Kadampa Life

The power of humility and emotional honesty

A guest article.

Who we really are is love. This is the essential indestructible nature of our mind — love. And if we’re going to solve our personal problems and the problems of our nation and our world, we need never to lose sight of this.

In How to Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang says:

All the problems of human society, such as war, crime, pollution, drug addiction, poverty, injustice, and disharmony within families, are the result of self-cherishing.

With self-cherishing, we lack love. All the problems of human society stem from a lack of love, and because we haven’t identified ourself as love.

Geshe-la continues:

If everyone were to practice cherishing others, many of the major problems of the world would be solved in a few years.

With Buddha’s teachings we are learning how to identify ourself and others correctly, and to act from that vantage point — with the kindness that is the pure expression of our nature. This is beautiful. We all have this nature of love and it is indestructible. This means that it will never leave us. We will never lose it. Eventually, we’re all going to identify ourself correctly as love.

Imaginary friend

How do we not get stuck or trapped by our powerful emotions, but instead creatively transform them? At the core of our strong feelings is the sense of ‘I’ — and of course, in terms of how we identify ourself and others, there’s ‘I.’ We’re always thinking ‘I. I. I’ “I want. I need.” We have an imaginary friend called ‘self’ and we are talking and listening to them all day long. We need to look clearly at how we create this self, this identity.

I think Geshe Kelsang’s phrase “identifying ourself and others correctly” is very contemporary, speaking right to the moment. We identify or create ourself based on so many shifting variables: our personal history, our family history, our culture, our race, our sexuality, our religion, and so forth.

Pride in identity

Then, as Geshe-la says in How to Understand the Mind:

Since we regard our self or I as so very important, we exaggerate our own good qualities and develop an inflated view of ourself. Almost anything can serve as a basis for this arrogant mind, such as our looks, possessions, knowledge, experiences, or status.

This is hilarious. It’s a great caricature of the mind, but it’s our caricature. “I’m so clever. Look at me. I have so much information. I’m so worldly wise.” We develop a sense of I that’s important and very well-defined based on pretty much anything.

We also base our sense of self on the things we like. If we like cats, we think, “I’m a cat person” – and maybe we get a cat illustrated tote bag and stickers that we put all over our laptop. Maybe we go to a cat party with all our cat friends wearing our cat sweaters and hauling along our tote bag with a cat inside. However, maybe we don’t understand dogs, so we think, “I’m not a dog person” — now dog people are over there, and cat people are over here. We have developed pride based on some sense of identity, in turn based on something we like or are attached to. This is crazy. What are we doing?

We can create a self based on anything. Wine, beer, cats, dogs, sports. And yeah, it’s all in good fun, and so forth, but sometimes it’s not. When the mind and emotions get out of control, then fighting ensues – for example the soccer hooligans who deliberately cause brawls. This mistaken way of identifying ourself can be very toxic.

In How to Understand the Mind, Geshe-la gives an insightful and practical explanation of seven types of ordinary or deluded pride. We say that samsara is the cycle of harming and being harmed endlessly, in life after life after life. And all of this can be understood to have its origin in deluded pride. We must overcome this.

Humility in action

Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso is the most humble person I know. He’s an extraordinary being, an extraordinary monk and teacher. I think it’s really worth knowing a little bit about his life. He entered the monastery at the age of 8 – his mother sent him at his request, and also so he didn’t end up being a serf. Later, he had to flee from Tibet due to the invasion, when he became a refugee in India, experiencing immense poverty. After this, he emigrated to England, again not knowing the language or the customs. Still later, out of his fearlessness in wanting to preserve Kadampa Buddhism for the benefit of the modern world and break it away from feudal Tibetan politics, some of the institutions in which he was brought up in Tibet rejected him, tried to strip him of his degrees. He has experienced quite a lot of challenges, from a common understanding of his life.

Yet he loves all beings. And through his love for all beings, his extraordinary humility, and his conviction, he has brought ancient Kadampa Buddhism to the modern world.

He has often made jokes: “I don’t know how to use a computer. I don’t know how to do any of these things. You people helped me and together we have done this.” Humility is real power. Love is real power. We can see him as a great hero, as a role model, as an example. He’s been able to accomplish everything he’s accomplished in this world due to the purity of his intention. He said, “Whatever I’ve been able to accomplish, I’ve been able to accomplish because I respect everyone.” That’s a statement of truth and not a statement of deluded pride because he respects everyone.

With his humility, he has had the openness to understanding the ways of modern people. Through this beautiful display of love and humility, he’s actually transformed our world. He’s transformed my world. I think he’s transformed some of yours.

Pride in identity continued …

The fourth type of pride, pride in identity, is an inflated sense of self-importance based simply on our identity, such as being proud of being an English person, proud of being white, proud of being a man, or proud of being a Tantric meditator. ~ How to Understand the Mind

It’s very interesting what he points out here. And depending on who we think we are, we can say it other ways — proud of being an American person, proud of being Asian, proud of being a woman, proud of being a Christian. Or whatever. It goes all ways because, due to ignorance, we all do this.

This pride in identity is a real poison. This mistaken way of identifying ourself and therefore drawing distinctions between ourselves and others is a big problem. We do this within our mind.

Naming and labeling

There’s a very particular part of our mind called “discrimination.” And we know this word in general, right? We understand in general what it means to discriminate. We think, “I have fine discriminating taste because I’m a wine connoisseur and I can discern the tones of oak and cherry and chocolate,” or whatever. In How to Understand the Mind, we’re given a very interesting description:

The definition of discrimination is a mental factor (ie, part of our mind) that functions to apprehend the uncommon sign of an object.

The uncommon sign is what is seemingly unique to that object, that differentiates it from other objects.

The function of discrimination is to distinguish an object from other objects and to identify the object as this and not that. With this we impute, we name, we label.

Again, this is so contemporary. We all know about naming, labeling, and so forth because we know that, by labeling, an identity is created or imposed. However, who a person is depends entirely upon our mind, how we identify them; and who we are as a person depends entirely upon our mind. Therefore, for every different person who’s perceiving us, including ourself, there is a different person that is created, named, labeled, and imputed.

It’s not surprising how hard it is to communicate because we’re all in our own “self” bubbles, totally viewing different selves, based on our karma, based on all manner of factors. We think there’s me, and there’s you, and there’s this, and there’s that, and everything is so solid and objective — but everything is subjective. Everything depends upon the mind. Buddha gave us this teaching so that we can break out of the jail cells of our mistaken identifications.

Defined by our good heart

When I first met Kadam Dharma, I was maybe 21. I thought a lot about identity, being a mixed-race person growing up in the American South. When you are in high school, you have all kinds of questions about your sexual identity and so forth; but when I met Buddha’s teachings and learned about ultimate truth emptiness, I realized that we didn’t have to be defined by anything other than our good heart, our Buddha nature.

I found that incredibly liberating. That is a correct way of identifying ourself. This is a way that we can choose to correctly discriminate, and if we identify ourself like this, then we can do so with others.

Geshe-la says that we have choice how we discriminate, it is up to us. For example, we can choose to see those who are challenging for us as objects of our spiritual growth, such as patience, wisdom, and compassion. This is not necessarily easy, but if we can understand that everything depends upon the mind we will see that it is nevertheless our choice, and we can become more and more familiar with making this correct choice, in meditation, out of meditation, when we’re having challenging conversations or reading difficult things in the news.

If we hold onto this correct way of thinking of ourself and others as defined by Buddha nature, but being temporarily controlled by the enemies of the delusions, we can have a deep level of respect and compassion for others while also still righting wrongs. Actually, we’d be able to right wrongs far more effectively.

Emotional honesty

Buddha identified discriminations and feelings as two of our main bases for self-identification.

There’s a phrase these days, “Don’t be in your feelings. Why you all in your feelings?” which is really quite Buddhist. Why are we trapped by our feelings? Feeling is really important and now, perhaps for many of us, individually, collectively, we can see that we have powerful emotions. These are not a problem. Perhaps if we are a Buddhist, we sometimes think that they are a problem because we see strong emotions as the opposite of inner peace. I’m sure there’s some validity to that, but we must never deny, suppress, ignore, or intellectualize our feelings. Why? Because then we are not practicing Dharma.

What we are trying to get to is the realization of ultimate truth, but how are we going to get there if we don’t start with a realization of honesty? Being emotionally truthful. If we don’t start off from truth, we’re not going to get to truth. And this is where the hard work comes in of looking at our faults in the mirror of Dharma. I’m not equating faults with strong emotions, but just looking honestly in a spiritual mirror at how we feel.

This is why the Buddhist approach was founded in meditating because through meditating we watch our mind. Without the practice of meditating, we can’t watch our mind well. We can’t see what we’re thinking and believing in every action. Without going deep into the heart in meditation, we remain stuck in our intellectual realm. Thus, we need meditation to see what’s happening within our mind, to dislodge our mistaken discriminations, to be completely honest about how we feel. And then, to direct our mind along a positive path, not suppressing, denying, or ignoring, but honestly seeing.

The phrase that’s really helped me lately is ‘emotional honesty.’ Mental honesty. Looking in the mirror without judgment or criticism. And if we have strong and powerful emotions, just allowing them to be, to wash over us. They won’t remain. And maybe we cry. Maybe we feel rage, and so forth. Until we have really great mastery over our mind, we’re going to experience these things. And that’s okay.

I think the measure of our Dharma practice is not about not experiencing these strong emotions, but how we practice with them.

For instance, we may have very strong anger, rage even. We want to blame. And within Buddha’s teachings, we say we can blame something. We can channel our anger. What can we blame? We can blame ignorance. We can blame delusion. But we never blame living beings. We never blame people, because people are not their delusions. People in some ways are already like enlightened beings. They are love. That is their nature, just as it is ours.

Over to you dear reader. Any comments for the guest writer are very welcome below.

Living beings have no faults

Guest article co-written in Arizona by one black and one white Kadampa.

Do you sometimes feel that the problems of our world are insurmountable? We feel confused about the way forward. What are the solutions, how can we effect change, and how can we effect it quickly? Because we need to make some changes now.

Although it can appear that the problems of our self and of our world are overwhelming, we can know from our own direct experience that things change so fast. Ven Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says:

If everyone in the world were to practice cherishing each other, all the problems of our world would be solved in just a few years.

This could happen if we all practiced love because love has such extraordinary power. Things can change dramatically in a very short amount of time. This is not a platitude; this is the truth. Why? The problems in our world have arisen because we do not practice love for one another. So, if we do the opposite, we get a new and different result and our problems will quickly disappear. We need to practice cherishing love and we need to do it now, not later.

The moment is calling us

I think that’s what this historic moment is calling us all to do. The future is now. From an ordinary point of view, if we think, “later,” what is the future? Fantasy. Some idealized vision. We need to bring the future into the present moment. That means that we can try our very best to practice love now, to practice powerful compassion now, to be wise now, to be patient now. Not later — we don’t need it later. We need it now. If we practice love, patience and wisdom right now, then we will see different results right now, and we will bring that future into the present moment.

