On Compassion . . .
by

On Compassion . . .

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.

On Distraction…
by

On Distraction…

Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me,

I will abandon laziness for which life has no time,

enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing,

reflection and contemplation, and meditation,

making perceptions and mind the path,

and realize the “three kayas”: the enlightened mind.

Now that l have once attained a human body,

there is no time on the path for the mind to wander.

Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava

i. What does this mean to me?

    We spend our whole day doing stuff. We urgently rush from one task to the next. When we get done with all that stuff, we turn to distraction to end our days. Whether it’s Netflix or video games or games on our phone, we are always distracting ourselves with so-called entertainment. Then we go to bed, wake up and start over doing stuff, rushing around and indulging in distraction.

    What are we distracting ourselves from? The suffering of living in samsara with the sure knowledge of disease, aging and death. In America, we’ve made an industry out of entertainment. We think nothing of it. For most of us, distraction is how we live our lives.

    There’s nothing wrong with entertainment in and of itself. But here’s the thing. We have very little time here. What we call ‘life’ is merely the gap or the bardo between birth and death. In our day-to-day lives, many of us bury this knowledge. The writer specifically tells us that having realized life is merely a bardo between birth and death, he will “…enter, undistracted the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation and meditation…”. That’s a pretty long list but notice the writer says first, “undistracted”. Is it true that we have no time to waste on distractions? Well, nobody I know is getting younger with each passing day.

    To me, these lines are both an instruction and a warning. I don’t think we should all drop our lives and go live on top of a mountain and meditate and contemplate. Distraction is inevitable in samsara. But we have the capacity to limit distraction and turn our minds “undistracted” to meditating, and contemplating, and hearing, and listening to the Dharma. What we choose to do with our time and our mind is vitally important.

    ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

      I attended a two day retreat this past weekend. It was on Zoom. It was an inspiring experience. There were one to two hour gaps between each segment of the retreat and then of course overnight. At the beginning of the retreat we took a vow of Noble Silence. Among other things, that meant we would limit the distractions that entered our minds.

      Honestly, I had planned for some quality knitting and Netflix time in between segments. But no. Now there was Noble Silence. As it turned out, I got just as much from the in-between segments as I did from the retreat itself. The first in-between segment was two hours. No problem, I thought. And it wasn’t. Until it was time to do it. I had to actually sit a few moments and consider carefully what I was going to do to observe Noble Silence. I couldn’t watch YouTube – my go to distraction. No peeking in on Facebook at my knitting group. No catching a documentary on Netflix or Breaking Bad or Bridgerton. And definitely no listening to my favorite Murderbot series on Audible. It was daunting.

      It took me a good five minutes to decide to knit quietly and reflect “undistracted” on what we were learning in the retreat. It was eye opening. I had no idea there was so much distraction in my life.

      To explain this to someone else, I would ask them to observe a day of Noble Silence. I would ask that they go without their usual distractions for just one day. When we decrease our distractions, at first the mind is very noisy. Once you settle into an activity, the mind settles down. Thoughts come and go.

      After doing this exercise, it’s impossible not to notice your level of distraction. Although this was written long before Netflix or YouTube, or Audible, or video games, I’m sure there was still plenty to distract the mind. Even when we identify the distractions that cloud our mind, it’s not easy to enter “…undistracted, the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation and meditation…”. The desire to distract the mind is very nearly addicting. But with practice and perseverance, we can learn to have, as my teacher the Venerable Tashi Nyima likes to say, more Dharma and less drama.

      iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        Just two days after the retreat ended, there were bad storms. I had no power or cable for just about two days. I felt as though the retreat had been in preparation for those two days. On Tuesday in particular, it was pretty much enforced Noble Silence. The only distraction I had was a Kindle, but I could only do that for a couple of hours at a time. There was no way to recharge it.

        While it’s true that I could have read some Pema Chodron, I chose instead to read Stephen King. Because of course I did. I want, I told myself, to be entertained and distracted from the awful discomfort of the heat. The Shining worked perfectly.

        I was a bit disappointed with myself because of course I felt that after the retreat, plus one whole day of practice, I should have been ready to engage in a day long meditation in unaccustomed heat and discomfort. The big difference between before and after the retreat is that now when I engage in distraction, I do it with awareness.

