Book Contents

Preface

Advice from Khenpo Rinpoche

Introduction

Short Biography of Karma Chakme Rinpoche

Biography of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche

A Concise Liberation Through Hearing: An Introduction to the Bardo

Shade of the Ashoka Tree: How to Avoid Robbers and Death While in Retreat/Marichi

All Connection Has Meaning: Definitive Methods for Burning a Living Inscription

The Hook of Compassion: Visualizations to Guide the Dead

Thunder of Mantra: The Outer Practice of a Yidam or Dakini

Magic Mirror: Miraculous Signs Arising Through Practice

Showing the Unmistaken Path: Cutting Through Deviation

A Shower of Ambrosia: The Dispelling of Impediments or Obstructions

The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel That Brings Progress: Instructions on Improvement

The Great Peacock That Conquers Poison: The Nature of the Five Poisons

Dedication

Precious Garland: A List of Contents to Prevent Disorder

A List of Mantras

Glossary

Index

Index of Stories Told by Khenpo Rinpoche


Book Excerpts

Advice from Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche

The following paragraphs are taken from the Question and Answer sessions that were a part of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s teaching on Karma Chakme’s Mountain Dharma. During these sessions, Rinpoche personally engaged with his students, answering their questions and offering his advice. Here Rinpoche comments on how the teachings were given to Tsondru Gyamtso, the uniqueness and value of this text, and how to use the information and practices contained in the book to instruct and support one's practice.

Karma Chakme Rinpoche was in lifelong retreat when Tsondru Gyamtso requested teachings on mountain Dharma. Traditionally, when someone was doing a lifelong retreat, provisions were made for limited communication with the outside. When a practitioner had completed all of the graduated practices of the various yidams and had achieved signs of realization, it was appropriate for them to teach even though they were remaining in retreat. They would speak through a small aperture in the wall, and as in the case of Karma Chakme Rinpoche and Lama Tsondru Gyamtso, the teachings would be received and written down by a student sitting outside, often in the cold. In some cases a blessing would be given, with the retreatant actually sticking his hand out and blessing the person. The reason it was appropriate for Karma Chakme Rinpoche to teach while he was still in retreat is that he was in lifelong retreat and he had completed all of the necessary practices.

***

This book is almost unique in its clarity of presentation. The various topics that are dealt with are also to be found in other texts; however, most of these are so long and detailed that it is possible to get lost and not come to any real understanding of the subject. The presentation here is concise and very clear. As Karma Chakme Rinpoche wrote in his introduction, “If you place this volume on your pillow, then you have gotten hold of the one teacher who will never get mad at you.” If people have this text available, then they will truly have an understanding of how to practice and how to approach the many different practices we do. They do not need to use the whole book. They can select the parts that correspond to their particular practice and get a much better idea of the purpose of it.

***

This text is designed as a means of general guidance. It presents the whole path common to any system of practice in which you might be engaged. For example, when the text explains the preliminary practices, they are presented in their usual sequence. When it reaches the yidam practices, they are presented in a general way that can be applied to any major yidam practice, although you would need the empowerment for that particular yidam.

***

When it comes to practicing Dharma, you think that you do not need to know what you are doing. You do not need to know anything. You do not need to study. This is incorrect. You may wonder why I am teaching all of this. Surely, the contents of any one of these chapters would be enough. It is not enough. Everything presented in this text is necessary and is here for a reason. You need to know these things in order to do your practice and to be able to deal with the problems that arise. Therefore these practices and these chapters are not redundant. They are not irrelevant. They are not outmoded. They are here for a reason.

***

It is best if these practices are done by someone who has finished ngondro because the function of ngondro, as its name indicates, is to prepare you for other practices. However, there is no rule that says you cannot perform these visualizations until you have completed ngondro. In the case of the practices to benefit others, it is best if you have the seed of empowerment and the required mantra recitations, but it is most important that you have compassion.

***

The practices that have been described in this text are a specific type of visualization practice called an “application.” To do an application connected with the practice of a specific deity, you should have received the empowerment of that deity. Strictly speaking, in order to perform an application practice, you must not only have received the empowerment, you must have performed a specific number of recitations of the deity’s mantra. This is called being “fit for activity.” The usual requirement is 100,000 multiplied by the number of syllables in the mantra. Thus if it is a ten-syllable mantra, it would be 1,000,000, and so on. That is considered the minimum requirement to be “fit for activity.” The reason for this is that your faculties have to be empowered and familiarized with the visualization to the point where the application of that visualization and the benefit of others will actually be affected.

***

I would like to say something about this whole question of signs or indications in practice. Sometimes it happens that practitioners will experience some positive signs in their practice, some indication that the practice is taking effect. They assume that that means they are done, that they have attained the result, and they therefore stop practicing. This is incorrect. Signs in practice do not indicate that you have reached your destination. They indicate that you are heading in the right direction and that therefore you should continue to practice as you have been.

***

You have to understand that the ultimate nature of thoughts is empty, but you nevertheless have to make a choice and attempt to strengthen and reinforce positive thoughts and get rid of negative thoughts.

Ultimately what you want to be able to do is simultaneously accumulate both merit and wisdom. This is the best type of practice, and this is done when you accumulate merit by doing meritorious things such as inviting deities in front of you, prostrating to them, presenting offerings, and so on, and you simultaneously accumulate wisdom by realizing their nonexistence. But this is something we usually cannot do. In the beginning, we cannot practice the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom at the same time. We can only practice them in alternation.

