Life through Buddha’s eyes

Deciding to catch the last watery rays of the day in St Albans last Friday, my sister-in-law Catherine and I headed out for a brisk walk along a canal. Down by the marshes we came across a somewhat disheveled man, whom we initially presumed was drunk from the way he was lurching around, until we figured he’d had a stroke. He stopped us with a question, “Have you seen three five-year old boys?”

Lost boys

That got our attention. Said boys had apparently run off from their three mothers about an hour and a half ago and were missing. At this point we realized why the helicopter had been swirling overhead.

Catherine’s friend Sarah just happened to be behind this man, “keeping an eye on him” she explained, as “This is the father of one of them.”

From a routine stroll we had unexpectedly entered a twilight zone. “Bertie, Bertie,” this father called out, as he frantically searched for his son. His face was desperation itself. We joined in the boy hunt – I felt kind of helpless, though, till I started praying to Tara, whereupon optimism crept in. I imagined Taras and Buddhas to be everywhere – all in this strange new world of lost children, but not of it.

As we walked and looked, looked and walked, we passed more and more gentle locals who wanted to help. It was getting duskier and duskier; the light was running out. “Bertie, Bertie”, we called; but there was no sign of these children anywhere.

Until there was. About 30 minutes later, we heard they’d just been found! They were outside a Bike Hub 1.5 miles from where their mothers had lost them. We walked back to where we’d last seen Bertie’s dad, just to let him know – if he didn’t – and to witness his face. He wasn’t there, but we imagined that smile anyway.

One happy ending, which could have been horribly unhappy. That father’s face said it all – samsara is terrifying. It can go very wrong on a dime. And then what? Where is the refuge? Until I started relying on Tara to bless the boys and everyone concerned, though I really wanted to help, I felt helpless. Feeble. Willing … but not able.

You are never alone

Buddhas are everywhere. They are right here right now in your apparently small room. They pervade time and space. And day and night, in life after life, these awakened beings are doing everything they can to help us know that they’re here, to help us to see them. They want to wake us up from these endlessly boring, poky, trapped, sometimes desperate dreams of samsara to join them in the pure land of bliss.

I was talking earlier on Zoom to a Buddhist friend who’s been having a hard time lately with health issues, noisy builders upstairs, and a general feeling of isolation and hopelessness from not being able to do very much. We talked about something that we have often felt to be true, which is that she is not actually isolated or alone. She has enlightened beings around her all the time.

This friend is far more than her illness, far more than a limited person trapped in a moldy room in Manchester catastrophizing about the future. This current circumstance is just another of those temporary empty dreams in samsara conjured up by the endless windmills of our mind, it is a mistaken appearance. It is not who she really is or, for that matter, where she really is. She is always in a blissful forcefield of Buddhas and protection. She is always a disciple of Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. The reality of enlightenment is just a trick of the mind away.

With delusions, we are always somewhat isolated or cut off from others because we are living in a dualistic universe. And it is ironic that we isolate ourselves even more, sometimes, when we are having the hardest times in life; which is of course the time we need the most help. We are not always great at asking for help, thinking instead that we’ll just muddle through this on our own because “no one would understand even if I told them”. This could be one reason why we’re strongly encouraged to make an effort to receive help from Sangha as one of our three main refuge commitments. Another refuge commitment is to make an effort to receive blessings from Buddhas, which we do the moment we remember they are here. (The third main commitment is to make an effort to practice Dharma).

I noticed my friend kept saying, “I’ve been trying this practice or that practice, but they all seem really difficult because I don’t feel well enough”. So I suggested she stopped “trying” and just surrendered for the time being to refuge, to belief. Sometimes it’s enough, more than enough, just to believe that the Buddhas are looking after us no matter what, and that they won’t let anything too bad happen.

The Field of Merit

Every sadhana begins with visualizing Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the Field of Merit. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang said at Manjushri Centre 31 years ago:

The important point in this preparatory practice is to believe strongly, without hesitation or doubt, that all these holy beings, the principal Field of Merit – Buddha Shakyamuni – and all the Lamrim lineage Gurus, Yidams, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Dakas, Dakinis and Dharma Protectors are present in front of us. Just believe this. This is very important. We should never try to check what each one looks like as this will only cause more problems. Just simply imagine they are present in front of us, and remember this.

I find that whenever I stop focusing on mistaken appearances as the truth, the reality of unmistaken appearances naturally starts to show itself, however vaguely to begin with. I feel that completely pure, compassionate, and transcendent beings are indeed here, even if I cannot see them directly with my eye awareness. For this to work, we need to use faith, or at least keep an open mind, in something existing beyond these mistaken appearances. As Venerable Geshe-la puts it in The New Essence of Vajrayana:

We meditate on this vast assembly of the objects of refuge with admiring faith, believing faith, and wishing faith. Admiring faith is the nature of rejoicing – rejoicing in the complete purity of enlightened beings; believing faith is the nature of correct belief – believing that the assembly of enlightened beings is actually present in front of us; and wishing faith is the nature of wishing – wishing to become just like them.

