Problem-solving & overcoming delusions

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.

Detoxing our daily life

8 mins read.

We talk a lot about toxic relationships, poisoned environments, and so on, but according to Buddha all outer poison comes from the three inner poisons of attachment, hatred (or aversion), and ignorance. I don’t think we have to look far to see the effects of actions fueled by unbridled greed, intolerance, indifference, and basic confusion. I could put a long list here, or you could just turn on the news.

Carrying on from this article on the three nons, which help us overcome our delusions on even our busiest day.

Meanwhile, when not overtaken by these delusions, people everywhere are also doing extraordinarily brave and unselfish things for others, sometimes at the cost of their own comfort or even lives, such as those trying to put out fires in the Amazon or rescue tortured animals. It restores hope in humanity, seeing these welcome glimmers of clarity, sanity, and kindness that arise from our pure Buddha nature. They are reminders that no one is inherently evil, that we are all good at heart; but that we fall tragically victim to our unpeaceful, uncontrolled thoughts and bad karma. It is the delusions that have to go.

Glimpsing a pure land

I got a good feeling for what it’s like for thousands of people to practice being peaceful and considerate for several days in a row at the recent epic opening of the fifth Kadampa world peace temple and the International Fall Festival. It was magical, to be honest. Deeply inspiring. A lot of fun. You see the goodness at the heart of all of us, and how it is perfectly possible to bring it out of each other if that is what we decide to do. We don’t need to stay petty, or selfish, or vindictive, or addicted to the drama of attachment, pride, and other delusions – we do have a choice here. Back home, we can become examples for others rather than just join back in the fray.

Sometimes we can see the value of a state of mind by extrapolating it to include everyone – what would this world be like, for example, if we all tried to practice non-harmfulness, never deliberately causing pain to others? Where would be the wars, the pollution, the shootings, the inequitable distribution of resources, the starvation?

Even if that seems too much to hope for, knowing what a pure land this would create we can at least start by practicing non-harmfulness ourselves and sowing the karma for a kinder more peaceful world. This is not idealism – this is creating a new reality based on compassion and a wisdom that understands the power of our mind and takes responsibility for our own thoughts, actions, and experiences. Rather than demonizing each other, thus remaining a victim of our own anger and frustration and very muchpart of the problem, it would help all of us a lot more to recognize the real demons that lurk within our own hearts — and turn this sorry situation around. That’s what Buddha basically said, anyway, and I agree.

Non-ignorance

(We’re on the third non, non-ignorance or wisdom.) Geshe Kelsang said in his 2000 Mahamudra teachings that all subject minds and object things arise simultaneously from karmic potentialities in the root mind, like waves from an ocean.

Mahamudra meditators therefore conclude that all the many appearances we perceive, such as the world, the environment, enjoyments, beings, our friends, and our bodies are all waves of the ocean of our consciousness. They do not exist from their own side at all. They exist as mere appearance to mind. This is very close to saying that they are mind, but they are not actual mind. They are not separate from mind. They are the nature of mind.

Everything appearing to you right now, including the words on this screen, is coming not from outside your mind but from inside. Truth! We know this if we take the time to do the analysis of looking for things with wisdom and get that insight into the mere absence of the things we normally perceive, the endless space-like emptiness of all that exists. Whatever it is we are currently grasping at, it’s not there! Grasping is as futile as trying to drink water from a mirage or grasp hold of a reflection.

This is one reason why objects of attachment such as handsome people keep slipping through our fingers; and the more we grasp the quicker that seems to happen.

If things are not out there, yet they appear, then what else can they be other than mere aspects or appearance of our mind not other than their emptiness? As Venerable Geshe Kelsang says in his new book, The Mirror of Dharma:

When we see our body, in truth we see only the emptiness of our body because the real nature of our body is its emptiness. However, we do not understand this because of our ignorance.

Geshe Kelsang has said that “anything can appear due to karma”; and it seems that anything does appear! – our mind is constantly throwing up new appearances, day after day and life after life, like an ocean throwing up waves, some of it quite cool, most of it really crazy.

We manage to grasp at all of it, we are “deceived by grasping at things as they appear”, ie, they appear outside our mind, nothing to do with us. This means that if they’re attractive we want them (attachment) and if they’re not we want them gone (aversion). But if none of this exists outside our mind, these poisonous responses are a horrible and beginningless waste of time.

So much suffering we have had already since beginningless time, really way too much.

And so much more suffering awaits us all if we don’t stop doing this. I think it is good to keep remembering this every day until it sinks in and we commit to detoxifying our mind of the three poisons once and for all. These two verses from The Three Principal Aspects of the Path, transmitted to Je Tsonkghapa by the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri, provide a graphic and heart-wrenching contemplation of our existential predicament. Applied to oneself, this swiftly brings on renunciation, and applied to others, bodhichitta.

Swept along by the currents of the four powerful rivers [birth, ageing, sickness and death],
Tightly bound by the chains of karma, so hard to release,
Ensnared within the iron net of self-grasping,
Completely enveloped by the pitch-black darkness of ignorance,

Taking rebirth after rebirth in boundless samsara,
And unceasingly tormented by the three sufferings [painful feelings, changing suffering and pervasive suffering] –
Through contemplating the state of your mothers, all living beings, in conditions such as these,
Generate the supreme mind of bodhichitta.

Just as the moon’s reflection in a lake cannot be separated out from the reflecting lake, so nothing that appears to us can be separated out from our reflecting awareness. If there is nothing “out there”, what exactly are we grasping at? We have to stop. If not now, in this precious human life, then when?

Practice all three nons in this context

I think it’s helpful to practice all three nons in this context. When an attractive object appears, such as sweet potato fries or a beautiful Fall aspen tree or even the huge Rockies seen through the window of this airplane, I can understand that these are not out there, and enjoy them as a mere appearance or reflection. I can know that when I attain liberation by purifying my lake-like mind, I will be able to enjoy pure appearances forever, and infinitely better ones to boot! This is all non-attachment.

When an unattractive object appears, such as someone arguing with me about politics, I can accept it as simply a wave-like arising within my own mind, resulting from my own karma, and let it go, not getting caught up in it.

And whenever something feels even more solid, fixed, and real than usual, this appearance itself reminds me that it is not real at all — just as a moon appearing in a lake reminds me that it is just a reflection, not outside the lake. Change the lake-like mind, the reflection changes automatically.

Practicing this with Tantra

We can practice the three nons within our Tantric practice too.