***

Obscurations are not lasting; they are adventitious, not only in the sense that they are not intrinsic to the nature of the mind, but also because they are constantly shifting. For example, a certain amount of the obscurations that an individual has accumulated will be purified through their different activities, such as practicing dharma and so on; at the same time, they are accumulating other obscurations that replace those they purified. It is more like fleeting clouds passing through the sky than a block of solid stuff; this is why we think of this whole process as being like a constantly spinning wheel, which is the source for the term samsara, which means "spinning." As each obscuration arises, in reaction to it we develop mental afflictions, which become the cause of the next obscuration, which inspires more mental afflictions, which become the cause of further obscuration and afflicted action, and so on.

Someone Who Returns from Death

I have a short story to tell you. In the eastern part of Tibet, outside the area of Derge there is a specific place called Dorshul. There was a woman from that area known as Dorshul Khandro. She was a delok, which means “someone who returns from death.” Each year she would die once and then come back. While I was a young monk at Thrangu Monastery, she died and remained dead for seven days — I saw her myself. When she came back to life she would bring a lot of messages to different people, such as, “While I was dead I visited the hell realms and saw people that you knew from before. Your father died and he is now in this particular hell realm, so you need to do certain practices to help him. Such-and-such people have been doing this and that in various hell realms. In order to help them you have to do this many prayers and practice these virtues,” and so on. She was always busy running around advising everyone in this way. She did not encounter just one or two individuals in this manner; it happened countless times. This is true.

Then one time she brought a message about someone named Pogen who had previously been an old hunter with no family. While he was alive, he used to hunt in the mountains all the time. He would eat the flesh of whatever animals he was able to kill, then collect money by selling off the remaining body parts — horns, pelts, flesh, or whatever. He lived in a rocky cavelike dwelling near a large mountain, where there was a triangular arrangement of three stones in a grassy spot. He buried all the money he had managed to save up under the ground in the center of these three stones.

After the hunter died he was reborn in one of the hell realms, where he was suffering tremendously. Dorshul Khandro encountered him there, and he said to her, “I have left some money buried in a certain place — I will tell you where to find it. Please take my money and use it for printing the Sutra of Great Liberation. I also have faith in Thrangu Monastery, so if there is some money leftover, give it to Thrangu Monastery for butter lamp offerings and aspiration prayers. If you do this, it should definitely help liberate me from the lower realms.”

Dorshul Khandro came back to life and told some people about what happened. They searched for the place with the three stones, and they actually found the money there some time ago. It was a very old kind of archaic Chinese money, altogether about forty coins, and it was offered according to Pogen’s wishes. This story demonstrates how even if someone is dead, if you continue to pray, make offerings, and dedicate your virtue to them, it can definitely bring benefit.

Dorshul Khandro is still in Tibet. The last time I went to Tibet I saw her there, and now she is about ninety-four years old. Nowadays she does not have to die as before, but she has a clairvoyant faculty with which she can see beings in various locations, and wherever she stays she still advises people in the same manner that she used to in the past. While I was there it was very hard to understand what she said because she had no teeth. There was a nun who was constantly helping her; the nun knew what Dorshul Khandro was saying, and she would then translate for me: “She said this; this is what she means,” and so on. At that time she was living in a place called Serkok. At the moment, I am not sure if she has passed away yet or not. In any case, she is not the only delok — there are many other people who have actually come back from death. She was just one such individual who I personally happened to meet in my own life.

Recognizing the Nature of the Five Poisons

Among the commitments of secret mantra is a set of five commitments or samayas called the “five things not to be abandoned.” Somewhat ironically, the five things not to be abandoned sound like the five mental afflictions. It is a commitment of Vajrayana not to abandon attachment, aversion, bewilderment, pride, and jealousy. The commandment not to abandon these may seem somewhat superfluous. After all, it seems that no one does abandon them. Does this mean that all beings are naturally ideal practitioners of secret mantra? Obviously it does not, because the concealed meaning in the commandment not to abandon these five things is not just that you shouldn’t abandon them, but that you must unveil their true nature.

As we have seen, according to Vajrayana the true nature of these mental afflictions is the five wisdoms or the five buddhas. The injunction not to abandon them means to recognize that without these five poisons, there are not five wisdoms. As we saw in the previous technique, we might think that the five poisons are removed and replaced by the five buddhas or the five wisdoms, but it is not like that at all. If you abandon the five poisons, if you give up on them and try to get rid of them, you will not discover any wisdom in their absence. In fact, the path of abandoning or repressing the five poisons is the path of the Hinayana, the path of a shravaka. You cannot do that either in the Mahayana or the Vajrayana because according to both the Mahayana and Vajrayana, wisdom is found in the true nature of these mental afflictions.

You may ask, “If there is no wisdom apart from the mental afflictions, what is the difference between an ordinary person and someone who practices this?” The difference is that an ordinary person, which is to say a person without training, follows the mental afflictions in their poisonous or unrecognized state. Failing to recognize their true nature, we follow the commands of the mental afflictions, and this causes us to accumulate karma and be reborn in the six realms.

Even worse than that, if you misunderstand the injunction not to abandon the five poisons and think it means to freely indulge them, to actually cultivate them, this is the activity of Mara. This is worse than a conventional samsaric being; this is the opposite of what is intended here, and this is how you get to places like vajra hell and other unmentionable environments. As long as you are still dualistic, as long as the mental affliction arises as an interplay between you as a subject and something else as an object of attachment, aversion, or bewilderment, it is still mental affliction and not wisdom. If you indulge the affliction in its dualistic form, you will do something terrible.

