Tag: Buddha nature

Unleashing our potential

sarcasticI asked a bunch of people the other day what their New Year’s resolutions were, and most of them told me they hadn’t bothered making any because they never stuck to them. And it is true that New Year’s resolutions often don’t work because our minds are kind of too much all over the place, scattered.

If we find we can’t stick to our obviously worthwhile resolutions each new year, or any other time for that matter, it could well be because our habits and real desires go way deeper than our new plans, so they keep winning. Luckily meditation helps, perhaps more than anything.

We need to change from deep within, not just on a superficial level of consciousness – our thoughts are too changeable on the surface of our minds, like waves or froth on an ocean, so even if we manage to change them they don’t stay changed. I find it is always pretty much vital, therefore, to start the process of self-transformation by diving below the waves of chatter and thoughts directed largely outward, to access a deeper level of awareness.

Reboot

amplutihedron_spanEven the simplest breathing meditation, designed to overcome conceptual distractions, brings us inward and helps us to connect to our Buddha nature, which is in fact unfathomably deep, and we can sense that.

We don’t feel things in our head – we feel them in our heart. We don’t really change in our head — we change in our heart.

So we start by dropping into our heart, and experiencing already some peace and space opening up. The slightest experience of peace shows lasting deep peace and change is possible, so we identify with that, thinking, “This is me.”

An even more powerful method for accessing deeper awareness is meditating on the clarity of the mind.

And above all we can mix with the blessings of all enlightened beings — their all-pervasive omniscient, compassionate minds — because then for sure we go deeper and deeper and deeper. And our mind is purified and inspired.

On this basis we can reinvent ourselves — dissolve all our stale habitual thoughts away and start again! Reboot. Especially if we can bring even a little understanding of emptiness into the equation.

I plan to share more on how to do everything I’ve just said because it’s useful – but later. For all this to work, to really change, we need to get in the habit of relating to this potential — our spiritual depth — and identifying with it. And this brings us back to the development of self-confidence, carrying on from this article.

colorado mountains 1.JPG Pride with respect to our potential

The first type of self-confidence, also known as non-deluded pride, is called “pride with respect to our potential”. This state of mind is:

… based on a recognition of our spiritual potential and leads us to think, “I can and will attain Buddhahood. ~ How to Understand the Mind

With this we identify with our Buddha nature, our potential for lasting happiness, total freedom, universal love, omniscient wisdom, etc. In short, our potential for enlightenment. We trust our Buddha nature, not our superficial desires and aversions, however seductive or on our side these may pretend to be.

Big vision

In How to Transform Your Life, which you can now download for FREE! here, the author Geshe Kelsang says: httyl-bookcovers

In the heart of even the cruelest and most degenerate person exists the potential for limitless love, compassion, and wisdom. Unlike the seeds of our delusions, which can be destroyed, this potential is utterly indestructible and is the pure essential nature of every living being… Recognizing everyone as a future Buddha, out of love and compassion we will naturally help and encourage this potential to ripen.

“Everyone” includes ourselves. We are all future Buddhas. In our society, we have phrases like, “You gotta have vision of yourself”; but our vision tends to be who we are now, just a little bit better, right? In Buddhism, we develop a really big vision. We say “Identify with your Buddha nature ~ you can become an enlightened being.”

With this first non-deluded pride, we aren’t just saying I CAN become a Buddha, we are saying “I WILL become a Buddha.” I am going to become someone with perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, total patience. A mind pervaded by joy. I’m going to do that. That’s proper vision, isn’t it? And if we identify with that, well, that’s a big sense of self. But this self, unlike our ordinary, painful, limited sense of self, is imputed on the truth. I have the potential and I am going to become a Buddha. It’s true.

Some people might think, “Hey, that’s a bit arrogant or far-fetched.” But you know what? It’s possible. It’s actually possible for us to become a Buddha.

happinessWhereas it’s not possible for us to develop lasting happiness or meaning through our looks. Or through our ability to sing. Or through our ability to make money. Or through any of the other things we tend to develop pride in. We might or might not get a temporary happiness hit, but sooner or later these things all just disappear.

In other words, it is MORE possible to achieve enlightenment than to achieve lasting happiness through external things.

We are by nature unlimited, and once we have purified our mind we will have purified our world.

So why put our efforts into trying to achieve happiness through external things that will never amount to anything, instead of into something that we know is possible, and infinitely more desirable, which is to achieve enlightenment? The first non-deluded pride helps us overcome this discrepancy because we identify with our potential and with our wish for enlightenment.

Try it out

In meditation, in our heart, we can just try it out. Just allow that self-confidence to resonate deep inside, just that insight and determination, “I have the potential for enlightenment, that’s who I really am, and I am going to realize that potential and become a Buddha.”

Actual enlightenment is a mind, and anyone can develop that mind of pure love, pure wisdom, and pure compassion, from which we manifest in whatever form benefits living beings.

Enlightenment is a state of total freedom, for which we all have the potential. So why not go for it? Why not develop a big vision? And say deep inside, “I’m going to do that!” Unless you have a better idea. But what could be a better idea?

not-way-to-relate-to-potentialIt may seem a fairly outrageous thought if you are new to Buddhism, it may even seem slightly terrifying; but it is actually a very relaxing thought. Why? Because we’re no longer identifying with our limitations. It is identifying with our limitations that’s the main reason for our laziness of discouragement — looking at ourselves and thinking, “I’m such a twerp. I’m such a deluded being — I’m so angry, and I’m so jealous, and I’m so attached to my stuff, and I’m incapable of moving on, and that’s me.” And then we’re walking around trying to improve an inherently existent twerp, which is really tough. We’re thinking, “I’m useless, I’m so inadequate, I’m a stupid person, but at least I’ve made some New Year’s resolutions here, at least I’m trying” – but we can’t move away from that if we think it’s the truth, if we feel intrinsically useless.