        It’s unrealistic that I would spend all my time studying the Dharma. For one thing, I have to go to work. I bring this into my life with new practices like stopping to take ten deep breaths ten times a day. And I use existing practices like meditation and contemplation. When I take the time in my day, whether it’s first thing in the morning or at random moments of the day, to study or practice the Dharma , my mind feels very aligned. It feels like I’m in harmony with something that I’ve forgotten but now I’m remembering.

        As my teacher, the Venerable Tashi Nyima reminds us all the time, every moment is new. I think the writer here reminds us of this by calling it a path. He says I will “…enter, undistracted the path of listening and hearing…”. A path is a progression. No two steps are exactly the same. We are always arriving in the next brand new moment, much like stepping stones in a river.         

        Considering this, do we want to spend all our spare moments in distraction? Or do we want to spend our moments entering into a path of listening, hearing, meditating and contemplating the Dharma? Honestly it’s a question of balance for me. I would much rather spend more moments with the Dharma than not, as the Dharma is forever enduring.

        On the bardo…
        by

        On the bardo…

        Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me,

        I will abandon laziness for which life has no time,

        enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing,

        reflection and contemplation, and meditation,

        making perceptions and mind the path,

        and realize the “three kayas”: the enlightened mind.

        Now that l have once attained a human body,

        there is no time on the path for the mind to wander.

        Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava

        i. What does this mean to me?

        I can be the ultimate procrastinator. Why do today what you can do next week, or maybe the week after, is what I say to myself. Just the idea that we can do something tomorrow assumes a lot. For one thing, it assumes we’ll wake up the next day. What makes us so sure of that?

        The first line of this proverb says, “Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me. . .”. What’s a bardo? Our local friendly AI tells us that a bardo is a “gap, interval, intermediate state, transitional process, or in between…”. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? A bardo is an interval that has a beginning and an end. Sleep, for instance, is a bardo. It’s an interval that begins when we fall asleep and ends when we wake up. Sleep is usually in between one day and the next. We take this bardo for granted. We assume we’ll awaken the next day.

        The writer talks about “…the bardo of this life…”. What does he mean? What is life between? Well, we’re born, we die, and in between there’s the bardo of life. The writer says that the bardo of this life is “…dawning upon me…”. Many times we go about our lives in a routine that’s day-to-day. We usually don’t pause to look at life itself, especially when we’re younger. It doesn’t dawn on us that life is a bardo. We can’t even be certain of our next breath, let alone our next day

        But samsara with its distractions, sucks us in. We enter a cycle that begins with struggle. When we struggle for something, there are only three possible outcomes. First, and most common, we don’t get it. Or, you get what you want, but it’s not what you thought it would be. And the least common outcome is you get what you want, it’s exactly what you thought it would be, but then you lose it because nothing lasts forever in samsara. When this happens, we are undeterred. We simply find something else to want, thinking this time I’ll get it. This time it will be what I want and it will last forever. We do this because we mistakenly believe that if we look hard enough, we’ll find something in samsara that will make us happy. Sadly, this isn’t so.

        The writer goes on to say that now with the bardo of this life “…dawning upon me, I will abandon laziness for which life has no time…”. Once we remember or once it dawns on us that life is just a bardo between birth and death, our perspective can change. We can start seeing that life itself is only a limited time and we have no time to waste.

        Does this mean we should all become monastics and pursue spiritual matters the rest of our lives? No. To me it means that this bardo of life that we take so much for granted is exactly that – a bardo. It’s going to end sooner than we think. So why waste time on the shiny distractions of samsara? How will that prepare us for the end of this bardo?

        ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

        Life is like a vacation from work. Why do I say that? When we go on a vacation, we make all sorts of plans so that everything goes just so. Some people even have very strict itineraries for vacation. Why is that? Because we recognize that, compared to the rest of our work-a-day life, vacation is very short.

        When we believe we have an entire lifetime yawning out before us, it’s easy to be lazy. It’s easy to watch Netflix instead of meditating or doing mantra or even contemplating the Dharma. If we believe that our lives will just go on and on, we live our lives with a complete lack of urgency.

        But the writer here uses strong language about life. He says he will “abandon” the habit of laziness. He’s not saying, ‘maybe I won’t be so lazy’. No, he says he’ll abandon laziness. To abandon is to “…give up completely…” according to our local dictionary. This is a pretty radical statement to make. The writer is not going to do his very best not to be lazy anymore. He is going to give up completely the habit of being lazy. Why is that? Because no one gets out of samsara alive.