Live through Buddha’s eyes

What is tremendously uplifting is remembering that it is not just us looking at them as pure. Feeling in connection with the Buddhas is a two-way street, and they also see us as pure, and free by nature. So when we’re in their presence we can see ourselves through their eyes, free from the constraints of ordinary conceptions and ordinary appearances. They see us as Dakas and Dakinis, Heroes and Heroines, as enlightened beings. They know that it is a mere trick of the mind away for us to be able to see ourselves in that way – we simply need to purify our minds of ordinary appearances and conceptions by practicing the stages of the path of Sutra and Tantra. This view of us is a supreme expression of their compassion and wisdom.

Sometimes I can spend a whole session just feeling like I’m in the company of the Guru and an endless galaxy of holy beings. (More here: Trust in the infinite.) Because I’m in their presence, I am already in their enlightened world as opposed to them being in my deluded world; my room, my whole ordinary life, is just a mistaken appearance that is not really there. From these blessings and transcendent focus, all the stages of the path flow more effortlessly; and it is not so hard to generate myself as a Dharma practitioner, a Bodhisattva, a Dakini, even an enlightened being like them.

Everyone has access to an experience of the transcendent world of holy beings, though, of course, to access it you generally have to believe it exists. Not always though – one example being my Grandfather mentioned here: What are blessings?; and another being the guy in this article: Is Heaven real? Obviously this perspective is not exclusive to Buddhists, though we may spend more time figuring out exactly how enlightened beings can and do exist, and how we can become one ourselves.

I really love this quote by Venerable Geshe-la, taken from the same teaching in 1993 as the quote above.

Visualizing the Field of Merit is a very powerful mental action. Even if our motivation is impure, simply visualizing holy beings creates a vast accumulation of merit and is a cause for attaining a Buddha’s Form Body. This is because of the power of the object. If, throughout our whole life, both in meditation session and outside meditation, we constantly remember the assembly of holy beings, we will remember it when we die and without doubt we will be reborn in a Buddha’s Pure Land. This visualization also gives us great confidence. For example, when we are thinking like this all the holy beings will appear in front of us. We will feel that these holy beings, our protectors and best friends, are with us all the time, helping us throughout our life, and we will never feel lonely.

Others’ universes

Buddhas have endless depth but so too, in a way, do ordinary beings. There is a meditation we do called equalizing self and others, where we intuit the interior world of others by focusing on the fact that we are all entirely motivated by the same two wishes, to be happy and free from suffering. We also can focus on their Buddha nature, their equal potential to attain enlightenment – everyone is a future Buddha! Sometimes when I do this I can really feel how deep others go. For just as I know that I am not the limited, superficial version of the person that others see or project, but inhabit and experience this vast complex interior world, so too does everyone else. It is fascinating. They are not just pedestrians or brothers or friends or even lovers. Those labels are utterly one-dimensional, sketchy. (Even labelling “just a horse”, “just a dog”, or “just a wasp” for that matter is missing the entire story.)

Right now, writing in this café in Golden, Colorado, I have a charming gap in my mouth where my front tooth was removed last Tuesday in a three-hour surgery. For the first few days I wore a mask whenever I was not wearing my temporary retainer because I look like a witch (at least I don’t need to buy a Halloween outfit this year). Now I don’t seem to care, especially as I cannot eat or drink with my retainer in – my attachment to Flat Whites has prevailed over my vanity. But I do notice that people are flinching when they see me, “Who is that gap-toothed witch and why doesn’t she wear her tooth, gross”, entirely oblivious to the rest of me, lol. Of course, I am imagining this just as I imagine everything else, they actually think I look cute. Point is, who cares what other humans think of us; it is always limited and inaccurate. This includes what we think of ourselves a lot of the time! We are better off, like I said, seeing ourselves through Buddha’s eyes.

We have all conjured up universe after universe, personality after personality – we have extraordinarily creative and imaginative minds. Only problem is that we’ve been doing this with our ignorance and delusions, for the most part, so we keep suffering in endless loops. On cue this song just came on, which seems curiously apt:

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind.

Through a glass darkly

With help, however, from the Buddhas – and especially our own personal Buddha aka our Spiritual Guide – why would we not be capable of mastering this creative power of our consciousness to conjure up entirely pure universes and personalities? This is what Dharma does for us. We can begin right now, anytime, anywhere, by believing in the Field of Merit, the infinite assembly of “protectors and best friends” who are right here, right now, waiting patiently to help us, just the other side of our mistaken appearances.

What do you think?! Do you believe any of this or do you think I am mad?! I skimmed a hundred comments on an article about religion by Ross Douthard in the New York Times yesterday that had me shaking my head because there was this deep assumption that the material world is the only real one and anyone who thought otherwise was, basically, mad. I kept going, looking for someone, anyone, who was prepared to entertain the notion that mind has primacy, but saw only a couple brave attempts. Someone said that we had to have a brain first – matter before mind – because how else could we think, duh?! But is it not more logical to say, as Buddha does, that the mind creates matter, as in a dream? In which case, it is not that hard to understand the existence of completely pure minds, pure worlds, and pure beings.

More about that here, Living in a virtual world, if you’re still up for it.

Thank you so much for reading this. I would like to read your comments on this subject, including about any experiences you may have had, so please just scroll to the comments box …