Non-attachment: If I encounter an object of desire, instead of generating attachment I can remember the faults of attachment, as explained in this first article. I can remember that all samsaric enjoyments are changing suffering and paltry compared with the pure enjoyments of enlightenment. I can remember that my mind is mixed with Guru Heruka’s mind of bliss and emptiness, and is giving rise to the appearances of the four complete purities – the body, environments, enjoyments, and deeds of Buddha Heruka or Vajrayogini, like reflections in a completely pure lake. Since this Grand Canyon or handsome fellow etc is in fact the same nature as the bliss and emptiness of my mind, he/she/it gives rise to even more bliss. In other words, I can have my cake and eat it. (As opposed to the frustration of trying to hold onto it with attachment, wherein I can neither have my cake nor eat it.

2. Non-hatred: If I encounter an unpleasant person, I can remember that this person is not their delusions, in fact they are a future Buddha, in fact they ARE a Buddha. And, just as important, I want them to be a Buddha. Ideally right now. This is the highest form of love and compassion, and will remind and inspire me to be Buddha Heruka.

3. Non-ignorance: When things get too real, I can remember that this is showing me that things are NOT real, just like that reflection of the moon. Everything is mere name, a manifestation not just of emptiness but of the extraordinary non-dualistic clear light bliss of my mind; and I am more inspired to be Buddha Heruka.

You can read more about the three nons in Universal Compassion and How to Understand the Mind.

Over to you: I’d love to hear more from you in the Comments below on how you practice this instruction. It is such a vast and beneficial practice, given that it covers our three main delusions and all our waking hours! And there are so many different ways to go about it.

How to have a productive day

6.5 mins read.

According to some surveys, the world is the angriest it’s ever been. We do seem to be living in a time of escalating tension, polarization, and discord; but at the same time people are still good at heart, and no one presumably is enjoying this? Recognizing we may have an anger problem is the first step to doing something about it, starting with ourselves. And the advice Buddha gave transcends all politics.

Carrying straight on from this article on the three objects, three poisons, and three virtuous roots.

Transforming objects of hatred into objects of non-hatred

Whenever we encounter undesirable situations or people, instead of getting angry or annoyed we can intensify our patience or compassion. This is called non-hatred. (By the way, hatred is quite a strong word, but it includes all variations of aversion from mild irritation to genocidal rage.)

Most of us probably have several opportunities to try this out most days! This may seem especially the case in a polarized world but, even if we were surrounded by perfect saints, provided we still had the habits of anger in our minds we would still be bumping into objects of anger. People will seem difficult and annoying wherever we go if we have a mind to be annoyed; that’s pretty much guaranteed.

Of course, not giving into our tendency to blame others is easier said than done; but what’s the alternative? If we keep becoming irritated and upset by even the smallest things, we spoil our lives. Buddha’s method works very well for staying calm, if we want it enough. It can help our world enormously.

A friend of mine texted me 20 minutes ago to say that her jeep had been broken into and thieves took her keys, credit cards, health insurance, and social security card (not to mention her lucky green sweater).

And this was supposed to be my b’day outing 🤦🏻‍♀️

However, after a bit of time to think this through, she just texted again to say how this is karma and giving her the chance to practice patience, purification, and giving, and “that makes me happy actually 🙅🏻”; plus she also feels grateful to her bank for acting swiftly to cancel her cards. She has to sort out the boring practicalities of course, but she is laughing again: “🤣”

I was soooo grumpy before and now I feel better. 🙏🏼🙏🏼

When people don’t cooperate …

lake 1 It’s not just when people don’t cooperate with our own wishes — non-hatred can also come in handy when the people we care about are not cooperating with our wishes to help them (or is that just me?!) Instead of getting annoyed or discouraged, we can use their recalcitrance to increase our humility and supreme good heart, motivating us to attain enlightenment even more quickly for their sake.

The three nons

These “three nons” — as I shall henceforth refer to non-attachment, non-hatred, and non-ignorance — are a huge practice. They are the direct antidote to our three principal delusions, the “three poisons”; and, as all delusions stem from these three, they are indirectly an antidote to all that ails us.

And this practice is very important because it means that no day, however impossible, need ever be wasted – in fact the more bombarded we are with distractions and/or upsetting people, the more opportunity we have to solve our actual inner problems. Every day brings us a sense of achievement.

Transforming objects of ignorance into objects of non-ignorance

Here with the third: whenever we encounter objects of ignorance, instead of assenting to the appearance of things as fixed, real, and outside our mind, we let these seemingly solid objects remind us that in fact everything is dreamlike or like a reflection in a lake, not outside our mind. This is called non-ignorance. How great it would be if we and everyone else could live in the deep mental peace that comes from wisdom!

Applying non-ignorance to our own fixed self-image

Just a quick example of how we can practice non-ignorance when it comes to self-loathing (because I was talking about that a lot recently.) We can learn to see every manifestation of an unlikeable self as an incentive to practice both patient acceptance with ourself as described in these articles AND to practice wisdom.

Whenever that painful limited fixed ME rears its ugly head, we can think, “Great! Now I’ve got you where I can see you. And that means I can see that you are a fake self, not me at all, and I am going to let you go.”

The other day someone accused me of not liking her. Considering I do like her very much, and 95% of the time she knows this, this said far more about her own self-image than about me. Moreover, as expected, as soon as her bad mood lifted we were friends again.

In those instances, even if at that moment we feel so sure of something, it is still worth checking: What version of my self am I relating to right now? (Ans: An unlikeable one.) And does it even exist? (Ans: No.) We can dissolve that limited self away and identify with our potential. Only then can we say we are clear about what is going on.

Where are the reflections in a lake?

If things are empty and cannot be found when we search for them with wisdom (as described here for example), how do they exist? As mere appearance to mind, as the nature of mind, like things in a dream or reflections in a lake. As it says in the Mahamudra teachings:

All appearances are the nature of mind.

A lake doesn’t have to go out to its objects; and in truth there are no objects for our mind to go out to either. I was thinking about this just two days ago, while sitting on this bench next to this rather nice lake.

Just to go back to the definition of mind for a moment. Our mind is clarity, which means that it is something that is empty like space, can never possess form, and is the basis for perceiving objects. Our mind or awareness is like a medium that is clearer than the clearest thing ever, clear enough to know objects, to hold them. And an object is just that which is “known by mind”.

Do look at this lake for a moment … can you separate out the clouds from the lake? The clouds appear, and they have shape and color and so on; but lake 3 they are just the nature of the lake. In the same way, objects appear with form and so on, but they are just the nature of formless awareness, clarity.

Two approaches to understanding reality

There are two ways to approach this understanding of the actual relationship between our awareness and its objects and to gain deep personal experience of it. One way is through meditating on our own mind, as explained so clearly for example in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang said in his Mahamudra teachings in 2000:

Using the root mind as our object of meditation — always trying to perceive the general image of our mind – means that we realize the subject mind very well, and understand the relationship between mind and its objects. The huge mistaken understanding that objects are there and the subject mind is here – that between them there is a large gap – will cease, and we will gain the correct understanding of how things really exist. If we clearly understand the real nature and function of mind, then we also understand how things really exist.