        This may sound doom and gloom, but really it’s an encouragement. We’re all here in this realm of struggle and desire because of our karma. Does that mean we’ve been lazy in previous lifetimes? Hard to say. But once we are blessed with the perspective that life is a bardo, a short time between birth and death, that can really light a fire under us. And we can live our lives accordingly.

        iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        Like I said, I can be the ultimate procrastinator. I used to wait until the absolute last second to get something done. But like the writer I’m blessed to know the Dharma and understand that life is a bardo. It’s a very short time. Some turtles live to be hundreds of years old. Compared to that, the lifespan of the human species is a flash in the pan.

        I would like to say that having come to understand the truth of life as a bardo by studying the Dharma, I really lived life with a sense of urgency. But I didn’t. It’s only now as I have come into old age that I feel a sense of urgency. I have so few years left compared to what I’ve already lived. And now, I’m starting to wake up and truly realize that life is a bardo and there is no time for laziness.

        When is it time to study the Dharma? It’s always time to study the Dharma. It’s unavoidable. The truth of it rings out all around us every day. As I work to bring this teaching into my life, I find that it’s a matter of priority. Without ever leaving my house and with an internet connection, I quite literally have thousands of distractions at my fingertips. I also have the Dharma which is nothing more than an undistorted view of reality.

        When I first began studying the Dharma, my teacher the Venerable Tashi Nyima called it ‘mind training’. There was so much to learn. It seemed overwhelming. I thought I had to know all of it, chapter and verse. But gradually as I began  to study and meditate, I saw that no matter what ‘part’ of the Dharma you study, you’re studying all of it.

        Because the Dharma is seeing reality as it truly is, there’s no way to break down the Dharma and say, ‘I’m only going study this part’. Since studying the Dharma really is mind training, it doesn’t matter where you start. It’s said that there are 84,000 gates to the Dharma. No matter which gate works for you, you will encounter the entire Dharma. This is because studying the Dharma, after a short while, shifts your perspective. The minds starts to see things differently. The Dharma is a point of view.

        From this point of view we can understand that life really is a bardo, and there really is no moment to waste. This is the blessing for me of bringing these lines into my life. Once we see things as they truly are, samsara gradually loses its hold on us. We begin to see that the distractions of samsara are but a waste of our time. And our time here is very short.

        On dying . . .
        by

        On dying . . .

        All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

        By this truth may I know that all appearances are vanity;

        may I know that I dream while dreaming; may I know that I die while dying.

        i. What does this mean to me?

        The first time I heard this prayer, this line hit me pretty hard. ‘No,’ I wanted to argue, ‘I’m not dying. I’m fine.’ Then I thought, ‘Oh, wait.’ And the truth of it hit me. With every breath, every heartbeat, every tick of the clock, I am dying. I’d like to say that I straightened up, meditated and prayed everyday, and went out of my way to perform acts of kindness and generosity. But that didn’t happen.

        The mind is funny that way. I fell back into my usual day-to-day complacence. It’s only as I got older – into my fifties – that I began to appreciate this line. Samsara is full of distractions that hide many truths. One of the things samsara hides best is the undeniable fact of our mortality. There are no TV shows called, Dying Well or How to Have a Good Death. Just the opposite in fact. If we go by samsara’s fictions, everyone will remain at best middle-aged and healthy forever, and they will somehow find that elusive dream. And live happily ever after.

        Fortunately, we have the Dharma  to keep us informed of the truth even in the midst of samsara’s distractions. In samsara, there are lots of pretty, shiny things to chase after. Samsara is seductive and very addicting. But in this realm of struggle and desire, we will never have enough bright, shiny things. We will always be chasing after something empty and meaningless if we get sucked into samsara.

        ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

        I’d start with an exercise my teacher, the Venerable Tashi Nyima did with us years ago. It went something like this. Make a list of the top five things you want or want to get done. Now, what if you only had a year to live, how would the list be different? What if you had one week?

        We came back with our carefully thought out lists. Our teacher’s comment, after listening to us for a while, was that all the lists should be the same. That’s how much samsara sucks us in. We assume that, at any given time, we know how far we have to go before death catches up to us. But the truth is that a one year old and an eighty year old have the same mortality. Either one could die at any moment.

        Samsara seduces us into believing otherwise with thirty year mortgages, five year plans and retirement. At my age of sixty, retirement planning should be practically a hobby, with all the media, virtual and printed that I get inundated with. Many strangers invite me to sumptuous lunches at very nice places to talk about how to plan for retirement.

