We can all have experiences that are transcendent, which, according to the dictionary, means “beyond ordinary or common experience”. I don’t mind admitting that I like science fiction, and over this Thanksgiving break, cat-sitting up a splendid mountain, I had some time to watch a series called The Wheel of Time. In it, perfectly ordinary people come to realize that they are in possession of the “one power”, with which they are able to overwhelm the enemy hordes they have been running away from for months.
But whatever force they manifest by channeling the one power could never hold a light to bliss and emptiness, which can zap away not just one army of Trollocs but all the maras of the ten directions permanently. In samsara, unlike in the Pure Land of bliss and emptiness, battles have to keep raging even after the battles have been won. While delusions run the show, the darkness must go on.
When we ask Buddha Shakyamuni in The Liberating Prayer:
Please give me the light of your wisdom
To dispel the darkness of my mind
And to heal my mental continuum.
we don’t have to be half-hearted about it, imagining a few trickles of light that barely making a dent. The light of Buddha’s wisdom is in fact formidable – within moments it will completely dispel the darkness of our mind and heal our mental continuum. Whenever we are receiving blessings, that is the understanding we want.
In The Request to the Holy Spiritual Guide, we say:
“O Sublime lamp illuminating the entire universe.”
Blessings are the clear light of great bliss of all the Buddhas, which radiates endlessly and is reality itself. Point being, there is nothing passive about blessings; and, through our faith, Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is able to pour all that clear light into us, and via us throughout the entire universe.
O Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka,
Please remain at my heart forever,
So that all directions will be pervaded by your matchless excellent deeds.~ Request to the Holy Spiritual Guide
A way to get closer to our Spiritual Guide
In what turned out — we didn’t know at the time — to be amongst the last of his instructions, Venerable Geshe-la encouraged Kadampas all over the world to collect 100,000 name mantras of Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. This is a really powerful way to both receive and pass on blessings. As Kadampa teachers have been explaining in Centers around the world, we can if we wish do this in a close retreat — check out your local Kadampa Center here for the instructions.
A close retreat is so-called because we get close to Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka both by developing a strong connection with him as a friend and by becoming more and more like him. Here are some personal reasons why I want to do this.
Before he passed away last September, Venerable Geshe-la left instructions for his disciples to engage in a two-day retreat; and in this retreat we did the same sadhana we use in the close retreat, The Hundreds of Deities of the Joyful Land According to Highest Yoga Tantra, except that we didn’t add the mantra.
I really appreciated that Geshe-la asked us to do this because at a time when we all could have been — well, I could have been anyway — deeply unhappy and gnashing our teeth at the loss of our incredibly precious Spiritual Guide, we did this retreat instead and realized that we hadn’t lost him. At least, that’s how it felt for a lot of people, that he was still here. It was just two days, but it was enough for many if not most of his students to get a sense that it’s alright, Geshe-la is actually still here. He is Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka.
In this practice of reciting the mantra, it seems like we’re doing the same thing but even more so – we’re spending more time developing faith and we’re adding the transcendent name mantra. So, if we do this, I think the point is that we will end up feeling deeply connected to our Spiritual Guide, to our Founder, to Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. And through that reliance or faith we’ll be able to receive all the Buddhas’ blessings whenever we want, day and night, just pouring into our heart whenever we feel like it. That’d be nice.
I think this practice will work whether people have met Venerable Geshe-la in person or not, whether they’ve seen him teaching live or not. For example, someone who has been by his own account an on/off Dharma practitioner for several years just came home from hospital, admitted for complications from late stage cancer and a great deal of pain. He has made a huge effort this past year or two to get to his local Center as often as he could, but is now pretty much housebound. Yet he always remains incredibly calm, impressing those around him; and this text he just sent me indicates how:
The role of faith
Basically in this retreat we’re increasing our believing faith, admiring faith, and wishing faith in our Spiritual Guide and his attainments, viewing him as Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. Geshe-la says:
Developing such faith is very simple and easy. I promise you; it will bring great results. In particular, you can accomplish Highest Yoga Tantra realizations through faith and belief. Our problem is faith.
