The Mirror of Dharma – Kadampa Life

Quick fix meditation on emptiness

7.5 mins read

While we continue to harbor the 2 ego-centered minds of self-grasping ignorance and self-cherishing, our lives can quickly take a sinister turn. Everything that was working out for us can so quickly go wrong when our own and others’ delusions such as anger, attachment, pride, and jealousy wreck everything – work, supreme court nominations, families, marriages, these can all implode and leave us finding everything and everyone so weird and distasteful, even the people we thought we understood.

Do you ever have thoughts like this: “I don’t like this! I want to escape! I want to get away from all these annoying and/or demanding people and crushing responsibilities/anxieties/stressors! I want to get away and forget about it all — the worrying family, the depressive exes, the needy friends, the daily grind, the constant pressure of the endless to-do list, the boring commute, the insane politics, the scary climate change, the racist system, the cruelty everywhere I look, the sickness and ageing and death ….” And that’s just for starters.

Maybe we save up all year to go on vacation to get away from it all, but before long we want to get away from the airport queues, the sunburn, the sand in our teeth, the credit card debt, and the bad memories and anxieties we accidentally brought along in our luggage.

The thing is, regardless of our circumstances, and wherever we find ourselves in samsara, the only way we are going to finally get away from our suffering is if we learn how to increase our inner peace and, above all, learn how to dissolve all suffering into (bliss and) emptiness. We need to take time to do this every single day. Even taking ourselves off to a deserted cave in the middle of nowhere to do a long solitary retreat is not going to crack it otherwise.

Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso has explained over and over again in all his books on Sutra and Tantra exactly how we can do this. I find this too incredible for words. Because these methods work every single time. No matter how busy or over-scheduled I become, giving myself a little time to meditate on emptiness is to find the way out of the feelings of being overwhelmed, the tight crowded thoughts that make everything seem unmanageable.

And the more we have to do, and the more people who need our attention, the more we need to apply this wisdom, as I talk about in this article, “Going wide means going deep.”

Moreover, quite the opposite of being irresponsible, Geshe Kelsang explains in his mind-boggling new commentary on Avalokiteshvara practice how cultivating the recognition of all forms, sounds, and thoughts as mere name not other than emptiness is the only way to quickly release all six classes of being from suffering. Please read this latest book, The Mirror of Dharma, when you get a chance; it feels very blessed to me.

A quick fix meditation

I shared my thoughts on how to meditate on the emptiness of the self in this article. Once we have gotten a taste of that, we can try this quick-fix meditation – it is my main go-to when I’m feeling oversubscribed or worried about anything.

So, let’s say you’re feeling upset or overwhelmed. Soon as you can, take yourself off to a quiet place (even if that means letting the restroom live up to its name.) Sit down, breathe a little and get into your heart, and ask yourself:

Who is upset?

Answer: ME. I am.

Then ask yourself: Is my body upset? Is my mind upset?

Answer: No. I am upset. That I or Me seems to exist all on its own, from its own side, pretty darned solid and real and upset; and I seem to be grasping at it without question.

But now I will question it. So now look for this I or Me. Is it your body? No. That’s just flesh and bone. Is it your mind? No. That’s just formless awareness, just thoughts, no me embedded in them. I am not just a thought, I am ME.

So take away the body and mind, and the I or Me remains? No. Not at all. It’s gone.

When we have some experience of this searching and not finding, our strong sense of self disappears. There is empty-like space there, the absence of self, NO self — and big relief.

It is not the appearance of our I and other things existing in a certain fixed way, or external to the mind, but the belief in that appearance as being true that leads to our being upset. If we can let go of that belief that our I or me exists in a certain fixed way by observing how it dissolves into emptiness, this frees us up to name or impute or project our self, our world, and other people differently. We can arise within the space of that emptiness, inseparable from that emptiness, as a mere appearance who is very relaxed and happy, or a Bodhisattva, or a Buddha, or whoever we want.

“The Pure Land is closer than thought”, a friend just messaged me. Make of that what you will.

Getting some context

If we are confident in our path to liberation and enlightenment, and hold that as our main priority and job, we are less inclined to become “too closely involved in the external situation” as Geshe Kelsang puts it in How to Transform Your Life — like children building sandcastles, excited when it’s built and anxious when it’s swept away. Instead, it can be an enjoyable daily challenge to use the arising and subsiding of all fleeting, insubstantial cloud-like appearances as fuel for our renunciation, compassion, and wisdom. We have a big mind perspective, like the sky, and thus the space to play with the clouds.