        This is what samsara does. We are lulled into a false sense of complacency about death. Instead of being urged to live with a sense of urgency, we’re encouraged to make plans – mortgages, investments, five year plans – it goes on and on.

        This is not the truth. Death stalks us in every heartbeat, every breath. Our prayer says, “…may I know that I die while dying…”. Why is this important? It’s not just doom and gloom and woe is me. In fact, the Dharma teaches us, it’s just the opposite.

        With this clear view of reality, we are encouraged to live our lives with a sense of urgency. The shiny baubles in samsara are ultimately empty. They are “…mere transformations of consciousness…”. Knowing and understanding this, how do we proceed? With great clarity. When we realize at a deep level that every moment draws us closer to death, our ‘I Have To’ or ‘I Want’ list becomes much shorter. Some items fall off altogether. This line of the prayer is not to sadden us, but rather to wake us up from the stupor of samsara and point out the Path as the only thing worthy of being on any list.

        iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        I’ve only recently turned sixty. It gives me a new perspective on life. Things that seemed important just five or six years ago no longer matter. I left off studying the Dharma for some years. I say that, but I never really did. I left off formally studying the Dharma and attending sangha. But I saw the Dharma everywhere. Samsara felt so empty and uninspiring. There was nothing that gave me any sense of meaning. In a sense, samsara drove me back to studying the Dharma. It’s the only thing in samsara that holds any meaning for me.

        With the knowledge at a very fundamental level, that I’m closer to death with every breath, I have a certain urgency in my life. I heed the warnings of the Dharma. The Dharma is repeatedly warning us of the illusory, dreamlike quality of samsara. We are urged in every prayer, every teaching to look to the Dharma as a guide to how we live our lives. Be kind. Be generous. Avoid attachment, aversion and indifference. Get out of the burning house of samsara where we will only find suffering.

        The Buddha told us that there is cessation of suffering and a path to the cessation of suffering. The Dharma doesn’t direct us to be perfect. It urges us to move through samsara with compassion and kindness. The Dharma assures us that there is true purity, true bliss, true permanence and true being.

        When I pray “…may I know I die while dying…”, I am praying that my own Buddha Nature helps me see through the illusions of samsara. I am praying that in my journey on the path, I may come to truly see that there is freedom from the cycle of birth, disease, aging, and death. In doing this I bring a sense of urgency to my steps on the path. The blessing of this prayer is to remind us that all in samsara is insubstantial, impermanent and dependent on causes and conditions.

        Once we realize the truth of this line of prayer, samsara’s illusions fall away. We can come to understand that there is only one way out of samsara: the Path. For me, this is comforting and reassuring. Am I still afraid of death? For sure. But with the Dharma awakening me to my own Buddha Nature, I know that I can be free of the cycle of death and rebirth. I can one day return to samsara of my own will with the intent to liberate all those who suffer.

        On dreaming. . .
        by

        On dreaming. . .

        All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

        By this truth may I know that all appearances are vanity;

        may I know that I dream while dreaming; may I know that I die while dying.

        i. What does this mean to me?

        Dreams can be so weird. I’m a Type 2 Diabetic, so there are lots and lots of foods I can’t eat. I have this constantly recurring dream of a buffet so big, it’s the size of a mall. You have to ride a bicycle from one end to the other. And it smells amazing. And it’s all vegan. But in my dream, I never get to eat. I’ve had this dream so often, that many times I know it’s a dream.

        Our local friendly AI tells us that a dream is, “a series of thoughts, feelings, or images that the mind creates. . .”. Despite that, they seem so real, don’t they? Samsara is no different. Everything we experience – thoughts, feelings, encounters with objects or other people – are all mental representations. They are transformations of our own consciousness.

        It’s very hard to realize the dreamlike quality of samsara. Most of us go through our entire lives never once questioning the so-called ‘reality’ we experience. What does our prayer mean when it says “may I know that I dream while dreaming”? To me it means to remember that in samsara the struggle may seem real, but it’s not. Nothing is ‘real’ as we experience it. That is not to say that we’re all dreaming samsara into being. There is an Absolute Truth, but with our limited senses, we’re not able to perceive it.

        Why pray to know we’re dreaming while dreaming? Although I have nightmares at times, most of my dreams are like the buffet. They’re tantalizing to my senses. They seem to satisfy some longed for wish. Dreams are seductive and to a degree hypnotic. And they’re all-encompassing. That seductive quality draws us in deeper and deeper. We never question the dream. I never question who would build a buffet the size of a mall. I simply accept it as what is.

