Embracing the illusion: why cherish others?

I want to explore a bit in this article how it’s possible, desirable, and even necessary to cherish others despite the fact that they, like us, don’t exist from their own side. Why cherish illusory people?! Lemme lead up to that …

I’ve been thinking about Venerable Atisha quite a lot lately, how inspirational a role model he is. He starts his Advice from Atisha’s Heart with genuine humility – what he says here is not tongue in cheek, he actually means it!

Friends, since you already have great knowledge and clear understanding, whereas I am nof no importance and have little wisdom, it is not suitable for you to request advice from me. However, because you dear friends, whom I cherish from my heart, have requested me, I shall give you this essential advice from my inferior and childish mind.

And then he goes on to, presumably, blow his friends away with the most heart-warming and profound daily advice you can imagine, advice that has resonated down the ages. It is one of my main go-to’s if I feel the need to re-arrange my thoughts. Only yesterday, for example, I sat on this bench in my new nearby park and, after connecting for a few minutes with my Buddha nature to get things moving (as explained in this article called Heartspace), I contemplated Atisha’s words. Within minutes, my whole day had turned around. Highly recommended, lol, next time you’re in a bad mood, or if you just want to feel extra good. Like any great master whose words drip with blessings, Atisha is able to inspire us, rather than cajole or force us, into a vastly improved mindset with relatively little effort on our part.

On the subject of re-arranging our thoughts compared with seeking relief from outside of ourselves, I was talking to a relatively new practitioner yesterday for whom, not so long ago, the idea of a Sunday morning treat was to have coffee in bed and scroll social media for 3 hours. She knew she felt no better, and indeed pretty wasted, by the end of it; but isn’t that just what we all do these days?! Having met Dharma, she decided one Sunday to instead drink her coffee while cherishing and playing with her dogs, followed by Sunday morning meditation class. She has never looked back. I was reminded of that dedication verse in Essence of Good Fortune:

The Buddhadharma is the supreme medicine
That relieves all mental pain.

It works every time (if we take it).

Exchanging self with others

Atisha’s humility is part of his exchanging himself with others, wherein he genuinely believed that he was no more important than others, that indeed they were more important than him. The times I’ve managed it, I find it immensely relaxing to no longer have to feed my self-importance, but to believe instead that I am insignificant, at most a mere cell in the vast body of life, no more important than any other cell. Truth is, far less important, as I am just one cell and others are many. (More here: Better together.)

And if we do really understand that the self we normally see, and believe is so important, does not in fact exist, we finally have that permission to give up on cherishing it once and for all. There is just no point to it. Self-cherishing is self-defeating. We don’t need to hold out for it, thinking, “I need to keep a little bit of selfishness back, surely, or people will walk all over me and I won’t be able to have fun.” They won’t and we will.

Thanks to Buddha’s and Atisha’s mind-training teachings, we learn that we have the permission to be as kind and loving as we want, to as many people as we want – the more, the merrier. Our whole life can be dedicated to making others happy and relieving their pain, both on a day to day hands-on local level and with a huge heart seeking enlightenment to free all living beings. Just like Atisha. And we’ll discover that this is the quick path to fulfilling all our own wishes as well. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang said in his teachings on The Heart Sutra in Portugal 2013:

All the Buddhas of the past and present changed the object of their cherishing from themselves to all other living beings. As a result of this, they attained the supreme happiness of enlightenment and have the ability to benefit each and every living being every day by giving blessings and by emanating various kinds of things for the purpose of living beings.

He suggests we can “follow their example”. I find it helpful to contemplate individual examples, such as Atisha, Venerable Geshe-la, Arya Tara, Khachen Yeshe Gyaltsan, or Buddha himself. There are numerous examples to choose from on any given day. Right now, like I said, I am into Atisha. He was a seriously awesome practitioner and yet believed we could all, of course, be just as good as him. He is also the original founder of our Kadampa tradition. You can read his life story in Joyful Path of Good Fortune.

 Why bother cherishing people if they’re illusory, though?

However, this brings me to a common question that comes up, which I also saw on Facebook yesterday. One wise peer posed the question. and then other wise peers gave some great answers. I hope they don’t mind if I simply (and lazily) copy and paste their words here (slightly edited in places for brevity).

Gen Pagpa brings up a quote, saying that in the meditation on cherishing all living beings in The Mirror of Dharma with Additions, Geshe-la says:

We believe that ourself we normally see is so important and its happiness and freedom are most important, and we neglect the happiness and freedom of others. This belief is ignorance, because ourself that we normally see does not actually exist. If we search for ourself that we normally see with wisdom, it will disappear. This proves that it does not exist at all. Therefore, our normal view believing that ourself is important but others are not is ignorance of self-cherishing.