The second way is through searching with wisdom for objects outside the mind. This is a bit like looking for reflections outside of the lake — they cannot be found. Which brings us back to a deeper understanding that they must be the nature of the mind, mere appearances of mind.

I think that some people find their way into reality primarily through meditating on their mind, and some find their way into it primarily through meditating on emptiness – at least at first. However, we end up at the same place and using both methods – which are two sides of the same coin and constantly deepening one another.

International Fall Festival

This week, people from all around the world will be converging on the brand new temple for world peace near the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Many are on their way as we speak — safe travels if you are one of them! One reason Kadampa Buddhist Festivals are really inspiring, I find, is because they are a living demonstration of what happens when thousands of people are practicing Buddha’s teachings both in and out of the meditation sessions. It’s hard to describe, actually, so I won’t. But perhaps I’ll see some of you there.

One more article on this subject of the three nons coming up soon. Meantime, over to you for your feedback, please, on how you like to practice them.

Buddhism in daily life

Reflections in a clear lake

Experience and reality

Buddhism in daily life

8 mins read.

Sometimes I find the world’s problems so scary-messy that I puzzle where & how on earth well meaning people are supposed to start unravelling them!!? And how can one person without worldly power make a difference anyway? This kind of doubt can lead people (me) to discouragement and inaction, switching channels to watch a comedy instead.

However, in the four noble truths Buddha explains how all inner and outer problems stem from a handful of delusions in the minds of living beings, along with the negative actions these spawn. That is why the book How to Solve our Human Problems only has about 100 pages! If we solved our delusion problem, and our actions were motivated by wisdom, compassion, skill, self-confidence, and other positive minds, all other problems would have no choice but to slink away. And as we start mastering our own minds, we’ll find we have more and more will and power to help others.

Along with study, contemplation, and meditation, there’s no reason not to do the actions we are already doing to attempt to solve the world’s problems – I just voted in the local elections, for example;* and people everywhere are coming up with visionary, creative, active ideas all the time. I love reading about some of these solutions, including new technology for combatting climate change; but I still feel that if we are not at the same time solving these uncontrolled negative states of mind and behaviors we won’t be able to escape their suffering results — regardless what outer measures we take.

(*Ah, well, since I wrote that the election results came back, showing that only one item I voted for got through, lol. See my point?! Some civic involvement may be useful but clearly not enough to get others to agree with us, let alone to transform our troubled world.)

Maybe I should just give up?

Watching what’s going on around the world, it can appear that the easy choice is to cave in to delusions such as greed, moral corruption, arrogance, and intolerance. People seem to be getting away with this left, right, and center whilst those who are trying to lead a good life and help others are left high and dry. But — talking to myself here — it is not the easy choice because, regardless of any seeming short-term benefits, it leads not just other people but ourselves to more suffering and pain. Sometimes I think we just have to trust that if we are making our best effort to overcome our ignorance and selfishness and to be steadfastly kind, moral, and ethical in accordance with the law of karma, things will work out.

Transforming daily life

There’s a beautiful section in the mind-training (Tib. Lojong) teachings that shows how, instead of feeling sad and defeated, we can transform literally everything that happens to us into the journey to freedom and the growing ability to help everyone.

The three poisons, three objects, and three virtuous roots
Are the brief instruction for the subsequent attainment. ~ Universal Compassion

“Subsequent attainment” means the periods between meditation sessions, ie, our daily life, the vast majority of our time; so it’s kind of important.

This is the whole point about modern Buddhism or Kadampa Buddhism – bit by bit we take all Buddha’s teachings as personal advice and put them into practice in our lives, whatever we’re up to. It’s why it is proving so perfect for busy contemporary people with full lives, jobs, careers, kids, families, relationships, social engagements, who travel, etc etc. Whether our own and others’ conditions are good or bad, whether we’re all having a transform your life quote 5 good time or are beset with difficulties, we learn that there is always something we can do to stay peaceful, positive, and helpful, to stay part of the solution.

It’s a work in progress, but eventually we find we are integrating our life into Dharma, rather than integrating Dharma into our life.

Transforming objects of attachment into objects of non-attachment

Whenever we encounter objects of desire, instead of responding with the poison of attachment, we intensify our wish (“virtuous root”) to experience the real happiness that comes from inner peace and eventually culminates in the bliss of permanent freedom. Then we can enjoy them (or lay them aside, either way) without exaggerating or getting sucked into them. This is called non-attachment.

just when i thought i was out.GIF — **Trying to escape attachment**

Seems to me as if practically everyone is running all day long after objects of attachment to get happy, or the “wrong objects” as Geshe Kelsang calls them. We can check what we are doing all day long to see if that includes us. Or for that matter talking about all day long, including even our most innocent conversations. Just now I was listening to one woman sigh to another, “I prefer these pine trees to the ones we saw over there – I really wish they’d plant more of them.” (Yes, I’m in Colorado). And I was thinking, perhaps uncharitably, how no amount of pine trees would be capable of making this woman happy.

Ok, that’s a strangely mild example of attachment leading to mild frustration, and a first-world problem for sure; but we can extrapolate how, as attachment strengthens, so does frustration. No amount of relationships, money, drugs, TV, fame, sex, vacations, or pine trees can make us happy – finding real happiness in transient illusory objects outside of our mind is impossible. As Shantideva puts it, quite powerfully:

If we consider all the hardships we have endured since beginningless time
In pursuing meaningless worldly pleasures
We could have attained the state of a Buddha
For a fraction of the difficulty! ~ Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life

Funny thing about attachment is how it promises pleasure but delivers bondage. The stronger our attachment, the more we chain and bind ourselves to objects, situations, people, places – believing they have the power to make us happy when only we have that power, and then becoming so sad and confused when things don’t “work out”. Our partner, for example, cannot make us happy. Check out this video by Will Smith, who says some wise things on this subject.

And if you know how to make yourself happy, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in a relationship or not — either works.

Perhaps this seems counter-intuitive at first, but I have found out over the years that non-attachment or non-clinging is what actually allows me to enjoy everything and everyone a lot more. You feel so free. It is the crucial foundation for being able to transform all objects of enjoyment into the bliss of the spiritual path. It dissolves away huge amounts of distraction, confusion, and unsettled feelings, opening up the space in the mind needed to sustain stable love, compassion, concentration, faith, bliss, and wisdom. Without it, I can see clearly how I have one foot on the path to freedom and one foot on the hamster wheel of samsara, which not unsurprisingly encumbers my spiritual progress. As Geshe Kelsang puts it in Meaningful to Behold:

Although the objects of our attachment are transitory, they nevertheless have the power to obstruct our path to freedom.