What should you do? You are not supposed to abandon mental afflictions; you are not supposed to indulge them; you are not supposed to act them out. The only thing left is to look straight at them and their nature, not attempting to get rid of them and not attempting to indulge them. You simply look at them as they are. This is very different from indulging them. Indulging in a mental affliction is actually a way of avoiding its true substance. When you stop avoiding a mental affliction and look at it directly, you see its nature. By seeing its nature, it is self-liberated, which means that without you having to do anything to it, you see it as it is, and thus the wisdom that is the kernel or essence of the mental affliction is unveiled.

What we normally experience as anger, antipathy, hatred, and that group of related emotional states, we now see as mirrorlike wisdom and Vajrasattva in their essence. Here each of the mental afflictions is correlated not only with a buddha, but also with a wisdom. It may sound as if we are saying that each mental affliction is two different things, but in fact mirrorlike wisdom and Vajrasattva are synonymous.

What we call a buddha is the unity of expanse and wisdom. Expanse refers to wisdom, the revealed nature. The embodiment of that wisdom is what, in the context of expanse and wisdom, is called “wisdom.” From the point of view of the nature that is recognized, anger is mirrorlike wisdom. From the point of view of the embodiment of that recognition, or the presence of that recognition, it is Vajrasattva. In the same way, when pride is seen as it truly is, it is the wisdom of equality, which is Ratnasambhava. Attachment or desire is the wisdom of discrimination, which is Amitabha. Self-liberated jealousy is the wisdom of accomplishment, which is Amoghasiddhi. Self-liberated apathy or bewilderment is the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, which is Vairochana.

In this approach you do not abandon, attempt to suppress, or get rid of mental afflictions; instead you look directly at their nature. In this way the mental afflictions are purified of your ignorance or misperception of them, and then without the afflictions going anywhere, they arise as the five wisdoms. If you do this, you spontaneously achieve the wisdom of the five victors, the buddhas of the five families, beyond the need to visualize them or attempt to accomplish them. You spontaneously achieve their wisdom through recognizing their indwelling presence within your mind. This is the practice of the Mahamudra and Great Perfection traditions, and this is the way these traditions teach us to deal with mental afflictions through recognition. This is like possessing one medicine that cures a hundred, a thousand, or a million different sicknesses. I do not know whether there is actually such a physical medicine, but there is such a mental medicine, namely the recognition of the nature of mental afflictions.

Accumulating Merit

Generally speaking, with regard to the accumulation of merit, there is no limit to the potential quantity of merit that can be accumulated. For that reason, even if the deceased individual has already passed on to a pure realm, the store of merit accumulated on the basis of offerings and so forth made specifically for the benefit of the deceased will automatically benefit both the living and the deceased. If it were somehow necessary to weigh the benefits in terms of either living or deceased, the deceased definitely has no power to decide what is most beneficial, so what you do as a living person is very significant. The amount of merit that can be accumulated on behalf of those who have died really cannot be figured in terms of days or months.

As well, when you consider all those dying or dead beings whom you have never even seen or met, if you think about it logically you understand that the numbers are completely beyond estimation. It is with all of those beings in mind, therefore, that we engage in the practice of virtues for the deceased. When we recite texts, at the beginning we say, “All sentient beings.” You practice with the intention that you are not doing this for just one deceased person, but rather for infinitely many other beings who have died as well, and so they all will definitely receive great benefit. So the more meritorious activities you can engage in, the better. There is no reason to stop.

The Five Poisons and the Four Noble Truths

The five poisons or kleshas are desire, hatred, bewilderment, pride, and jealousy. In the first turning of the dharmachakra, which occurred near Varanasi in India, the Buddha taught the four truths of superiors, commonly referred to as the four noble truths. In this teaching he explained that being under the influence of nonvirtue at the present time results in the experience of suffering later; this is to be known with certainty as infallibly true. This is the first truth: true suffering.

The Buddha said that the five poisons are to be relinquished through recollecting what is fundamentally wrong with them. In this lifetime and in future lifetimes, we live in fear of all kinds of unwanted experiences, including the real possibility of taking rebirth in the realms of hell beings, pretas, or animals; we also fear the various kinds of relatively less intense suffering we presently undergo. In the first truth the Buddha first explained that this anxiety itself is suffering.

The cause of all forms of suffering that arise for hell beings, pretas, animals, humans, or otherwise is wrongdoing. Wrongdoing here means the five poisons. Most of the time these five poisons remain invisible in a state of latency. As soon as they come into contact with the conditions that trigger them, the poisons of desire, hatred, bewilderment, pride, and jealousy will immediately flare up like a fire and take control. Once this happens, whatever you might do, say, or think will be misguided due to the influence of those afflictions. These five poisons are unvirtuous; therefore they cannot lead to the experience of happiness, but will only result in the experience of suffering. With a correct understanding based on the certainty of this fact, they are therefore to be relinquished.

For example, if there is a very attractive, colorful, delicious-looking pastry, we might assume it would be good to eat. If we eat the pastry without knowing that it contains poison, we are certainly going to suffer as a result, whereas if we know the pastry contains poisoned, we will stay away from it entirely. In the same way, recognizing that falling prey to these five poisons is the reason behind the experience of all suffering in the three realms of cyclic existence from one lifetime to another, and fearing the arising of such suffering, we should determine to relinquish these five poisons and not fall under their power.

