it Buddha nature because we all, without exception, have the potential not just for liberation but to be a Buddha, a fully awakened person who has all good qualities to perfection.

baby steps to enlightenment

So how do we get there? Baby steps. We gradually train our mind so we can find and hold the positive, peaceful feelings, like love for others, for longer and longer periods of time, always identifying with them and giving ourselves permission to stay there. We gradually clear our minds of all obstructive, destructive thoughts that interrupt, letting the clouds disperse from the sky. We can do all this because we have the potential and we have the methods. And as soon as we’ve attained the true and lasting mental freedom of liberation we’ll be happy throughout our life, and in any future life.

Happiness now, happiness later

In Buddhism, we talk about how our mind and our body are different natures. Our body is like a guest house for our mind. There is no use pretending that this body is anything other than a piece of meat with a rapidly approaching expiration date. But we are not our body; we are so much more than our body. Our mind has limitless potential.

At the point when the body dies, our mind does not die because it is a formless continuum of awareness that never stops. Our gross waking minds do stop — they dissolve into our subtle mind, and this dissolves into our very subtle mind that travels onto our next life. Buddha’s understanding of life after life comes from the direct experience that mind is formless. Happiness will always depend upon the positive qualities in the formless continuum of our mind and not on externals, and that is not going to change. Wherever you go, there you are. Therefore, if we want to be peaceful and happy in this life and in any future lives, we need to develop and maintain these qualities as a matter of priority.

Over to you: do you agree that to be happy we need to train our minds? Or can we find lasting happiness in other ways?

Filed Under: Happiness, Problem-solving Tagged With: Buddha nature, Buddhism, Foe Destroyer, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, happiness depends on the mind, meditation, New Kadampa Tradition, nirvana, problem-solving, Transform Your Life

The power of communication to change lives

03/16/2013 By Luna Kadampa 23 Comments

Respect to my readers and subscribers… Kadampa Life has just received its quarter millionth page visit, thanks to you.

It was Red Nose Day yesterday in the UK. I really like Red Nose Day. Comedians and celebrities do funny, embarrassing, and risky things in order to bring awareness and money to children who need it.

I don’t have a TV but thanks to the internet (and BBC iPlayer) I was able to watch 6 celebrities — including Sporty Spice Mel C, Philips Idowu (who has a terror of water), and Jack Dee — risk life and limb rafting down the Zambezi in “Through Hell and High Water”.

In between the very good photography (some taken just with the celebs helmet cams when they’d tipped over and were hanging onto tree branches for dear life with anyone supposed to be helping them already way, way downstream) and voiceover of their exploits (they seemed to be in real danger on at least a few occasions), the celebs were visiting children like 11-year old Cynthia, who couldn’t go to school as she was too poor and had too much housework to do in lieu of her sick mother. They joined children on their daily two-hour walk each way to get to school, and not along nice paved sidewalks either — even Philips Idowu found it grueling. The celebs were moved and spoke movingly about what they were seeing, and they made me press Yes to text money a few times until I remembered that it was ending up on my mum’s phone bill (long story, oops! I’ll pay you back, promise!) Red Nose Day has raised 75 million quid so far (and there’s still time to donate more)!

I was impressed by the good sportsmanship of those taking part in this 5-day challenge – even when they had a totally terrible, scary day they determined to carry on because they wanted to help, and they were unfailingly good-natured with each other as well despite the heat, the exhaustion, the dirt, the fear, the insect bites.

I was also struck about how easy it is for us to see what is going on in other parts of the world, to expand our horizons, through the power of the internet. How easy it has made it for us to communicate and spread ideas, and meet people all around the world – to feel part of the same huge human (and animal) family. It is far harder to hold onto musty ancient prejudices in the oxygen of internet exposure.