The solution to the problems of our world is grounded in the transformation of our mind because if we change our mind, we change everything. This is Buddha’s essential teaching. If we change our mind, we change our world because what we see or experience exists in relationship to our mind.

This isn’t a statement to gaslight you and your reality, but to show that our mind has extraordinary power; so let’s harness thatcreative power our mind has to create good, to create peace, to hold onto the virtues of love, wisdom, truth, and patience, which are so necessary for us. We can take hold of the solution right now.

Change minds, change (inter)actions

When we look at what’s going on in our world, we automatically go to changing things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t change things — things need to be changed — but we sometimes neglect the understanding that if we change our mind then the quality of our actions changes. If we change what we feel and believe about others then the quality of our interactions changes. Thus, the way we go about making change is dramatically different because what we are bringing to it is not ordinary.

It is a challenge to think about changing our mind, to look within ourself and to take personal responsibility, to say “I’m going to be part of the solution and it starts within my mind.” We can rise to this challenge in a very balanced way, addressing both the outer problems and the mind.

Buddha taught that because our mind creates the world — our experience, our emotions, our actions. Our mind is so powerful and mental actions are hundreds of times more powerful than physical and verbal actions, as Genla Dekyong explained two days ago during the US Spring Festival.

In this video above, you can see the moment Venerable Geshe Kelsang says:

Love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all of our enemies.

If we have a powerful mind of love and we see love as real power, and we develop that stably within our heart, we would have no personal enemies. Yet we would have extraordinary power to do good things for others, and to move through the challenge, the hatred, the obstacles, unwaveringly. We are beings with so much power. We need to find it, claim it, take it back. And we can do so through rising to the spiritual challenge and taking these methods to heart.

What does world peace mean?

Buddha Shakyamuni dedicated all his activities to the benefit of all living beings. Similarly, the teachings of this tradition, called the New Kadampa Tradition, are dedicated to world peace. That is the vision of our world now. It’s not the vision of our world sometime later. We have built these temples, established these Centers for this world now as well as for the future, but also for our future, now.

Another way of looking at world peace is that we’re working on developing communities and societies that are founded in truth as opposed to deception; founded in love as opposed to self-interest; founded in wisdom as opposed to ignorance. This is world peace. Buddhists need to think about this. We talk about what’s called, “the Pure Land” as if it’s some future fantasy; but the Pure Land can be now, and if our compassion is strong, powerful, passionate, then we will bring that into reality very soon.

What is the Mahayana?

The nature of Buddha’s teachings is compassion — and also wisdom that overcomes ignorance. The teachings of modern Kadampa Buddhism are part of what is called, “the Mahayana.” “Maha” is a Sanskrit word that means “great” and “yana” means “vehicle” — “Great Vehicle.” It refers to the huge scope of our motivation that we can develop through practicing these teachings. This means that we can develop great compassion, which is universal compassion. This means that we don’t leave anybody out. These teachings, this Great Vehicle, is a vehicle that takes everyone out of the ocean of suffering.

The Mahayana asks us to develop this great compassion. It is a big goal, but a goal worth pursuing; and it is something that we can all accomplish. Why can we accomplish this pure, altruistic mind of the Great Vehicle, of great love, empathy, and eventually great compassion? Because it is our nature. Our nature as sentient beings is essentially good. We essentially have a heart of gold. Right now it is a gold nugget in dirt, but who we really are, what the nature of our mind really is, is love. Truth. Kindness. Compassion. Since these qualities are all part of our pure nature, we can accomplish this great scope of our vision and intention. We can access these qualities in meditation and, if we can enjoy the peace within and be it, then we will gain real confidence in who we actually are.

Our Buddha nature

If we can do this, we can develop confidence and even faith in who others really are too. I believe this is the starting point for this journey to ending all suffering for all beings. It starts in recognizing what we call our Buddha nature, our compassionate seed of enlightenment. Bringing about the end of our own personal and collective suffering necessitates this faith in ourself personally, and in all of us collectively. This is logical.

What’s the danger of not really relating to our Buddha nature as the essential quality of ourself and others? When we see others and ourself thinking, saying, and doing harmful things, then we will become discouraged. Angry. Ashamed. If we don’t relate to our essence and have faith in that as who we really are, then we get sucked into the drama and negativity because we’ve just lost sight of our own and others’ pure nature and potential.

We’ve lost our faith in each other, in our common humanity and so then we just descend into fighting, arguments, and destruction.
We need to work on developing faith in our common goodness. We know how powerful beliefs are. They guide all of our actions. Everything that we do and say comes from our beliefs, so what we believe about ourself and others is the foundation of how we live. Therefore, what we believe, what we have faith in, is power. It’s real power.

There’s nothing wrong with sentient beings

Therefore, how do we develop faith or confidence in our nature being essentially good? In How to Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang says:

Although sentient beings’ minds are filled with delusions, sentient beings themselves are not faulty. We say that sea water is salty but in fact it is the salt in the water that makes it salty.

This is exactly like our mind. Our mind is like pure, clear water. It just has salt in it. On the one hand, we think that the water is contaminated. On the other hand, we think, “But we can make it good.” And essentially it is good because the contamination, the salt, is temporary.

Similarly, all the faults we see in people are actually the faults of their delusions, not of the people themselves. The fault is the salt, not the water, so people are like pure water, pure in essence. They are good, but what makes them salty? Delusions. We are not our delusions — but we are often controlled by them.

Delusions are part of the characteristics of a person’s mind, not of the person. Since we can never find faults in sentient beings themselves, we can say in this respect sentient beings are like Buddhas.

Since enlightened beings are people who have purified their minds, they have only love and wisdom, constantly and spontaneously. That’s a simple way of understanding what is an enlightened being. Therefore, they benefit everybody with no concern for themselves and they’re always peaceful and happy. They’re free.

We are like enlightened beings already because our essential nature is like pure, clear water. Our essential nature is love and wisdom. It’s just that we’ve got the salt of delusions that we need to remove. You and I and every sentient being has Buddha nature, we’re almost enlightened already. We’re so close.

What do we relate to? Unfortunately, the salt. “There’s a whole glass of water here, but all I see is salt.” We forget that actually it’s pure water, just clouded over. We’re just mistaking who we are. We have mistaken appearance and beliefs. We’re not seeing the truth and it’s this mistaken perception of ourself and others — which is a projection of the mind — that traps us into believing something that’s not true. Therefore, we get angry and we harm each other. However, our root mind is completely pure.

Another example is that it is like blue sky, and our delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise. We know there are storms in the sky. There are dark clouds and all of a sudden it looks ominous. However, so quickly the weather changes, and then there’s blue sky for days and days.

The mind itself is pure like sky. And the delusions – our ignorance, anger, hatred, shame – these are just dark clouds. Not only are they not the sky, but they do not destroy the sky. They’re temporary, only moving through.

Therefore, living beings have no faults. If we can apply this correct belief to ourself, have faith in ourself, and really understand this logical way of thinking, we will have faith in other people too. How could it be that we ourselves are essentially pure while a whole lot of other people are not?! I don’t think that logic works. Every living being’s mind is equally pure.

Start from your blissful clear light mind

We have deep within us what’s called our root mind, our consciousness at our heart. It’s the root because it’s the source from which all our other minds develop. This heart-based mind has a beautiful name, “clear light.” Within Buddha’s teachings, we are taught that the deepest level of our mind, its nature, is always bliss, always peace.

When we do even a little breathing meditation, we experience a new level of peace. And the more that we meditate, the more peace we find. If the nature of our mind were not peaceful, then what we’d actually find would be just more and more layers of junk. We’d just go deeper and deeper into confusion and negativity. However, this is not the case.

We call this mind at our heart, “continuously residing.” Its nature is indestructible bliss. So this is the starting point – Buddha nature. The whole Buddhist path is a path of discovering and revealing this nature. If we hold onto the belief in our own and others’ pure nature without a doubt, and we engage in actions with this in mind, we will always be moving in the right direction. And, as Geshe Kelsang says, if every living being cherishes one another, believes in each other in this way, and pursues the common goal of real happiness and liberation from suffering, then the problems of our world will be solved in a few years. Truth.

Over to you. Please leave your comments for the guest authors in the box below!

Applying Buddhism to daily life: one Kadampa’s journey

A guest article.

I’m a white Australian/American and the video of George Floyd being murdered by a police officer, while other police officers watched, is not something I can ever “un-see”. While painful, as a Buddhist practitioner discomfort is something I am trying to learn to work through, not repress. I am no expert, but I would like to share my journey of looking deeper into this with you in case it’s of any help.

I have been studying and practicing Dharma for around 20 years now, and I am quite aware of the concept of reading/listening but not hearing, hearing but not knowing, knowing but not understanding, and understanding but not realizing. We can read about, listen to, and feel that we understand many things without it deeply touching our heart or moving us. Anyone who has ever had a Dharma insight will understand this point.

My profoundly kind Spiritual Guide has been giving me more or less the same words of wisdom for two decades, and I smile, enjoy the small progress I make, and don’t rise the next day with the fury of a Bodhisattva in my heart to decry all the simple and silly attachments and other delusions in my life in pursuit of protecting all living beings. I have access to the most complete and clear Buddhist path, I have faith in the teachings — and yet I hide in the so-called-comfort of my own samsaric existence — somewhat knowingly!

Just before I start ….

From the different opinions I am hearing on the matter of racism against black Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement, I realize that what I am about to say might not resonate with all people, including all Buddhists. All I can reply is that I understand you and I hear you.

To those who say this conversation is necessarily political, I reply that I feel the lines between political and civil & human rights seem to be blurred. People are confused with the verbiage and politicians are also standing on platforms that are about humanity – making “taking sides” about humanitarian issues seem political. But the issues are humanitarian whether a politician agrees with them or not. And the deep solutions are not political but spiritual.

On this subject, I think a lot of people are mistaking being asked to “take a side” as being political. If this were the case then the whole of Buddhism is political. I think that the only thing being asked of people is for them to pick the side of the Bodhisattva. I am no expert at being a Bodhisattva, but in my experience of trying, the best way to arrive at the act of having compassion for “all living beings” is through specific living beings, in a targeted way. I believe that Venerable Geshe Kelsang says that at the end of almost all the Mahayana meditations on developing love and compassion — start with our karmic circle.*

What can I myself do?

With that out of the way, I will now talk about my own journey. Before my very recent insights, I was looking but not seeing. I believed that because I had heard of the racism against black Americans, I understood it. In the past I also believed I knew Dharma before I had any actual insights. Neither were the case. And I suspect I am at the very beginning of my journey. As Buddhists, this is our specialty — so my feeling is that we do not need be afraid or have self-judgement. Instead we can have plenty of joy that we are trying – trying to get in there and root out anything keeping us in samsara.

I have read about the disparity between white Americans and black Americans. I have seen it on the news, including the numbers of deaths during the coronavirus being disproportionately weighted towards black Americans. I have seen videos, and more than I would like to count, not just of abject racism, but of the police murder of black Americans. Captured on video! And yet, I have done little for the cause.