Furthermore, because of the suffering connected with the negative karma we previously accumulated under the influence of the five poisons, we take everything to be truly existent. As long as the karmic tendency to experience things in this way continues to be reinforced within the mind-body continuum, there is no possibility of this tendency decreasing. On the basis of that, as the accumulated negative karma of the present body ultimately ripens, we continue to experience rebirth in subsequent lifetimes in numerous physical and mental embodiments. This will inevitably happen, and that is why this is called “true suffering.”

The five poisons are the cause or source from which wrongdoing originates. Thus the only result of being under the control of the five poisons is wrongdoing and nothing else. All forms of suffering found throughout the three realms of cyclic existence arise from these five poisons. For that reason they are known as “true origins,” which is the second truth. The origins are true because once there is any involvement with the five poisons, it is impossible that suffering will not arise in some way.

When you understand what is wrong with the five poisons you will be able to avoid them, and if you successfully bring them to an end through awareness, recollection, and vigilance, you will achieve liberation from suffering. In the absence of a cause, there can be no result. If you can reach the point where there is no longer a cause for suffering, you will definitely attain the levels and paths of liberation. This is called “true cessation,” which is the third truth. Here to cease means to be gone. If the five poisons are absent, nonvirtue will not occur. If we are not under the influence of the five poisons, it is impossible for suffering to arise; therefore the permanent cessation of suffering is called “true cessation.”

We now turn to the fourth truth, the “true path.” Through gradually eliminating the five poisons, and on the basis of tremendous exertion in the conduct of the vinaya, the result of traversing the levels and paths and continually developing and improving in this way is the eventual attainment of the state of an arhat. Arhat means “foe destroyer,” which means that the foe or enemy consisting of the five poisons has been destroyed. Once those five poisons have been destroyed, it is no longer necessary to experience the sufferings of any of the six classes of beings. This constitutes final liberation from samsara, and the process of achieving it as described above is called the “true path.” It is the true path because when the means of relinquishing the five poisons has been accomplished, there is no other path to be pursued. Gradual progression along this path leads to the certain attainment of arhatship, and for this reason as well it is said to be the “true path."

Thoughts Leave No Trace

While resting in even placement, all kinds of thoughts can naturally arise. When they arise, if you become involved in evaluating each thought by thinking, “This one was better,” “That one was worse,” and so on, this does not serve to help you, and it is also not meditation. If thoughts arise, then remain undisturbed. If they do not arise, then remain without delight. To be unmoved by whatever pleasant or unpleasant thoughts may arise and to remain in the state of even placement within that nature — this is the authentic method of practice. About this, Padampa Sangye said, “Thoughts leave no trace, like birds in the sky.” We see birds flying around in the sky, but they leave no print or trace at all in their wake and so the sky itself remains undamaged and unmarked. In this way, regardless of whatever thoughts may arise for you, if you simply rest in even placement within that essential nature, free from fixation on the duality of apprehended object and apprehending cognition, the thoughts will not become a conceptual focus or defect, nor will they disrupt your experience of meditation. If you cultivate your practice in this way, it will lead to realization.

Enhancing Your Dharma Practice Through Illness

This section is not so much about how to get rid of illness but rather how to make use of it, because the intensity of illness makes it an opportunity to progress in meditation practice.

The cause of sickness is your previous wrongdoing and the obscurations you have accumulated. From this point of view, because illness is caused by wrongdoing and obscuration, the best way to deal with it is by meditating on emptiness. This is simply because meditation on emptiness is the best way to purify wrongdoing and obscuration. There is no other method of purification as powerful as meditation on emptiness because the essence or nature of wrongdoing is obscurity or darkness, and meditation on emptiness is like lighting a torch in that darkness. If you want to get rid of darkness, you need to produce light. That gets rid of it; nothing else needs to be done to dispel darkness except introduce light, and nothing else will dispel darkness except introducing light. Thus from the point of view of the cause of sickness, the best way to respond to sickness is by meditating on emptiness.

The proximate condition that produces an occurrence of illness is demons, obstructors, and elementals. You may think the best way to get rid of demons, obstructors, and elementals is to do all sorts of fancy visualizations. The problem with this is that gods and demons also know how to do visualizations.

There are many stories about this. For example, in order to overpower a demon, someone might visualize themselves as a huge form of Guru Rinpoche. The demon will simply visualize himself or herself as an even bigger form of Guru Rinpoche; it is no problem for them to do that. However gods, demons, and spirits do not know how to meditate on emptiness; they do not understand emptiness. If you feel that you need to tame spirits or elementals, the best way to do so is by meditating on emptiness; this is because in the nature of emptiness none of them can find any opportunity to cause harm. When you recognize that the nature of your mind is empty and therefore beyond any kind of substantiality, you are beyond harm since only that which is substantial can be destroyed or harmed.

The resulting and final stage of sickness, what we basically mean when we think of the pain of sickness, is the thought of sickness, the thought that “I am ill.” If you look directly at that thought — which here means looking at the thought in a way that sets up no boundary between the looker and the object that is looked at — you will see that there is no difference between the thought of sickness and the thought of not being sick. It is not the case that the nature of the thought, “I am ill” and the nature of the thought, “I am well” are different. One thought is no more real, no more intense, no more coarse than any other thought. Rest evenly and look directly at the thought, “I am ill,” and look at that which thinks, “I am ill.” Do this without attempting to alter these things and without attempting to get rid of them. If you do this, although the pain and discomfort of illness will not immediately disappear, the suffering of illness will arise as mahamudra. The point of this method is that, although conventionally we think of mahamudra as being bliss-emptiness or clarity-emptiness, it can just as well arise as suffering-emptiness.