I could of course speculate any number of things about the dangers of too much internet use, wondering aloud how it is going to be possible to develop strong concentration while we succumb to too much distraction, and musing how, as with any tool for communication, it can be used for good or for bad. But overall I welcome this modern development – and there is no doubt that it has been a very useful way to spread meditation and Buddhism throughout the world. This blog is just one small way of how this can happen, it is riding a wave. With his free gift of Modern Buddhism, Geshe Kelsang showed his understanding of the power of modern communication, and harnessed it to an immensely beneficial end. Modern Buddhism is (I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong) in the top ten Buddhist books on Amazon, downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and counting. That is hundreds of thousands of people who might not have met Buddhism for years if they’d had to rely on their local library storing a hard copy of a Buddhist book.

Kadampa Buddhist meditation is immensely practical and useful for people in all walks of life and all over the world, and it doesn’t belong just to Buddhists. A lot of it is simply common sense with bells on – it doesn’t require us to believe things that we can’t test in our own experience or using our own powers of reasoning. And once we know the methods for finding inner peace, freely given in Modern Buddhism, we can practice them whenever and wherever we want — no one can take that away from us.

We are all about “modern Buddhism” these days, and modern Buddhism necessarily takes place in modern lives. In the early days, as Kadampa Buddhism segueyed from sequestered Tibetan monasteries into the West, we did things very differently. We tried to a large extent to emulate the monastic way of life, even as lay people – moving into residential centres, joining full-on study programmes, and working full-time for those centres. Back in the day, we had no TV, no internet (barely invented), no Smartphones – it is pretty much impossible nowadays to live and practice as we did in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s. Some people still live, study, and work full time in our large residential centres, at least on and off, but the vast majority of Kadampa Buddhists worldwide live “out” in the world with their families, regular jobs, mortgages, etc., and are learning to put the teachings into practice and get results in many different contexts.

The world has modernized beyond belief and we are moving with it. I think we are all still very much in the process of modernizing the presentation of Buddhism to fit into this new reality so that people can still gain deep realizations like the monastics and Yogis in Tibet. I for one am watching this process with great interest. I welcome this adaptation of Buddhism to the modern world, I like that it is so much easier for people to share ideas and awaken to the lives of others even if they live in far-flung places, and my hope with this blog is to help that process along in one small way. Geshe Kelsang once told me we need to “go where the people are”. I think that most of you can often be found here, in Cyberspace!

Growing up, I was probably less “modern” than almost any other Westerner I know. Moving around from continent to continent meant that I knew a lot about the people I was living with, my local schools, and so on, but we had little to no communication with the rest of the world. There were no TVs (let alone computers) in those countries back then. One UK newspaper came over weekly in the diplomatic bag, and was then shared out amongst the staff, starting with the Ambassador, and eventually arriving tattered at our house. We used the telephone on Christmas Day to call my grandparents, keeping the call short due to its ludicrous expense. I watched my first movie around the age of 8, it was a Dracula movie at a drive-in theater with a scratchy screen (and I loved it!) I read, a lot! I had lots of time to think, and there was time for my imagination to go crazy in 20-page stories I wrote for my teachers and long-suffering parents. I was outside running and biking around a lot, and started lots of societies for all my friends – gymnastics, dancing, animal protection, etc. I collected tortoises, cocoons, ants, and other animals so I could look after them. (I know, they should have just got me a dog.) My first accent was Sri Lankan where I learned to speak, later I had a West Indian accent for two years. Early photos show me looking like Mowgli from the Jungle Book. When I was eventually sent back to the motherland for “reintegration” in my teens, I knew a lot about different places and people and the contents of (often old, musty) books, but I was clueless about global and current affairs. I had never studied anything except English, maths, and local history and geography, and I had a lot of catching up to do.

I left scores of friends behind in all the countries I lived in – once I left, I never heard from them again, unless we wrote letters (didn’t happen, except in the case of Debra, whom I recently re-found miraculously through Facebook). And how different to Facebook, where it might now be impossible for a child ever to lose a friend even if they want to – friends follow you around forever! If the Internet had existed when I was a child, none of the above would apply. At any rate, it was not a problem, my childhood was great, and I did catch up. And everyone my age and older has this experience to some extent or another of how life has changed, modernized, and become transparent in communication beyond our wildest dreams; we have all changed with it. And I’m not THAT old!!