        In samsara, we behave the same way. If we buy into the dream of constant unending struggle and desire, we suffer. We lose track of who we truly are. The Dharma is always there to remind us of the dreamlike quality of samsara. It keeps us from investing ourselves entirely in a dream that will never satisfy. Samsara covers up who we truly are. The Dharma uncovers who we truly are and helps us discover our own Buddha Nature in the midst of the nightmare that is samsara.

        ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

        I’d start by asking them to name one thing that has remained the same throughout the years of their life. I don’t know of anyone who can give an honest answer to that question.

        After all, what has stayed the same for any of us? Certainly not our bodies, not our dreams and aspirations, not even our perception of reality remains the same. The cool thing about the Dharma is that it is unchanging. The Dharma is that which holds. It underlies and supports all that we experience. When we have those vague feelings of dissatisfaction with a life that feels empty, this is the Dharma peeking through the dream of samsara. All in samsara is impermanent, insubstantial and dependent on causes and conditions.

        We bear witness to this everyday in even the simplest of things. The sun shines in the day, but at night it’s gone from our skies. We’re born tiny babies, but we grow up, grow old and eventually die. Nothing in samsara is unchanging.

        In samsara, we are drunk on distraction. Our cravings know no bounds, and this drives us to struggle ever harder, and we suffer. Then we seek distraction from our suffering and a new craving arises and on and on. This is the vicious cycle of samsara. We can free ourselves by studying the Dharma. Nothing else can free us from the nightmare of samsara. The blessing of the Dharma is that in the midst of the nightmare of samsara, it shows us what truly is and frees us of the cycle of struggle and desire.

        iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        When food is used on TV such as a Thanksgiving ad, the turkey is not cooked. A blow torch is used to ‘brown’ the outside, toilet paper is stuffed in the cavity to give it a nice plump appearance, shoe polish is used to get that perfect brown look. Back when I ate meat, I would have totally tried to eat that raw shoe polish covered turkey. And it would have poisoned me.

        Just so in samsara. Nothing is what it seems to be, yet most of us gorge on seductive dreams that poison us with greed, envy, or craving for things we can’t have. When I began to study the Dharma, I gradually lost ‘faith’ in the illusions of samsara.

        I bring this into my life by reciting prayers, by practicing, by reminding myself throughout the day that nothing is as it seems. This may seem pretty basic, but here’s the thing. When I’m on the cushion meditating, I totally understand and even experience the dreamlike quality of samsara. But my mind still gets caught up in samsara. I still forget sometimes that nothing is as it seems. When afflictive emotions arise, it’s tempting sometimes to let myself get sucked in by them.

        When these things happen, I take a step back, breathe and recite mantra. Or I pick up my prayer beads and do mantra for a couple of minutes. For me, it still takes effort to live in samsara and not be sucked in by it. Despite that, my Buddha Nature is always trying to break through.

        I’d like to say that once I feel my Buddha Nature peeking through, samsara falls away and dissolves like the dream that it is. That’s not what happens. But samsara does lose a lot of its grip on me. It becomes more transparent and less substantial. This is something we can all do. Buddha Nature is always there, shining through samsara, trying to give us liberation, if only for a few moments at a time.

        On vanity . . .
        by

        On vanity . . .

        All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

        By this truth may I know that all appearances are vanity.

        i. What does this mean to me?

        I’m not sure what I expect from our prayers when I sit down to write a contemplation. At first I thought the simplicity of the words hid some grand esoteric, deeply philosophical truth. But no. I find that the prayers form mostly a “How To” guide for living in samsara without becoming lost in the illusion.

        The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we see and experience is “mere transformation of consciousness only.” Last time we talked about how there are two kinds of truth when watching a magic show. There’s the ‘truth’ that your eyes see. And there’s the underlying process of what the magician is actually doing.

        Well, that’s nice to know, we might think, but – so what? Of course there’s no such thing as magic. We all know that. And with something as obvious as a magic show, it’s easy to understand that no one is really being sawed in half. Not so in samsara.

        This line of our prayer reminds us of the nature of samsara. Our local friendly AI tells us that one of the meanings of vanity is “the quality of being worthless or futile.” Samsara is a realm of struggle and desire. We desire something, we get it, we move on to wanting something else, and then we go struggle until we get it. That cycle is exhausting and it’s only halted by death.