Whenever you recognize the nature of any experience as emptiness, it is the same fundamental thing. Therefore many different methods can be used to point out mahamudra. For this reason teachers sometimes abused and beat their students until they wept, and then the teacher would point out the nature of mind. Others have punched their students in the belly so they farted loudly and were horribly embarrassed, and then the students were able to recognize the nature of their mind. Still others have made their students sleep with the teacher’s consorts and then, in the midst of that bliss, caused them to experience the nature of their mind.

In working with illness, you need to prolong the state of even placement while looking at the nature of the thought. If you can meditate in a prolonged way, then your experience of illness as being intensely painful or uncomfortable will start to dissolve, as will your experience of illness as something that exists independent of you. The pain per se will not go away, but your experience of it as pain will change. It will become more like the sensation of a shiver. If you can meditate in that way for a long time, not only will you not be as affected by pain and sickness, but your wrongdoing and obscurations will be purified, and finally sickness and harm from spirits will be pacified in their own places.

If you wonder where this instruction comes from, it was not invented by Chakme Rinpoche himself, but it is the essential point of the teaching of ronyam or “equal taste,” which was composed or codified by Lord Gotsangpa.

You may use also this when you experience mental suffering, such as when someone close to you passes away, when you are afraid, when you are being reviled or denigrated without any justification, when you are verbally abused, when you feel that you are being victimized by wild demons, gods, or spirits, and so on, or when someone tells you that you have broken samaya and you are a sinner who behaves badly. In short, whenever anything happens that upsets you, or when any thought arises that you just cannot stand having in your mind, if you look at the nature of that thought and allow the thought to dissolve through experiencing it as having no independent existence, this will bring tremendous enhancement to your practice. It is said that meditating under such circumstances is one hundred times better than meditating while at ease. The intensity of physical or mental discomfort is what enables you to gain progress or enhancement in such a situation.

However if you do not do this technique long enough, the discomfort of illness or mental suffering will come back. For example, if you look at the nature of the thought until the immediate discomfort is pacified or dissolved and then you stop doing it, your discomfort will come back. This is called the “re-arising of the leftover or corpse of the poisons.” If this happens, it simply means that you did not do the technique long enough, and you need to look at the nature of thought again. Make the aspiration that you and all those connected with you be born in the realm in which you attain perfect awakening, and that none of them have to undergo such an uncomfortable or unpleasant thought again. In short, seal the meditation with that type of dedication and aspiration.

Cultivating Pure Motivation

You too possess the potential of buddha nature, and therefore you have every opportunity to realize that potential. You are not lacking in that potential at all. As for pure motivation, this is something we all have to work on. There is no such thing as having complete and perfect pure motivation right from the beginning. Everything requires time to work, develop, and then finally bloom.

The necessary process of growing and developing is like the analogy of cultivating crops. If you want to plant crops, first you break up the soil by digging it up. Some people might wonder why you are making such a big effort to do this. The reason why you are working so hard to prepare the soil is to be able to plant crops in it, so there is a great deal of work that needs to be done before you even cultivate the seed. People might also think that the plant matter you are about to spread over the ground should just be eaten right away because then it would be of immediate benefit, rather than being wasteful and throwing it on the ground. You know that it is not wasteful, however, because by planting the seeds in the soil you have prepared and softened, the result will be a much greater crop in the future. With this understanding, you have no reservations in scattering the seeds on the ground, but rather you feel happy and content to do so because you know that in the future you will enjoy the benefits that come about through the cultivation of your crops.

In practicing any form of meditation you are accumulating virtue or merit. As I have said repeatedly in the past, since we are human it is a normal tendency for us to become attached to and feel possessive of our wealth and material things. We are sometimes unable to give things away because of this attachment. As beginning practitioners this is normal; nevertheless there is no material substance in the virtue that you accumulate, and since there is no material substance in your virtue, let go of it. Do not feel possessive towards it, thinking “This is my virtue” or “This is my merit.” Otherwise whatever merit you have accumulated is defiled with the afflictive sense of “mine,” and therefore that merit can be destroyed with any instance of anger that you may experience later.

Rather than clinging to what you have done as being virtuous, at the conclusion of your meditation session think that you are dedicating your merit towards the benefit and awakening of all sentient beings. In that way you let go of the merit for the benefit of others and avoid the possessive mentality of thinking that it belongs to you. Moreover, virtue or merit that has been sealed with dedication not only increases over time, but also becomes inexhaustible and thereafter cannot be destroyed by any occurrence of mental afflictions.

If you can think this way then there is no real difficulty in cultivating pure motivation, because pure motivation is simply thinking that whatever practice you are doing is being done for the benefit of sentient beings. This thought itself is pure motivation. Sometimes we might be unable to cultivate the attitude that we are practicing for the benefit of sentient beings because we have become possessive of the virtue involved. Instead, dedicate the virtue that you accumulate towards the benefit of others and their attainment of perfect awakening. By thinking of others in this way, your motivation will be pure.

Taming Pride

Taming pride consists of simply recollecting all the reasons why we should not be proud of ourselves. First, we have been undergoing rebirth throughout innumerable aeons. The Buddha taught that cyclic existence is beginningless. If we try to think back to when it might have started, we will conclude that we have no idea. If you reason it out, you see that cyclic existence could not have had a beginning because the cause of rebirth is the accumulation of karma; in other words, the accumulation of the imprints of actions causes rebirth. However for actions to have been implemented, for imprints to have been created by actions, one must have already been there in the first place. Therefore there is no beginning: birth is caused by actions, actions take place after birth.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that we know cyclic existence is beginningless, in spite of the fact that we know how much we suffer, in spite of how many times we have been born in lower states, and in spite of all of the suffering we have undergone again and again as a result of our own actions, our hearts are so hard that we are not yet tired of cyclic existence. If we really were tired of it, we would have gotten out of it; we are still in it, so therefore we are hardhearted.