A practical idea … instead of reaching for the Smartphone first thing in the morning (get another alarm clock!) and/or starting to itemize all the things to worry about that day and/or ruminating on everything that is going wrong with our life, thus cramming our mind with clouds before we’ve even got to the coffee, it is a really good idea to start the day by counting our blessings. We can do that by tuning into our precious human life and the kindness of others, for example, letting happiness wash over us.

We can also set ourselves in flight by remembering impermanence — laying down the heavy burden of the past (which is in fact no more substantial than the dream from which we have just awoken). Considering that this could be our last day on Earth, we may as well use it to be a Bodhisattva or Buddha.

Wanna be a wishfulfilling jewel?

From a Tantric point of view, as someone said the other day on Facebook, what’s stopping us from thinking of ourselves in this way, using the words from the Liberating Prayer:

Your body is a wishfulfilling jewel,
Your speech is supreme, purifying nectar,
And your mind is refuge for all living beings.

This is a description of Buddha Shakyamuni and, if we play our cards right, one day this will be a description of us. In Buddhism, faith in Buddha necessitates faith in our own enlightened potential. We may as well start practicing.

Maybe just give this thought a go and see what it feels like. What’s it like to think outside the box about ourselves? There is nothing to stop us arising from emptiness as a Buddha or, if we don’t feel ready for that yet, as a magic crystal:

It is said that there exists a magic crystal that has the power to purify any liquid in which it is placed. Those who cherish all living beings are like this crystal — by their very presence they remove negativity form the world and give back love and kindness. ~ Eight Steps to Happiness

How are you?

Someone asked me how I was the other day, and for some reason I couldn’t find the words to reply. But it got me thinking that a more interesting question than “How are you?” might be “Who are you?” For who we think we are will be determining both how we feel and what we plan on doing, including the karma we create.

I don’t suppose this question will take off 😄 But I find it useful because it reminds me of who I want to be and what I want to do, rather than just how I am feeling at that moment. “Who are you and what do you seek?” as it asks us in Heruka Tantra.

Atisha used to ask the people he met,

Do you have a good heart?

This question might not take off either, but I think it could help society if it did, putting the emphasis on what we are all intending rather than how we are all feeling.

Our intentions are more significant than our feelings or experiences as they are what create the causes or karma for our feelings and experiences – not much we can do about the ripening of our previous karma, but much we can do about the karma we are creating now. What do you think about that?

And who are you today?! 😄

Just who do you think you are?

Tired, yet, of living a cliche?

Karma and us

Finding a quick way to spiritual realizations

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

4.5 mins read

Have you ever thought to yourself anything along these lines: “How am I supposed to develop a state of perfect concentration — I can only focus for a few seconds before my mind wanders away?!” In Buddha’s teachings we learn about attaining incredible spiritual realizations, such as universal love, single-pointed concentration, and omniscient wisdom, yet we might feel as if these are something completely impossible for us.

Luckily, this is not true. Spiritual attainments or realizations arise as a dependent relationship — they are not something we either have or do not have. It is more helpful to think of them as an inner evolution. If we keep creating the causes, then the results we are looking for will necessarily appear.

Increasing the potentials for spiritual realizations

Tharpa Publications just released Geshe Kelsang’s new book The Mirror of Dharma. The eBook of this is now available for download. In it, Geshe Kelsang says:

If we have within ourself a strong potential for spiritual realizations, then with this condition we will easily develop and maintain profound knowledge and spiritual realizations. We can accomplish this condition, a strong potential for spiritual realizations, within ourself by sincerely practicing the Guru yoga of the Wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa.

During the time of Buddha Shakyamuni, many people easily attained high spiritual realizations. This was due to the strong potentials for spiritual realizations already in their minds.

In these spiritually degenerate times, it seems far more rare to possess these strong potentials, such that making progress on the spiritual path can often feel rough and difficult. Nonetheless, due to our connection to the Wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkhapa, we can become exactly like the disciples of Buddha, making quick and easy progress on our path to enlightenment.

Imagine the unbelievable confidence we would possess if we received the teachings on the perfection of wisdom directly from Buddha Shakyamuni! Through the kindness of Je Tsongkhapa, who was predicted by Buddha Shakaymuni, we are able to develop this same confidence and experience these same results.

The easiest way to develop these potentials

Geshe Kelsang goes on to say:

Through this we will receive the powerful blessings of all the Buddhas through our Guru so that we will easily develop and maintain profound knowledge and spiritual realizations.

In general, we say that all spiritual realizations ripen through receiving Buddha’s blessings. In particular, as Kadampa Buddhists we rely upon the blessings of Buddha Je Tsongkhapa.