It doesn’t have to be a problem, not if we understand more about what faith is and how anyone can have it. Sometimes it’s easier to understand what something is by considering its opposite, and in How to Understand the Mind Geshe-la explains that we can understand faith by considering what is non-faith:
“Non-faith of disbelief is disbelief in any correct object in which it is necessary to believe to make spiritual progress, such as the objects explained in Dharma teachings…. Non-faith of non-admiration is a mental factor that causes us to see faults in virtuous objects such as Dharma Teachers, the Three Jewels, and other holy beings. It makes our mind unclear and confused. Non-faith of not-wishing is a mind that does not desire virtuous attainments. It prevents us from developing a wish to engage in the paths to liberation and enlightenment.”
This is quite helpful because it shows that faith doesn’t have to be that weird or mysterious — it simply involves believing in something that will help us make spiritual progress, admiring or feeling happy about any teachings and teachers who show us how to do that, and wishing to gain their good qualities, become just like them.
All this has to be based on knowing that we CAN develop these qualities because we have always had the indestructible potential, the divine spark, to do so — and now is the time to identify with that.
The global polycrisis
In The Wheel of Time, the protagonists did not wish to settle for just an ordinary domesticity with no meaning beyond the hearth and home. Well, part of them did, but the other part knew that this was not an option given that the forces of darkness and blight were amassing against all living beings.
(Even within our daily domestic duties, by the way, everything can have the meaning of liberating countless others. For example, as I feed the cats, I can imagine that I’m feeding the entire universe. Nothing is as fixed or ordinary as it seems.)
This spiritual practice allows us to tune into the source, bliss and emptiness, which needs to be a priority. The problem is, our times are degenerating fast. Buddha predicted all this would happen, describing the now easily recognizable five impurities (see Universal Compassion or The New Eight Steps to Happiness); and over the past ten years in particular scientists and others are describing similar things. In between feeding these ancient cats, who loudly demand a spoonful of food approximately every half hour, I also read an article up here called “What Happens When Crises Collide?”, in which a group of professors talk about the so-called “global polycrisis”:
“It seems as if the world is encountering a “perfect storm” of simultaneous crises: The coronavirus pandemic is approaching the end of its third year; the war in Ukraine is threatening to go nuclear; extreme climate events are afflicting North America, Europe, Asia and Africa; and inflation is reaching rates unseen in decades and authoritarianism is on the march around the world. But the storm metaphor implies that this simultaneity is an unfortunate and temporary coincidence — that it’s humanity’s bad luck that everything seems to be going haywire all at once.”
The article goes onto explain that deeper hidden forces are at play and everything is interconnected. Buddha would agree — the reason why all this is happening at its deepest level is due to the delusions or distorted thinking and ensuing negative collective karma of the living beings (ie, us) experiencing it.
“In reality, the likelihood that the current mess is a coincidence is vanishingly small. We’re almost certainly confronting something far more persistent and dangerous. We can see the crises of the moment, but we’re substantially blind to the hidden processes by which those crises worsen one another — and to the true dangers that may be enveloping us all.”
This is why we need more than the ability to ward off one army of Trollocs or other evil monsters. We need Heruka’s wheel of sharp weapons to destroy delusions at their root, cutting through the self-grasping hallucinations in the minds of all beings:
Through the wheel of sharp weapons of the exalted wisdom of bliss and emptiness,
Circling throughout the space of the minds of sentient beings until the end of the aeon,
Cutting away the demon of self-grasping, the root of samsara,
May definitive Heruka be victorious. ~ The New Essence of Vajrayana
With ignorance, we ARE substantially blind to the hidden processes and true dangers that may be enveloping us all. The only way to permanently cure what ails this world, or any world, is through compassion and wisdom, bliss and emptiness.
