” Faith in one’s guru does not mean blind faith, it does not mean believing “My guru is perfect” even though your guru is not perfect. It is not pretending that your guru’s defects are qualities. It is not rationalizing every foible of the guru into a superhuman virtue. After all, most gurus will have defects. You need to recognize them for what they are. You don’t have to pretend your guru’s defects are qualities, because the object of your devotion is not the foibles, quirks, or defects of your guru, but the Dharma that your guru is teaching you. You are not practicing the guru’s foibles. As long as the Dharma you receive is authentic and pure, then the guru is a fit object for your devotion. You need to recognize the defects of your guru as defects- you don’t need to pretend they are otherwise. The guru’s defects cannot hurt you, because it is not they that you create or cultivate. You follow the teaching of the guru, and “trust” meaning trust in the validity of the teachings themselves.”
Thrangu Rinpoche, contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Master in Creation and Completion, a book written by Jamgon Kongtrul
Author: Lama Lekshe
Buddha’s Teachings on How to Express Loving-Kindness
The Buddha Shakyamuni’s Words on Kindness in the Metta Sutra
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness, and who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful, not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety, may all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be; whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen, those living near and far away, those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another, nor despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings,
Radiating kindness over the entire world, spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths; outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection. This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views, the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
being freed from all sense desires, is not born again into this world.
The Four Immeasurables (Four Brahmaviharas)
The Four Immeasurables are
- Equanimity (Tib. tangnyom), (Pali: metta) which is the wish that beings may be free from attachment to some and aversion to others.
- Lovingkindness (Tib. jampa), (Pali: karuna) which is the wish that living beings may have happiness and its causes.
- Compassion (Tib. nyingjé), (Pali: mudita ) which is the wish that living beings may be free from suffering and its causes.
- Joy (Tib. gawa), (Pali: upekkha) which is the wish that living beings may remain happy and their happiness may increase further.
The Four Immeasurables are mindstates or emotions that when present, help us cultivate qualities that clear away obstacles to experiencing our truest nature. They are cultivated both in formal mediation and through carrying practice. One can also recite the Four Immeasurables Prayer (This is just one of many translations.)
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May they be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
May they never be seperate from the highest bliss which is without suffering.
May they come to rest in the great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion to those close, and far.
The great thirteenth century Tibetan Dzogchen master Longchenpa taught that the entire conduct of the bodhisattva can be summarized into two aspects: (1) aspirational bodhichitta and (2) application (or action) bodhichitta.
Longchenpa explained that aspirational bodhichitta is based on the Four Immeasurables: (1) Immeasurable Loving Kindness, (2) Immeasurable Compassion, (3) Immeasurable Joy, and (4) Immeasurable Equanimity. (My own teacher always taught this sequence beginning with equanimity, saying if one actualized this, the others would come naturally.)
Because sentient beings are as limitless as space, our practice of the Four Immeasurables must also be immeasurably applied to all beings, not focused on any particular one or ones. We begin developing these in our heart by chanting aspirational prayers such as the prayer above. Thus, aspirational bodhichitta is mainly applied at the levels of mind and speech. Through practice, it becomes the cause of action bodhichitta. In action bodhicitta, we act from the wish to benefit others, without exception.
The ‘near enemies’ of the Four Immeasurables are
- indifference (insead of loving-kindness)
- pity (instead of compassion)
- envy (instead of empathetic joy) and
- jealousy (instead of equanimity).
The ‘near enemies’ are qualities or emotions that we may develop that may seem like the immeasurables, but instead are ones that increase suffering, not diminish it.
Dekeling Porch Peas
Hey, apparently. you can plant a shade screen of sugar peas on your front porch and get the side benefit of lunch. Try every experiment to benefit beings.
How to Listen to Dharma Teachings
There is a Tibetan teaching called “The Three Defects of the Pot.” It tells how to listen to dharma teachings.
Not listening, is like being a pot turned upside down. If you have no intention to listen, you won’t hear much. Maybe you have the intention to listen, but you are distracted most of the time.
If you don’t retain anything, you’re like a pot with a hole in it. Everything is poured in, but it just runs out. To realize a teaching, you need to hear it and then practice it. But how can you practice it if you can’t remember anything?