Je Tsongkhapa was a Tibetan Buddhist Master and scholar who founded the New Kadampa lineage. Buddha Shakyamuni predicted him in King of Instructions Sutra, explaining that he would spread and clarify Buddha’s teachings of Sutra and Tantra and prevent people from following mistaken views. Believing this Wisdom Buddha is in the space before us or at our heart and holding a mind of faith in him creates potent conditions for easy spiritual attainments.

As with any relationship, we first need to discover who Je Tsongkhapa is and then get closer and closer to him. Over time we’ll come to see in our own experience that the skill of his methods and the power of his blessings are unequalled.

It is because of Je Tsongkhapa that we are now able to easily integrate all the practices of Lamrim (the stages of the path to enlightenment), Lojong (training the mind), and Tantric Mahamudra into our daily life. He compiled all 84,000 teachings of Buddha into one complete and straightforward path to enlightenment.

The fact that this path can be completed by even the busiest person is one of the miracle powers of Je Tsongkhapa. If we entrust ourselves to these methods and blessings, we will soon develop advanced spiritual attainments.

(There is more explanation about Je Tsongkhapa in the books Heart Jewel and Great Treasury of Merit.)

Identifying with these potentials

Practitioners such as Gyalwa Ensapa and his disciples and Je Sherab Senge and his disciples are witnesses to this. They attained the state of enlightenment within three years. This is magical. Through this we can understand how fortunate we are to have the opportunity to practice these instructions. ~ The Mirror of Dharma

When we hear about enlightenment, we may concede that it could be possible if we could give it a few lifetimes worth of training. Thinking like this underestimates both our potential and the power of our teacher’s blessings.

Pure minds create the experience of pure worlds and impure minds create the experience of impure worlds. This means that experiencing our own pure world is a change of mind away.

If we want to have magical results in our practice, we need to learn to stop identifying with our limitations and ordinary appearances, to see through them and past them. Our limitations are momentary appearances arising from potentials in our mind. If we quickly increase our spiritual potentials through Guru yoga practice, and identify with these every day, then what appears to our mind will soon start to be radically different. It is just a matter of time before we experience the same results as the practitioners who have come before us.

Make the future an enlightened one

In movies about time travel, characters are very cautious of changing even the slightest detail of the past because they fear how it might affect the future they came from. We can apply this notion to changing our mind.

Even the slightest positive imprint we place in our mind has the potential to create dramatic consequences for our future self. Every day we can create these spiritual potentials and receive blessings. Eventually, maybe even in a few years, we will find we have traveled to a future in which we are now enlightened and benefiting every living being!

Over to you, comments welcome.

Using Tantra to destroy everyday delusions

7 mins read + a video

Now carrying on from this conversation about Tantra. And, by the way, this is the 400th article on Kadampa Life …

In The New Guide to Dakini Land, Geshe Kelsang says:

The ordinary deluded pride that I have had until now results only in suffering and continued rebirth in samsara, but divine pride will lead me to liberation and Vajrayogini’s Pure Land. Therefore, I will never give up this pure pride of being Vajrayogini.

We don’t need to use self-deprecating language on ourselves, thinking, “I am trying to be Vajrayogini” — we can just be her! Or “This is too hard” — instead we think “I am already doing it!” Bliss and emptiness are actually not that complicated — it is our delusions and over-conceptualization that are complicated, weighing things down with elaboration.

Who are we anyway?!

As Geshe Kelsang says in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra:

Many of Je Tsongkhapa’s disciples and their disciples in turn became enlightened Buddhas in their lifetime by attaining the realization of the union of great bliss and emptiness through practicing the instructions of the Ganden Oral Lineage. However, it is difficult for people to believe that this is true because their minds are obstructed by ordinary appearance.

joy Not surprisingly, due to beginningless familiarity with everything appearing as ordinary and impure, it is a stretch of our imagination at first to conceive of things as extraordinary and pure. But just because we haven’t experienced ourselves or our reality like this before doesn’t mean we cannot do it now. There is always a first time. We have been busy creating our suffering beginningless time; now we can start creating our happiness.

And we need to be convinced that this new experience is just as “real” as what we are currently experiencing.

Our current self is mere name, mere label, imputed by our ordinary imagination or conception on the basis of a hallucinatory meaty body and deluded mind. It cannot be found upon investigation. As Geshe Kelsang says:

What does taking rebirth in samsara mean? It means that in each of our lives due to ignorance we grasp our body and mind as our self, thinking, ‘I’, ‘I’, where there is no I, or self. Through this we experience the sufferings of this life and countless future lives as hallucinations endlessly. ~ The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra

Think about this … how can we NOT experience suffering if we think we are a meaty body and a deluded mind?! Our self-grasping ignorance has trapped us in the very sources of suffering, so the most we can ever hope for is temporary liberation from particular sufferings – which is never going to be good enough.