In case you misunderstand, do not think of hardhearted as meaning courageous. By hardhearted, I mean stupid. We cannot say that buddhas have not attempted to liberate us. Throughout this beginningless cyclic existence, billions and billions of buddhas have been teaching. Not all beings are still in cyclic existence; countless sentient beings got the message and were liberated by the teachings of previous buddhas, but not us. We are inferior to those beings in the sense that they have achieved liberation and we have not. We need not wonder whether we have achieved liberation or not — if we are here, we are not liberated.

Let us focus on this life. At this point I feel that many of these statements are going to be autobiographical. I do not know how much they apply to others, but they do apply to me. In this life we have received so many empowerments, so many reading transmissions, so much instruction, and yet our minds are not the least bit liberated. We are still just as bewildered, just as ignorant as we were before. We are lousy practitioners. Achieving liberation is the only point of practice, and we are not good practitioners because we are not liberated. Having entered the teachings, we have taken all sorts of vows — the pratimoksha vows, the bodhisattva vow, and samaya vows — yet we have broken them. Violations of these vows have descended upon us like raindrops in a rainstorm, and therefore we have violated our promises.

We may have done a great deal of yidam practice, and we may have recited the requisite number of mantras for many different deities. We may think this makes us something special, but not only are we not liberated, we have never had even a trace of an authentic vision of any of these deities, which is the point of doing these practices. We are failures. Despite all our practice, our obscurations are unaffected; we are still just as obscured as we were in the beginning.

From an early age until we die, we devote our lives to the consumption of others’ offerings; we consume the generosity of others and the wealth of the sangha. We are never satisfied: our minds are filled with the five poisons and it seems we can never get enough of taking advantage of others’ generosity and devotion. We carefully preserve the five poisons, and we repel with great effectiveness anything that might damage or in any way impinge upon them. We manage to conceal these poisons: we dress up as practitioners, we wear robes and we wear them very, very carefully, but in fact we are not really Buddhists or practitioners; we are clever hypocrites who are good at pretending to be what we think people want to see. There is a traditional saying for this: it is like a used handkerchief wrapped in silk. This is what we are.

We may not know how to correctly explain or defend in debate the meaning of even one book of Dharma, yet we strut around thinking of ourselves as learned and scholarly. We are careful not to allow any weakening of our five poisons. We make sure they are preserved in their full strength, and yet we think we are great; we think we are benevolent and well behaved. We have our heads in the sand and we deceive others as well.

Because we are ignorant, we have no idea whatsoever what is going to happen to us after death. We do not know. I suppose that based on our conduct we can infer that we are going to lower realms; aside from that we really do not know anything, and yet we dare to claim that we can lead other beings’ consciousness to liberation. We cannot lead ourselves, so how can we lead others? In our ignorance, we have no idea when we will die. We do not know if we are going to die tomorrow or years from now. Yet we claim to have the blessing to remove others’ obstacles. We say, “I can remove your sickness; I can protect you from untimely death,” and so on.

If you think about these things, you should become depressed. You should think about these things until you cannot help but beat your own chest, not like a gorilla does as a show of strength, but in a miserable way. Thinking of all the reasons why we should not be proud of ourselves is the way to conquer the affliction of pride.

The Kindness of the Three Jewels

Even when everything you do goes wrong, or even if there is no blame on your part and everything still goes wrong, you continue to devote yourself to the dharma. Even when you are victimized by adversity and the vicious activities of others without any reason, you do not blame or resent the Three Jewels. What is being pointed to here is the possibility of thinking that since you have gone for refuge to the Three Jewels, you should be protected from all adversity, and therefore if adversity occurs there must be something wrong with the Three Jewels. If you do not think this, if you actually consider the adversities to be the ripening of your previous karma through the kindness of the Three Jewels, and if you continue to entrust yourself completely, without reservation, to the Three Jewels with the thought, “You know what I need. Please make it possible,” this is the sign that you have properly meditated upon going for refuge.

Buddhahood Is Possible

The first problem we face is that we doubt whether or not buddhahood is possible. We want to believe that it is, but we are not completely convinced there really is a way out of cyclic existence. This is a big problem. On the one hand, it appears to us as a lack of faith, and on the other hand, it seems to be a lack of discipline or diligence, but it is really the same fundamental problem. We do not have faith because we do not know if there is anything to have faith in. We lack discipline or diligence because we do not know if there will be any benefit through being diligent. This principally comes from an unfamiliarity with dharma, the fact that we are still so unfamiliar with it that we are not really sure if it makes sense. Therefore because of that unfamiliarity, we are plagued by a recurrent fear that maybe it is all made up, maybe it is just cultural, and maybe it does not really work.

Lack of discipline is partly due to this, but it especially comes from forgetfulness of our own mortality. What makes us unable to be disciplined or diligent at any specific time is that we forget that we will lose everything when we die. We will lose everything that we have acquired, we will lose every moment of fun that we have ever had, and we will lose the very bodies that we used to acquire things and have fun. A recollection of death and the imminence of death is probably the single most helpful thing in bringing about discipline.