(The article appearing next to this one in The New York Times was entitled “Who runs the world? Ants.” Which might also explain why things are not going quite as swimmingly as they could.)
“Most of these systemic risks have become more disruptive and hazardous. And in most cases, they’re now worsening faster. In other words, these risks are both amplifying in severity and accelerating in rate. We tend to see bits and pieces of a causal loop, but not the whole thing.”
We only see the results of our delusions and actions and freak out – yet nothing happens without a cause, and we need to appreciate that the deepest causes of these interlocking crises lie within the impure minds and intentions of living beings.
“It’s vitally important to get this kind of initiative underway. “Business as usual,” Mr. Guterres has warned, “could result in breakdown of the global order, into a world of perpetual crisis and winner-takes-all.”
So as well as the initiative the authors suggest for getting what is basically the outer problems under control, as people interested in spirituality I think we need to do our bit in getting the inner problems under control. Ideally before it is too late.
Touching the source
Please nourish me with your goodness
That I in turn may nourish all beings
With an unceasing banquet of delight.
This request touches the source, as it were. It’s accessing that bliss and emptiness of all Buddhas so that we’re able to irradiate away everyone’s problems and pain, all the mistaken appearances of self-grasping and its imprints. We even say to Buddha Shakyamuni:
You who love all beings without exception
Are the source of happiness and goodness.
I think that says it all, really. So, the way people can get connected to the source of happiness and goodness is through faith. We also connect to it through our wisdom, understanding that there’s nothing really going on out there, that everything’s like a dream; and through our compassion fiercely wishing to liberate all living beings.
Would love to hear your thoughts below.
18 Comments
I can’t wait for the next article.
You don’t need to wait, it has been up for a while 😆. And the one after that … xxx
Thank you! That was lovely.
I’m glad you like it 🙂
🙏🏻🌈🤍🧡💛💙🤍🌈🙏🏻
🙂
Dear Luna Kadampa. That article answered a question I have formulated for myself yesterday during a puja! It is a sign… thank you! But could you explain better the link between “blessings” and “the clear light of great bliss of all the Buddhas”?
Hello Kadam António,
My understanding of blessings is that they are part of the enlightened deeds of a Buddha and the nature of their Dharmakaya, their clear light of great bliss. I’ve written quite a lot about blessings all in this category https://kadampalife.org/category/blessings-inspiration/
including this article, which hopefully helps a bit:
https://kadampalife.org/2022/01/05/got-blessings/
x
Such inspiring words! Through the power of correct imagination seeing IS believing, you create it in your mind’s eye and know it exists, as mere imputation, because nothing exists independently, inherently. Mixing the mind with this truth is the guru. We need never feel separate.
Yes, thank you, what a beautiful way of expressing something very profound. Emptiness is the key.
Thanks for sharing the link again today. I hadn’t seen you had an article about this. Had some health hiccups again in December so decided to do this retreat all of January, two sessions a day with faith, even if I have to do some laying down. I didn’t go to Malaga nor have heard any teachings on it but bought the new sadhana last week and just been connecting with it with faith. It really helped me reading your articles about it, thank you. See you on the other side! Much love x
I am so delighted to hear this, Jennie, thank you for letting me know! And I am sure it will do wonders for your health, how can it not? xxx
Thank you! I wondered if you know what does ‘Sumati’ mean?
Hi Jennie, you may have an answer for this already… Guru means Spiritual Guide Sumati means Je Tsongkharpa Buddha means Buddha Shakyamuni and Heruka means Heruka 🙂 🙏
Your timing is perfect as we are planning our retreats (Madhyamaka) and at the same time being inundated with Black Friday offers and in the US celebrating thanksgiving. Luna thank you for keeping our feet on the ground while our aspirations soar.
I love that last line! Thank you so much 😁
Sublime, thank you.
😊