How lazy, or not, am I?!

One of the biggest obstacles to our spiritual practice is laziness, and there are 3 types, which, I don’t know about you, but in my experience form a vicious circle. The first type is the laziness of attachment, as just described. Then there is the laziness of procrastination – which of course is fairly inevitable if we have the first type, because why practice today what we could put off tomorrow, particularly when there is so much entertainment to be had?! Then, when we don’t experience any deepening inner peace because we’re not actually trying to, we develop the laziness of discouragement, “Man, I can’t do this!” or “This meditation stuff doesn’t work.” So we may as well just watch TV or drink beer instead, back to type 1.

The bliss of the yogis and yoginis

As it says in Meaningful to Behold:

Without a doubt yogis like Milarepa experience bliss that is a thousand times greater than anything we ever experience. Their unsurpassed happiness is due to their inner calm and their complete lack of attachment to external objects, while our suffering and dissatisfaction is due to our complete submersion in attitudes of attachment and aversion for external objects.

While I’m bringing up this wonderful book, have you read the Concentration chapter in Meaningful to Behold lately? I turn to that whenever I need an attachment corrective – whether that is attachment to people, places, fame, fortune, or whatever. It is powerful medicine, but not for the faint-hearted, lol. I have needed this chapter many times over the years and am seriously grateful it exists.

Bit of advice too for when we read these kinds of strong teachings by Shantideva and other Buddhist teachers who don’t mince their words: It is a good idea to start by feeling some peace inside (eg, through allowing your mind to settle in breathing meditation, clarity of mind, or absorption of cessation), identifying with your boundless depth, and remembering your sane wish for real freedom and bliss. Otherwise, if we are not feeling any alternative to attachment, reading about its faults can freak us out, even feel there is nothing worth living for.

Going back to the beginning of this article, what’s all this advice about non-attachment got to do with solving the world’s problems, you may be asking? A lot, as it turns out. Attachment is our biggest distraction to doing anything significant about other people’s suffering and its causes.

Okay, we seem to be out of time. I will carry on with this subject of transforming daily life soon.

Over to you …. I’d love to hear how you transform objects of attachment into objects of non-attachment.

A closer look at attachment

The heart wants what the heart wants

Stepping off the hedonic treadmill

The art of letting go

Did you get a chance to try out any breathing meditation lately?

sama-660x330

It can be so very useful, indeed powerful; and we can gain some deep levels of concentration and mindfulness with it. While we remain in that state of peace, when thoughts arise we don’t feel the same need to dwell on them – we sense the space around them and the space within them.

Continuing from this article.

We can let even disturbing thoughts come and we can let them go. We are free from the mental chain reactions induced by the habit of over-thinking. We are more present – not worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. We can stop identifying with our thoughts, as explained more in this article, understanding that:

There is an enormous difference between the thoughts “I am feeling bad” and “Unpleasant feelings are arising in my mind. ~ How to Solve our Human Problems

What’s next?

However, within minutes our meditation will come to an end and we’ll have to get up and get on. And even though we’ve tasted that space — and in fact even if we have some insight that things are more virtual reality than they seem — daily appearances can be very overpowering very quickly. We get sucked in.

In which case our delusions might quite likely not just rear their heads again but take over — possibly within minutes! — and we’ll be obliged to go back to our normal, crazy way of reacting to things as if they are solid, real, and outside our mind.

So, we need to take our spiritual practice further and get rid of delusions altogether by applying the antidotes of Dharma (Buddha’s teachings) both in and out of meditation.

When we do that breathing meditation, the first step, we feel the pure, clear, spacious peace that we already have inside us once we allow our delusions and their objects to simply subside. We give ourselves a break, giving ourselves permission to let go, relax, and take refuge in the peace of our own minds. And this in itself is evidence that our actual problems are created by our mind, because, when we let go of the thoughts of attachment and other delusions, our mind is at peace. The problem is gone; it actually just goes away.

Within that understanding, we train in Dharma to change our way of thinking about or holding onto things. Our mind and its objects — or our thoughts and what’s appearing to those thoughts — are co-dependent (not in a bad way!) Because they co-arise and depend upon each other completely, then when our way of looking at other people and the world changes, those objects change too. Literally change.

I think we’ve all had this experience.

Moving on naturally

For example, if the person we are currently attached to has not replied to our 25 texts, we might feel desperate, holding them as neglectful and ourselves as unlovable. But instead of dropping this storyline, we’re like a dog with a bone. We try to wrestle with that person mentally, physically, verbally — whatever we think it will take to get them to change and start being nice to us again. We believe we need this to happen so that we can feel good about them again. AND good about ourselves.

To that end, we send a text, “Hey, do you like me?” We know it’s lame and will cause our self-respect to sink even further, but we can’t help it. We have to do something.

Seems like we’re always trying subtle and less subtle ways to get other people to cooperate, to get them to do what we want them to do. And it’s a bit of a battle, isn’t it? Because, funnily enough, they’ve got their own ideas and self-interest. And meanwhile we’re just exacerbating the problem because we are trying to solve it with the very same mind that is creating it.

But then one day, just naturally, even without deliberately changing our thoughts, we realize: “Actually I don’t care any more what this person thinks or does! Cool.” A cloud lifts. Our attachment has lessened. Maybe it’s even gone away. And at that point the problem’s gone, the battle is over. We have moved on, as they say.

We are now free to view that person and ourselves in a different way. We can establish a better kind of connection with them, maybe keeping the love part while ditching the attachment. This too can happen quite naturally — sometimes we discover we can feel quite warmly toward someone we were really upset about. Sometimes we can’t even remember what we were upset about, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

So, on Wednesday that person can seem like a major problem. And this is from their own side I might add – it is their bad behavior causing our pain and self-contempt. We wander around thinking, “It’s their fault I feel this way. It’s their fault, it’s their fault, they need to change.” That’s what we think, isn’t it, when we have attachment or aversion? It’s their fault. But then on Thursday we wake up and think, “Actually, I don’t have a problem with this person anymore.” We’ve let go, moved on. At which point the person appears very differently, do they not? And we are happy and confident in ourselves again – back to being cool and mysterious. (At which point they may start texting us again … just sayin’. Doesn’t matter either way though.)

That person hasn’t had to do a single thing from Wednesday to Thursday. They’re just going about their merry way, as usual, ignoring us or not, as usual. They haven’t done anything, but our thoughts have changed, and so suddenly they’ve changed and we ourselves have changed. When we think about them, it’s: “Oh they’re not so bad. I could be friendly with them again.” Maybe we can even think, “I really want them to be happy.” At which point they’re no longer a source of pain but a source of happiness for us.