Since I started writing Kadampa Life at the end of 2011, there have been more blogs appearing that share people’s experiences of practicing Buddhism and meditation in their daily lives. I want to give a shout out to some of these, and you can find a list here (please let me know if your blog has inadvertently been left out).

Daily Lamrim A great feat, Vide Kadampa, a working man and father of 3, has written an article on Lamrim meditation every single day – you can see his meditation practice deepening with each cycle of 21 meditations, and he has a wonderful way with analogies. Well worth following.

This Mountain, That Mountain Mimi explains how she has used meditation to help her transform her cancer.

Kadampa Working Dad Started as a guest writer on Kadampa Life, now soaring on his own…

Cosmic Loti Quirky and warm, Buddhism in action.

Luna Cruciente By a kind-hearted Buddhist nun, in Spanish.

Heart of Compassion A promising and interesting new arrival.

There is also a Kadampa Buddhist Facebook page/forum for parents and another one for professionals.

Judging by the shares, people are appreciating the internet videos of how Buddhism is helping rural communities in South Africa too, such as this one, which is 9 minutes well spent watching.

One of the most inspiring, to me, recent developments in communication has been the possibility of Ben Fletcher teaching Buddhism in sign language to people all over the world – if we can video him and put him on YouTube and spread it through social media. Ben was born deaf and has never heard a sound. He is one of the most radiant meditators I have met. Young Dorje, aged 3, living at Manjushri Centre, summed up the usual reaction to meeting Ben for the first time when he turned to his mum after 2 minutes and asked: “Mum, why do I love that man so much? I won’t say any more about Ben for now, other than to say I spent a lot of time with him a couple of weeks ago at Manjushri Centre and he blew my socks off. I will try to watch every video ever made of him. He is teaching for the first time next week, March 23, in Southampton!! You can see a video of him here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEkeC26XDUI&feature=youtu.be

Going back to Red Nose Day, spinning off from Live Aid it also reminds me of how Kadampa Buddhism first came to America. I want to finish today with an amazing story by a friend of mine who accompanied Geshe Kelsang to America on that first trip. This has always struck me as a fortuitous example of the power of communications to transform many lives if harnessed to an extraordinary end.

(Please share your thoughts on this article and how to modernize the presentation of Buddhism in the comments box below.)

The frog story

In the 1980’s a simultaneous rock concert in London and Philadelphia called Live Aid was organized to beat back famine in Ethiopia. It reached a worldwide television audience.

My Teacher saw some of it too and became aware of the donation appeal to help the starving people. Someone had just given him a shiny new car to assist his increasing travels across the UK and, not having any other possessions, my Teacher phoned this benefactor and asked for permission to sell the car and donate the money to Live Aid. The benefactor agreed.

The local newspaper in Ulverston, a quiet Lake District town just next to Manjushri Institute, picked up the story and ran a small piece with a delightful picture of my physically tiny Teacher standing next to the huge car he had just sold. This story was syndicated across the newswires and also appeared in a newspaper in Palm Springs, USA, where it was read by Leland C. Miller, President of the Kilner Foundation, a non-profit organization that dispensed grants for worthy causes. Mr. Miller had recently purchased a copy of my Teacher’s book, Clear Light of Bliss, from his local bookstore, put two and two together, and concluded that here was “the real deal.” He wrote and requested my Teacher to come and give his first teachings in America, saying that his Foundation would sponsor the trip.

I was thrilled when my Teacher called me and asked me to help him organize the trip and accompany him on it. Working with Mr. Miller and responding to other invitations to teach in the US, including at Geshe Sopa’s Deer Park Center in Madison Wisconsin, we arranged the following schedule: Madison Wisconsin, Toronto, Montreal, and Seattle Washington, where Geshe Kelsang would give teachings on Lamrim and the Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments of Heruka & Vajrayogini at the appropriately named Bliss Hall.

It was a magical trip, including a journey to the rainbow-filled Niagara Falls and many other delights. I was snap-happy and took many photos of this historic event. When we returned to the UK, I decided to present my Teacher with an album of these photos as a gift. We looked through the photos together and came to the last one, a group photo of about ten people with my Teacher right at the front. He paused and looked at me; and then he asked a question I was not expecting: “Which one is me?”