Finding the self

Trying to find the self or me I normally perceive is like trying to touch the water of a mirage.

If this real me existed, it must be findable in its parts or separate from its parts. We should be able to point to it without pointing at anything that is not it. But luckily we cannot find a me or I if we look for it with analytical wisdom. I am not the body, not the mind, and not the collection of the body and mind — yet take the body and mind away and I disappear. (Thank goodness.)

These four essential points are explained in detail in this recent article. And you might find this video helpful – a hair is not the macrofibrils, microfibrils, or protofibrils, for example, but take any of those parts away and there is no hair. Everything is unfindable.

So there is no self separate from a sense (or thought) of self – self is mere appearance to that sense of self. There is no self, or anything else for that matter, other than its mere name. You will never find your self outside the mind, existing objectively or from its own side, however hard you look. (This probably explains why no one else can see your self! And why they come up with their own crazy versions all the time 😄) All there is is the emptiness of the self appearing as the self due to our mistaken minds.

Do what you like!

Thing is, if the self doesn’t exist from its own side but depends upon our thoughts, then why can’t we change our self by changing our thoughts? We can! In which case we can impute Me (or identify Me with) the pure body and mind of a Buddha, “I am a Buddha;” and this is just as “real”, or indeed more valid. This is because the body and mind of a Buddha, albeit still projections or appearances of mind like everything else, are non-dual with bliss and emptiness.

Pure mind = pure identity

When talking about making mandala offerings in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra, Geshe Kelsang interestingly says:

Offering the mandala is offering a Pure Land generated through the power of correct imagination. There is no difference between offering a Pure Land generated through the power of correct imagination and offering an actual Pure Land – both are mere appearance to the mind. If we have a pure mind both exist, and if we do not have a pure mind neither exists.

I think this explanation of Pure Lands applies to self-generation as well.

Using clear appearance to overcome delusions

From a daily practical point of view, we can rely upon clear appearance to overcome specific delusions.

We impute ourselves as Vajrayogini mainly on the basis of the Truth Body (or Dharmakaya) of bliss and emptiness, ultimate bodhichitta; but many times in and out of meditation I find it immensely helpful to remember the features of Vajrayogini and her mandala as a way to overcome the delusions that come up in everyday life. These features are not other than the bliss and emptiness of the Truth Body, but they teach us what to abandon and what to practice.

For example, if I am suffering from ignorance, aversion, or attachment, remembering my curved knife immediately reminds me to cut these away; or I remember that I am stamping on the symbolic forms of Bhairawa and Kalarati. If I am suffering from spiritual inertia, I remember that I’m looking up to space, demonstrating my attainment of blissful Dakini Land. We need the joy of unconditional love to help others, and our body blazes with joy like the fire at the end of the aeon. If we are identifying ourself with Heruka, there are even more features to choose from – such as his nine moods. You can read all about the features and their meaning in The New Guide to Dakini Land and Essence of Vajrayana.

We can use pure appearances/perceptions both in and out of meditation to overcome the appearances/perceptions of imperfection and ordinariness of ourselves and others. This is a lot of fun, to be honest, and gives us so much power, confidence, and energy to help others as well.

This is because what we end up doing every day depends on who we think we are.

Dream of the Dharmakaya

These features are mere appearance not other than emptiness – they are bliss and emptiness appearing. Therefore, they are not fixed — but the mandala is the rainbow-like manifestation of the omniscient wisdom of Heruka and Vajrayogini, created and blessed by enlightened beings. Geshe Kelsang once called it the “dream of the Dharmakaya”.

The mandala and Deities are inspirational and powerful because they are the embodiment of every stage of the path and every quality of enlightenment. Just remembering them automatically purifies and empowers our mind. I think of it as like all the Sutra and Tantra realizations appearing in technicolor.

Like every pure AND impure appearance — everything that exists in fact — Vajrayogini and her Pure Land are empty and dream-like; but it would be hard to come up with a better dream. We now have a dynamic, transcendental, pure, and blissful paradigm for relating to ourselves, our world, our enjoyments, our activities, and other people.

Over to you for comments. And Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments and commentary are coming up again soon, this Summer in England – perhaps I’ll see you there.

Tag: The Mirror of Dharma