The three spheres

And we are now identifying ourselves as, or imputing ourselves on, a loving, whole person, no longer a neurotic needy one. Again, these changes have not come from that person’s side, but because there’s a dependent relationship between our thoughts and their objects, including our self. Our mind and its objects arise together.

We have these kinds of experiences all the time, even without practicing Dharma. When our delusions naturally abate through time, the problem goes away and we’re free to have a totally different experience of that other person, relationship, and self. These are called “the three spheres”. They are all empty of existing from their own side.

Moving on more quickly

So, with Dharma, what we’re doing is understanding this connection between our thoughts and their objects and then changing our thoughts deliberately. This means we don’t have to wait for weeks, months, or years for our attachment to go away on its own, or for our aversion to subside, or for our disappointment or frustration or anxiety to fade. Through Dharma, we no longer have to wait for our thoughts to exhaust themselves. We can actually seize control over our own minds, rather than (as Buddha pointed out) having our minds control us, which is our current predicament. Our thoughts are no longer calling all the shots, because we are.

Through the meditations on renunciation, compassion, and wisdom we can learn to let go of our attachment, aversion, and other delusions, and in an instant be relating to ourselves and others in a happier way. And when we love other people — genuinely love them, not mixed with attachment or conditionality, just wanting them to be happy — then they present no problem for us. If they are an object of our attachment or aversion, they are a problem for us; but as soon as they become an object of our love, they’re no longer a problem for us. Quite the opposite, in fact. They become a source of joy, even if they’ve let us down. Does that make sense?

Love, compassion, and so on are our greatest wealth because they will always help us solve our problems and find happiness. And this is because our problems don’t exist outside the mind. Nothing exists outside our mind. Nothing is independent of our perceptions and thoughts.

As it says in the synopsis of How to Understand the Mind:

If we understand that objects depend on the subjective mind, we can change the way objects appear to us by changing our own mind. Gradually we will gain the ability to control our mind and in this way solve all our problems.

Geshe Kelsang explains in his Mahamudra teachings how subject minds and object things arise simultaneously from the root mind like waves. Whatever we are experiencing or thinking about in any given moment, we cannot separate our thoughts out from their objects. Everything that appears to us entirely depends on the quality of our consciousness, or our thoughts. So, if we have a thought of irritation or anger, we have an object of irritation or anger. If we change that irritation into love, we have an object of love.

As we may know from Buddha’s wisdom teachings, everything is dreamlike. What appears to our mind depends entirely upon the mind itself. This is why Dharma works. Pure and simple – this is why it works. Change our mind, change our world. Literally. Not just tweak our world, not just make incremental changes, but change it. Transform it from the inside out.

Common experience

If we gain some experience of this peace and transformation, we have something to give, do we not? If we understand how our own thoughts operate, we can understand the same for others; and, feeling this common experience, are now more able to be there for them. We can help others, eg, give them some badly-needed encouragement or advice, because we’ve done it ourselves. Dharma is a win win. We help ourselves, we help the people we love, we help everybody.

Over to you. Do you have any examples or anything else to add?

Ten-minute breathing meditation for building confidence

Happiness from the inside out

The relevance of inner peace

Changing direction

6 mins read

In Buddhism, we train to solve our own and everybody else’s problems through compassion and wisdom.

This is a bit different to the usual way we try to solve them, to be honest, which is generally through attachment and aversion.

Out of attachment to a world outside our thoughts, a world in fact projected by our ignorance, we wish and sometimes expect things to turn out a certain way and people to behave a certain way. We’re constantly going outside of ourselves to get what we want and get others to cooperate with our wishes.

But it doesn’t really work, does it? Because we still don’t have everything we want and, even when we do get the things we want, we lose them. And then we get disappointed and upset. Worldly pleasures, as Buddha explained, are like scratching an itch. Indulging in them just satisfies the itch that’s created by our attachment in the first place.

In this way, attachment is a bit of an inner demon, deceiving us; but it’s sometimes hard for us to recognize this because we feel it’s what’s making us happy. This is our habit. We’ve always used our attachment to go out and try and get what we think we want.

And with aversion we try to push away the things out there that seem to be getting in the way of our happiness — people or situations that seem to be threatening us or harming us in any way. And this makes our mind unpeaceful. We don’t like things. We don’t like people, and we want them to behave differently, or go away. We are not in control – we have to push out mentally, verbally, and/or physically.

We’ve been doing this since beginningless time, trying to solve our problems with our attachment and aversion, and for that matter all our other delusions too; but it doesn’t seem to be working, does it?! Because here we all are, still probably with the same number of problems we started with this life, or this morning, and still without all the things we want, or, even if we got them, still wanting more.

Newsflash: We cannot solve our problems through our delusions when it is our delusions that are creating our problems in the first place.

So, with Dharma (ie, Buddha’s teachings and the experiences we gain from practicing those teachings) we learn to become what’s called “inner beings”, appreciating more and more that the way to solve our problems is to change our minds. And on one level it may sound obvious, but it can’t be that obvious to us or we’d be doing it all the time. It may be intellectually obvious to us, but at the moment we have the deeply ingrained emotional habit of trying to solve our pain and problems outside of our mind. We try to get what we want by rearranging stuff outside of our mind.

What we need to do is change these habits and approach our problems with wisdom and compassion, which have the power to solve all our problems not just straightaway but permanently.

To get started …

When we start our training in meditation and Dharma, we need first to learn to experience our own inner peace by allowing our minds to relax and settle. Otherwise it is no wonder we feel we have to get our happiness from out there. Even Dharma seems to be something we have to find from out there.

What we come to understand when we start meditating (skillfully) is that Dharma is already within us. We already have the seeds of everything we need inside us, including a naturally peaceful, blissful mind. We may have heard this many times, but sometimes we forget. We also forget that peace equals happiness, and that when our mind is experiencing peace we don’t have problems.

So the very first step is learning to rely on that inner peace — identifying with just how good we feel when we allow our mind to relax and just forget those stupid delusions for awhile. We can do this through breathing meditations, relaxing into our heart, clarity of the mind, and so on. This is the first way we usually taste that freedom, that peace we have inside us. We can relax into it and think:

This is me. I’m home.

We really need to give ourselves a break and, by letting our mind chill out, see how our aversion and attachment settle down a bit, like waves disappearing into the ocean of our root mind. We can let this go. We can let our thoughts go. And when we let our thoughts go, their objects go as well; so for awhile we’re simply free of that problem! We feel peaceful inside, it’s like, “Hey, I don’t have a problem!” If we can just forget it though breathing meditation, we feel COMPLETELY FINE.