I support several charities regularly, one of them against animal abuse. I never open the mail they send because I can’t un-see those images, and they are horrific. Why is that? I know many gay women and men who have been abused, women who have been raped, and black people who have suffered deeply at the hands of racism. Again here, I am supportive and loving, but have not necessarily actively engaged in practical or maybe even specific spiritual solutions to these atrocities in the past. So why not?

Isn’t it good enough to be a good person? Isn’t it good enough to do good things when you can?

I am a Buddhist. I am a Bodhisattva-in-training. And, as such, I believe deeply in the merit of Buddhism as a solution to all of our actual or inner problems. Only once I am enlightened will I truly be able to help all living beings … all of the time. So, what of my journey to enlightenment? How should I spend my time on the way there? How should I prioritize the many demands pulling me in a multitude of directions? And how does my spiritual practice intersect with practical solutions in my daily life?

Being true to the tenet of Mahayana Buddhism, having compassion for all living beings without exception, a Bodhisattva finds the suffering of all living beings – which means any living being — unbearable. The caveat here is that the Bodhisattva actually “finds” the suffering. This would take not just looking, but actually hearing – or deeply understanding what that meant. That is when we find something unbearable. This is also the reason I don’t open my mail if I don’t want to look at what it is showing me because it is unbearable. It’s not that I don’t care, in fact, I care deeply; but I am making a number of fatal flaws as a human and especially as a Buddhist.

First, I am letting the discomfort of the “unbearable” feeling prevent me from really looking, from really knowing, from really seeing. I think this is where a lot of well-intentioned people fall short. We look, find it painful to see, briefly acknowledging how terrible that must be “for all involved,” and we look away, getting back to our busy daily lives.

This same feeling keeps me from even engaging in conversation about the topic or racism when it comes up for fear of saying something “wrong” that would lead to a feeling of hurt or embarrassment. I know this does not reflect well on my character, but it is true. I raised this issue with a black girlfriend recently, to which she said:

Can you bear a small moment of discomfort in pursuit of a solution to racism, for a lifetime and generations of deep suffering?

I hope this sentence never leaves my mind.

if you are always trying to be normal

Second, on the basis of the fact that we “look away”, we deprioritize because we have not truly understood what the problem is. Today as I write this, it is a Saturday. My to-do list, like any other day, has more on it that I can possibly achieve in the time I have. I run a company, and between my work and home life, I seem to not have a moment to spare. And yet, if I looked up the street and saw several houses on fire, I would immediately abandon what I was doing and go help. Why? Because I can see it clearly. Lives are in danger. I couldn’t sit here finishing the financial reports for my company while simultaneously watching a house – with people in it – burn to the ground, all because I was too busy with other priorities.

Third, and just as important as the other items, is that even if we do have the time, the money, or the inclination to act, we are not identified with the solution, and we don’t have the confidence that what we are doing is really helping. This discourages us from continuing to act. This in turn undermines anything ever changing.

A Bodhisattva not only finds the suffering of any other living being unbearable, but is, at the same time, identified with the solution, knowing that freedom from suffering is possible. They have a clear vision of the solution and result, and a path to get there. In this way, a Bodhisattva is always confident in their actions, never stops working for the sake of all living beings, and never feels discomfort. The mind of compassion is a peaceful happy mind.

We need to be very honest with ourselves when we check – is my compassion a happy mind or not? If not, why not? Or maybe we even need to check by asking – how can I feel happy when I see the suffering of other living beings? It is not that Bodhisattvas feel happy when they see suffering, rather that their mind is never moved from peaceful confidence in the solution; and, when they see suffering, moved by it, Buddha nature they act, knowing that what they do will be moving in the right direction.

Diving in …

And so, with all of this in mind, I went on a deep dive into racism against black Americans and its implications.

Seeing this, and knowing how little I had actively done in the past and considering my own opportunity or privilege, coming to this understanding about myself was actually a little bit of a shock. I had been resting on a belief that it was good enough to be a good person. It was good enough to consider all beings as equals. It was good enough to do the things I am already doing (of which there are some…). But the truth is, if we look (and we don’t have to look too far or deeply), the house is burning! And we must act now.

This is surely how a Bodhisattva would feel.

Going out of my way to help

And so what now? For me it is time to act personally, on both a spiritual and practical level, and it is time to use any platform I have to work against the disparity. The time to act is now!

Last week I got together with a group of Sangha friends with the explicit purpose of talking about this issue. We were there to be honest with one another so that we can change, and we were there to hold one another accountable to our wishes to change. We plan to continue these conversations regularly, and we are all committing to actions.

Last week I held a meeting with all my employees. In the meeting I read out some topline statistics about the differences between black lives and white lives in America. After this I stopped and I asked everyone to take a moment of silence to think about what this really meant. Because this is where we need to start. We need to notice how things actually are. We need to truly see, to move, to act.

After this, I showed pictures of many black Americans who had been shot by police in 2020. I read their names, their ages, their home cities, and for a few of them, I read their stories. After this I asked people to take a moment to mentally place the pictures of their own family members on these photos, in these stories and asked them to spend a few moments thinking about how they would feel if it were their child, parent, cousin, uncle, etc. Because if we contemplate this deeply, we will be unable to bear the suffering.

And finally, we talked about action.

For my company, this will mean making systemic and formal changes as to how we hire people, where we spend our money, and how we leverage our communication channels as platforms to bring about positive change. This will also mean that we will commit to keeping the conversation and the action going.

For a Buddhist, this means spiritual action, which incidentally will lead to practical action. We (me) need to uproot our own ignorance through looking honestly at our own mind, and our own racist tendencies, even if that is avoidance or concealment or denial. We need to examine those places we feel discomfort, and look at why we feel it and how to move past that. (If we find we are already completely free from discrimination, which some of you reading this may well be, then that is wonderful too, and there was no harm looking.) We need to develop authentic compassion, which is a peaceful, action-oriented mind. We need to understand the great and unnecessary tragedy that mistaken appearance and conception keep us trapped in this place. And we need to use all of this to develop a strong intention to become an actual Bodhisattva and a Buddha.

I want to finish this article with a quotation from Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

Although there are many different parts of the body, such as the arms and legs,
We protect all these parts as equally as we protect the body itself.
In a similar way, although there are many different living beings,
I should cherish them all as equally as I cherish myself.

The suffering I experience
Does not harm others,
But I find it hard to bear
Because I cherish myself.

Likewise, the suffering of others
Does not harm me,
But, if I cherish others,
I shall find their suffering hard to bear.

Therefore, I should dispel others’ suffering
Simply because it is suffering, just like mine;
And I should bring happiness to others
Simply because they are living beings, just like me.

Postscript

*Since I wrote the above, I have received some more feedback. In response to people saying things like (these are real questions), “Why don’t you feel it necessary to have these huge debates about the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Muslim Burmese? Are they not quite important enough? Where do we draw that line I wonder? Racism will not stop until delusions stop, it’s that simple. Why don’t you care equally for all the other minority groups and oppressed people around the world?”

Fair questions. One answer is that with regards to the Syrians, the Palestinians, and the Muslim Burmese, these people ALL MATTER. A child dies in the world every 10 seconds from hunger. More than a million (known) children are trafficked each year. Almost 30% of the world does not have access to safe drinking water. And I could go on… those trapped in refugee camps, victims of war, living in abject poverty, child marriages, the violence and abuse of animals….. These living beings ALL MATTER. All the time.

Drawing attention to one group is the only way we learn about it and can learn what it is that we can do to help. Don’t we want to help everyone? We can’t learn about gross injustices against “all living beings” at once. We are also not in a position to help everyone all at once either. But this happens to be an opportunity to speak up and do something about racism, which affects people all around me and right under my nose.

I think it is interesting to think about what it means that our job as Kadampas is to pray, and that the only way we will truly end racism is by ending self-cherishing and self-grasping. Until then, samsara will prevail over us. I agree full-heartedly with all of that. That being said, Geshe Kelsang tells us that modern Buddhism means to be “out there” in the modern world, the world we helped create, amongst people, helping them through example, through peaceful minds, through teaching, through giving advice, and, when able, through practical help too. Geshe-la would never say to NOT help someone if we see something practical that we could do. But do we see?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what activism means, and how it doesn’t mean going to demonstrations or even writing blog articles, but how it does mean living a life where we take every opportunity to protect the lives of human beings and animals we are intertwined with. I think if people have a platform – like a well read blog, or if they are a celebrity or a business owner or even a politician — then it is valuable to many people that they use their platform to speak up. Because this is what a black Kadampa said to me today:

The silence around racism is very loud
Touches us at the core of who we believe we are and who others are.

Over to you! Comments for the guest author are welcome below.

Living beings are never our enemies

So says Buddha. Living beings are never our enemies, they are our kind mothers. Only delusions are our enemies.

I want to unpack that a bit because it has helped me stay sane, positive, calm, and with a big blissful heart, with room for everyone, even when I am in the very midst of arguing with people. (I do actually like a good argument, ahem debate — always have, as some of you may have noticed.) Like many of you, I have been discussing and debating Black Lives Matter* – coming from a place of wanting to be not just non-racist but also anti-racist, not just an ally but also an abolitionist. Why?

To be clear, this is not a political but humanitarian issue for me. I do not press political solutions, that is not my area. I do believe spiritual solutions are possible though.

I have felt pretty strongly about the stupidity and injustice of racism for years, maybe most of my life in unequal countries around the world; but there seems to be no better time than right now for us to do something about this 400-year-old US disaster. We seem to be in the middle of an historic outpouring of support that may actually make the difference, that is making a difference. I am not holding my breath for total equality, freedom, and justice just yet. This is samsara. But it would appear that a huge number of people are open to listening, learning, and seeing things they didn’t see before and, if this continues, it will show up in a fairer society.

What does racism have to do with Buddhism?

So what can Buddhism contribute? Or, more to the point, what can I as a Buddhist contribute? And what can I learn too? I was struck anew by this line from The Liberating Prayer a little earlier today:

You who love all beings without exception

It is so true, Buddha really does love all beings without exception, all the time! And how on earth does he manage to pull that off? How do Buddhas never ever lose their love and compassion for all living beings even when they don’t agree with a single word that they’re saying (which has got to be a lot of the time, right, given how much we are all hallucinating what’s going on?!) The answer is: because they never conflate living beings with their delusions.

It is because Buddhas distinguish between delusions and persons that they are able to see the faults of delusions without every seeing a single fault in any living being. Consequently their love and compassion for all living beings never diminish. We, on the other hand, fail to make this distinction, and so we are constantly finding fault with other people but do not recognize the faults of delusions, even those within our own mind. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness.

As we try to understand our own part in this world we have collectively created with others, and as we fight for not just temporary but permanent justice and equality for all beings, we can remember who our true enemies are. Is it not greed and hatred and ignorance that have kept racism alive for so long? These same three poisons that are responsible for every other atrocious thought, word, and deed that has ever occurred? Including cruelty all over the world every day, such as the rapidly growing sex slavery trade, or the mass incarceration, torture, and murder of millions of animals every single minute. Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. These three poisons are responsible for all six realms of samsara, including the hell realms, for goodness sake, so of course they are responsible for injustice and racism. Systemic racism is but one room of the prison built on these delusions.