Luckily, it’s not the truth. We’re just creating it with our mind. An intrinsic twerp is just an idea. And it’s a useless idea at that, it’s a wrong idea. We’re not useless. We are by nature empty, which means we are by nature free. If we think we’re a limited being, we’re a limited being. But if we think we have an unlimited potential and we identify with that, that’s what we have.

If you think you’re someone who is going to become a Buddha, that’s exactly who you are. So go for it.

Ok, enough for today. Maybe you’d like to try this out for a few days and report back in the comments below?! And here is the next article on the subject.

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How is your meditation going?

 

A skeptic’s guide to Buddhas and blessings

By a guest writer and long-term meditator

Buddha for skeptic.jpgI live in a country where the majority of the population identify themselves as non-religious (agnostic or atheist). They are not closed minded people, rather just naturally skeptical. So, for some time now I have been pondering how to explain the existence of Buddhas and blessings to a life-long skeptic. Most importantly, how can they come to explore the truth of both for themselves, experientially.

Connecting to a peaceful reality

Through even the simplest form of meditation — breathing meditation — everyone can learn how to connect to a relatively peaceful mind. When we are experiencing a little peace we are, at that time, tasting a little of what it’s like for someone who experiences their life as peaceful, whether that’s for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or all day!

Buddha explained there is no world outside our mind — our personal world, our life, is a reflection of our mind. If our mind is peaceful, our life will be experienced as peaceful; if it’s not, it won’t. So, those peaceful moments in meditation are revealing a little of our potential to live from the perspective of a peaceful reality.

This peaceful potential is what we call in Buddhism our “Buddha nature”. Someone who has fully actualized this inner potential and accomplished a supreme and lasting peace of mind and happiness, moment to moment, is an enlightened being, a Buddha. Everyone has this potential. To know it experientially we just need to connect to a little peace.

breathing-meditationA Buddha experiences their life always as a profoundly peaceful reality. Our moment of peace in meditation (or out of meditation) is revealing our potential to one day live from that supremely peaceful reality ourselves.

In his book The New Eight Steps to Happiness, my teacher Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says:

It is also important to understand how we too can become a Buddha, for when we are confident that enlightenment is a possibility for us we will naturally feel much closer to those who have already attained enlightenment.

For me, this has many levels of meaning. One way of understanding it is that the more we learn to access and abide in the experience of a peaceful mind, the more we become ‘confident that enlightenment is a possibility for us’; and gradually we ‘feel much closer to those who have already attained enlightenment’. Not just ideologically, but in our direct experience.

The key is, Buddha explained how our normal sense of a separate self and separate mind is mistaken. In reality there is no separate mind or self. So in reality our mind is never separate from the minds of all enlightened beings, and, when we experience a little peace, to some degree we are letting go of that experience of a separate mind and self. At that moment we are connecting with the vast peace of enlightenment, Buddha’s mind. That connection to the peace of enlightenment is what we call, in Buddhism, a blessing.

Geshe Kelsang defines blessings as:

The transformation of our mind from a negative state to a positive state, from an unhappy state to a happy state, or from a state of weakness to a state of strength through the inspiration of holy beings such as our Spiritual Guide, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Blessings, when two minds connect

reach-enlightenmentA friend of mind explains it in a very simple and practical way. He says that blessings are simply when two minds connect. We probably all know a peaceful, positive and kind friend whom, when we spend time with them, we generally leave feeling better for the encounter. It seems the best of who they are draws out the best of who we are, and we often leave them feeling more peaceful, positive and kind than when we arrived. These are the people we hear ourselves saying, ‘I feel blessed to have them in my life’. Most of us can understand and accept this explanation of blessings.

Connecting with enlightenment

The challenge is when we try to understand how we receive the blessings of a Buddha. The reason for this is very simple, we can see our kind friend, we can’t see Buddhas.

However, just because we cannot see them, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For example, have you ever seen wind? Yet, if you open your window on a windy day you will feel it and its power immediately. Although we cannot see wind, we can still harness its power to accomplish beneficial outcomes, like powering wind turbines which power electricity plants.

It’s similar with the blessings of Buddhas — we may not be able to see Buddhas (at the moment!), but we can certainly feel their presence through the peaceful power of their blessings. So the good news is that even the most skeptical of us can learn to tap into this ocean of peaceful positive energy / blessings of enlightenment, whenever we wish.

How? Simply close your eyes, focus on your breath, and connect to a peaceful mind. Then just allow yourself to imagine (and in time to know) that your little peace is connecting you to the limitless peace and goodness of enlightenment, connecting with a Buddha’s mind. Gradually this is what you will experience.

With our eyes closed, centered in that inner experience in meditation, notice how that seems quite real for you. Also, notice how when you open your eyes all your doubts naturally come back. Why?

Let your experience reveal a deeper knowing

The reason for this is that when we are focused inwards (in our inner world) we are relying upon our direct experience, and when we open our eyes (back in our outer world) we go back to relying upon our so-called 5-sitting-at-the-dock-of-the-bayrational, logical mind.

This is the downside of our over-reliance on science as the only barometer of truth. We discount our own direct experience in favor of the so-called logic and truth of science. I am not dismissing science; it has many good qualities. However, when it becomes a dogma it can limit us in our exploration of deeper truth. The only constancy in science is that it is constantly proving that what we previously dogmatically thought to be true was, in fact, wrong!