And it doesn’t matter what the problem is, to be honest. Any problem can be temporarily solved through breathing meditation if we get good at it. Or even if we’re not that good at it. Just by allowing ourself to focus on our breath, or relaxing into our heart, we get a little peace, a little space from that problem. And we stop, at least for a short while, trying to solve those problems OUT THERE, in that most frustrating way we normally have. We relax, we rest, we experience this feeling of contentment and think:

“That’s incredible. I have this peace inside me. I can relax. And, you know what? This indicates that there is so much more where this came from. This is just the beginning of the peace I can experience if I change direction — from trying to solve everything outside myself to just allowing myself to practice these teachings and change my mind. This is only the beginning, but I can rely on it — I can understand that this peace is how I can be feeling all the time, and it is who I am.”

IMG_2521-EFFECTS

At the moment we are so habituated to following our attachment wherever it takes us, or our aversion trying to solve everything out there all the time. These delusions are what’s shaking up our minds and causing us so much aggravation, pain, frustration, tightness, heaviness, sadness, depression, not to mention negative actions, etc., etc., etc. IT’S OUR DELUSIONS. We get a glimpse into that simply by experiencing some temporary freedom from those delusions. We should really take refuge in that peace, knowing we can always go there.

Then we can arise from that peace with a clearer mind and happier heart, more centered and better able to deal practically with the so-called outer problems that present themselves.

Next installment is here. Meanwhile, your comments are always welcome.

The relevance of inner peace

Coping with anxiety

Going wide means going deep

Do we need our delusions!?

A guest article by a modern Buddhist practitioner who works full time as a manager of software engineer teams.

In Buddha’s teachings on training our mind, he says that we need to identify, reduce, and remove our delusions.

This is often unskillfully interpreted to mean that delusions are inherently bad and we should not have them in our mind. As a result of this, when a delusion arises in our mind we develop aversion to it. This is then compounded by grasping at a self that shouldn’t be deluded, but is. We then believe that this deluded self is true and real, and develop discouragement, feeling that we are hopeless and will never be able to improve our mind.

This entire process is summed up in a text I received recently from a Sangha friend asking for advice, which read: “I am getting nervous, and hate when I feel like this”. Unfortunately, this approach to “controlling our mind” usually leads to repressing our delusions. As a result, we aren’t even doing the first step of identifying them because we are pushing them away too fast with aversion.

Our delusions are our greatest teacher

As we are often reminded, the opponent to anger is patient acceptance. In this case, to fix the aversion to having delusions in our mind, we need patient acceptance with the fact that they are arising.

As Geshe Kelsang says in How to Solve Our Human Problems:

When painful feelings arise in our mind, there is no need to panic; we can patiently accept them, experience them, and investigate their nature and where they come from.

We can apply this same advice to our deluded states of mind. If we are getting irritated, great! Frustrated, excellent! Nervous, bring it on! Accept the delusion is there in our mind. Experience it and know exactly how it functions. Investigate it to see how it is distorting reality. Learn precisely how each delusion develops and functions in your mind.

If we approach our delusions in this way, then there is so much to be learned from them. Just like understanding the movements of an army makes them easy to defeat in combat, so understanding how our delusions work in our mind takes away their ability to harm us.

More delusions, please

If we are training in martial arts, then we look forward to sparring because it helps us improve our fighting technique. If we are training our mind, then who are we going to spar with? Delusions! The stronger our delusions, the more opportunity we have to go deeper in our practice. As one of my teachers often says, “Super samsara, super nirvana”!

If we learn to practice like this, then we begin to be able to use our delusions to benefit both ourselves and others. As Geshe-la says in How to Understand the Mind:

Bodhisattvas on the first and second grounds experience ordinary attachment, but this does not disturb their spiritual practice, and they are able to use it as a means of benefiting others. Just as farmers use unpleasant things such as manure to create favorable conditions for growing crops, so Bodhisattvas use their attachment as a means of helping others.

Its worth noting that accepting delusions in our mind doesn’t mean that we allow them to stay there forever. The point is that we are aiming to reduce and abandon them all permanently. What it does mean is that we don’t push them away. Instead we examine them, learn from them, and develop more mental fortitude every day. It may take us years to remove our delusions completely using wisdom, so in the meantime, why not enjoy them?

After writing this article, I am honestly looking forward to the next time I get deluded, and hope that you are as well!

Here is another article on the subject.

Hey, what’s going on?!

A friend just told me that the Republicans are winning by 36,000 votes in this great state of Colorado. It gave me pause, again!, as so many times I have been wondering of late, hey, what’s going on?!

(Apologies to my subscribers for popping a second article into your inbox so soon after the last one, but I thought it a civic duty to put one out about the election today 😅 And it’ll still be relevant tomorrow, I’m betting.)*

Yes, I’m writing this slap bang in the middle of election day 2016, November 8^th, 3.56pm MST. It is also Tara Day, thank goodness. For everyone everywhere has the jitters, or almost everyone, ordinary beings at least – whereas Buddha Tara & co. of course do not. This is on account of their fully mastering their hearts and minds.

My hair stylist (yes, why not have a haircut on election day) just told me that the reason he thinks visits to doctors for anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, and the like have spiked by 25% during this election season is because the world is more complicated than ever before and people feel more and more like they are losing control, that they are powerless. And I agreed with him. I also told him I would be putting him in my blog, so here you go Jason, I am a woman of my word.

If there is anything this confounding reality show of an election is showing it is that everything depends on the mind. Problems or non-problems, happiness and suffering, and ugliness and attractiveness – these all depend on the mind.

Problem, no problem

That thing about outer and inner problems is never demonstrably more true than during elections. I’m sorry to break this to you, if you haven’t heard, but we will never ever have full control over the outer problems in life — no one throughout history has ever accomplished this and we are not going to be the first. However, we can learn to control how we react and therefore avoid the inner problems. This is always going to be the case.

Where we feel helpless, also, it is helpful not to forget the power of prayer – one prayer suggested on 9/11 by Geshe Kelsang, and seemingly always applicable, is for our world leaders to have compassion and wisdom.

UK Election 2019

*Yes, another year, another day, another election that is crushingly disappointing to some and a relief to others. Today, Friday Dec 13, I want to add a pertinent quote I read from a Kadampa friend:

For as long as those in power commit to the belief that full spectrum dominance over the external world and its people will satiate their unending desire for control and materials, they will continue to follow paths bereft of meaning and full of untold sadness and destruction. It is the responsibility of those in the fortunate position of being less deluded to cultivate the opponent forces of wisdom and compassion to help facilitate all living beings’ deepest wish … to feel love and to be happy.

For me, it is the people who are less deluded, who show the forces of wisdom and compassion, who are the greatest leaders, for they show us how we can recognise and nurture those same qualities and, then, help others do the same. It is leadership by example, not through spectacle.

As Mickey Rourke says to Matt Dillon in the film Rumblefish:

If you’re going to lead people, you have to have somewhere to go.