Yet living beings are not their delusions. Delusions are our worst enemies, not us. Blaming people for their delusions is like blaming a victim for the fault of their attacker, as Geshe Kelsang explains. Living beings are our kind mothers. I and especially guest writers will be discussing more about how we can get rid of our own and others’ delusions around racism in upcoming articles, and do check out this last fantastic guest article, Dislodging discrimination, if you have not yet had a chance to do so. For now I want to look at this other part of the equation, how we can discriminate all beings as our mothers.

It would make a difference, would you agree? For although we may not always agree with our mother, and indeed sometimes find her to be totally annoying and ignorant, it doesn’t stop us from loving her. We may flounce out of the house muttering about how she knows nothing, but it is only a matter of time before we want to go home again; and if she was really suffering all our conflicts would be forgotten as we tried with all our heart to help her.

From a spiritual point of view, remembering that everyone is our kind mother opens our heart wide and leads to great compassion, such that we cannot bear their suffering and are impelled to attain enlightenment for their sake. But even from a practical daily getting along with and wanting to help people point of view, this way of seeing people is deeply helpful. When we discriminate all living beings as our mother, we instantly feel a deeper connection with them and responsibility for them.

I’ll say a bit about the traditional meditation based on an understanding of past and future lives, and then explain how we can hold this view even if we don’t subscribe to past and future lives.

Never judge a book by its cover

Buddha Shakyamuni said:

I have not seen a single living being who has not been the mother of all the rest.

To really understand what he means requires an understanding of rebirth, which in turn requires an understanding of our continuum of consciousness and how this current dream-like life is not our only life. As Buddha said:

This world is not our permanent home. We are just travellers passing through.

I explain a lot about the continuum of consciousness and rebirth in these articles. The quick jist of this meditation I will take now from the Introduction to Buddha Vajrapani Sadhana:

Normally we point to other people and say, ‘They are my enemies’, but this is a mistake. Living beings cannot be our enemies; they are our mothers. We must understand this. Since it is impossible to find a beginning to our mental continuum, it follows that we have taken countless rebirths in the past and, as we have had countless rebirths, we must have had countless mothers. Where are all of these mothers now? They are all the living beings alive today.

Normally we judge books by their covers and people by their covers too, including even ourselves a lot of the time. What do we see when we look at a stranger? Rarely our deep and close history with them. If we could look back at our mental continuum and their mental continnuums and see the interweaving of our minds and bodies going back through countless lives, we would see we have a profound connection with everyone. Maybe we think, “Surely I’d remember!” But I don’t even remember what I had for lunch last Wednesday, let alone all my previous lives.

I don’t have the space to explain the whole meditation right now, but I hope you can read about it in How to Transform Your Life, Joyful Path of Good Fortune, and/or The New Meditation Handbook, and do give it a go.

Regardless of past lives ….

HOWEVER, even if we don’t want to take past and future lives into account, it is still really helpful to decide to view living beings as our kind mothers.

As Geshe Kelsang explains in How to Understand the Mind:

We can choose how we discriminate objects.

Our thoughts are free, and, given that there is nothing actually behind them, we create our world with our imputations.

The defining characteristics of an object do not exist from the side of the object but are merely imputed by the mind that apprehends them. We can understand this by considering how different people view one object. ~ page 24

Here’s an example. Let’s say you want a family but cannot have biological children, so you decide to adopt. Maybe you fly half way across the world to see a child who is a total stranger to you – different parents, looking nothing like you, born into a hitherto alien culture, and so on. But you decide, “This is my child. I am going to love them forever.” And then you do love them forever.

Why? Through the force of your changed decision and changed discrimination. That’s it. From their side, they didn’t have to do anything – you just decided. And now you’re stuck with them through thick and thin, and that’s perfectly fine with you.

Or take your pet. Why do you love your pet so much that you would bust the bank to help them, but not all the other cats & dogs in shelters and wet meat markets around the world? Because at some point you decided to take them on, and then you bonded from there.

We don’t have to legally adopt anyone, let alone everyone, to decide that they are our mother and we’re going to love them forever. We can just adopt them in our thoughts. That decision and discrimination will function to bring about a deep feeling of connection and love, and if we do it for everyone, well you can see what a difference that would make.

One example — if someone we love is quite dumb or disagrees with us, it is not so hard to be patient, we don’t hold it against them – sometimes we can even find it endearing. Take your cat, for example.

There is no limit to our love when we decide to love. We each have the seed for universal love and compassion, and this is a powerful way to grow it.

It is true that everyone has been everything to us, but we focus on everyone as our mother because our Mom has been the kindest person for us – whatever her delusions, without her we would not be here. George Floyd called out to his Mama in his time of need, even though she was no longer alive, in a poignant cry recognized around the world. Most of us would. Our mother is a very important person in our life.

Years ago I was explaining this meditation to someone in Florida and he was really quizzical because he didn’t buy into past and future lives. But he apparently went away and thought about it because he liked the idea – and I know this because months later he came back and, somewhat to my surprise, told everyone in the group how his life had changed utterly for the better. Holding that view of others, even though he didn’t embrace the idea of past and future lives, meant that day and night he was feeling more warm, connected, and respectful to everyone he met and thought about.

Changing our perspective changes everything about how we experience our world and other people. Dharma is practiced in accordance with our wishes — we can check whether a teaching might work for us, and, if it does, we can choose to practice it. The reason enlightenment is possible is that we can change our thoughts if we decide to – we can learn to think bigger better thoughts of wisdom and compassion.

I don’t want to be a mean and heartless child (or dog)

There is a powerful verse in The Lord of all Lineages:

All mother living beings who care for me with such kindness
Are drowning in the fearful ocean of samsara.
If I give no thought to their pitiful suffering
I am like a mean and heartless child.

If it is mean and heartless to simply give no thought to all these beings who have taken care of us with such kindness, how mean and heartless is it to actually hate them?! We need to hate their delusions and love them. We can do this.

I read a story a couple of weeks ago about a 55lb dog called Blue who tragically mauled his very loving human mother to death. No one knows why. But what an hallucination he must have been experiencing. This poor woman died despite her love for her four-legged babies, and he was put down because he is unsafe. Where is he now without her protection and love? What has happened not just to her but to him, all because for a few dreadful minutes he recognized her not as his kind mother but as some sort of threat.

All living beings possess the seed of enlightenment, but animals cannot grow that seed while in an animal body. However, we human beings can choose to change our discriminations and grow our hearts. If we train in this view, not only will we find ourselves striding towards the perfect liberation of enlightenment, but we will also be far more skillful in our ability to support others practically now. We could help change our existing society, a society we after all helped build in the first place through our own karma and other actions.

The party to beat all parties

Later in The Liberating Prayer it says:

Please nourish me with your goodness
That I in turn may nourish all beings
With an unceasing banquet of delight.

Personally I can’t wait for this blissful celebration at the end of my samsara, the most inclusive party in all of time and space, to which every single mother being without exception is invited forever.

Over to you. Would love to hear your comments.

(*By the way, if you object to my using the phrase Black Lives Matter, can I point out that I still also feel strongly about removing everyone’s suffering. To be clear, saying Black Lives Matter is not saying other lives’ don’t matter. For example, saying Rainforests Matter is not saying that other forests don’t also matter. They all do, but sometimes there is a burning need, or an opportunity presented, or some karma ripening to help, or something. And also if black lives don’t matter, or matter less, which has often been the case, then we clearly can’t say that all lives matter.)

Dislodging discrimination

Recognizing all beings as our mothers

What is modern Buddhism for?

Dislodging discrimination

Written by an African American Kadampa Buddhist.

8 mins read.

How do you feel about people who appear to be different to you? Someone with a different color skin. A different looking nose. Different looking hair. Someone from a different culture. Someone who likes different foods or music than you. Different sports. Someone who speaks a different language. Someone who wears different clothes. Someone in poverty. Someone with mental health issues. Someone who is angry. Someone who is visibly in pain. How do you feel?

It’s complicated. It depends. Feelings are not solid but depend on so many things. Our upbringing and education, our friends and way of life, our karma from previous intentions and actions, our beliefs and values, and many more things besides. Our thoughts and feelings aren’t straightforward or easily categorized. Our mind changes like the wind, and we often feel differently on different days.

Why you all in your feelings?

How we feel is entirely subjective, but because we grasp at our feelings as solid and objective, they are deceiving us much of the time. Yet we are in our feelings so much. We allow ourselves to be in them, to dwell in them, to stew in them. We allow our feelings to control us and dictate our actions, which can and does cause so much suffering. Buddha himself highlights this fact, calling out our contaminated feelings as a main component of how we build our false sense of self or identity.

There’s a popular phrase these days “In your feelings.” Courtesy of Urban Dictionary:

Kianna is over there pouting because Shaundra is trippin & snapped at Kianna for being in her way.

Kianna, why are you all in your feelings? You know how Shaundra be trippin.

David is in a bad mood because his girl didn’t call him last night.

Bro, why you all in your feelings, you know you just met that girl last weekend.

I think Buddha would agree. Why you all in your feelings? It’s a great question to ask.

Our feelings often arise from ignorant causes and give rise to suffering results. Yet we feel so right to be in our feelings. Why? Because they are real! And because they are mine! (Turn on sad music. Or happy music.)

We often base our whole sense of self off of these fleeting insubstantial unfindable feelings. Happy feelings arise, we think “I am happy.” Disappointed feelings, “I am disappointed.” This goes for most of our ever-changing senses of self, totally identifying “Me” with whatever feelings happen to be arising in our mind. A happy self. A sad self. A conflicted me. An overwhelmed me. A romantic self. An angry self. The results of overly identifying with our feelings can be quite tragic – tragi-comic, melodramatic, or even full on Greek tragedy.

Don’t believe everything your mind is saying

As it says in the Buddhist scriptures:

Appearances are deceptive and our own opinions are unreliable.

“What?!? Excuse me?” The BIG I does not like to hear that our opinions are not to be trusted and that what our mind perceives or appears is fooling us.

The real fool is our own ignorance. It is never to be trusted. When we are under the influence of ignorance, what is appearing to our mind is an hallucination created by ignorance. Our opinions and how we feel based on those appearances are unreliable. What we then do, how we act, is also contaminated by ignorance.

Our mind under the influence of ignorance is out of control, which means we are out of control; and when we are out of control our actions are not helping.

This is what we Buddhists call samsara — the cycle of contaminated, impure life, a life controlled by ignorance and other delusions. It’s not a pretty picture; and nowadays it seems that it’s getting clearer and clearer how ignorance is polluting our minds and society.

However, it is nothing new – we have been under the influence of ignorance since beginningless time. It would be good if we could enter a rehab facility of wisdom to detox our ignorance. Otherwise it’s just going to get worse for us and everyone else around us.

A personal mental survey

We need to do the work. Each one of us. We need to do the hard work of looking in the mirror of Dharma and asking, “How do I feel about…” Someone who is challenging me. Someone who appears different from me. A fundamentalist Christian. A far-right or far-left or straight-in-the-middle politician. A racist.