If you have misguided motivation, you’re like a pot containing poison. If you listen to the teachings with the wrong motivation—for example, to impress people with your knowledge or to become famous, it is like someone pouring precious nectar into a container of poison. Even though the pot is filled with medicine it is still poison.
When you listen—only listen. Don’t even recite mantras and prayers and other meritorious activities. Instead, let the body be still and become completely present. Listen with all your heart.
Once you have heard a teaching, remember the meaning and put it into practice, over and over.
I have shown you the path that leads to liberation,
But you should know that liberation depends upon yourself.
Buddha Shakyamuni
In my mind, I add one more. It’s not in the traditional teaching as far as I know, but I like it a lot. Don’t be like the full pot. When a pot is already filled, everything the teacher tries to pour in runs out on the ground, wasted. Let go of what you know. Be empty of preconceived notions, beliefs and opinions. Receive, even if you don’t yet understand.
Listen with your best conceptual mind and also your heart. As soon and as often as you can, call to mind the meaning of the teachings and put them into practice. Gradually, you will realize the teachings, benefitting yourself and others.
Practicing in Sickness
A Dekeling student, David McWherter, is going in for surgery soon. He and I met this morning and we chatted about how he can carry his practice to this experience. He agreed that I could share the gist of our chat with you:
Almost every practice has some utility when you are sick or receiving treatment. It’s best to choose one or two and keep it fairly simple. From among David’s practices, we looked at the following. He will choose on his own.
- Awareness of all experience arising. For this practice, simply notice every experience of body (sensations, etc.) and mind (thoughts, emotions, memory, etc.). Let it arise and see both the experience and its nature (transient, dreamlike, etc.) If you are having a general anesthetic, notice the changing mind state as you ‘go under.’
- Relative bodhicitta. Set the intention to benefit all beings every step of the way in your travel to the hospital, your time there and your journey home. Each time someone comes into your room or interacts with you, however briefly, ask yourself in what small way you can benefit them. This is particularly good practice during the pandemic, when many frontline workers are stretched thin.
- Mantra. If you are familiar with mantra practice, recitation of mantra may help calm the mind and more during illness. If you are chanting a mantra like Chenrezig’s mantra, for example, be aware of yourself as the embodiment of that quality of awakened compassion.
- Gratitude practice. As time goes by, find things to be grateful for. This turns the mind from the tendency to complain or worry, which tend to increase fear and agitation. Gratitude balances experience by filling the mind with what’s working, antidoting the natural tendency when ill to focus on what appears to not be working. Gratitude, a form of the practice of contentment, keeps the mind in balance and strengthens equanimity.
When we can practice in the face of potential adversity, we transform difficulty into awakening. This is one of the Seven Points of Mind Training.
As a side note, Dave has a good system of support in place for the surgery, but it’s always appropriate to include community members in your practice. If you have a challenging time, let’s talk about how to apply practice all along the way! We’re in this together.
Self-Care
Shall we respect ourselves—our body, our mind, our precious life? Let’s do. Let’s learn the skillful means of boundary-setting and taking time and continuous learning and continuous rest.
But shall we put ourselves first? It depends on what you want. If you’re looking for happiness and liberation from suffering, then maybe not. Continuous obsession with how I feel and how I want to feel and closing the gap between the two can lead to more continuous obsession with that. The gap might be narrowed, but then what? The underlying need will not be satisfied and something else will demand the same attention, with the same mysterious unsatisfying results.
If you are still plagued by a mind that needs to ‘fix’ every situation to meet your needs, you will never be free. The force of math will win and life will continue to vex you with its randomness, it’s refusal to come into line with your personal standards and cravings.
The self is a reified narrative of an experience so fluid, so deeply interconnected with infinite constituent parts that the self we are trying to protect could be said to not even exist—at least not in the way we think it does. What’s to protect? An idea? A state of being? A preferred experience? What exactly are you caring for? What is it that you want? Are you getting it? Are you able to manifest it for yourself? How much do you know about why not? Do you know how to explore the basic assumptions and mental models of this situation?
In every moment there is a wellspring of stillness and ease. A pool of joyous energy and peace, waiting only for you to notice and absorb. How to notice? Stop doing everything else—even self care. Right there, in the flash of non-doing and the seconds that follow…satisfaction, ease and joy are waiting to enrich your experience.