Happiness and suffering

Happiness and suffering depend on the mind – people with just the same amount to win or lose from the results of this election still vary in how happy or sad they are today, for example, depending on their state of mind and perceptions. Some people are feeling very depressed whereas others are figuring a way through it while remaining relatively peaceful.

Some people of course have more at stake than others in these elections, as it more immediately impacts their lives. At times like these, samsara shows its true colors. But, if we are still in samsara, we are all one way or another in this together. And we could all probably use this opportunity to remind us to take deeper and deeper refuge in the restorative power of our own mind and potential, as explained here, and the foolproof Dharma medicine, the methods for fulfilling this happiness within. This election has been showing me the need for more refuge, not more dependence on externals.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Ugliness and attractiveness also depend on the mind. And there is a lot of that going on right now – including incomprehension on both sides as to how anyone cannot see through the quite obvious undesirability of the other candidate. Yes, I have my preference and my own incomprehension, and I voted carefully on every point on the ballot; but from a spiritual point of view it doesn’t make much difference who wins this election, for tomorrow our main opponents are still going to be ignorance, attachment, and aversion. Our real work is still going to be cut out for us, either way.

Search for the hero inside yourself

It is wrong to hate Hilary. It is wrong to hate Trump. (Attachment for one would also appear to lead to more aversion toward the other, so best not to succumb to deceptive attachment either.) And it is also wrong to hate both of them! It is short-sighted, and it doesn’t come from any real compassion.

There is much at stake during this election season, no doubt — such as my ability to go to the doctor and, more ominously, the legitimization of fear and hate. Still, there is no justification for our own aversion because, as Buddha pointed out and we can discover for ourselves, living beings are not our enemies, they are our kind mothers. Only our delusions are our enemies. As Geshe Kelsang says:

We may think that our suffering is caused by other people, by poor material conditions, or by society, but in reality it all comes from our own deluded states of mind. ~ Introduction to Buddhism

And it is not as if Geshe-la has not put this to the test – he had to flee Tibet with just his robes, and before that he lived in a feudal dictatorship.

He has also suggested that we vote in order to keep creating the causes for living in a democracy.

We are the change we’ve been waiting for

So we can canvass and vote to try and stop the most dangerous delusions taking power, trying to solve the outer problem as best we can; I am all for this and, in fact, Bodhisattvas have a vow to “go to the assistance of those in need”. But let’s not kid ourselves that our real enemies are either of those two people, or any other politicians for that matter. Even if both of them were to vanish into thin air, the world will still be in a mess for as long as we are all enslaved by the master race of the delusions.

I wonder why we have allowed delusions to ruin our lives since beginningless time and counting?! Why are we so wholly consumed by finding the threat to our happiness always outside ourselves? As Shantideva puts it:

The inner enemies of hatred, attachment, and so forth
Do not have arms and legs,
Nor do they have courage or skill;
So how have they made me their slave?

No other type of enemy
Can remain for as long a time
As can the enduring foes of my delusions,
For they have no beginning and no apparent end.

The only way to be free and stay free is to free the mind – by removing our delusions, and particularly by getting rid of self-grasping ignorance. I reckon that if I had put a fraction of my formidable energy and righteous indignation since beginningless time into rebelling against my own delusions, I’d probably be enlightened by now. And so would you. This election is reminding me of this, so for that at least I am thankful to all concerned.

Have a nice rest of election day, what’s left of it! See you later.

Update 10.55pm

Definition of red herring: Something intended to divert attention from the real problem or matter at hand; a misleading clue.

reflection of mind.jpg — “What we see is a reflection of our own mind.” ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

My conclusion: This divisive and disappointing (was always going to be for half the country and now is for much of the world) election has shown, yet again and quite resoundingly in my opinion, that trying to make samsara work is a red herring. The arc of forward progression — of tolerance, human rights, international security, climate protection, and global connectivity for example — is not an inevitability. While we let the obstructionist delusions stay in our hearts, it is a pipe dream.

But there is also little point in panicking or scare mongering because, lets face it, we wouldn’t have known what was around the corner whoever was elected.

As Buddha said over 2500 years ago, the places, enjoyments, and bodies of samsara are deceptive. Nowhere on this planet is great to live, so let’s instead give up entirely on the hallucinations that come from our self-grasping and self-cherishing. It is about time, and it won’t be a minute too soon. And meantime, as we work on pulling the plug out on the ocean of samsaric suffering by abandoning its causes, let’s not underestimate the power of prayer, “our main job” as Geshe Kelsang once said.

Heruka’s mandala, the appearance of bliss and emptiness, awaits us all, is just a trick of the mind away. Get your Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments when you can.

Perhaps you might join me in trying even harder to rely on the armor of wisdom and compassion, becoming a true refuge for ourselves and others as soon as possible, while we still have health care … I mean this precious human life 😝

If you can, please add to the comments below any inspiring words or quotes that are helping you heal and deal with what is going on, and might help others. The more wisdom, the better.

Lost and (un)Found ~ includes Brexit musings

Looking back at this life

The end of collection is dispersion

A way out of this fine mess …

I have been at the Fall Festival in Toronto this week, which has been an incredible pleasure, one that could only have been improved upon if you had all been here as well. During one lunch with my old friend G from Florida and his charming new wife S, who is relatively new to Buddhism, she asked me how it is that living beings are experiencing suffering if that suffering is not “real”, or inherently existent – that is, if the suffering we normally see does not exist?

A similar question came up during the Tantric Q & A, to which Gen-la Jampa gave a beautiful reply. Only I didn’t take notes so you’ll have to wait for that. Unless someone feels like typing up their notes on that for us all in the comments section … ah, done, thank you, see below.

But I know that S has 3 crazy little mini-schnauzers, and so what I said to her was this.

Imagine that Murphy is sleeping on that huge big bed with you and G, and he is fine, all safe and cozy. But you see that he is whimpering and twitching, and you know he is having a nightmare. You know that he is not “really” suffering, but that is not how he is seeing it at the moment. He believes that the big dog is actually attacking him or the black squirrel has outwitted him yet again or that his family have really deserted him (etc, etc, whatever). But you know that all this is mere appearance to his dreaming mind, and so all you want to do is wake him up.

The Buddhas feel the same way about us. All the time.

It’s a fine mess we have gotten ourselves into …

In a surreal counterpoint to this sane, harmonious Pure Land of the Festival was the divisive second US presidential debate – Greek drama or tragedy, take your pick. Jaws worldwide were dropping. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Only we did, between us. Please by all means vote on November 8; I certainly am going to. However, I have also concluded that the only way to cure these weird appearances and resultant widespread discomfort and delusion is to focus on developing compassion for everyone concerned (including the Rocky Mountain Trump supporter sitting next to me on this flight, who is drinking lots of beer and trying to sleep the whole thing off). Not to take these politics too seriously, if I even could, but to remember to purify it nonetheless, remembering that it is all dream-like karmic appearance. (Perhaps it is even better that it is now “out” rather than “in”, providing it encourages us to do something about it.) For the alternative to purifying it is buying into it and experiencing an increasingly tangled mess.