Geshe Kelsang refers to Kadam Dharma as:

Scientific methods to improve our human nature and qualities.

Meditation and Dharma is inner science, the science of conscious experience. We prove empirically that by continually centering in a peaceful heart and opening up to the idea that we are connecting to the vast peace of enlightenment, this is exactly what we prove to be true, through our own direct experience, empirically.

The key is, give yourself permission to let go of what you think you know (just for a few moments!), until your experience in meditation reveals a far deeper knowing. Discover for yourself how when we surrender our current logic to our own direct experience, we find it a far more reliable barometer of truth.

Let your peace flow to the ocean

river flowing.pngHave you ever noticed that a flowing river, no matter how small, naturally flows to the ocean. It’s always flowing to something far greater. So it is with our little peace. Whenever we are experiencing a flow of peaceful, positive energy in our heart, for example through love or any other positive state of mind, we are immediately connecting to the ocean of peace that is enlightenment, we are experiencing a blessing.

Just as the river is never separate from the ocean, so our little peace is always connected to this ocean of peace that is enlightenment. We just need to recognize this and then relax into and abide with that connection to enlightenment. In this way we allow this enlightened energy to awaken our potential for love, compassion, and wisdom, as well as pure peace and happiness.

Plug in and awaken your potential

In the eco-friendly city I live in, there is an increasing demand for Tesla electric cars. I’m not much of a car person myself, but I’m reliably informed that they are a thing of great beauty and potential. Apparently the new ones can go from 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds! However, if your Tesla car is sitting on the side of the road and hasn’t been plugged into an electricity source, its extraordinary potential remains dormant and it can’t take you anywhere.

In a similar way, everyone already has an extraordinary (and indestructible) potential for enlightenment, our Buddha nature. This potential will remain dormant in us until we connect to an enlightened energy source, an enlightened being’s mind.

It’s simple really — the only way to enlightenment is through enlightenment.

Through plugging into the limitless peace and goodness of enlightenment in the form of blessings, we can awaken our potential for limitless compassion, wisdom, peace, and pure happiness.

Buddha in water.jpgPractically, it’s similar to what happens when hanging out with your peaceful, positive friend. The best in him or her draws out the best in us. Just take some time every day in the inner experience of meditation to connect to a flow of peace (or any virtuous mind), and then allow that flow to connect you to the ocean of peace and goodness that is enlightenment. Just spend time with the most peaceful, positive person there is, Buddha! And allow the very best in him or her to draw out the very best in you — to awaken your Buddha nature.

It’s easier than we think

Then we will understand what Geshe Kelsang means in the book Joyful Path of Good Fortune, when he says:

The instructions of Lamrim are easy to put into practice.

The ease comes from knowing (through experience) that we are not doing this on our own, thank goodness! Rather, we are attaining enlightenment through our creative, dynamic relationship with enlightenment.

Over to you, comments for our guest author are welcome!

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Meditation in the pursuit of happiness 

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Exploring our potential for peace and omniscience

 

Think globally, act locally

who-wants-changeWe cannot change everyone. We cannot get everyone to behave. You may have noticed this. So being the change we want to see in the world — as Mahatma Gandhi put it in equally trying times — really needs to be our internal starting point. As Buddhist master Atisha says:

Since you cannot tame the minds of others until you have tamed your own, begin by taming your own mind.

Thinking globally

But having said that, we can develop a global motivation that encompasses everyone, and the sooner we do that the quicker we will tame our own minds and be able to help others everywhere. Thinking big, aiming at bodhichitta motivation, we can learn slowly but surely to overcome our aversion, dislike, and fear of others locally, and hold them in our everything-begins-in-the-imaginationhearts.

Furthermore, with Tantra, generated as Buddha Heruka for example, we have huge vision that defies mistaken and ordinary appearances and conceptions and already sees ourselves, others, and the world as pure. This is the quickest, and frankly only way IMHO, to accomplish world peace. There is an incredibly profound, beautiful verse in Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra:

Through the wheel of sharp weapons of the exalted wisdom of bliss and emptiness
Circling throughout the space of the minds of sentient beings until the end of the aeon,
Cutting away the demon of self-grasping, the root of samsara,
May definitive Heruka be victorious. ~ p. 91

Just to get a bit deep for a moment … I like to view myself as a mere aspect of my Spiritual Guide’s mind of bliss and emptiness, and view everyone likewise as a mere aspect of my mind of bliss and emptiness. This is bringing the result into the path big time, and a way to “effortlessly” benefit others, training in meditation and trying to hold that view more and more the rest of the time.

ring the bells.jpgWe need to be in refuge. I was imagining, like I do, where I would want to be, mentally speaking, if a bomb dropped on my head today. I would want to be in my heart, in the refuge of my Spiritual Guide’s heart, full of love, compassion, and wisdom, and on my way to the Pure Land where I will then emanate bodies to help everyone.

So that makes me think that I have to get ever closer to that state as a priority because, even if it’s not a bomb, it’ll be something that turns up out of nowhere one of these days to dispatch me to my next life.

Acting locally

But locally, meanwhile, we can go to the assistance of people in need, turn things in the right direction. I had a nice little example of that yesterday.

As I was waiting for a flat white at Tucson airport, a monk dressed in orange robes was next in line holding his cashew nuts. When I offeredtucson to buy them for him, he beamed and said “What is your name? And where are you from?” I told him I was also a Buddhist and had lived in Sri Lanka as a child. He told me his name, I think I was supposed to have heard of it or something, for he paused before adding, “I have written lots of books.” Then he told me the name of his temple in Los Angeles and invited me to visit him there next week when I go. I googled him before boarding this flight, and, as it happens, he is currently the chief Sri Lankan monk in America and the advisor to the Sri Lankan president on international religious affairs.