The Four Forces for Overcoming Destructive Patterns
The Four Forces are a traditional Buddhist practice sequence that provide a structure for overcoming the influence of patterns of thought, speech and behavior that cause suffering. The four forces are
- Regret
- Reliance
- Remedy
- Resolution
Regret requires that you acknowledge a habit-pattern, at the very least to yourself, and that you become clear about the harm that was done, to yourself and others when the pattern played out. An example of a pattern would be a flash of jealousy that caused an angry comment.
Regret need not activate shame or guilt. The pattern is not evaluated through the lens of what your culture deems ‘appropriate behavior’. It is more simply evaluated as leading towards suffering, or away from it.
You may think, say, or do harmful things for a long time without understanding or even seeing their impact. Consider unintentional racism. In that case, guilt is not required to undermine the pattern. Regret is.
Finding sincere regret raises the energy of intention needed to notice and stop the pattern. You recognize that it is causing harm, intended or not, and like a person who discovers that their poor posture brings them neck pain, you take action to stop creating the causes of suffering. Maybe you overcome the habit of slouching. Regret alone is not complete, the other steps are required to disrupt a pattern, and most likely the steps will need to be repeated over time, along with mediation and other practices.
The practice of regret is simple: notice how allowing this pattern to play out creates a habit in which the pattern plays out on autopilot, without awareness, and see how it plants the seeds of future suffering. If you ate cheese and it made you sick, you’d regret having eaten it, and the habit of eating cheese will be easier to break as long as that understanding is present.
Reliance is the process of reconnecting and recommitting to the practices that help you keep this harmful pattern in view. Most any practice that inspires you and helps you see the pattern clearly will do this: mindfulness, shamatha, confession practices—there are many. Experiment and use the ones that work best for you.
Think of Remedy as a balancing mechanism for your tendency to repeat the harm of a pattern. For example, as a remedy, you might do something positive, even if seemingly unrelated, thereby strengthening the positive qualities or habits that you already have. This is an indirect method, but it usually helps. As the positive patterns increase and strengthen, they vanquish their opposites. While continuous awareness is even more ideal than creating positive habits, replacing negative habits with positive ones is a great stepping stone. Again–keep in mind that ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ here do not refer to social norms, but to whether a habit leads to suffering or to freedom from suffering.
The efficacy of balancing a negative action with a positive one does not mean that you can ‘buy’ your way out of wrongdoing. If you destroy rainforest and create a food shortage for local indigenous humans and animals, it may not remedy your tendency towards selfish action to build a library in your hometown with the profits. Choose carefully.
Remedy commonly includes a heartfelt apology, making amends and even restitution. Again, the intention is to undermine the pattern. The most powerful remedies help us see the impact and intention of our thoughts, speech and actions more clearly and more consistently. They help us honestly connect with the harm we have caused, and they help us see how our actions are the basis for our future actions, otherwise known as karma. They also help us repair and strengthen our connections to others, so we gain a felt sense of our interconnectedness. Those connections help us notice that our intention and impact may not necessarily be the same.
Resolution—sometimes called ‘resolve’–is the process of strengthening the intention to not let the pattern play out unintentionally again. It’s a sense of determination to do whatever it takes to free yourself from this form of self-harm. If you lie, for example, having seen and felt the suffering it causes you and others, and acknowledging that openly, you build intention, awareness and supports to help you immediately notice the pattern arising, and to disrupt that habit.
If you cannot find the resolution to disrupt or uproot the pattern yet, then you are not clear about the extent of the suffering it brings you. You may still be confusing some temporary pleasure it brings with the longer-term consequences. Or you may not yet personally connect to the pattern’s impacts, and may not yet be aware of how the harm you do to others harms you, too.
Expand your understanding the pattern’s dynamics by increasing the timeline of impact further into the past or future, and by contemplating your connections to a wider circle of people, places and things.
To practice the four forces is to take ownership of your own mindscape. It is to bring discipline and common sense to your habits and their impacts. It is to train consistently and deeply in uprooting the causes of suffering in your life, one event at a time. In that way, even the mistakes you make when propelled by negative habit-patterns become a cause of awakening.
The Experience of Breathing as the Object of Shamatha – Beginner’s Mediation
From the Sanity Sit on May 12, 2021.
New Podcast up today
Check our our new podcast, a talk in the Seven Points of Mind Training Series—on Point 3-Aphorism 13: Contemplate the Kindness of Everyone
In a world like ours today, how to do you contemplate the kindness of everyone, if there are lot of people that trouble you?
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