        So what is our prayer telling us about living in samsara? It’s telling us that the appearances we experience do not have the qualities we assign to them. Another way to say appearance is to talk about the “outward form” of something.

        This takes us back to the magic show. The appearance is magic. But magic in and of itself  is a worthless understanding of how things are. We know the magician is doing something, but we don’t know what he’s actually doing.

        In the same way, samsara is all appearance. This is not to say that we dream reality into existence. Rather it’s to point out that what we experience in samsara is merely the outer form. Like the magic show, there is an underlying truth, but in our limited minds and bodies, we don’t have access to that Absolute Truth.

        ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

        I’d start by saying ‘the devil is in the details’. The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we experience is mere transformation of consciousness. That is to say there is an underlying truth in samsara, but our experiences in samsara arise in the mind.

        Once we accept this as true, then it becomes fairly obvious that all the appearances we experience couldn’t possibly live up to the qualities we assign to them. If I have two clear glasses, and I fill one with green liquid and the other with blue liquid, are the glasses themselves now green and blue? No. But the appearance is that we now have two different color glasses. Is it wrong to assign the glasses the colors of blue and green? Not exactly. But it’s futile to proceed as if the glasses are now green and blue. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of what is.

        In samsara, we do this all the time with just about everything. We absolutely and unquestionably believe that there are two glasses of different color. To the degree that we live our lives believing in fundamental untruths, we suffer. The source of our suffering comes from trying to work with or shift a ‘reality’ that we believe. In this realm of struggle and desire, there is no satisfaction, no peace, no end to suffering. The Dharma teaches us that the glasses are clear and furthermore, the glasses themselves are merely the outward form that arises in the mind of some Absolute Truth.

        iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        Before I began studying the Dharma, no matter what I did, there was this horrible feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction in my life. Materially, I was fine, but I couldn’t escape those feelings. Only when I began studying the Dharma did those feelings subside. Once I began to understand about the illusory qualities of samsara, I no longer desperately searched for ‘happiness’ in samsara.

        I try to remind myself of this prayer when samsara starts getting to me. ‘No,’ I say to myself, ‘what I’m experiencing right now is not what it appears to be.’ My job can be very frustrating at times because I feel like I’m not getting enough stuff done that has to be done. Then I take a step back, breathe and remind myself that there is no point in fighting against how things are. My experience of reality, I remind myself is exactly that, an experience. This helps me to refocus my attention on what is, rather than what I want it to be.

        This can be very liberating. There is simply no amount of emails that I can answer that will be satisfying. Not in samsara. This is where the Dharma and our prayers become important guides to living in samsara. The more we realize that nothing in samsara is substantial, or permanent or independent, the more we free ourselves of the pangs of living in samsara.

        With this prayer reminding us that “all appearances are vanity”, we have the freedom to rely on our own Buddha Nature. It is complete and whole, nothing missing, nothing to add. In this way, we can live in samsara with compassion, wisdom and open hearts.

        On transformations of consciousness . . .
        by

        On transformations of consciousness . . .

        All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

        i.   What does this mean to me?

        When I was in high school we went on a field trip to Manhattan, to Broadway in particular. We went to see a matinee magic show. I was thrilled with the performance. At some points I found myself asking, “How’d he do that?”

        Now that I look back on it, it was a strange experience to participate in the show. I say ‘participate’ on purpose because magic shows really need audience participation. Even if only for a few seconds at a time, the audience has to believe what they’re seeing is ‘true’. So, while watching the show I experienced two realities almost simultaneously. “Oh no! There’s a lady on stage being sawed in half.” And at nearly the same second I’d be thinking, “That’s impossible. He’d be in big trouble for murder.” And other thoughts like, “where’s the blood”? Why isn’t she screaming?” And so on. The point is I believed what my eyes told me was happening but at the same time I knew it couldn’t be true.

        This line of today’s prayer is very much telling us that samsara is like a magic show. The big difference is that it’s as though most of us live our lives on the magician’s stage, and never question the ‘magic’.

        This line of the prayer begins with “All notions of subject and object . . . are mere transformations of consciousness.” What could this mean? Is it saying that there’s no reality out there? Is it saying that we live on the magician’s stage and there is no theater beyond, just an empty void? Far from it. After all, how do we perceive the world? Our eyes see light bouncing off an object of a certain size and configuration, and instantly the image of a table arises in the mind. Could you fit a whole table inside your head? Of course not. But an image fits in the mind just fine.