I was so dumbfounded that I had no idea what to say. Here was one of the greatest Buddhist Masters of our time, who had written books of astonishing intelligence and brilliance, apparently unable to recognize himself in a photo. It was not a problem I had ever had!

Of course this question stayed with me, and I thought about it for a long time afterwards. I would take a picturesque daily afternoon walk around the lake at Madhyamaka Centre. There is a bench at the bottom of the lake, which presents the most beautiful view of the centre and the rolling hills behind, where I often stopped and meditated for a while. On one of these occasions I noticed a group of frogs in the water below. As I watched this scene I had a revelation.

Buddha taught that there are six different realms of existence, including animal realms, human realms and god realms – all dream, or nightmare-like, projections of mind where we take repeated rebirth according to our karma. I had recently read that from the perspective of someone who has taken rebirth in the god realms, we human beings are as ugly and smelly as frogs. I also understood from Buddha’s teachings that enlightened beings have the power of emanation, and that one of these powers is the ability to appear in many different forms, both animate and inanimate, for the benefit of living beings.

It dawned on me – what if I, as a human, wanted to help these frogs directly by teaching them how to be happy, co-exist peacefully, not be so attached to each other’s bodies, and attain a higher rebirth such as in the human realm? Would I not need to appear in a form that they could relate to, namely as another frog? I would still keep my human mind and my sense of my human life, but would simultaneously appear as a frog. What if I asked a keen young little frog to help me organize a trip across the pond to the other bank, where I could meet other frogs and teach them a spiritual path? What if that frog kept snapping photos of me here and there? And what if, the journey safely concluded, that young frog presented me with a group photo of ten frogs in a row? Would I not have to ask, “Which one is me?”

Filed Under: Modern Buddhism Tagged With: communication, Facebook, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Kadampa Buddhism in America, Kadampa Life, Modern Buddhism, New Kadampa Tradition, red nose day, the frog story, Where are the Kadampas

Finding my heart

03/10/2013 By Luna Kadampa 3 Comments

I am only a parent of cats and take my hat off to parents of small humans, who seem to have to work 24/7 for others. But I think even pet parents have some of the same experiences, and also some of the same concerns when it comes to balancing love and attachment and avoiding undue worry and stress when things go wrong…♥) So, when Kadampa working dad recently had the good idea of starting a Facebook page for Buddhist parents, I joined the group too. And to let more parents know about this forum, I thought it was a good excuse to post this guest article by him. Scroll to the bottom of this article to read the Facebook About.

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

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

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

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

How wonderful if we can extend the love we feel towards our children to all living beings, where we can view all living beings as our children.

Here is the Facebook forum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/288032664659782/members/

About: The purpose of this group is to provide a platform for Kadampa parents to share their experiences of how they use the Kadam Dhama to be better parents and to ask questions about how to apply the Dharma to common parenting challenges. Through this, we can all learn from each other’s trials and tribulations as we seek to unite the Kadam Dharma with modern parenting. Over time, this page will become like a repository of the accumulated wisdom of Kadampa parents, which will then hopefully prove helpful to future Kadampa parents for generations to come. The group is open to parents and non-parents alike, because in the end our job as Kadampa Bodhisattvas is to help others grow. Please add all of the Kadampa parents you know to this group. The group is also open to Kadampa teachers who wish to better understand and help their students who are parents. And yes, parents are free to post pictures of their little ones doing all of the silly things they do! Please note, the views expressed in this group are those of individual practitioners and do not represent those of the New Kadampa Tradition itself. This is an “unofficial” group of practitioners. For the official New Kadampa Tradition Facebook page, please visit:
https://www.facebook.com/kadampa

Filed Under: Guests, Love & compassion Tagged With: Buddhism, Facebook parenting, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, love, Modern Buddhism, New Kadampa Tradition, parenting, Tara

Home is where the heart is

02/16/2013 By Luna Kadampa 31 Comments

I have had the thought of late that I don’t think I’ll ever be completely, utterly happy until I realize I am everywhere. We all are, as there is no world outside our mind.