It’s not enough to say, “Oh I’m a Buddhist so (by definition) I love everyone. I have equanimity,” while at the same time feeling viscerally afraid of someone with darker skin. Or assuming that someone of a different background than ours isn’t interested in Buddha’s teachings. Or holding a great variety of assumptions and biases towards people of color for example. That can be any color by the way, including white. What are our stereotypes of any “type” of person?

Seeing discrimination in the Dharma mirror

Geshe Kelsang says:

We tend to project the faults or qualities of the few onto the many, and then develop hatred or attachment on the basis of, for example, race, religion, or country.

How do we think about someone who appears differently than us? What are the faults we are seeing in them? How are we discriminating against them? Buddha also called out discrimination as another main building block of how we identify ourself. Discrimination is a functionality of our mind and we can’t think without it. Simply, it serves to identify something as this versus that.

We have to do the hard but rewarding work of examining our minds, our biases, our feelings — being so honest with ourself that we feel a little pain our heart when we see the truth of our own faulty discrimination. It’s not a pain that lasts, more like a needle holding a medicine that will cure our illness. Or like removing a splinter from our toe – it hurts a little, but it’s humbling and quite quickly feels good to be on the way to being free from the pain.

The fourth type of pride, pride in identity, is an inflated sense of self-importance based simply on our identity, such as being proud of being an English person, proud of being white, proud of being a man, or proud of being a Tantric meditator. ~ How to Understand the Mind

So, how are we identifying ourself versus others? Of course our ignorance is always influencing the situation and so, if we’re honest, on some level or another we’re not identifying ourself and others correctly. For instance, we can discriminate cats as the most cute loveable animals, and on that basis create ourselves an identity as a cat-person. Raccoons? Hmmm. Not so much. Ooops. Just did it again. Mistakenly identifying ourself and others. It’s quite funny in some ways and then not so much in other ways.

This mistaken way of identifying ourself, and by extension others who seem inherently different to us, is the root of all suffering. So if we want to be free from suffering we have no choice but to do the real work. The honest work. The challenging work. The work of looking in the Dharma mirror at how we discriminate ourself and others, how we identify our self and others, how we feel about our self and others, and how ignorance is messing up this whole process of cognition. It’s messing with our reality. Right now it is not hard to see that it’s really, really messing things up.

The imprints of ignorance cause mistaken discriminations that apprehend an inherently existent self, even though such a self does not exist. Moreover, because of our familiarity with delusions we discriminate some people as our friends, some as enemies and some as strangers; but all these discriminations are mistaken. ~ How to Understand the Mind

For many of you reading this, I’m sure you could think of a number of ways in which Geshe Kelsang has explained how to correctly identify ourself and others. So it’s up to you (and me too) to do the work. To take the teachings deeper and try harder to get out of our hallucinatory discriminations and biased feelings by dislodging our deeply held grasping at both.

The way forward

If it weren’t for Buddha’s radical wisdom, we wouldn’t be able to understand much of this. We probably wouldn’t be able to even think or speak these things. Without Buddha we would be trapped in this mixed-up reality, literally forever.

In their compassion Buddhas feel no difference between their most bitter opponents and their own sons; they feel compassionate concern for everyone without any discrimination. ~ Joyful Path of Good Fortune.

11-Turning-the-Wheel-of-Dharma

Buddha has shown us the great example of deep compassion without discrimination. He’s shown us the freeing reality of ultimate truth. Due to his guidance we have the incomprehensibly good fortune to see the way out. Especially due to our kind visionaryteachers such as Je Tsongkhapa and Venerable Geshe Kelsang, we have crystal clear and practical teachings that anyone can follow. These wise beings are giving us the opportunity to clean up the mess of ignorance and walk out the door of samsara, only to return again and again for everyone else.

Persistence

When a runner trains, they train in intervals. There are periods of slower runs and faster runs, shorter and longer distances. Sometimes they push a little, sometimes they rest. It’s the same when training our mind. Sometimes we’ve got to push a bit harder to achieve a goal. Sometimes we’ve got to dig a bit deeper to find extra power.

I think now’s the time to dig deeper, to push a little harder, to challenge ourselves to go to the next level of our spiritual training. With the world going in the way it appears to be going, we must do this. We must and we can find a better way forward.

Over to you. Please leave your comments for the guest writer below.

Looking for happiness where it can be found

A guest article by a Kadampa Buddhist monk in Texas.

8 mins read.

We can think less! Wouldn’t that be nice? Day in and day out our mind is like fizzy water with so many bubble-like thoughts – we find ourselves thinking annoyed thoughts, unkind thoughts, self-defeating thoughts, random thoughts, and a bunch of other thoughts that we really don’t want to think.

When our mind is scattered like this, our attention is blurred and our natural wisdom is out of focus. Thinking, thinking, thinking, especially about challenging things, we easily overcomplicate matters and find ourselves stuck in indecision or tied in emotional knots. With our thoughts out of our control, we feel kicked about like a pinball in a pinball machine. By reactively pressing the buttons of delusions, we constantly feel disturbed, unpeaceful, and scattered. It’s really not as much fun as we think.

One great meditation to help us settle all that mental movement is called absorption of cessation of gross conceptual thoughts. It’s a special name for the practice of learning not to think so much! Another is simple breathing meditation. As Geshe Kelsang explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune:

Geshe-la in Dallas circa 2002 — Geshe Kelsang in Dallas circa 2002

Inappropriate attention is conceptual thought, and breathing meditation temporarily removes all negative conceptual thoughts from our mind, making it calm like water that has become pure and still. Atisha says in Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment:

“Moreover the Blessed One has said: ‘The great ignorance of conceptualization causes us to fall into the ocean of samsara. [A mind] of non-conceptual concentration is free from conception and as clear as space.'”

Amidst all this static we are only trying to be happy! We are trying to be happy all the time. Which really isn’t a problem. Buddha doesn’t say, “Stop trying to be happy all the time! Just deal with it. Suck it up.” Can you imagine Buddha saying this?! I can’t. In fact, Buddha says the opposite.

He says this wish to be happy all the time is our real wish; so why not fulfill it? In reality we are never going to give up this wish. Temporary freedom from problems is too short lived. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang says in Modern Buddhism:

Temporary liberations from particular sufferings are not good enough.

Since this is the case, let’s find lasting happiness. Let’s learn to be happy all the time!

“But hang on”, we might think, “That’s childish!” or “It’s unrealistic to be happy all the time!” Adjusting our expectations, we settle for being unhappy and unfulfilled instead, thinking that’s all there is. We simply try to put up with things and catch some limited happiness where we can.

Where happiness is

Both objections do have some truth to them. But it’s good to ask, “What kind of happiness are we talking about?”

It is fair to say that it’s entirely unrealistic to expect to find lasting happiness if we are looking for it in the wrong place. But lasting happiness itself is not spiritual fantasy. Buddha says it can be so, and many have seen this to be the truth. Buddha is a realist. Buddhism is all about being real. It is about learning to live in accordance with the way things are — reality. And if we look for happiness where it can be found, we will find it.

This is so simple for something so beautiful that maybe we think it has to be harder or more complicated. We can even look at all the extraordinary teachings of Buddha and think that this lasting happiness business sounds pretty complicated and, hmmm, I’m not sure if I want anything more complicated! I agree, who needs more complicated issues in their life!

It’s as simple as this. If you need motor oil and you go to the smelly trees section of the auto parts store, you aren’t going to find motor oil. But that’s just what we do. Or we go over to the windshield wipers section and, exasperated, think, ‘This is ridiculous. No motor oil!” Then we think, “What kind of useless auto parts store is this!?” Frustrated and with a feeling of entitlement we find a store clerk and say, “Excuse me, I’ve been looking all over this store and I can’t find any motor oil anywhere.” They kindly reply, “Oh we have every kind you could need in Aisle 7. Did you look over there?” But we never looked there, even though that’s where it is.

If we look in the right place we will find exactly what we are looking for and more. The thing is, our normal way of looking for happiness is to look outside of ourself. We think, “I’m going to be happy WHEN … I meet someone who makes me laugh. I find success in my career. I lose 20lbs and get a new wardrobe. I go to cool places and have an adventure.” We’re always postponing happiness to a later time, and so are never actually really happy because we’re still seeking it in Aisle #3 in the smelly trees section instead of Aisle #7 where it can be found.

In a way, we are giving over our own power to be happy to someone or something else. We often feel powerless or have a hollow feeling that we can’t quite fill. That happy feeling is elusive, like water in our hands slipping through our fingers. So why don’t we reclaim our power to be really happy? Instead of giving it away, why don’t we take it back? We can find this spiritual power to be happy and fulfilled, an inner power to heal our mind and body. Through meditation we can find it within, grow it, and allow it to shine out to others. We can find a radiant inner resilience, which is like shining armor in the face of conflict and difficulty.

This is not unrealistic or spiritual fantasy. It is clear, logical, and practical. Meditation is not about checking out of reality – it is about checking into the reality of pure happiness. This benefits us, our family, and everyone we meet — and it’s not unrealistic to say that eventually it benefits the entire universe. We are all like cells in the body. So what kind of cell are we going to be?

New paradigm of happiness

I quiet reflection think we need to change our paradigm of happiness. Instead of it being, “I’ll be happy when …,” it can be, “How can I be truly happy inside now?” This way of thinking is not selfish, it is wisdom. Through Buddha’s incredible practicality we can shift our search for happiness 180 degrees, from outside ourselves to inside ourselves. We can find it within our peaceful heart right now.

A simple example is making plans. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, making it seemingly impossible to plan. But we still have our little daily plans, even if we can’t have the big ones – we plan to have a cup of tea and then a cookie. Yet if things change, even the little plans go out of the window.

That’s happened quite a lot for me recently, and at one point I found myself getting a bit irritated.

Menla and Shima — @Next door to KMC Texas

“Wait a minute!”, I thought. “Am I trying to find happiness through my plan?! But that’s not where happiness comes from!” Remembering to simply accept and go with the flow, the day turned out to be lovely. This was a helpful experience. I guess this 20 years’ of meditation is getting me somewhere.

Adjust on the fly

Meditation is not just about that quiet moment alone, but being able to adjust on the fly. It’s so important right now as all our plans have been smashed or temporarily interrupted at least. This has happened around the whole world.

A great question to ask is, “Why is my one plan more important than anyone else’s?” We’re all in this together –- as communities, cities, and countries. When we step back and gather perspective, for many of us it’s not too bad and it’s temporary. And as Venerable Geshe Kelsang says, “This is nothing, others far worse.’” Thinking like this we regain our inner peace, which is real happiness. We move into empathy and compassion, which are real protections or spiritual armor.

Meditation on the go is about this. Not getting stuck on what we think happiness is, looking for it where it can’t be found, but remembering in the moment where it really is — inside our peaceful and positive mind.