The hankering for special experience is related to the first problem. Because we are unfamiliar with dharma, we are not really sure what buddhahood is. We imagine it as something similar to, but hopefully better than, what we have already experienced — as you said, imagining it like the world’s greatest acid trip or seeing lots of rainbows and flashes of light. This hankering for experience is really just another form of attachment to some kind of temporary pleasure. Therefore these three things — doubt or lack of faith, the lack of discipline, and the hankering for some kind of experience — are the things that keep us in samsaric existence. It is not so much that they are particular obstacles; they are the main problems you deal with on the path.

It helps to recollect that right now you have the opportunity to transcend these problems. In fact, you have what may be your only opportunity to transcend these things and attain liberation. Should you be reborn as an animal after this life, you will have no opportunity whatsoever to practice or even hear about dharma. Your suffering will be far, far greater than what it is now.

The major technique that is taught in order to deal with all these problems is contemplation of the impermanence of things, karma or the results of actions, the defects of samsara, and so on. One of these three impediments, our doubt, interferes with all these contemplations. Because we doubt, we tend to think that these things are not really true, that they are exaggerations and basically just stories made up to convert us. This thought itself is Mara. It is not that Mara produces this thought; the thought is Mara. These things are true and they are presented straightforwardly, so we know the truth that we have the right and the need to know.

Finally, the best thing we can do is to cultivate a stronger conviction about the results of actions, a more consistent and more intense recollection of death, and a greater conviction about the existence of buddha nature. These three things will deal with the three problems. Through the recollection of death you will become disciplined, through belief in cause and result you will find greater faith and confidence, and through conviction of the existence of buddha nature you will understand what buddhahood is, and therefore you will not hanker after any kind of temporary experience.

Taming Anger

Just as the text previously presented the meditation on the unpleasant as a remedy for attachment (which is the main meditation of the vinaya), it now presents the meditation on loving-kindness — including exchanging yourself for others — and the motivation of bodhichitta as a remedy for reversing aversion or anger (which is the main meditation presented in the sutras).

The start of the Mahayana way of viewing and dealing with mental afflictions is to recollect the fact that each of us has been born countless times. In most of these births we have had parents; that is to say, most forms of our birth involve parentage. Because we have been born of parents so many times, this means that each and every sentient being has been our father and our mother innumerable times. Not only has each and every being at one time or another been our parent, but they have been our parent many, many times. In each of those births, these beings have done a great deal for us out of kindness; as well, in order to protect and nourish us, they engaged in negative deeds that ultimately harmed them. Thus not only have all beings been kind to us, but much of the trouble they are currently in was caused by their wish to benefit us.

When you think about someone in this life who seems to be your enemy, someone who wishes to harm you — and remember that the subject here is the subject of mental afflictions, including aversion or hatred — remember that from the point of view of the Mahayana and from the point of view of bodhichitta, the very person who you regard as your enemy and who has made an attempt to harm you has been your mother innumerable times in previous lifetimes.

The reason they are attempting to harm you is because they do not recognize that you are their child. Just as you cannot look at them and recognize that they are your mother, they cannot recognize you as their child. The reason they do not recognize you as their child is because they are afflicted by ignorance and other kleshas, and they are afflicted by ignorance and other kleshas because they have accumulated the afflicted actions or karmas that perpetuate these kleshas. Moreover, the main reason they accumulated these kleshas is because of the things they did in order to protect and nourish you when you were their responsibility.

When beings harm other beings, it is because they fail to recognize the beings whom they harm as their former children. In a sense they are not to blame for harming you because they do not recognize their relationship with you. If you know about previous lifetimes and therefore understand that these persons who wish to harm you have been your parents innumerable times, far more often than they have been your enemy, and if knowing that you still respond aggressively to the harm they attempt to inflict upon you, are you not far more at fault than they are? They are attempting to harm you out of ignorance, not knowing that you are their child, but you respond to their harm even though you know that they have been your mother. In short, if you understand that all beings have been your parents many, many times in previous lifetimes, how could you fail to respond to even the worst aggression with kindness and patience? How could you dare to be aggressive, how could you bear it?

In this way you should recollect that all beings have been your parents in previous lifetimes, and cultivate immeasurable love for your enemies. Immeasurable here means not only cultivating this state of benevolence for the particular enemy afflicting you at the moment, but also cultivating this state for all beings because you recognize that not only this person but all beings have been your parents in previous lifetimes.

According to the Mahayana, there is a second reason for cultivating love and compassion for enemies. In order to achieve full awakening, which is the goal of Mahayana practice, one of the main virtues that must be perfected is patience. But patience can only be developed when it is being exercised; if there is nothing that exercises or strains your patience, there is simply no way to increase or develop it. Since you need strain on your patience in order to achieve perfect awakening, and since the greatest strain on one’s patience is the aggression of others, people who are aggressive and abuse you are the most responsible for your future awakening. They give you the greatest opportunity to cultivate the most difficult virtue — and patience is the most difficult and greatest of virtues, just as aversion or anger is the worst of mental afflictions. You must understand that your enemies are your best friends because they give you the greatest opportunity for the accumulation of virtue.

In an extreme situation, when you are accused of things that are not true — for example, when you are reviled or denigrated without the slightest justification, when you are called a thief, a murderer, a samaya breaker, or whatever insults others make up about you — if you simply remain patient with this utterly unjustified abuse, you purify tremendous amounts of your wrongdoing and obscuration. If you are patient with those who revile and abuse you, they are purifying your negative actions and your obscurations, and this occurs without you doing anything except being patient.