I suppose what has partly bought on this cosmic rather pleasing thought is the amount of times I’ve been asked in the last few months since I came to Liverpool from Florida:

“Really? That is a BIG change?!”

Whereas it is a surprisingly un-big change.

Plus, give me a dollar or a quid for the amount of solicitous comments I’ve received along the lines of whether I am feeling at home yet? (I am, thank you.) But the truth is I don’t feel I left home. Home is where the heart is, as they say. My home is in my heart. Luckily, my heart goes with me everywhere.

Florida was only ever dreamlike appearance to my mind, and I can still “be” there when I want to in my heart-mind. Same for everywhere. As Geshe-la points out, the mind can go anywhere – it’d take considerable effort and expense to lug my body to the moon, but my mind can go there in an instant just by thinking about it.

“Love is all you need.”

Florida is empty of inherent existence and can be anything depending on my thoughts, so I like to imagine it as a Pure Land — I still enjoy offering it up to all enlightened beings and living beings, with all its pterodactyl pelicans, lapping turquoise seas, and gorgeous gargantuan tropical undergrowth. My hairdresser yesterday spent 10 minutes marveling aloud at the Armadillo she had once seen in Florida – I offer him up too, along with, now, the swans in Sefton Park, the miniature chirpy birds, and the timeless and Tara-green English countryside.

Be here, now. Be everywhere now.

It was EM Forster who said:

Only connect.

daffodils at Kadampa Meditation Centre Liverpool

Thank you, Flower Fairy!

Love is the great connector. With equanimity, we reduce our sticky attachment Velcro-ing us to our only (bring out the violins) loved ones, and love the ones we’re with as well as the ones we’re not currently with. (An anonymous flower fairy just left the first daffodils of spring outside my door with a message wishing me a joy-filled day — what’s not to love about Liverpudlians?!) [Remembering how everyone is our kind mother and that we depend on others for every atom of our being, we can feel at home anywhere. Love makes us feel entirely connected, settled, and supported – it stops loneliness and homesickness in their tracks.

I just this moment received this gracious reply from an old friend I wrote to in Florida, who is going through a hard time:

“You are so kind to have me on your mind with all the new frontiers you are forever moving through.”

That’s what I mean! Why wouldn’t I have her on my mind? Why would I be concerned for her over there but not over here?! To prove it, I’m now going to dedicate this article to her and Chuck.

Uncertainty

One of the six general sufferings of samsara, according to Buddha, is Uncertainty. Impermanence means that everything is unstable – our relationships, our locations, our enjoyments, our bodies. Unless we find a way to transform change, we are in for trouble – and not just in this life but in all our future lives.

As a child, we travelled, my parents and I. We lived in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Guyana, Turkey, Ghana, and Singapore, and visited many other countries too. Though my parents adapted remarkably well to change on almost every continent, for them travel was rooted in, I think, a sense of Britishness. They were happy to come back and retire here; England is home for them. My older brother who started in England and was packed off to boarding school aged 7 told me at Christmas that if he could choose where on earth he would live, he too would live in England, just where he does live. For me, though, starting my life in New Zealand, paying occasional visits to the motherland, England never felt like my roots. My parents were my roots, and that was fine, as I never doubted that they’d look after me (I was lucky!) Every two or three years I’d be going to a new continent and meeting new people. One day, on the school bus waiting to drive off to another first day at another new school (nine in all), I felt an existential ennui at having to start all over again making new friends, and doubted that I’d have the energy or ability to do it. Just before the bus rolled away, my mother gave me this parting shot:

“If you want people to like you, like them first.”

When I asked how I could possibly like a whole bunch of strangers, she said:

“Get them to talk about themselves. And remember that everyone is beautiful when they smile.”

She doesn’t remember saying these things, but I do.