And then he poses the question:

If the self that we normally see doesn’t exist, then neither does the self of others that we normally see; so how can others be more important than ourself? Surely we are all equally unimportant creations of self-grasping!? Conversely, if others are important, then surely this means that we are important because we perceive self and other to exist in the same way. Why would this not be the case?

I won’t write everybody’s names but you can find the actual conversation on a Facebook group called: Discussing Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s Books.

Person 1: The belief that we are more important than others is ignorant for several reasons and not “only” because the self that we normally see does not exist, but also because others have shown us great kindness, have the exact same wish for happiness as us, and are far more numerous than us.

And the fact that they don’t exist in the way that we perceive them to exist doesn’t mean that they don’t exist at all. We are important in the sense that our happiness is important, but our happiness is best served by regarding others as more important than ourself.

Person 2: Others are important because, although they do not exist inherently, we need them to progress and develop the minds we need to attain realizations along the path to enlightenment for the benefit of all. It is more beneficial to cherish them as we cannot do this without them.

Person 3: Cherishing others is a correct belief that leads to happiness. Self-cherishing is an incorrect belief that leads to suffering. Neither reality exists inherently, but which reality would you like to abide in? When we cherish others and diminish our own delusions, our mind is suffering less. When we cherish others, our mind becomes closer to being able to experience reality as it truly exists. Those are some of my favorites.

Person 4: I would say that the self we normally see does not exist, so therefore it is unimportant and there is no point cherishing it. But there is a self that does exist, our Buddha nature, our pure potential. We should absolutely cherish that. Cherishing our Buddha nature is renunciation.

The others we normally see also do not exist, and therefore are also unimportant. There is no point cherishing them either.* They are the creations of our delusions.

But there are still others that do exist, their Buddha nature, their pure potential. We should absolutely cherish that. Cherishing others’ Buddha nature is universal love, compassion, and bodhichitta. The others that appear to these minds do exist and are creations of our wisdom and other virtuous minds.

*Me again: I would just add to this point that it takes a while to hold the view that can cherish others while simultaneously realizing they lack inherent existence. And therefore there is some point in cherishing others whom we view as real — this is an important, indeed probably essential, step in the right direction. Person 4 person did qualify this point himself, “Cherishing others is grounded more in conventional wisdom and, frankly, math, and will lead us in the direction of ultimate wisdom minds while also helping us to create better karma for ourselves. So even if they don’t exist, cherishing them is better than cherishing our self that doesn’t exist.”

Also, this is an important point:

Person 5: My answer to this point would be, although we may still see other living beings as inherently existent, the mind of love itself is not a self-grasping mind and so it observes existent living beings and develops the wish for them to be happy – thus, love is a valid mind, a virtuous mind that is a main cause of happiness. Self-cherishing, on the other hand, is part of ignorance and the self that it cherishes doesn’t exist; it’s a delusion, and, being a delusion, leads to suffering.

I like this one:

Person 6: If 100 people are hallucinating a real frightening tiger, why are 99 of them more important than 1 when there is no tiger? It because they are all believing that there is a real tiger and this is very important to resolve. Just because there is no tiger doesn’t mean everything is ok.

Me again: One final consideration that I find helpful is that I know full well, in my own experience, how much I want to be happy and free from suffering, even though I don’t exist in the way that I appear. So I can know that this applies to everyone else, too.

Thank you to these unwitting contributors! I think this just about covers it, and hope it’s not too head-scratching. If you have any questions about any of this or would like to add more observations in the comments below, that’ll be awesome.

Atisha’s cook

And now, to conclude on a practical note, back to Atisha … Atisha is famous for tolerating, nay deeply appreciating, his grumpy cook. Who doesn’t have one of those in their lives? And generally we want them to show us some respect or, failing that, go away and be replaced by people who are nice to us. His disciples wanted to get rid of him but he was having none of it:

Without this man, there would be no one with whom I could practice patience. He is very kind to me. I need him! ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

He genuinely appreciated having someone around who could keep him “real”, as it were –helping him practice exchanging self with others, humility, self-awareness, and unconditional love. Like the grit in the oyster, necessary if we are to have a pearl, we need difficult people in our lives if we desire mental strength. How else can we make progress with universal love and compassion, and in particular with patience? I mean the occasional day or week or month without an Atisha’s cook around can be really relaxing, lol, but where is the challenge if everyone is always nice to us?! I want to get to the point when, like Atisha, I am just as affectionate and relaxed around the difficult people in my life as I am around those who praise and validate me. That spells freedom.

It’s a work in progress. Over to you … feel free to cherish me by leaving a comment 😁