I was moved by the last question of the debate, when an earnest undecided voter asked the candidates to please name one thing that they actually respected about each other — and they did both come up with something. The atmosphere in the town hall immediately softened. There was some opening. Everyone could breathe a little more freely. You saw the possibility of sanity and kindness being restored one day. All in the space of a few minutes. I know the clouds rolled back in again almost straightaway, but there was a glimpse for a moment there of sky-like Buddha nature.

Centered in the solution

We think to cure suffering that we need to focus on the problem. But Buddhas never focus on the problem out of the context of being centered in the solution. How are we going to help others if we hold them to be inherently problematic? There is no space — there is no room to bring out their potential, their pure nature, their kindness or clarity or peace. All we can do is try and patch things up, shuffle things around, all the while in danger of being dragged further and further into the morass. There is no hope in a world of inherent existence. Borrowing the newly-minted Nobel Laureate to make this point:

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Luckily the world is empty of inherent existence. As Gen-la Khyenrab explained in the Festival, emptiness is the true nature of phenomena. Emptiness is not nothingness; it is the opposite of nothingness. It is because of emptiness that everything can exist.

Because emptiness is possible, everything is possible. ~ Nagarjuna

So emptiness means that things can change completely and radically – that this otherwise intractably tangled mess of samsara can be unravelled by pulling on a single thread.

From enlightened beings’ point of view, we are already pure. Geshe Kelsang said in Portugal in 2009, for example, that he views us all as Heroines and Heroes, which is why he has so much respect for us. And this seems to be why he has never tired in liberating us, why he finds it effortless. Buddhas understand that we are not inherently pure, and that from our point of view we can feel far from pure. But that is just a point of view, and when we stop “awfulizing everything” with our inappropriate attention, as a friend put it the other day, and improve our imagination or imputation based on wisdom, we will see ourselves and others in a completely different way. No more “real” but infinitely more enjoyable.

Over to you, comments welcome.

Change our thoughts, liberate ourself

How to be a hero

Tantra: Bringing the result into the path

Dealing with our demons

Of the three steps to overcoming our delusions taught in the mind-training teachings of Buddhism, the first is recognizing or identifying them. And that means not just intellectually but in our own minds. We identify them but we don’t identify WITH them — the difference is crucial. (The next two steps are overcoming them by applying their opponents and uprooting them completely with the wisdom that realizes emptiness.)

Monsters in the cellar

It is far better not to repress those bits of our mind that we don’t like. These delusions and the bad karmic appearances they spawn are not intrinsic to our mind but, while we fail to accept that they are there, they continue to lurk in our mental cellar. Even when they don’t jump out and terrify us, they still haunt us. They cause us unease and painful feelings without our even knowing why we are feeling this way. Do you ever find life a bit spooky, or is that just me? I think life is a bit spooky when we are living under the influence of unacknowledged mental monsters. We sort of know they’re all there, which is why we try to keep that cellar door firmly shut and bolted.

We have various strategies to avoid them, as mentioned here, but they’re not really working. You’ve seen horror movies, maybe — you know what people do to try and pretend there are no monsters in the cellar. They blame the creepy neighbors, distract themselves, and/or get blind drunk. Or they try to leave the house, but of course that never goes well (we cannot leave our minds.)

Whatever they do, the terror still creeps up the stairs and through the cracks in the doors and windows; and it always seems to maintain the element of surprise. They know that, so they are never truly comfortable; they live in fear.

Our refusal to own our delusions pushes them into the cellar, where they exert enormous unseen influence over what we do in life. We need instead to have the confidence and authenticity to bring these inner demons of the delusions out into the open, invite them to show their faces in the light of our pure, indestructible potential, so we can (1) see that there is nothing to be scared of, they are not so intolerable, and we are far bigger and stronger than them; and (2) be prepared to learn from them to see what is really happening in our mind. Check out this article for more on how to do this.

Moving beyond

We cannot completely and whole-heartedly accept who we are or where we’re at if there are aspects of our mind that we are too afraid (or alternatively too self-satisfied) to explore. And if we cannot accept who we are, we cannot change who we are. If we want to improve, we need to take ownership and responsibility for our delusions, taking a good honest look at them rather than denying them or rejecting them outright.

Once we acknowledge instead of avoiding one of these dark traits or habit patterns, it will cease to have the same control over us. We will also see more clearly that we are not our delusions, that they come and go like clouds in a clear sky, like weather.

For example, we cannot move beyond our habitual dislike for others — that, “I don’t really like people very much, at least till I get to know them, and even then…” mind — until we realize we possess this mind of self-protective aversion, which is projecting unlikeability onto the mess of humanity (probably starting with ourselves). At the same time, we need to see that we are not the aversion, that our real nature is connectivity and affection.

One of the most valuable things I did during my longish retreat a few years ago was look at my delusions head on in this way, not papering them over with unapplied generalities of Dharma, not shoving them under the carpet, not pretending they were not there. I came to discover that when I had a strong delusion, my subsequent meditation session was even stronger as a result, such that I actively came to enjoy my delusions in a funny kind of way, certainly they lost a lot of their power to scare me or influence me. They became more objects of curiosity, of challenge. I’m not saying I have anywhere near mastered this yet, of course; it is a life-long practice and our delusions have many levels. (We always have to be on the look out for complacency and self-satisfaction too, which can rear their lazy heads when our mind is feeling comfortable.) But I do have total confidence in the possibility of genuinely accepting all our delusions, however shadowy, and letting them go with the help of applied Dharma.

The next installment is here, Saying bye bye to the painful, limited self. Meanwhile, please share your comments below on how you deal with the monsters in your cellar.

Imaginary friend

Pride in identity

Humility in action

Pride in identity continued …

Naming and labeling

Defined by our good heart

Emotional honesty

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Glimpsing a pure land

Non-ignorance

Practice all three nons in this context

Practicing this with Tantra

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Transforming objects of hatred into objects of non-hatred

When people don’t cooperate …

The three nons

Transforming objects of ignorance into objects of non-ignorance

Applying non-ignorance to our own fixed self-image

Where are the reflections in a lake?

Two approaches to understanding reality

International Fall Festival

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What’s next?

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To get started …

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Our delusions are our greatest teacher

More delusions, please

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Problem, no problem

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We are the change we’ve been waiting for

Update 10.55pm

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It’s a fine mess we have gotten ourselves into …

Centered in the solution

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Monsters in the cellar

Moving beyond

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