        Let’s take a look at consciousness. Our local friendly AI tells us that, among other things, consciousness is, “…the state of being aware of yourself and the world around you…”. Notice that nothing is said about perception. The definition says “…being aware of. . . “. This means that consciousness demands at least two things: a seer and that which is being seen. But oddly our prayer says this isn’t so. According to our prayer, any idea that the seer and that which is seen are two separate things is an incorrect understanding. Rather, both are “mere transformations of consciousness only.” And if we look more closely at transformation, it means, “a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.”

        When I first learned this prayer, I was like – what do you mean ‘mere transformation of consciousness’? Are we dreaming the world into life? No. Nothing like that. Let’s go back to the magic show. When we watch, we are witnessing two kinds of ‘truth’. The first and easiest truth is that the magician is doing magic. The underlying truth is years and years of practice that allow the magician to trick the eye and the mind.

        Even still, we could question if the magic show is even there. The answer is yes. There is some underlying truth there but with our limited senses, we can’t know what it is.

        ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

        As long as we are conscious, we are aware of what’s around us. The mind builds meticulous images for us even if it’s based on just a sound. When we hear a police siren, we immediately have an image of a car speeding along with flashing lights. But where did that car come from? It comes from our own experiences. In other words, it comes from our own consciousness arising in the mind as a transformation of our already existing consciousness that is there every second of everyday. So we can see that there are not two “things”. There is a sound (also inside the mind), and there’s your image of the police car. Both exist within your consciousness. There is only one consciousness at work here: yours. The ‘experiences’ we believe we have are all transformations of that consciousness.

        You know how when you wake up from a bad dream, you’re really relieved to find yourself safe in bed? When we talk about the dream, we don’t say things like, “Last night I went to visit this strange place where everyone has three eyes and a mouthful of razor sharp teeth, and one of them kept saying my name and I was running.” No. We say something like, “I had a really weird dream last night.” What does this actually mean? It means that our whole experience of the dream was merely a transformation of our own consciousness. The underlying truth in this case is the so-called ‘reality’ that we wake up to. But even this reality is a transformation of consciousness at every turn.

        This does not mean that everything is a dream. What it does mean is that our way of experiencing the world works much the same way as a dream. Which is to say, we experience transformations of our own consciousness in our day to day lives.

        iii. How do I bring this into my life?

        When I first learned this, it was a difficult teaching for me. I couldn’t escape the nihilistic idea that the teaching was saying there is no reality. This is all a dream.

        It was only gradually that I began to see the usefulness and liberating quality of this teaching. For me it began with negative emotions. I found that if I could just take a step back, I could recognize that the anger or frustration or whatever, was nothing new. That same energy is always there. It’s my own thoughts that are causing me to experience that particular transformation of consciousness as negative or hurtful. And guess what? Our thoughts are also transformations of consciousness.

        As I live with this teaching, I find myself coming back to how to know when something is ‘real’ in samsara. Is it substantial? Is it permanent? Is it dependent on various causes and conditions? When I combine this with the teaching that all we experience is mere transformation of consciousness, it feels very liberating.

        It makes me realize that all in samsara (including me) is subject to aging, disease and death. With this in mind, I can navigate my life and walk the path with deliberation. It doesn’t mean that I can call up utility providers and let them know I won’t be paying anymore because all of this is just a transformation of consciousness. If I did that, I would experience a transformation to homelessness. No. I can’t do that. But this prayer offers liberation from samsara. I trust that the Dharma is that which holds. I trust that Buddha Nature is whole, complete and not subject to birth, aging, disease and death.

        Knowing and understanding this, I am free to operate as though I’m watching that magic show. “Yes,” I say to myself, “this is what I see – a magic trick. And in conventional reality I will participate in the show.” The blessing of this teaching is that it allows the freedom of choosing which parts of the magic show I’m going to participate in. I don’t have to rush through life addicted to rocket fuel strength coffee just to reach some goal that I absolutely believe will satisfy me. In samsara, nothing satisfies.

        Am I going to be compassionate and have a loving heart for all sentient beings? Yes. Despite the dream-like quality of samsara, I have a duty to ease the suffering of sentient beings caught up in the nightmare of samsara. This teaching allows me to participate in conventional reality while at the same time acknowledging that all that I experience is a transformation of my own consciousness. There is no one being cut in half. I can choose to understand that and live my life in accordance with the Dharma and my own Buddha Nature.