Madhyamaka Centre 1980s

As an adult, I have continued to go from place to place – apart from a 14-year stint at Madhyamaka Centre, by far and away the longest period I’ve spent in one place, a veritable exception to the rule. (And on three separate occasions, months apart, after we all moved into Madhyamaka Centre in 1986, my teacher Geshe-la asked me the curious koan-like question: “Have you moved into Madhyamaka Centre yet?” knowing full well that I had [or thought I had!] Make of that what you will.)

Why am I telling you all this? Partly as I’m feeling chatty, and partly because it has been my karma so far in this life to move around a great deal, and this uncertainty has given me ample opportunities to contemplate the truth of Dharma. So, hopefully, if you’re perhaps in the midst of some big move or change, reading this might help a bit.

All this moving is nothing, obviously, not to mention luxury compared to the amount and type of upheaval experienced by refugees all over the world. It is also nothing compared to our constant travels from life to life. Other general sufferings of samsara are having to leave our body over and over again and having to take rebirth over and over again.

Change is inevitable so if we can find a way to feel at home and to feel happy wherever we go — place to place and life to life — we are free. We have mental freedom. That’s what I want. Geshe Kelsang left Tibet with just his robes and 2 texts in the late 1950s, and then he had to leave India to come over to an alien West to try and bring peace to a bunch of materialistic, self-indulgent (speaking for myself) barbarians. Not only did he remain perfectly happy through all of these upheavals, but I am quite sure he has mastered the art of being everywhere at the same time, as well as never leaving home.

“You can only have 130 friends!”

That modern-day phenomenon, Facebook, is a connector too, in its own way. At its best, it helps people feel close across continents, in that locationless cyberspace that could be anything really, so make of it what you will. I was recently talking to a young teenage boy about Facebook in the World Peace Café downstairs, and he told me that Facebook doesn’t work because you can only really have 130 friends. I knew what he meant, but I still told him it wasn’t true – we can love as many people as we want, it is up to us, not up to them. A Bodhisattva is known as a friend of the world. Karmically a Bodhisattva may spend more time with some people than with others in any given day or year, but mentally they remember their deep connection to everyone in the universe. If we emulate this, then when we physically encounter old and/or new friends in this and future lives, on Facebook or anywhere else, we are ready for them!

The mandala of bliss and emptiness

Just to get a bit Tantric for a moment, the mandala universe is everywhere. The union of bliss and emptiness pervades all phenomena, is the “stuff” of all phenomena. As it says in The Root Tantra of Heruka and Vajrayogini:

“In the supreme secret of great bliss
Always gather the nature of all.”

The mandala and Deities are this bliss and emptiness appearing as completely pure form, pervading time and space. Bliss and emptiness are in our heart and they are simultaneously everywhere. Heruka and Vajrayogini are everywhere. Compassion and wisdom are everywhere. (At the least, I like to be in 24 places at a time …) You can find out more about Tantra in Geshe Kelsang’s books.

Expanding horizons

Buddhism does nothing if not expand our horizons. We think about limitless past and future lives, limitless worlds, beginningless and endless consciousness and time, how every single living being is our mother, how there is nothing really “out there” as everything is mere appearance to our mind… We can break out of our poky prison, so dingy we can hardly see past the end of our nose, with its bars of self-grasping ignorance and self-cherishing. If I check my problems, I can see that they all stem from grasping at things as fixed and real and/or thinking my own happiness and problems are far more important than everyone else’s. Dharma expands us in space, time, awareness… til we feel connected to everything and everyone in a non-dual experience where prison walls have no place. Then we spring everyone else from this crushing prison as well, bringing them to an absurdly welcome and serene state, bringing them home.

Filed Under: Happiness, Love & compassion Tagged With: Buddhism, dealing with impermanence, dealing with uncertainty, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, happiness, life, Liverpool Sefton Park, New Kadampa Tradition, samsara, what is home

Can ageing be worthwhile?

02/02/2013 By Luna Kadampa 7 Comments

Carrying on from where this article left off.