(I have to say, this beat my standing in line next to Darryl Hannah a few weeks ago in Denver, where she apparently lives too … entertained as I was at the time ;-))

Small world, as several of my friends pointed out – and indeed our karma is what makes it a small world. We are all interconnected — all of our actions have effects not just now but way way into the future. Who knows when and how my and Bhante Walpola Piyananda’s paths will meet again, perhaps lifetimes hence or perhaps next week in LA; but it was worth creating some good karma together in our brief encounter.

Friend of the world

The Bodhisattva’s way of life is, I think, an incredibly skillful way of thinking globally and acting locally, and one that we can all aspire to, whatever our background.

The main thing a Bodhisattva promises to do, in the so-called Bodhisattva vow, is to attain enlightenment to benefit all living beings without exception. But there are no fewer than 46 secondary downfalls the Bodhisattva tries to avoid, and these include:

  • Doing little to benefit others
  • Not helping others to avoid negativity
  • Not going to the assistance of those in need
  • Not acting to dispel suffering
  • Not helping others to overcome their bad habits

leave-samsaraSo although, as Geshe Kelsang says,

Temporary liberation from particular sufferings is not good enough.

and we need liberation and enlightenment, this doesn’t preclude our doing other more immediate things with that motivation.

I have been reading some stories of hate crimes in the last week and, yes, they make one’s blood boil. But there is no point taking that out even mentally on the people perpetuating the crimes because they are being governed by their delusions, they are creating horrible karma, but inside they are okay, pure even, just like the rest of us. As Geshe Kelsang says in New Eight Steps to Happiness:

finger-up-cactus
Up yours, delusions

In the heart of even the cruelest and most degenerate person exists the potential for limitless love, compassion, and wisdom. Unlike the seeds of our delusions, which can
be destroyed, this potential is utterly indestructible, and is the pure essential nature of every living being.

As explained more here, one way to understand that our compassion and wisdom are indestructible is because they are based on reality, which is not going anywhere; whereas delusions are utterly destructible because they are based on ignorance, inappropriate attention to something that just isn’t there.

Better to take it out on the delusions, as they can be destroyed, and that solves everything. And meanwhile:

Whenever we meet other people, rather than focusing on their delusions we should focus on the gold of their Buddha nature. ~ p. 83

This is how Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are able to keep it together when they see all us sentient beings acting crazy. They can help us tirelessly, enthusiastically, and without a trace of discouragement or depression because they have unwavering, unconditional love and respect. If we take them as our role models, we can become less and less childish and sign-americansmore and more like them.

That is seriously lame, dude

And blaming delusions while keeping our hearts in love doesn’t mean we don’t say or do anything else. I personally think that acting locally includes standing up for each other whenever the opportunity arises, not standing by and letting people be mistreated. There have been one or two heartening tales of this happening of late – some guy shoved another guy off the sidewalk with racist slurs, and some other guy came over to help him up while saying to the perpetrator:

“That is seriously lame, dude.”

Talking about childish, as a kid in Guyana, full disclosure, and to cut a long story short, my BFFs were a family of Indians called the Sookrajs. I was fiercely attached to them, we spent all our free time together, had a lot of adventures in Georgetown and inland up the Essequibo. There was a lot of racism in our neighborhood — pitting white trenchesagainst black against Indian with befuddling, to me, variations on that theme — and on a few occasions I literally rolled around fighting kids in the trenches that ran in front of the houses. I drafted my poor brothers in one time to defend my friends as well. I was really mad, angry with the stupid mainly white kids I fought and yelled at – and though I think my heart was partly in the right place, it was also very largely not. I even found myself starting to look out for trouble. And I know that my lack of equanimity and angry behavior as the ringleader did nothing to increase tolerance and harmony in the neighborhood (sorry everybody!) I had let myself forget these incidents, Did I dream it?!, until my friends turned up again in my life a few years ago and reminded me.

Therefore, I like that story above because he didn’t call the dude lame, but he did call out the stupidity of the dude’s behavior. If we all do that, call it where we see it, online and off, while keeping our cool, I think it could help. I’m going to try.

Over to you. We would probably all love to hear your comments on how you are tackling this troubled week.

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Want your meditation to flow?

What do you do when your meditation isn’t flowing as you wish?water flowing

Sometimes we feel disconnected. All these teachings and meditations sound good, great even; but they are out there separated from us.

First bit of advice: Never push for an experience, and never get caught up in a “should” mentality – “I should be feeling love! But I’m not! Therefore, I’m no good.” The aim is not to self-generate as a bad person.

So the first thing we have to do when the mind is not moving is to accept it. Rather than thinking “Oh no!”, we think “Oh yes! This is what I have to work with now, this is what is appearing.” Once we let go of the resistance, within that space of acceptance we just need to find our way back to our basic spiritual foundation. Rather than pushing forward, we can step back to find our way forward. You can try this if you like:

Disengage from the unhappy thoughts for a moment, enough time to allow yourself to relax a little. Follow your breath if it helps, or simply sit there in your heart. Then turn  your attention to something that is generally guaranteed to put a smile on your face, such as your niece, or some kindness you have received. It doesn’t have to be much, something simple, just enough to shift your attention. You stop focusing on the things that are agitating your mind, so the natural peace of your mind can reassert itself.

inner peace 3No pushing to peace

If we stop shaking our mind, our mind will stop shaking. We don’t press our mind into peace; we just stop agitating our mind and it becomes peaceful. We can build more peace from there. No point wrestling with unhappy thoughts like a dog with a bone in order to sort them out, “I gotta sort this out! It’s getting in the way of my meditation!” No need to apply any opponents to our delusions just yet. We just relax back to some peace, however slight, and the rest of our meditation can take place in the space of a basically peaceful mind. Identifying with the peace, we can then apply the opponents later.

