Too busy to be a Bodhisattva?

What is a day really for? I’ve seen four clips these past few days that illustrate the need to think about this if I want my life to have a deeper meaning.

The first, and simplest, clip is just a stick person getting up each morning, going to work, coming home, going to sleep, getting up again, etc, in an endless loop.

The endless to-do list

The second is a more sophisticated version of this, where we manage to accomplish all manner of chores each day/week/year, feeling even somewhat accomplished at having gotten through our to-do lists, only to find ourselves in the exact same place the following day/week/year.

Have you noticed that our to-do list never actually ends? Worldly activities are like a man’s beard – though he may shave it off in the morning, it is bristling back by the evening. Samsara plays in an endless loop, and all these loops end up being dystopian sooner or later, involving variations on the clichéic themes of birth, sickness, ageing, losing what we like, encountering what we don’t like, underlying dissatisfaction, and (even if we do get to the point where we’ve sorted this life out a bit), dying and having to start all over again in our next rebirth. Check out this article for why this keeps happening: Tired, yet, of living a cliché? 

Clearly we have to go to work and get stuff done each day. We are human beings and we need human things. That’s not the issue. The issue is that if we’re doing all these chores with a boring, grumpy, negative, or unhappy mind, we are getting precisely nowhere. Arguably we are going backwards. Life remains boring, irksome, negative, and/or unhappy, with just the occasional highlight perhaps as we celebrate the human milestones (weddings, births, vacations, graduations, career accomplishments, etc).

On the other hand, if we’re approaching the days of our lives with, for example, the wish praised by the ancient Kadampa Geshes:

To harm our delusions as much as possible and help others as much as possible,

then both our regular chores and the various milestones of our life are bringing us closer and closer to the real happiness and freedom we have always longed for. For example, I went shopping on this bright sunny day in Fulham Road charity shops to buy wedding dresses. That’s a first! Now I can go to two of my nieces’ weddings this summer with a view to building fun memories for myself that I’ll end up forgetting, or with a view to practicing the loving-kindness that wants to bring the happy couples and their guests to a state of lasting fulfillment. That way we can have our (wedding) cake and eat it: meaningful times and fun fleeting memories. With Dharma, all else being equal as we go about our lives, we can learn to approach all our normal activities with this wish, both the good times and the bad. We are following the profound Kadampa precept to:

Remain natural while changing your aspiration.

Simplify your wishes

The third video clip is Kadam Rebecca, one of the Buddhist teachers in California, explaining (and I paraphrase) that every day we have so many wishes – to go here, do that, avoid this – but life could be a lot simpler and more effective if we only had two wishes, namely the wish for liberation and enlightenment. (These two are the logical extension of the wish mentioned above to harm our delusions as much as possible and help others as much as possible.)

The two basic or underlying wishes of every single living being are to be happy and free from suffering. There is nothing wrong at all with these wishes, and Buddha gave his 84,000 teachings precisely to lead us to the lasting happiness and freedom he knows we’re capable of. However, at the moment, (1) due to self-cherishing our wishes are selfish, always about “me, me, me, what I want”, which turns out to be a lot (including these high heels I bought that I now realize I’ll never wear, not even to these weddings). And (2) due to attachment believing that happiness comes from outside the mind, we have countless wishes that cannot be fulfilled (I need this, I need that, I need shoes). With uncontrolled desire there is literally no end to the things we want to have or to avoid. Selfish desires are like a black hole – no matter how much we throw in there, it’s never going to fill up. As it says in How to Transform Your Life:

We have countless desires, but no matter how much effort we make, we never feel that we have satisfied them. Even when we get what we want, we do not get it in the way we want. We possess the object, but we do not derive satisfaction from possessing it. For example, we may dream of becoming wealthy, but, if we actually become wealthy, our life is not the way we imagined it would be and we do not feel we have fulfilled our desire. This is because our desires do not decrease as our wealth increases.

Thing is, if we really want an ever deepening happiness and a lasting mental freedom – which is on offer if Buddha is to be believed – then it’s a lot more efficient to wake up each morning and contemplate how what we really need to do today is keep heading toward liberation (reducing our delusions such as self-cherishing and attachment) and enlightenment (improving ourselves so that we can really help others.) Is that, therefore, not what a day is really for?

In this next quote, Geshe-la is encouraging us that with the wish for enlightenment – bodhichitta – uppermost in our mind, we don’t mind nearly so much whether or not we fulfill all our umpteen other wishes:

If we have bodhichitta, negative states of mind such as attachment, anger, and jealousy have no power over us. If we cannot find a well-paid job, a comfortable home, or good friends, we will not be upset. Instead we will think “My main wish is to attain enlightenment. It does not matter if I cannot attain these worldly enjoyments, which in any case serve only to bind me to samsara.” With such a pure mind there will be no basis for self-pity or blaming others, and nothing will be able to obstruct our progress toward enlightenment. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

Are you too busy to be a Bodhisattva?

The fourth clip is by Gen-la Khyenrab addressing the question “Are you too busy to be a Bodhisattva?” I will let this one speak for itself.

To conclude, it may be just me, but I think these four videos are all pointing at the same thing – analyzing both the problem (samsara’s meaningless loops) and the solution (break the cycle by using everything to harm delusions and help others).

Time for a proper holiday!!!

The third and fourth videos both come from the recent US Kadampa Festival. Being that I’m currently a Londoner, I wasn’t at that particular Festival this year; but social media has been reminding me of how much fun these Festivals are. Not in a FOMO way because luckily the Spring, Summer, and Fall International Kadampa Festivals are all coming up soon, and this year they’re all in the same country as me, or close enough (Fall/Spain!). Can I use the excuse of this article to encourage you to book in for a Festival this year in person if you’re free? Especially if you’re in the UK or Ireland, lol, as honestly these Festivals are just up or down the road. You only have to log onto Trainline and book a train (and maybe a ferry) to Ulverston.*

I’ve written about Festivals before ‘cos I think they’re fantastic in terms of deepening our connection with Buddha, Dharma, and the international Sangha. Festivals are also an enjoyable, relaxing, and spiritually significant way to take some time off, which is why Geshe-la called them spiritual holidays. I don’t know about you, but I am up for a proper holiday. This year I believe indoor and local accommodation are filling up fast – but you can always take a tent, or stay in a pre-erected tent. I served my time, camped for decades, and it’s really not too bad = UK English for it’s fine. Affordable (8 quid a day, including breakfast) and you’ll be in nature, in the famously beautiful Lake District, conveniently located close to the action. (A lot of people apparently prefer to camp than to be inside or offsite – I am not one of them, but thought I’d pass that on.)

Check out these two articles for more about Kadampa Festivals:
Things aren’t coming at you, they’re coming from you
A Festival state of mind

*For the cash-strapped, there’s sometimes some financial assistance available to help people travel to and attend Festivals – check the comments section. And for the time-strapped, the Festivals are also available online.

Further Reading
If you like this article, here are a few more pieces from Kadampa Life that explore these themes in greater depth:

• Are you in the groove or a rut?
A look at how even productive, well-organized lives can fall into repetitive patterns—and how to break free from them.
• How to deal with difficult people
Explores how our mental habits keep us stuck in the same loops, and how changing our mind changes everything.
• Being bound for freedom
An explanation of why samsara never truly satisfies—and how the wish for liberation arises.
• Life through Buddha’s eyes
A perspective on seeing beyond the ordinary appearance of things and awakening to a more meaningful way of living.