We also suffer from greed and selfishness. None of us like to give because we all want to take care of ourselves, and we do not like to see things that are unpleasant or depressing. However if you think about it, just as you must cultivate the perfection of patience, you must also cultivate the perfection of generosity. If you are not exposed to the sufferings and needs of others, you have no opportunity to develop compassion and you have no object for the practice of generosity. If everyone you see needs nothing and if everyone is happy, how can you ever develop compassion? Dharma flourishes in periods of degeneration rather than in a golden age because during a golden age everyone is happy and so no one sees enough suffering, and as a result no one develops much compassion. The reason why Dharma flourishes in an age like the present is that we constantly see things we can respond to with compassion.

There is simply no way to achieve awakening without the development of compassion. Moreover, there is no way to develop compassion without witnessing situations that cause one to respond compassionately. There is no way to practice generosity toward others without being around beings that actually need what you can give them. Therefore every time you witness another’s misfortune, you have an opportunity to develop compassion, and you have an opportunity to practice a true and real generosity.

Finally, it must be admitted that sentient beings are more beneficial to us than buddhas because it is primarily in reliance upon the needs of other sentient beings that we achieve the causes of unsurpassable awakening. You cannot develop benevolence and compassion based on the contemplation of buddhas. Buddhas do not require anyone’s compassion; they are not suffering. Thinking about buddhas does not produce compassion, whereas reflecting upon the situation of sentient beings does produce it. Of course, you can make offerings to buddhas, but the principal practice of generosity is giving to those in need, and buddhas do not need anything. Sentient beings are the ones that need what we have to give.

The first three of the six perfections — the perfections of generosity, moral discipline, and patience — are all practiced primarily with reference to sentient beings and not with reference to buddhas. We can only really be generous to sentient beings. You cannot give something to nothing; you have to give it to someone, and that means a sentient being. It is with respect to sentient beings that we must exercise moral discipline and patience. Moral discipline involves, among other things, how we relate to the sentient beings we experience as pleasant or attractive. Patience, among other things, is how we relate to the sentient beings we regard as unpleasant or repellant. All of this involves sentient beings, and therefore the practice of the Mahayana path depends upon the kindness and existence of others. Therefore you should understand that every time sentient beings interact with you in even the most unpleasant way, they are giving you the best opportunity for cultivating the path and virtue. If despite that understanding you still get angry at someone else’s abuse, you are the stupidest among the stupid.

This is true historically as well. When we think about the Buddha’s relationship with his cousin Devadatta, which was pretty much the same relationship they had throughout many previous lifetimes, we tend to vilify Devadatta. We think that Devadatta, with his constant attempts to harm and kill the Buddha and his constant challenges of the Buddha’s wisdom, was nothing but an emanation of Mara. Yet according to the Buddha’s statements, he achieved awakening as quickly as he did because of Devadatta and Devadatta’s attempts to harm him and derail him from the Mahayana path for many, many lifetimes.

In terms of when the fifth buddha, Maitreya, and Shakyamuni Buddha first generated bodhichitta, and in terms of how long their respective paths should have taken, Maitreya should have come first; he should have reached the finish line before Buddha Shakyamuni, but he did not. Although Buddha Shakyamuni generated bodhichitta after Maitreya, he attained buddhahood first because he had to put up with Devadatta lifetime after lifetime. Therefore it is taught that Buddha Shakyamuni’s achievement of buddhahood before Maitreya was due to the kindness of Devadatta’s constant abuse.

Although we know that all beings have been our parents and it is therefore horrific if we become angry with them, simply knowing this may not be enough to stop the habit of becoming angry with them, especially when they abuse us. If you find that due to the strength of your habit of anger or for whatever other reason the method already presented here is not enough for overcoming anger, the Mahayana presents other methods that may help.
The first is to imagine that your enemy, the person you are angry at, is the person you love the most. You imagine that enemy as your mother or whoever it is that you love most in this life. This is not purely an act of imagination because in previous lifetimes, this person who is your worst enemy in this life was your mother, who is the person you loved most again and again. When you imagine your enemy to be the person you love most now, although you are doing something imaginary, it is not untrue. Imagine them in that way, and think about whether or not it is appropriate to be vengeful, angry, and harmful.

If this is not sufficient, another method is to literally put yourself in their place. In other words, imagine yourself to be your enemy and imagine your enemy to be you. By changing your perception and your perspective, you can actually pacify the habit of anger. This is the cultivation of the samadhi of loving-kindness, which is to say a one-pointed absorption in or maintenance of a state of benevolence. This is how anger and aversion are tamed.

Working with Distraction

As soon as you catch yourself in a state of distraction, look back at however many instances of distraction or discursive thought may have occurred during that time. When you take into account the number of such instances and then trace them individually up to the point when you regained your recollection, you discover that all of those discursive thoughts were completely groundless to begin with, even though some of them were coarse enough for you to take notice of them. On the basis of recognizing this, rest evenly within the nature of whatever thoughts arose for you. By doing so, in that very instant they will all be resolved as being empty in nature; in other words, there will be no fixation on discursive thoughts. When you do this successfully it should bring you a sense of contentment. Whereas initially you felt disappointed because you were distracted, that experience is now replaced with a feeling of contented happiness.

Through practicing in this way, it is taught that every instance of distraction can actually play a useful role in your meditation. The peerless Lord Gampopa himself attested to this. He said that once you have realized the essential nature of mind, it is still possible to become briefly distracted, but the discursive thoughts that caused the distraction will have no capacity whatsoever to obscure that fundamental nature. This is because when you rest in even placement within the nature of whatever thoughts occurred to you, the thoughts are automatically purified of their own accord; that is to say, once you have directly realized the nature of discursive thoughts, they become powerless to affect your state of mind.