How do I meditate to get some feeling?

Someone who has been meditating for a long time but not enjoying it as much as she might asked me the other day how to meditate to get some feeling. This is what I suggested.

We need to start where we are, with our own experience, not pushing for a result that is somewhere outside of us. Start by getting into your heart and simply imagining there is some peace there. Find an inroad into that peace by connecting to a thought of gratitude and love that comes relatively easily to you, that works for you — like the last time you saw your dog, or the appreciation you feel for a friend. Then understand that the peace is your own Buddha nature, it is you, it is Dharma, and it is also not different to the peace of your Spiritual Guide, Buddha. Basking in the feeling of faith increases the peace even more, and on that basis you can spread out the feeling of gratitude or the feeling of love to more people, bringing them into its orbit.

IMG_7957
Foster kitten works for me.

Only once you have relaxed in this way, feeling in your heart the confidence that arises from your own experience, start your actual meditation.

If you like, while abiding in that space of refuge, do some blessed prayers as a way to purify the mind, increase your good karma, and receive even more inspiration for the meditation you want to do. It can help focus the mind too if you briefly generate the object of meditation before the prayers, and then recite the prayers with the implicit request to deepen and stabilize that particular realization.

I think this is where we need to start if we are not to be overwhelmed by appearances/distractions or identified with delusions and pain. There is more meditation advice along these lines here.

Our mind is on our side

Always remember: Your mind is on your side. Happiness arises naturally by letting go and abiding. We don’t have to force happy thoughts back into our head or push our mind for an experience of peace; we just need to let go of the thoughts that are shaking our mind.Digital Camera Exif JPEG

Imagine getting out of a perfectly functioning Ferrari to push it along the highway. Crazy, right? But no crazier than trying to push your mind when it is already perfectly capable of moving itself.

So, in summary, we don’t identify with ourselves as being blocked, negative, not able to meditate. That’s wasted time. Our mind is on our side, and even the slightest peace indicates its nature and potential for lasting peace, indeed permanent bliss. So it indicates our unbelievable potential, our Buddha nature. We can always go back to basics and identify with our Buddha nature. If we connect to our potential, we can feel that we are fortunate, and our peace will increase. If we allow ourselves to just relax into the nature of our mind, sooner or later this peace expands, takes on a life of its own, is pervaded by blessings; and we will feel that we can meditate on anything.

More about our Buddha nature and acceptance in the next article. Meanwhile, your comments and shared experience of overcoming obstacles in meditation are very appreciated.

What about ME?

golden gate in fogOne reason that compassion is our Buddha nature, I think, is because compassion is a natural response to reality. If we remove our wrong conceptions holding ourselves to be independent of others, and focus on our interdependence, which exists, our compassion will naturally grow and grow and grow until it becomes the universal compassion of a Buddha. By the same token, I think the reason why wisdom is part of our Buddha nature is because it is a natural response to the reality of emptiness. 

In the sunshine of wisdom and compassion, our delusions have no choice but to dissolve into our clear light mind like the San Francisco fog.

The ME mind

As mentioned, one reason we find our own painful thoughts so intolerable is because we are identifying with them. Another reason is that we are forgetting something quite significant, that we are one of countless people. So it is not really all about me. Therefore, that ME mind is the crux of our suffering, based as it is on an hallucination. We forget:

We are just one person among countless living beings, and a few moments of unpleasant feeling arising in the mind of just one person is no great catastrophe. ~ How to Solve our Human Problems

We grasp at our painful feelings as if they were a storm in a teacup instead of a tiny, passing storm in a vast global sky.

duck
What about him?!

This is true, no? No one else really gives a monkeys, this is our private affair. When we get a glimpse into others’ minds and see their storm in a teacup, we might easily judge: “Get over it! Can’t you just drop it, or him or her, it’s not such a big deal.” Or “You haven’t lost that much money, what are you so worried about?!” But we grapple with our own problems like a dog with a bone because we are so obsessed with ourselves. “What about ME?” Our self-grasping and self-cherishing are like a black hole sucking everything into it.

As soon as we can identify with others, give ourselves a break from poor old me, there is relief. The “What about me?” mind hurts, for example comparing and contrasting our own situation unfavorably with everyone else’s. But everyone has a hard life, and we can use our own pain to remind us of that and slowly but surely get over ourselves.

As a neurotic Tweeter put it the other day:

I’m a tiny speck in the infinite cosmos that feels fat. ~ Melissa Broder

Cruel world

famineThis ME mind blinds us to others’ suffering. Yesterday I was eating my supper while casually reading The Week’s page The World at a Glance:

Gabarone, Botswana: Up to 49 million people across Southern Africa are at risk of famine from the worst drought in three decades.

I had to read it again, surely I didn’t just read “49 MILLION PEOPLE”? But I did. How come I never knew this? Why isn’t it the headline on every news outlet? Why has it not occupied a single moment of my attention until now? Why is it just one short paragraph at the bottom of one page in a short-circulation magazine?

I don’t know. But I suspect our global self-cherishing has a lot to do with it. And it is awful.

No ME

Meanwhile, the truth is that the Me we are so desperate to serve and protect and freak out about doesn’t even exist.