The power of the Bodhisattva’s mind

When a Bodhisattva experiences pain, they regard this pain as an example of the pain experienced by countless other living beings. They do not possess the pain or identify with it. Ordinarily, pain destroys our happiness because we grasp it tightly as our own and it is all-consuming for us. But for a Bodhisattva, their pain induces more compassion for others. Strong compassion, in turn, lessens the feeling of pain, mentally for sure, and also physically. Therefore, a Bodhisattva has nothing to fear from pain.

kindness of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

If a Bodhisattva experiences a moment of loneliness, for example, they observe it in their mind. They don’t think, “I am so lonely”; instead they think, “Here is an example of the loneliness experienced by countless other beings right now.” Understanding directly how horrible this is, they decide, “How wonderful it would be if I could help alleviate the suffering of loneliness in this world.” Bodhisattvas transform their experience of any sickness or pain into a positive spiritual realization.

We can see examples of this in everyday lives. If parents lose their children to incurable diseases, they sometimes establish foundations in their children’s honor that are specifically dedicated to helping find a cure for this disease, and in doing so find meaning and relief. Or consider Lance Armstrong – whatever you may think of his cycling “performance”, his experience of the pain of fighting and surviving cancer led to his creation of the Livestrong Foundation and the ubiquitous yellow wrist bands that have raised so much awareness and money for a cancer-cure.

love is all you need in Buddhism

As we get older, we tend to experience more physical pain. If instead of focusing on our own pain and thereby making it feel worse, we can manage to think of others who are suffering in a similar way and generate strong compassion, this compassion helps protect us from our pain and fears and motivates us to help others.

My dad had to undergo some very uncomfortable medical treatment last year. He told me that he was feeling sorry for himself in the hospital one day, when something made him notice the other people around him. Focusing his attention on them, he realized that they were in a worse way than he was, and he felt very sorry for them. This totally took his mind off his own painful predicament, and for the first time, but not the last, he felt strangely all okay again.

It might be a good idea to start training in this now!

Growing old gracefully

Do you agree that being confident and being attractive are closely related? When people find a way to retain and cultivate their inner confidence, their engagement with others, their ability to laugh at themselves, they don’t cease being attractive whatever age or however doddery they are. I think a lot of confidence comes from having a clear sense of who you are, what you love, and a zest for life. My Grandfather loved life until the day he died aged 100, and so he was always fun to be with.

As our physical enjoyments and reputations diminish through ageing, instead of getting bitter or nostalgic we can increase even further the value we place on our experience of inner peace. If we become more peaceful, positive, and even blissful in our mind, people will enjoy hanging out with us, regardless of our age. This is certainly the case for my friend Eileen, who I’m visiting next weekend Buddhist meditation practice can engender great self-confidence.

Upon turning 80 last year (on the same day as my teacher!), my quasi father-in-law wrote to me:

I must admit that yesterday I woke up with a sense of amazement. Wow! I had thought it was only other people that get old, and an octogenarian is old. One is treated with a certain reverence (though whether this might be covering a degree of pity and disdain, I don’t know). Physically, I feel ancient. I used to boast a degree of dexterity but for some years I’ve felt clumsy. I’m learning to be more careful but I dropped and broke the lid of one of P’s casseroles the other day. Walking has become more of a thought-about action, particularly since I slipped on the ice early this year. My memory is getting very poor. There are embarrassingly long pauses in my speech as I search, not for the right word, but for any word that will do! I’ve also lost a little confidence in walking and driving.

However as far as attitude is concerned, I haven’t felt much change. I am OK as long as I feel I’m still in control of how I’m reacting to what is happening around me. I can visualize a time when this may not be so any more. As long as I find my absent-mindedness amusing, I’m happy. I imagine that most thinking geriatrics feel something similar to this. The sad thing is when one of us “wrinklies” does not notice the control slipping away and they drift into senility. Then all their bold statements along the lines of, “I don’t want to lose my dignity, to become dependent on others; I’d rather die with my independence intact,” and so forth, count for nothing.

As our body starts to let us down, we are compelled to rely more deeply on inner resources. Even if we do become more forgetful of words and phrases and where we left our keys, and our brain is seizing up, we can still feel love and compassion in our heart-mind, especially if we have started our training in this. In the end, the journey within is the most interesting journey we can ever take, and ageing is a constant motivator to travel it well.