Re-examining and changing our paradigm of happiness is of great value during these unusual times, and is in fact always invaluable. Many people are naturally thinking about this these days, and understanding the value of contentment. Just because they are not able to do all the things they normally want to do, people are finding some more simplicity, being a bit more satisfied and happy with what is. This inner quality of contentment is something many people are finding naturally. It’s a form of non-attachment, which is central to Buddhism. It’s a form of letting go. Contentment is being happy whether our conditions are good or bad, not depending on those conditions for our happiness.

At the core of our new paradigm is checking into the reality of happiness through meditation. Making meditation central to how we live our lives, not just as an adjunct or fancy addition, we find the reality of pure happiness. We grow in inner peace, contentment, and joy. This power of true happiness shines out to others, helping them find peace too. This shift is so simple yet so profound. And as we keep making these small shifts everyday, things really do change in unexpectedly good ways.

More great advice coming soon from this same monk! Meanwhile, please leave your comments for him in the comments box below.

Online Kadampa Spring Festival 2020

I’m doing something a bit unusual in this blog article, which is simply encouraging anyone who is reading it and who is interested in Buddhism to tune into the International Kadampa Spring Festival if you haven’t done so already and can make the time …

(Here is this article in Spanish.)

Buddha Vajrapani, the Buddha of power, who destroys diseases and delusions

This is because I’ve been finding it to be incredibly profound, clear, uplifting, and relevant to what’s going on right now. From what I am gleaning, it is helping people beyond measure, and it is definitely a huge shot in the arm for our troubled world.

I think it would be very powerful for everyone if loads and loads of people could hear these really clear Buddhist teachings on developing compassion and wisdom, receive the empowering blessings of Buddha Vajrapani, and do the inspiring meditations and retreat with these three close and immensely kind disciples of Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.

Tomorrow is technically the last day of the Festival — however, the links are available until June 3rd, which is still a week away. If you have not been able to listen in yet, or if you didn’t know this was happening, maybe you can think about registering today and making a plan to listen in over the next several days? Because you still have time. There are people all over the world who are still joining in, and I think a lot of people will in any case want to listen to a lot of the teachings and meditations twice before the links expire.

I would suggest starting with the first teaching and working your way systematically through the meditations, empowerment, teachings, and retreat in the order they are presented on the page, getting as far as you can according to what else you have going on over the next week! There is no need to join in for the Pujas at this point unless you have lots of time. Any questions, write them in the comments box below.

Here is the link to register: https://kadampabookings.org/frontend/?eventid=587

May all the inner and outer obstacles of all living beings swiftly be pacified.

The compassion cure

A guest article by a Buddhist gerontologist.

I wrote Parts 1 and 2 of this blog while “coronavirus” was a new word appearing in a far-off land. Shrouded by an illusion of safety in my Brooklyn apartment, I assumed it would be like other diseases that popped up around the world in recent times, thankfully disappearing before spreading beyond localized areas. By the time Part 1 was published, the coronavirus had reached the West Coast of the United States and it was all anyone could talk about.

(This is Part 2 of Everyone Wants to be Seen: Observations from a Buddhist Gerontologist.)

Luna Kadampa, our editor, connected what I had written to the crisis by pointing to the impact it was having on our elderly:

Given that these strange COVID-19 times are making our elderly all around the world even more vulnerable, and that many are being kept behind closed doors for their own protection, I find this guest article in 2 parts a timely encouragement to see them and to care. ~ Ed.

In the mere weeks since that publication, the entire world has changed. Buddhists know everything is changing at every moment. Blink and it’s a whole new world. But we’re talking about a once-in-a-lifetime change. Tens of thousands have died. Millions have lost jobs. People are lonely. They are scared. I wondered if what I had written for Part 2 would still have relevance. And, given the cataclysmic scale of the pandemic, if any of it mattered.

What really matters?

What does matter when the world we normally see falls apart? How do we manage as we helplessly watch the pieces slip through our fingers? Without a spiritual path we might default to things that make the situation worse. We scroll news feeds for glimmers of hope or to justify our worry, look for someone to blame, take substances to numb the pain or indulge escapist thoughts on the one hand or hopeless ones on the other.

In Buddhism we take refuge in the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. They alone have the power to protect us from this calamity. Buddha is the wise physician who diagnoses our problem, Dharma, his teachings, is the medicine we need to get well, and Sangha is the community of kind nurses helping us to heal.

Our real refuge is buried deep within our own heart. It is our compassion, a wish for our self and others to be freed from suffering. Compassion has the power to vanquish all our anger, fear, and depression, and can lift others out of theirs, too. Which is what I discovered in the sixty years I spent with thousands of elderly people. It is the type of true refuge we all need in these unprecedented and perilous times. It is where I was headed with the second part of this blog when our entire world got turned upside-down.

The unseen friend of migrators

In Part 1, I wrote about the decades I spent questioning anyone “of a certain age,” hoping they could make sense of a world that was nonsensical, contaminated, and oftentimes cruel. I was certain they could reveal some big meaning to life that eluded me. At a minimum, they could provide me with a reason to get up each morning.

While I never found a satisfying answer to all my questions, little did I realize how valuable those years would prove to be. In every connection with my elderly friends, listening and being heard, seeing and being seen, offering comfort and being comforted, I experienced an immensely important spiritual lesson. I just didn’t see it.

Lama Tayang (quoted in the book Universal Compassion) wrote:

Compassion is the unseen friend of migrators.

I think he meant this figuratively — that matters of the heart aren’t seen by our physical eyes. But for me it was literal. I couldn’t see that what was occurring within these interactions provided a large clue to the mystery I was trying to solve.

It took Buddha Shakyamuni to dispel the darkness of my mind. In my first Buddhist class, Gen Kelsang Rigpa, the Resident Teacher of Kadampa Meditation Center Los Angeles, told everyone gathered how Buddha had explained that we are all searching for something. Naturally, I was hooked because by this time I’d spent half a century looking. The answer was so obvious it surprised me: “we all want to be happy”. Not just in the moment, but permanently — there is never a moment when we don’t want to be happy.

I wondered, “Could this be what I was seeking all those years?” It seemed so simple. Yet the moment I heard it, I knew it to be true. Gen Rigpa went on to explain that this wish is what drives all our actions, be it the pursuit of a career, a relationship, money, a reputation, or the myriad of other things we chase after. The problem, according to Buddha, is that these things don’t bring us the type of pure and lasting happiness we seek.

So if happiness doesn’t lie in these usual suspects, where can it be found? In How to Understand the Mind, Geshe Kelsang writes:

In the Sutras, Buddha says: “The fully ripened effects of actions ripen not on soil or stones, but only on consciousness.” This is because only consciousness has feelings, and only with feelings can we experience the ripened effects of actions. Virtuous actions result in pleasant feelings, non-virtuous actions result in unpleasant feelings, and neutral actions in neutral feelings.

We find happiness by cultivating virtuous minds like love and compassion that ripen back on us as pleasant feelings. And this is where all my years with my elderly friends rained down like a million blessings.

Cherishing others is the key that unlocks the prison of self

As the years unfolded, I began to notice something interesting. I observed that even in my darkest hours, no matter how pointless everything seemed, being with my elderly friends often lifted me. Even opening the door of the nursing home on my way in to work in the morning made me feel better.

I experienced this pleasant sensation as a small boy being cherished by his grandmother. And over the decades I experienced it time and again with my elderly friends and clients. Maybe it wasn’t a permanent release from mental pain, but it was at least a temporary parole. And it appeared to help them, too. Even those in the depths of depression seemed better during our interactions than before. Why?

I believe one of the reasons that compassion is our friend is that it protects us from ourselves. It has the power to instantly eject us from that dangerous and painful prison of self. Geshe-la describes self-cherishing as an “excessive concern for our own welfare.” This “concern” can manifest as self-criticism and hatred, jealousy, anxiety, attachment or any of the many other delusions. It whispers insidious lies, telling us how much worse off we are than others and that the way out of our predicament is to work solely for our own benefit. And it never happens.

However, when we focus on others with an affectionate, compassionate heart we have no mental space left to obsess over ourselves. Our mind is completely pacified. Geshe-la writes:

It is impossible for strong delusions to arise in a mind filled with compassion. If we do not develop delusions, external circumstances alone have no power to disturb us; so when our mind is governed by compassion it is always at peace.

Compassion also is our friend because it purifies our mind. Compassion removes the blinders covering our eyes to reveal a beautiful reality that has always been there, like the sun shining behind the clouds.

In several of his books, Geshe-la presents the well-loved story of Asanga, who entered a mountaintop retreat to come face-to-face with Buddha Maitreya. After twelve years with no success he abandoned his retreat because he was discouraged.

On the way down the mountain he came across an old dog lying in the middle of the path. Its body was covered in maggot-infested sores and it seemed close to death. This sight induced within Asanga an overwhelming feeling of compassion for all living beings trapped within samsara. As he was painstakingly removing the maggots from the dying dog, Buddha Maitreya suddenly appeared to him.

It was Asanga’s extraordinary compassion that purified his mind so that he was able to see this Buddha of loving-kindness, who had in fact been there all the time. We have the same potential, we just need to rely on our friend, compassion. And doing so starts by opening our eyes to the truth — that everyone suffers.

Geshe-la says this awareness does not make us depressed, rather:

Compassion gives us tremendous energy to work for others and to complete the spiritual path for their sake. It shatters our complacency and makes it impossible to rest content with the superficial happiness of satisfying our worldly desires, yet in its place we will come to know a deep inner peace that cannot be disturbed by changing conditions.

For Kadampas, the spiritual path is our precious Lamrim, or stages of the path. When we combine these teachings with compassion, our mind gradually transforms into a state of joy beyond our wildest dreams. But to do this we first must believe in the power of compassion. Our faith grows by remembering moments of transcendence when we experienced pure, unconditional love and compassion. We know that if we can experience one moment of transcendence, we can experience more. We need only to train.

Our freedom grows by shifting the lens from self to others

To cultivate our virtuous minds of love and compassion, Geshe-la suggests we start with our karmic circle. For many people, this is their family or close friends. The hearts of some are naturally opened by being with animals, such as was the case with Asanga. For some it is children. And for some of us it is when we are with the elderly.

Oftentimes the suffering of the elderly is manifest. At every turn they are confronted by loss — the loss of physical appearance, possessions, health, friends, and lifelong partners. Anyone who has worked with the elderly, particularly employees of nursing homes or assisted living centers, knows this to be true. If we have the courage to face the truth of this suffering we will find our liberation. And more importantly, we will free others.

In the early ‘90’s I was running a nursing home on the north coast of Ohio. One day we admitted a wealthy woman who instantly shattered our peace and harmony. I knew she was wealthy because she paid us to remove a bed from one of our rooms so she could have it all to herself. Barely an hour went by without a staff member stopping at my door to tell me of a new complaint: she didn’t like the food, the staff, the air conditioning, and on and on. I had an “open door” policy but given her socio-economic background I knew she wouldn’t visit me; I was expected to call on her.

A few days later I decided to pay her a visit. As I knocked on her door I realized I knew nothing of her medical condition. This wasn’t a big deal because I’d known people with every medical condition under-the-sun. Even so, I was surprised by what I saw when I opened the door.