Of course it feels right now like it exists, but in truth it is nothing more than the non-existent object of an unrealistic painful idea of ourselves.

deerIn the course of one day we tell stories to ourselves about ourselves, one day it’s I’m fabulous, other days it’s “I’m such a wreck, can’t keep anything together.” We have wildly different ideas about ourselves. We might say kind things to ourselves “You’re ok, you’re good”, and we get on with our lives, but then when we get angry, for example, there is the person we are angry with, whom we are holding in an exaggerated way as the source of our harm, and there is the Me we are holding onto in also in an exaggeratedly limited way, eg, “I am a hurt person, that’s who I am.” Then we have to do something to protect that poor hurt person from that really mean person, as described here.

As for the allegedly harmful person, we can go from zero to a hundred miles per hour with anger by exaggerating their faults and thinking about nothing else, leaving the nice bits about them conveniently on the cutting room floor. While we remain angry we give them no wriggle room — nothing they say or do makes much difference as anger has covered Mister Mean with superglue.

A few days ago I was invited to coffee just to have someone insult me in a myriad of quite creative (I thought) ways. But in the same conversation she was telling me about her dying mother, who insists on continuing to work through her painful illness because she wants to claim a $9,000 tax credit in April to give to her child. Wow, I thought. Stand up the real person, the one who is appearing unjust and weird to me, or the beautiful one loved beyond pain by her mother?pagoda

Choose freedom

In this article I explained how we have the chance to identify with our potential rather than with our painful limited self, and in this way come to our own conclusion that we want liberation. So why do we identify with pain? If we believed we had choice, would we not choose to identify with freedom, space, happiness? Ignorance removes our choice because it is convincing us that we are not creating the painful self and other, that these are independent of our mind; so then we have no choice but to go along with it all.

If we dream of a monster and run away from it, is it because the monster is actually there? Or is it because we are misapprehending the monster’s mode of existence? Ignorance is causing this misapprehension. In the same way, we are not in pain because a real self or bay area treesother is actually there, but because ignorance is causing us to apprehend both self and other as independent of the mind.

Realizing this about ourselves gives us renunciation. Realizing this about others gives us compassion.

More coming soon! Meanwhile, please share your experiences on this subject in the comments below.

(And thank you for giving me an excuse to share some San Francisco photos I took this week 😉 Kadampa Meditation Center SF was the first Kadampa Center in America. I have been visiting this beautiful, lovable center and community for their 25 Year Anniversary Celebrations.)

Getting perspective on hurt feelings

I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain’t got the power anymore. ~ Quicksand

As mentioned in the previous article, step one in transforming our mind — gaining power over our lives and destinies — is to start by focusing on the breath. One reason for this is that we are all breathing, whereas we’re not all necessarily experiencing universal love or an insight into the ultimate nature of reality. So the breath is the easiest object to find and serves the purpose of allowing us to gain some control over where we put our thoughts. Thmeditation and realityis way, they can no longer suck us down like quicksand.

Trust clarity

It’s worth noting too that a still body of water reflects everything very accurately — the trees and the birds for example – we can trust those reflections. But when water is churned up, everything is distorted and reflections become deceptive. Similarly, when the mind is quiet and settled, relatively free from strong delusions and distractions, it is not only naturally peaceful but naturally still and clear, and as a result it reflects reality far more accurately. This is unlike our delusions, which arise from inappropriate attention and distort and exaggerate like a storm ruffling a lake. With anger, for example, we effectively don’t know what is going on. Our delusions are never reliable — on the contrary, their job is to deceive us. That’s one reason why I like this Kadampa motto:

Always rely upon a happy mind alone.

Meditation is therefore not an escape from reality — it puts us far more in touch with the truth of what is going on inside, and by extension outside, in our lives.

Plenty more where that came from

So as soon as our mind quietens down and we get a mini-vacation from our delusions and distractions, we feel some peace within. It is really important to recognize that this peace is the seed of lasting happiness and freedom, that there is plenty more where that came from; and to identify with the sense of potentially boundless serenity inside, like an open endless sky, more than with the passing clouds.

IMG_6770I was watching the sky yesterday, on a sunny-cloudy Denver day here in Cheesman Park, and the dramatic clouds were making the sky even more beautiful in a way because I was feeling the space of the sky, the clarity that IS the sky. It is all pervasive, it is not in any conflict with the clouds, clouds have room to be, they come and go. They come from the clear light like all other cloud-like thoughts — the only difference is that they arise in dependence upon unrealistic or inappropriate attention and so their suggestions are not to be trusted. Stop identifying with them and the pain associated with them also goes, and we are no longer stuck. And then we realize we can transform them — for example, the pain of grief or disappointment can remind us of everyone’s pain, and become the object of our vast blissful compassion, metamorphosized.

In any event, as mentioned in this article, our thoughts and their appearances cannot be separated out from the clarity of the mind; they are aspects of that clarity. Change the mind, change everything.

Just a mortal with potential of a superman

We need to spark our clear light, the extraordinarily deep Buddha nature that we all share. Every being on this planet has this really quite incredible spiritual potential, and the soVajrayoginioner we can relate to it and identify with it, the sooner it will manifest and get strong. It is all waiting to come out, we don’t need to add anything. But for as long as we skid about on the surface of our minds, caught up in our “flavor of the day” reasons why we are unhappy, we are neglecting who we really are and what we are capable of, and we’ll not give ourselves any choice but to stay stuck in bad habits of suffering.