Your turn: Do you have inspiring examples of people you know who aged or are ageing well?

Filed Under: Ageing gracefully, Problem-solving Tagged With: ageing gracefully, Bodhisattva, Buddhism, compassion, dealing with loneliness, death and impermanence, Eileen Stead, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, life, New Kadampa Tradition

Is enlightenment pie in the sky?

01/27/2013 By Luna Kadampa 19 Comments

I was remembering the other day what happened when I first encountered Buddhism. A new friend at college happened to mention that there was a talk on that evening by a Tibetan Lama in York – he was not Geshe Kelsang, who became my teacher, but a visitor who was being hosted by the Buddhist Centre. I took another nice, new friend, M., along with me, not having a clue what to expect (this was 1981 in the North of England when meditation was an alien concept to most people.)

To be honest, I hardly understood a word this Geshe said. But during the course of the evening, I couldn’t help thinking: “Whatever it is you have, I want it.”

He said a couple of things I sort of got, the words at least. The first was a comment about how we have radiators in the West, followed by his falling about laughing – something he seemed to be doing most of the evening. I suppose for someone who grew up in Tibet, radiators and other Western technology must have seemed quite amusing. (This was in the days before SmartPhones, which he would doubtless have found hysterical.) M. told me later that I was laughing uproariously and a little crazily at everything, which seems strange given that I didn’t know what this happy Tibetan was saying; but clearly this stuff was infectious.

The other comment I remember from that evening was:

“We are all on the airplane to enlightenment!”

(Followed by even more laughter.)

We’re what??! I thought. What is he talking about?! I knew I still liked it, I probably laughed along, but I wasn’t sure what it was I liked. And, when I stopped to think about it, enlightenment or Buddhahood sounded rather pie in the sky. As far as I was concerned, I’d be lucky to just get through the day without getting annoyed with someone. If Buddhist meditation could do that for me, I’d give it a shot.

And so M. and I did, the following week at the regular introductory meditation class at our nearest Buddhist centre. That was almost 32 years ago. The rest is history.

Although I well remember how pie in the sky enlightenment felt back then, since then I’ve decided that it really is not that much of a culturally alien concept, let alone an impossibly idealistic goal. Indeed, it is within the reach of every one of us; we just have to get going, starting with wanting it.

The other day I asked some friends if they wanted to improve. They said yes. Then I asked them what would happen if they did improve a bit and became a bit kinder and wiser, for example – would that be enough, or would they still want to improve? They said they would.

Interesting, I said. No wonder Buddha says we all have Buddha nature or Buddha seed, which is our natural potential for improvement; we clearly feel it on some level. We have this potential because our mind is not inherently existent, or fixed, which means it can change. If you really want to improve, then your Buddha seed has already sprouted into the beginning of a Bodhisattva’s mentality because a Bodhisattva is someone who has taken that wish to its logical conclusion and wants to keep improving until there is no further room for improvement.

Then I asked them if they would like to be able to help more people than they are helping at the moment. They said yes. So I asked them what would happen if they were able to help, say, 3 more people than they are helping now due to being kinder and wiser (see above), would that then be the end of it? No, they replied, they’d want to help even more people.

And there you have it, I said. You’re already just like a baby Bodhisattva, who has taken this wish to its logical conclusion and wishes to help all living beings without leaving anyone out. That wish is part of our compassion, also our Buddha nature. We are naturally kind because when our delusions are not functioning we default to being peaceful and free from self-centeredness, connected to others.

A Bodhisattva is someone who wishes to help all living beings without exception by attaining enlightenment aka becoming a Buddha. A Buddha is someone, anyone, who has perfected all their good qualities and got rid of all their faults, viz, improved until there is no further room for improvement.

What is so pie in the sky about that? We just have to train in our natural wishes and let our mind expand. We are all on the airplane to enlightenment; we just have to get it off the ground.

Filed Under: Happiness, Inspiration Tagged With: Bodhisattva, Buddha, Buddha nature, Buddha seed, Buddhist meditation, enlightenment, Fulfilling our potential, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, New Kadampa Tradition, Tibet

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