“Come in,” a shrill voice called out. I took a deep breath and entered. I could tell she was tall because she stretched to the ends of the hospital bed and she was emaciated, couldn’t be more than ninety pounds. But what struck me was her body. She was stiff as a board. Her hands were contracted and curled against her chest and old age had cruelly driven her chin into her shoulder. She lifted her eyes and they locked on me as I crossed the room.

“Hello, I’m Mr. Williams.” I said. “You wanted to see me.” When she realized I was the administrator she’d been asking for she affected a tone stiffer than her body. “Mr. Williams…” and then she unleashed a barrage of complaints that I already knew, sounding rehearsed as if she were reading from a script.

I could tell this was a lifelong pattern. When this woman said “jump,” people either asked “how high?” or argued with her. So my response probably surprised her. I just stood there silently gazing into her eyes. All of a sudden, she became aware of me. “What are you looking at?!” she snapped.

“I’m just trying to understand you,” I said.

No sooner had the words left my mouth than her body went limp and she began to sob. It was as if the words, “I’m trying to understand you” had found their way to a secret linchpin that was binding her musculoskeletal system and involuntarily released her. I stood there stunned as she continued to cry. I’d seen extraordinary things in my career, but nothing quite like this. After a few minutes she composed herself and said bitterly, “You have no idea what it feels like to be me.”

I did wonder what it must be like being her. A prisoner in your own body, totally dependent on others for the basics like eating and toileting. She couldn’t even wipe away her own tears. What could I say as I gazed down at her, this healthy whippersnapper dressed in a crisp white shirt and tie there to solve all her problems? “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t have any idea what it’s like to be you. But I’d like to try.”

Opening our hearts to the elderly in the time of Coronavirus

The initial epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States was a nursing home in suburban Seattle. Tragically, many more nursing homes around the country and world have experienced outbreaks. To date, one-fourth of all deaths in the United States have been nursing home residents.

As I read the stories, my mind is flooded by memories of all the nursing home residents I’ve known over the years. These are the people I have in my mind as I write this blog. They helped to shape and form the good aspects of the person I am today. I remembered the jokes, the kindness, the insights, and the tender and intimate moments.

And my mind went to the staff, particularly the nursing assistants who are on the front line of the front line. To me, they are true Bodhisattvas. Oftentimes they were cheerful, single mothers, making not much more than minimum wage, with little formal education. But they could write the book on how to cherish others. I think about how unfair it is for them to be in this situation. And I think about the deaths of all the people they care about and how this must be affecting them.

It seems no matter where in the country I worked, all caregivers held the same superstition. They believed residents died in threes. So when one died, they would brace themselves for the loss of the next two. At the time of completion of the second part of this blog, of the 120 residents of the suburban Seattle nursing home, a total of thirty-seven have died.

Every night at seven o’clock the people of New York City stop what they are doing to recognize essential workers. People in isolation open their windows wide. Church bells rings. Pots clang. People in the streets clap as they walk by. Some cheer. We unite in a collective inner wisdom that understands something profound is happening in the midst of all this suffering. We salute the courage of caregivers. We rejoice in compassion.

Over to you. Comments for this wonderful guest author are warmly invited in the comments box below.

How to broaden your horizons while stuck inside

10 mins read.

A news alert just popped up on this screen to say “Need a vacation!? Here are 8 gorgeously located movies to watch on Netflix.” And if we watch them, our mind will go to those places, albeit leaving our physical body on the sofa munching homemade popcorn.

Carrying directly on from this article, Living in a virtual world.

It seems like our mind can go anywhere, so let’s go somewhere uplifting. If I can go to the Caribbean or London from home, why can I not also visit the Pure Land from home? As I explain a bit in this article:

Just as our ordinary mind can go to the moon just by thinking about it, so our un-ordinary mind Vajrayogini can go to the Pure Land just by thinking about it.

Buddha Maitreya said in Ornament for Clear Realization that because living beings’ minds are impure, their worlds are impure; and when they purify their minds, they will inhabit Pure Lands. Even if I dream I am in a Pure Land, it is no different from being there, even if for just a little while.

Once we get rid of all the obstructions from our mind, our body will also go where our mind goes because for a Buddha their body and mind are the same nature, not different like ours. One way to understand this is to think of a dream – if my dream mind dreams that I am swimming in an ocean, my dream body is also swimming in an ocean.

Unfettered

Not only is our mind not in any way restricted by physical objects or time, but it has this amazing potential for deep bliss, for love encompassing all living beings, for wisdom that sees all objects of knowledge fully and simultaneously, for being everywhere all at once. It is because we have this formless mind, which is not in any way fixed, that we have the potential for enlightenment, our so-called Buddha seed. You have this.

When we attain enlightenment, our mind is universal compassion and omniscient wisdom — everyone is appearing to our mind and in our mind, like reflections in an unobstructed mirror. Not separated from them by the illusion of dualistic appearances and conceptions, we can now help everyone every day.

A mirror with two cloths

Buddha gave his 84,000 teachings precisely because we have this potential – if we didn’t, there’d be literally no point in him explaining how to attain liberation and enlightenment.

Try wrapping your mind around this for a moment:

In Ornament for Clear Realization, Buddha Maitreya gives three reasons why Buddha’s mind knows all phenomena directly and simultaneously: (1) Buddhas directly realize the two truths of all phenomena because they have completed meditation on the two truths being one entity; (2) Buddhas have complete knowledge of all phenomena being of one taste in the state of emptiness; and (3) a Buddha’s mind is completely free from the two obstructions. ~ Ocean of Nectar page 379

Here is a hopefully helpful analogy to illustrate at least that third point. We can think of our mind as like a mirror that is capable of reflecting (or if you like, holding) every single object in the universe.

Right now, however, it is covered with two cloths – a thin veil just on top of it and a thick cloth on top of that.

From our perspective we don’t know we are a mirror because all we see is darkness and confusion. We may get glimmers of light, but generally we blink out at a world narrowed by obscurations and, having no idea that we’re doing it, grasp onto this shrunken world as if it really existed. Like William Blake says in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

Our deepest level of awareness, or root mind, can potentially be everywhere and love everyone all the time. However, we are normally confined to our small selfish ego capsules feeling ordinary, fixed, and limited. This self-grasping and our other delusions are like a thick cloth obscuring our vision and rendering us unaware of how extraordinary we can be. Through spiritual training we learn about these delusions — how they function, how they harm us, where they come from, and how to remove them both temporarily and ultimately.

One conclusion we can draw from this, as Geshe Kelsang teaches in How to Transform Your Life, is how it is possible to maintain kindness and respect for everyone (including ourselves) despite our delusions:

Just as we distinguish between a person and his or her delusions, so we should also remember that the delusions are only temporary, adventitious characteristics of that person’s mind and not its real nature. Delusions are distorted conceptual thoughts that arise within the mind, like waves on the ocean—just as it is possible for waves to die down without the ocean disappearing, so it is possible for our delusions to end without our mental continuum ceasing. It is because they distinguish between delusions and persons that Buddhas are able to see the faults of delusions without ever seeing a single fault in any sentient being.

When we remove the thick cloth of our delusions permanently through the wisdom realizing the true nature of things, already there is light and happiness and freedom shining through. However, our mind is not free from all obstructions yet – we are still like the mirror with a thin veil over it.

We are liberated from our own suffering once we remove the thick cloth of our delusion-obstructions, but we still need to do some more spiritual practice to remove the veil of obstructions to omniscience, which we do on the so-called “three pure grounds”. These cause things to appear to us as somewhat existing outside the mind, the so-called “mistaken appearance of true existence;” even though we no longer believe or buy into this. We know we’re dreaming now, we have control. Our own mind is pure and free, but with this dualistic appearance we are not able to be everywhere all the time helping everyone.

A Bodhisattva on the eighth ground has abandoned all delusions and their seeds, but he still has the imprints of delusions in his mental continuum, rather as wet sand will retain a footprint even after the foot has moved on. These imprints of the delusions are obstructions to omniscience … Imprints of delusions are effects of delusions, but not causes of delusion. They are however, causes of mistaken appearance. ~ Ocean of Nectar page 431

On the final stage of our spiritual journey, wisdom pulls away the veil of mistaken appearance and reveals a Buddha’s omniscient mind, like a mirror that can reflect everything directly and simultaneously.

Only Buddhas are free from the imprints of delusions and the mistaken appearance of true existence to which they give rise.

A time of reckoning

Why am I telling you all this? Because when I look out of the window — as “stay at home” is morphing into “safe at home” here in Colorado — I can see that it is Spring; and Spring is all about new beginnings. We can become who we want to become, realize our fullest and most blissful potential. And this is a good time to do it, rather than sitting around feeling bored and powerless and sad. We have been projecting the causes of our pain outwards since beginningless time and look where that has gotten us. Now we could learn to do something different and really get rid of this pain once and for all.

This is a time of reckoning. I read a moving article the other day from a mother, here are some extracts:

The other night (or last night, or last month) I was putting my daughter to bed and she started to cry. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked, and I meant it…. “What is all this even for?” she wailed. She didn’t mean the quarantine: “All of this, why are we even here? Why are we even alive?” I tried to put together a soothing platitude …

To her credit, she was having none of it. “I hate this, I hate everything that’s ever going to happen to me. Help me, Mama, please, please help me.” …..

Absent the scaffolding of the world as we know it, I’ve got nothing to say. So I did the only thing I could. I held her, and rocked her, and hoped my silence helped.

During this confusing global pandemic, instead of feeling trapped we can really think about who we want to be and what we want out of this life – which will depend on what we think we can get out of it. Even when we brave our first tentative steps out of our houses, we’ll be finding that there are fewer distractions from all those full gatherings, a lot of our entertainments will have dried up, external life is basically looking like it is going to be pretty tedious and full of masks and endless hand-washing yet for a while. But instead of feeling hemmed in and frustrated and anxious, “hating everything that is ever going to happen to me”, maybe we can use Buddha’s teachings to find agency and become free instead.

My daughter is saying out loud the questions that everyday life helps us forget. This quarantine feels like a time of reckoning, forcing us to look at ourselves as we really are. Maybe whatever world we build after this is over will be more honest about that reality.

Like that young seeker, we can take stock: Who am I? Where on earth (or elsewhere) did I come from? Where am I going? Who do I want to be? Who can I be? What do I want out of this life? What kind of world do I want to live in? How can I find lasting happiness and freedom? And how can I be part of creating that for others too?

These are important questions. Do I want to go back to the same life and world I had in the “old days” or do I want something better? Is that old life even sustainable? Where and who do I want to be in five years’ time, for example? If we just go back to doing the same old things, we won’t change; and if we don’t change, our world won’t change.

At the very least, this pandemic has shown us that it doesn’t work to ignore and neglect others given that we are all caught up in the same web of mutual dependence. The heroes these days, the people we are applauding at 8:00 pm, are the healthcare and other essential workers – essential to our lives and well-being, that is — rather than the glitzy millionaires. Who knows, perhaps this is long overdue.