The key to letting go of unhappy thoughts is to stop identifying with them. And how do we do that? By identifying instead with our natural peace and potential. We need the kind of confidence knowing that we’ve really got it going on inside and no one can take it away from us. It’s ours. It’s the NATURE of our mind. If our mind doesn’t feel peaceful, it’s because uncontrolled thoughts are destroying that peace. But let them settle and we get a sense of the peace that is possible, and we can be happy with that, contented. 

There’s room in the sky

There is more than enough room in the sky for clouds — there is even room for rain, thunderstorms, snow, cyclones, hail the size of golf balls, every imaginable weather. No weather ever alters the fact that the sky is by nature clear, and that clarity can never be destroyed, only temporarily IMG_6676obscured. We tend to identify with our anger or worry or attachment as if it is everything, as if it is what is actually going on, as if it’s reality. “I’m angry and that person is horrific” or “I NEED her, she’s so cool, I’ll die without her!” – we are all wrapped up in it at the moment, but we can learn to recognize that the thoughts of anger or attachment are arising within spectacular boundless clarity. We can observe them and know they are not actually me. They are temporary fleeting clouds, but I am identified with clarity and peace. I don’t need to freak out here.

Instead of grasping at every fleeting thought as the be all and end all of everything, we get a taste for this boundless potential we have inside. This is me, this is my sky-like mind, and I want to be able to access this whenever I want.

If we get good at experiencing some peace and identifying with it, we start to have a lot of space in our minds and our lives; and then when unhappiness arises we are not so quick to think, “This is a total catastrophe, I need a bottle of sleeping pills.” We are not caught up in it, so we can let it go and/or transmute it.

What do we normally do?

I’m going to quote some bits from How to Solve our Human Problems in the next few articles, but treat yourself by reading the whole book if you can because it is so very practical and helpful:

Normally our need to escape from unpleasant feelings is so urgent that we do not give ourself the time to discover where these feelings actually come from.hallucinating

Geshe Kelsang gives some examples, such as someone we have helped responding with ingratitude, but I can think of countless occasions when we want to escape our feelings. Gazillion things hurt us at the moment, we are quite sensitive, our mind rather like an open wound, our uncontrolled thoughts like quicksand ready to swallow us whole. So what do we do?

These things hurt, and our instinctive reaction is to to try immediately to escape the painful feelings in our mind by becoming defensive, blaming the other person, retaliating, or simply hardening our heart.

“Our instinctive reaction” is I cannot handle this, I have to get rid of it, so we defend ourselves, our poor hurt sense of me. Have you noticed that we never let pain just float around in our mind, we always try and pin it down? There HAS to be a reason for the way I’m feeling and that reason is outside my mind somewhere. Even when there isn’t anything obviously wrong, we just woke up disgruntled for instance, we try and figure it out — “It has to be because of this, that, or the other!”

We have a well-worn habit of immediately casting around for something or someone else to blame. “I’m in a bad mood because of THIS situation”, and therefore I have to fix something out there. I was sitting here quite happily reading my book, you came into the room and made a face at me, I got upset, two plus two = five, it’s your fault. That’s the logic of the annoyed mind.

But could it simply be “I’m in a bad mood because I am in a bad mood”, and therefore need to let these thoughts go and practice love instead?

For example, on Tuesday we are upset with Jack, and on Wednesday it is Bob, and at the weekend it is Mary. Same old same old, just different packaging. The only reason there are upsetting people in our life is because of the unprocessed upset in our minds. If we try patience with Jack on Tuesday and get some result, then we can try it with Bob on Wednesday, and then with Mary at the weekend; and they can all become objects of love and patience. We become defensive, as Geshe-la says, blaming the object for our negative minds; but it is our irritated minds that are responsible for the irritating people. To someone whose mind is tamed, everyone is a friend.

Meanwhile, more coming up in the next article about accepting unhappiness without panicking.

What is compassion?

help everyone escape
Have to help everyone escape 100%

Compassion fills our life with meaning. So, what is it? It is not just being nice, though it will lead us to being good people. If we have compassion, we want something for others. If a friend has tripped over a drain and broken their leg, we want them to be free from physical pain. If a friend is suicidal, we want to protect them from mental suffering.

We already have some compassion—it may be a bit limited and biased, it may come and go, but we do have it. It is our Buddha nature. And don’t you find that those times you have felt a deep genuine compassion for another person with no thought for yourself have been very precious? Something good happens to your perspective? You feel more in touch with the truth of things?

Actual compassion is defined as the mind wishing others to be free from suffering and its causes. It’s the other side of the coin from wishing love, wishing others to have happiness and its causes.

Feeling sad and bad about others?
dog helped by Bodhisattva
Click on this picture for a story about a very kind man.

Though compassion can be hard sometimes, it is still more than worth it. (Delusions such as selfishness and anger are always hard, and they are never worth it!) And compassion, unlike delusions, is not a painful feeling. At its most qualified, it is blissful. I tried to start explaining this already in this article. But for me, I find that this quote from Eight Steps to Happiness puts it most beautifully:

Pure compassion is a mind that finds the suffering of others unbearable, but it does not make us depressed. In fact it gives us tremendous energy to work for others and to complete the spiritual path for their sake. It shatters our complacency and makes it impossible to rest content with the superficial happiness of satisfying our worldly desires, yet in its place we shall come to know a deep inner peace that cannot be disturbed by changing conditions.

One practical way to develop compassion starting here and now

It is good to keep it real, not abstract, by starting with our immediate circle. We can contemplate the situation of those under our noses at home or at work, for example, as opposed to a mass of unknown humanity living in China. We find a way in, and then draw more and more people into that orbit of love and compassion at our heart. Make meditation work, as my teacher Geshe Kelsang says.

I’ll give you a recent example of how I try to do this.

