May all disease, famine, belligerence, wrong views,

impairments, transgressions, downfalls, harmful actions,

self-cherishing, obstacles, harmful influences and impediments,

all ripen on me and me alone!

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, The Blissful Path to the Ocean of Bodhicitta

i. What does this mean to me?

I grew up in a religion where everything was my fault. Everything that I did wrong was due to my sinful nature, and I could only ever be saved by Grace. When I first read this verse of the prayer I thought, ‘Geez, I have enough of my own suffering, I’m not taking on anymore’.

In Buddhism there is no one to save you. ‘Buddha’ simply means ‘awakened one’. We all have the capacity to be awake because we all share the perfection of Buddha Nature. When we are fully awakened, it’s said that all afflictive emotions and wrong views fall away. Perhaps the most harmful wrong view that causes us suffering is the idea of separation or ‘me’ and ‘you’.

But as we move along the path of awakening we slowly come to realize that there is no true separation, no duality, as it appears in samsara. Once we come to this realization, the meaning of these lines becomes clear. We’re here in samsara because of our karma, our previous actions.

In these lines the writer is urging us to let go of the ideas of ‘you’ and ‘me’. If I were to shorten the verse to one sentence, it would be, ‘May I come to realize there is no ‘my suffering’ and ‘their suffering’, there is only suffering’. Putting it this way reveals an essential truth. It’s not so much that we pray in these lines to take on the suffering of others, but that we realize we are all in the swamp of suffering that is samsara.

II. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by asking, ‘Can you fit an elephant inside your head?’ Besides the look of are you crazy, the answer would be ‘Of course not’.

The answer is patently obvious to anyone who gives the question even a passing thought. How then, do we know what an elephant is? Well, at some point we eight saw an actual elephant or an image of one on TV, YouTube, or any of the plethora of media we have available to us. When that happened, if we were paying attention, we created an internal mental representation and labeled it ‘elephant’.

How many minds are involved in this internal mental representation thing? Only one. Yours. This is true of all that we perceive. This being the case, does it make sense to separate our perceptions into yours and mine?

The writer goes all out in this verse. He names just about all there is on the spectrum of suffering from physical to psychological to shortcomings of the mind. Why do that? I think it’s to remind us again that everyone’s suffering is of the same nature. Since this is true, if we make just a drop of difference by decreasing suffering of any kind, we have dropped a drop of pure water into the swamps of samsara. This makes it better for all.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

The Buddha taught that there is suffering, the cessation of suffering and a path to the cessation of suffering. When I think of bringing this this into my life, a recent teaching with my teacher the Venerable Tashi Nyima comes to mind. We were talking about including all in our compassion.

My question was, even Ted Bundy? Him too? Because I kind of feel like he was a bad person and did bad things. To sum up my teacher’s response, he said (a) why are you passing judgment on Ted Bundy; (b) who else isn’t good enough to be included in your compassion; and (c) Isn’t he among those deserving the most compassion because his actions, his karma, will bring him untold suffering.

Now, serial killers used to be a sort of hobby of mine. So immediately I started thinking. Wow, I thought to myself, that includes John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Riverside Strangler, and yes, even Jim Jones. They are all most deserving of our compassion. But a tiny part of me still said, ‘but I would never do anything like that.’

Not two days later I was sitting at my desk working when I tiny fly went by. I swatted at it. Given our difference in size, I probably caused a hurricane for the insect. And it hit me, I am the Ted Bundy of the insect world. I try not to, but despite myself, I still swat at them, completely disturbing their world. Now I had to ask myself, am I less worthy of compassion for having done that countless times? Should I take my place next to the Ted Bundy of my mind who is worthy only of unending suffering?

That gave me pause. This writer is imploring us to let all suffering ripen, or mature, on us. If we did that, are we changing anything other than our perception and awareness? Aren’t we already in the swamp of suffering that is samsara? Can we avoid experiencing the miasma of the suffering that is samsara? No. We can’t. This prayer is simply reminding us to decrease suffering, whenever, wherever we can. There are no corners in a swamp. You can’t just decrease suffering in your corner of samsara. We have to realize the truth of interdependence. If one suffers, all suffer.

Having lived with this prayer for a week now. I bring it into my life by reminding myself of a quotation of the Dalai Lama, “Be kind whenever possible . . . it is always possible.” All week at work I really paused to ask myself, how can I be kinder in this interaction? I paused to remind myself to mind the suffering of the person at the other end of the email. This was quite the feat, since I work from home. It really struck me that these people were internal mental representations, actually faceless, since we’ve never met.

This week it occurred to me that true compassion is exactly that – faceless. We may not know every being in samsara, but we know the feel and flavor of suffering. I have to admit that just one week of living with this prayer isn’t enough. It feels like there is so much to do in samsara, and so little time. We can live with this illusion of futility by relying on our Buddha Nature. It is whole and perfect and lacks compassion for no one.