I suspect this is not our last pandemic. Why would it be? And even without pandemics there is plenty of other pain in our world, not least the swarms of locusts in East Africa causing hardship and starvation to millions of human beings while barely making the news, and the trapped animals who are being chillingly “depopulated” in their millions due to the interruptions in the human food supply chains. Meanwhile all over the world people are still thinking to solve their problems using angry violence or selfish greed, simply setting themselves up for more.

Buddha’s point is that the suffering will never end on its own or by us just by dealing with external causes, which is at best putting on a band-aid. This world, our whole world, is clearly suffering a whole lot of problems right now; and we can’t ignore it so much now that it is reaching everyone’s doorstep. When we have delusions and do negative actions we have no choice but to inhabit a world of suffering – sooner or later our karma bounces back on us. This world is a reflection of our mind and our karma. If we don’t change these, our experiences won’t change, and our world will just stay impure, unhealthy, and painful. In fact, it will get worse.

Be the change

We follow the crowd. We tend to follow what everyone else is up to. Right now we don’t really know what everyone is up to as we are not seeing them – so maybe we can think more independently? Or maybe not, I don’t know.

We are often waiting for other people to change – for example for the politicians to start behaving. Good luck with that. Vote for who you need to, but basically waiting for others to change is massively demoralizing because we have no control over them nor guarantees their motivation or behavior will magically improve. Please don’t misconstrue me as saying we don’t do practical things as well, as I talk about here – but you know what I mean.

Venerable Atisha said:

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

We try to tame others’ minds, but that’s not how it works. If our mind is uncontrolled and polluted by delusions such as selfishness, we’re as much a part of the problem as anyone else; and there is no way we can control others’ minds or behavior.

I was wondering what would have happened if Buddha had waited for everyone else to change? Where would we be now? Prince Siddhartha figured samsara out when he left the palace and saw in turn a sick person, an old person, and a corpse. This is bad, he thought, I can see that this is bad. Life is based on a crumbling edifice of sickness, ageing, death, not getting what we want, getting what we don’t want, or feeling basically dissatisfied.

Rather than just putting his head back under his soft luxurious royal pillow or immersing himself in his palatial distractions, Prince Siddhartha decided to do something about this. He got rid of the two cloths from the mirror of his mind, and gave 84,000 teachings to show how we could do the same. The path to enlightenment is now all laid out for us in black and white.

It is not as if we don’t have the potential to follow this path, like countless people have done already:

From this point of view sentient beings are like enlightened beings. Their root mind, their own mind, is completely pure. Their own mind is like a blue sky and their delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise. From another point of view sentient beings mistakenly identify themselves and are harmed by delusions. They endlessly experience immense suffering as hallucinations. Therefore we need to develop compassion for them, and liberate them from their deep hallucination of mistaken appearance by showing them the real nature of things, which is the emptiness of all phenomena. ~ How to Transform Your Life

I don’t know what we are waiting for. We can complain as much as we like about other people, but it doesn’t help a single thing.

To conclude, we can use the creative role of our minds and actions to go beyond all suffering to the Pure Land of liberation and enlightenment, or we can ignore this potential and keep trying to stick band-aids on our gaping wounds, staying in the impure lands of samsara. It is our choice.

Okay, enough from me. Please leave comments.

Seven good reasons to learn how to meditate in a pandemic

Better together

Love, the great Protector

Living in a virtual world

8.5 mins read + a cool video.

Learning meditation is important because there is nothing inherently stuck about us – we are not just material beings but spiritual beings with a deep inner life and indeed infinite capacity for freedom.

No one likes suffering, and my heart goes out to everyone right now because no one seems unaffected by this disconcerting new “normal”, whatever normal ever meant or will mean again. Yet suffering can be motivating — and perhaps it sometimes takes something like a seemingly inescapable stifling pandemic to think about how we can become happy and free from the inside out instead of continuing to pursue happiness and freedom from the outside in.

The reason we have this potential for enlightenment is that we have minds, and these are formless, not physical, and endlessly creative. We can learn to do anything with our minds, and when we change our mind we really do change our world. Meanwhile, our bodies are physical and very limited. If I want to go to London, I have to fly there on an airplane, if they’ll even let me these days. But today I was talking to my parents in London as if we were in the same room. Our bodies were thousands of miles apart but our minds were still meeting. You are probably finding that a lot yourself these days, now that the whole world has gone virtual and we are visiting people in all sorts of places while sitting on our sofa.

A few weeks ago Gen-la Dekyong talked to over 5,000 people tuning in through their computers and phones. Talking to audiences across the world, her mind was no doubt partly in the Temple with the recording equipment and partly in a bunch of other countries and partly who knows where else, maybe the Pure Land. And those of us who listened to her were both in our rooms and in England, were we not? Or did our minds meet half-way, in the middle of an ocean?!

This teaching also showed the emptiness of time because many of us heard the teaching later in the day and yet it still felt totally present, again a meeting of minds.

Even as you read this our minds are meeting in some manner, are they not? We are together somewhere — the question is, Where?! How? When?! Where and what exactly is this concrete physical reality of time and space that we keep trying to grasp at even whilst our formless minds are commingling?

We are so caught up in material, spatial, and temporal coordinates, just like we fall for these in a dream; but they are all projections of our mind, not objective reality. If Gen-la Dekyong was in England and you were in Australia, what time was it when your minds met? What time is it when our minds meet now?

We can’t find anything when we look for it — “Everything is like space,” as Shantideva says. If you’re ever in doubt about how we are grasping at concrete independent things that are not actually there, take a look at this video:

The point is that everything depends upon its parts and upon imputation by our mind. The wonderful promise of this is that when we finally get around to realizing it for ourself, we can deliberately and completely change our experiences and our world for the better, enjoying the great bliss and emptiness of reality.

Where we all live

People are still managing to meet, all over the place, every day. This virtual reality that we seem to be inhabiting is a useful doorway into thinking about how our formless awareness is not obstructed by matter and can go anywhere. If we think about the moon, there we go – in fact, let’s go! It is quite cool up here, don’t you think?! Let’s have a party, eat some cheese. Our minds go where our thoughts go, even to London, even to the moon. Our mind is not in any way circumscribed by space or even time – it is non-local, it can go anywhere. It can even go to liberation and enlightenment.

What obstructs our mind is not what obstructs our body, such as walls and miles; it is delusions and their imprints. These two obstructions obstruct our potential to be everywhere and love everyone. We have dualistic appearance and believe there is a world outside the mind, an objective real world — when there isn’t.

As I mentioned in this article, Aligning with reality, where is the world outside my experience or my mind? I’m supposedly in lockdown in Denver, but where is Denver, for example?

We seek our happiness though seemingly solid material stuff that ends up being more fleeting than we realized and also nowhere near as important. What ends up being most important is the quality of our thoughts, our consciousness – whether we are feeling happy and free or anxious and depressed, for example. Our mind determines everything.

Our mind is formless awareness, it has no physical properties. We cannot see, hear, or smell our mind, nor sit on it or photograph it — we can only know our mind by looking within with mental awareness. We cannot find our mind anywhere in the physical world – it is as if it is everywhere and nowhere.

And our mind is tremendously powerful, the most creative force in the universe — with our thoughts we create our world. Our world arises from our subjective mind. The world or life we experience depends on our experience, of course, one hundred percent.

Let’s say you’re having a meeting on Zoom. There is certainly a meeting going on, important things being discussed. Co-workers are beaming in from all over the world, and some of them also have crazy virtual reality backgrounds like beaches or temples or planets (I don’t know how anyone manages to concentrate, I know I can’t.) Question is, where is this meeting taking place? Where is it? Let’s find it. Where would you start looking? Is it the camera on my computer? No, most people cannot see my camera. Is it a co-worker’s couch? Is it that virtual reality temple? Is it another co-worker’s home office? Is it the words coming out of people’s mouths? Or the satellites beaming those words through the speakers? I could go on and on.

Wherever we look, we’ll never be able to point to this meeting, “Ah, there it is!” The more we try to pinpoint it, the more it disappears like a mirage. It is impossible to find this meeting outside of our mental experience of this meeting, both collective and individual. Collectively we agree we are in the same meeting, so there is some conventional reality functioning and we’re able to communicate on some level; but my individual experience of this meeting is also probably quite different to that of my co-workers, perhaps because I am seeing different appearances all around me and am in a different mood.

Immersive reality

It is easier to see how a virtual meeting cannot be found objectively, outside the mind — and I think we may as well explore this now while we’re having all these Zoom meetings. So what about when our bodies, including our eyes and ears, meet again one day in the same physical room — where is the meeting then? We might agree that we are surrounded by the same walls and the same people, and it is easy to grasp more tightly at the colors, shapes, sounds, shapes, and tactile objects that are appearing to our sense awarenesses as being an objective reality. It is the same when we put on virtual reality glasses – the world of our senses is so immersive that it is easy to fall into the hallucination that it is really happening.

However, even when we are meeting in the same room, where is that meeting really taking place? Is it the colors or shapes and so on of the carpet or the walls or the other people? No. Again, the more we try to pinpoint the meeting, the more it disappears like a mirage. The meeting only exists as conventional agreement or appearance or imputation, just like the seemingly real solid forest I talk about in this article, Mere karmic appearance of mind.

All this is showing that our mind has the extraordinary ability to be seemingly everywhere and nowhere, or rather beyond everywhere and nowhere because it is formless, a different entity or dimension to the physical world.

We cannot point to the mind in the supposedly physical world NOR to any objects outside of it. The appearances of this world exist as reflections or projections held by mind, like a sky reflected in a lake or like a dream. If we dream a Zoom meeting, for example, the moment the dream mind ceases (because we wake up), the moment the meeting ends. It is the same for any Zoom meeting you have while you’re awake.

Experience on demand

One of the main features of virtual reality technology is that it gives us experience on demand. If we understand how our mind is projecting our reality even without the enhanced technology, we can change our reality on demand by changing our thoughts or experiences.

Here is a simple illustration – changing our thoughts into thoughts of love. How do we stop feeling bored with all the people we’ve been in lockdown with for months now and yearning for more interesting company elsewhere?! Through love.

Talking of Zoom meetings, apparently one highlight for people is seeing their co-workers’ pets. Which got me to thinking how cats and dogs and even children can be incredibly boring if we don’t love them, even irritating; but utterly fascinating if we do. And what do you think about this theory – the reason that human beings often love their cats and dogs so much is because they’ve given themselves permission to do so. They feel safe in loving them, and they are happy to keep increasing that love. They allow the love inside them to come out fully. What’s to stop us loving everyone around us that way too? I bet you’d find they become a LOT less boring if you do.

I saw this lovely Rumi quote today on Facebook and will leave you with it:

Finally, talking of Buddha’s teachings now live-streaming all over the planet, this Spring Festival coming up is the first time ever that an International Kadampa Buddhist Festival is open to anyone around the world who has a computer. Unbelievable. And perhaps thousands of people will tune in and share this powerful experience with each other, I wouldn’t be surprised. Click here to find out more about it.

Okay, out of space, whatever that means. Part 2 on its way.

Over to you — please leave your virtual reality comments in the virtual reality box below.

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