Dexton 2I was fostering a kitten recently called Dexton and we bonded like crazy. A woman had swerved to avoid him as he crossed the intersection on 53rd street and Pearl. She got out of the car to see him lying upside down with his paws thrown up above his head. “OMG,” she thought, “I’ve killed him!” But of course she hadn’t, that is just Dexton’s favorite posture, even, it seems, when he is in the middle of the highway. And she bought him into the shelter.

Given that it was already easy to love him, I found him a perfect candidate for compassion that I could then spread out to all the other cats and humans etc. But whenever I found myself worrying about him, for example how betrayed he would feel when I gave him away later, or when my friend P and I thought he’d jumped out of a second-storey window as we couldn’t find him anywhere (he was in a shoe), I found it very helpful to remember that it is not just that suffering I want him free from, but all wretched cat sufferings forever. And all other sufferings. And therefore all the causes of that suffering.

And then it was not too much of a stretch to remember that he is just one small furry person amongst countless others who need exactly what he does — complete freedom from suffering and its causes. It may seem counter-intuitive to our normal way of (avoiding) thinking about suffering, but worry starts to subside in the course of this contemplation, and an initial heartfelt concern for one kitten’s sore paw, for example, or a baby’s colic, or a friend’s heartbreak can be a trigger or way in for compassion wanting to remove everyone’s suffering and its causes. Because everyone is suffering and no one wants to.

Anyone can develop compassion for one suffering at a time – May this person be free from their migraine! May this family living in poverty receive a windfall! May this dying person consumed with anger quickly find peace! But only if we understand the actual origins of suffering – delusions and contaminated karma – can we develop genuine compassion wishing others to be free from all suffering and its causes.

How can I help everyone?!

kind BuddhaTo help everyone we have to become a Buddha first, but every day we can go in that direction by paying attention to suffering or “opening our eyes” as Geshe Kelsang has put it. Wishing, “May you be free”.

So, how does it work that a Buddha’s compassion has the power directly to protect others from suffering? The answer is profound, but this is one way to think about it. If you are experiencing some pain in the presence of someone, even an ordinary person, who genuinely and respectfully wants you to be free from that suffering, how does that make you feel? It’s at least a little bit better than being entirely neglected, is it not?! The Bodhisattva Vow describes Buddha Shakyamuni:

His purified mind abides eternally in the tranquil ocean of reality, seeing all phenomena as clearly as a jewel held in the hand, and suffused with an all-embracing compassion.

Buddha’s minds are everywhere, infinitely powerful, and a constant source of blessings.

The 2 ingredients of compassion

Are (1) love and (2) seeing suffering. Both wishing love (the wish for others to have happiness and its causes) and compassion come from cherishing love, thinking that others matter and that their happiness and freedom are important. If we don’t care about someone, we might think “Who cares” or even “Yeah!” when we see them suffering. But if we love our brother, say, and care for him, and see that he’s in pain, naturally we want that pain to go away. That will in turn lead to behaviors that help us help our brother – but compassion itself is what we are thinking, not what we do, it is a state of mind.

Compassion increases our opportunities to help
In the safe hands of the Bodhisattva who runs the shelter in Florida
In the safe hands of the Bodhisattva who runs the shelter I worked at

The more compassion we have, of course, the more likely it is that we are going to be kind, care for others, look after them, and protect them. But just the wish “May they be free” is compassion, and in itself is a powerful mind. So we don’t ever need feel inadequate, “Oh so and so is helping SO many more people than me, I’m useless …” Mental actions are more powerful than physical and verbal actions, according to Geshe Kelsang.

Not only are we good to be around when we have a heart filled with compassion, even without our having to lift a finger, but one encouraging thing is that if we do have the compassionate intention to help others, opportunities to help others will arise more and more. As the great teacher Nagarjuna explains in one of my favorite quotes:

Even if we are not able to help others directly
We should still try to develop a beneficial intention.
If we develop this intention more and more strongly,
We shall naturally find ways to help others. ~ Universal Compassion

Compassion increases our capacity to help

compassion 4Our capacity to help others will also increase because compassion purifies our mind and leads to many other good mental qualities, while at the same time decreasing our delusions. As it says in Eight Steps to Happiness:

It is impossible for strong delusions to arise in a mind filled with compassion. If we do not develop delusions, external circumstances alone have no power to disturb us; so when our mind is governed by compassion it is always at peace.

For example, if you really want someone to be free from their cancer, and you’re in their shoes, you’re not irritated with them at the same time, are you? You find quite a reservoir of patience! And in that way you can help more. Here is a short anecdote from an old friend of mine to illustrate this point.

To travel to South Africa for my gap year before university I had to earn money, so I took a job in a hospital’s geriatric ward as a “Domestic” with the uniquely British combined responsibilities of scrubbing toilets and making tea.

The ward felt like the asylum of lost hopes, where thrown-away people who had often led stellar lives were living out their end days lonely, lost and incapacitated. Several had amputated limbs, thus condemned to hospital life despite their active minds. And then there was the cheerful teenage me, about to go on a dazzling African adventure with my whole life still ahead, jovially offering them cups of tea. More than once they threw the tea on the floor, saying it was awful, deliberately trying to make my life difficult. Yet I was curious to note at the time that I never became annoyed with them. Why did their actions not upset me when the far less ornery behavior of people elsewhere irritated me all the time? It was because it made no sense to become angry when they were suffering so much; in fact the worse they behaved the more deeply I felt for them. My compassion for them was protecting my mind.

Over to you: More thoughts on compassion in the pipeline. Meantime, your feedback and comments are most welcome. How do you generate compassion?