        On the roaring dragon (Part 3). . .
        by

        On the roaring dragon (Part 3). . .

        Like the thundering roar of a dragon, the resonant voice of the Dharma  

        awakens us from afflictive emotions and frees us from the chains of karma.

        Dispelling the darkness of ignorance, the sword of wisdom cuts through all our suffering.

        How do I bring this into my life?

        i.

        When I think of bringing this prayer in my life, the words that jump out at me are “sword of wisdom” and “all our suffering.” Samsara is a realm of struggle and desire. Most chase after struggle and desire unceasingly. If samsara has existed for innumerable eons, what sword could be so powerful as to through “all our suffering?”

        Our prayer tells us that only after “dispelling the darkness of ignorance” can this “sword of wisdom” cut through “all our suffering”. Remember that ‘wisdom’ has its roots in ‘vision’, as in to see things as they truly are.

        If we go back further in the prayer there are four distinct parts to being freed of all our suffering. First we must be awakened “from the sleep of afflictive emotions. . .”. Second we must be freed from “the chains of karma.” Thirdly the “darkness of ignorance” must be dispelled. And fourthly we get to the sword of wisdom which “cuts through all our suffering.”

        ii.

        It’s kind of like a recipe, isn’t it? Or a set of instructions to build something. But do we want to build anything here in samsara where all is impermanent, insubstantial and dependent? That would be an exercise in futility and would only lead to more suffering.

        What we want is a recipe. What does a recipe do? It shows you how to use what you already have to transform your ingredients into something different. This prayer introduces nothing new. We already have the Dharma all around us. The sleep of afflictive emotions lulls most of us into sleep. The chains of karma have entangled us all our lives in samsara. Ignorance can seem to be an impenetrable darkness. And of course suffering is the default setting in samsara. These are our ingredients.

        When I think of bringing this into my life, there’s nothing to bring. All the ingredients of the recipe are already here. The tools of transformation are the “resonant voice of the Dharma” and the “sword of wisdom”. It’s interesting that the sword of wisdom dispels completely the darkness we call ignorance. Suffering, however is merely cut through by the sword of wisdom. Seeing clearly and seeing things as they truly are is enough to dispel ignorance and free us in an instant from suffering.

        iii.

        In bringing this little prayer into my life, I become aware, awake. The ingredients of afflictive emotions, the chains of karma, the darkness of ignorance, the suffering of being in samsara become starkly present for me. This prayer helps me the most I think in hearing the “resonant” voice of the Dharma. This prayer teaches me to attune to the resonant voice of the Dharma and let it resonate with my own Buddha Nature.

        Perhaps the most important gift of bringing this prayer into my life is that quality of feeling starkly awake to samsara. Then there is the sleep of afflictive emotions. Again the prayer offers us the resonant voice of the Dharma to resonate with our own Buddha Nature and wake up and see what is. There are the chains of karma binding us to samsara. And once again the prayer offers us the “thundering roar” of the resonant voice of the Dharma. And lastly there is the darkness of ignorance and the suffering of suffering. And here the prayer offers the sword of wisdom that banishes ignorance. When it comes to suffering, no need to settle it bit by bit, but rather the sword of wisdom will cut a clear swath through suffering in an instant.

        The beauty of this prayer is we don’t have to import anything from anywhere. Everything we need is already here in our enlightened Buddha Nature. We know how to wield the sword of wisdom: let the voice of the Dharma resonate with who we truly are.

        On the roaring dragon… (Part 2)
        by

        On the roaring dragon… (Part 2)

        Like the thundering roar of a dragon, the resonant voice of the Dharma  

        awakens us from afflictive emotions and frees us from the chains of karma.

        Dispelling the darkness of ignorance, the sword of wisdom cuts through all our suffering.

        How would I explain this to someone else?

        i.

        After the alarm goes off in the morning, do you ever fall asleep again and dream that you woke up, got ready for work and even went to work? That dream seems so real, doesn’t it? In fact, when the alarm goes off again (because you snoozed it), it can be downright annoying to have to actually get out of bed and get ready ‘again’.

        Samsara is much the same way. We go about our daily lives believing we’re wide awake. But really we’re in a kind of deep sleep of afflictive emotions and wrong views. I don’t mean we’re some kind of zombies sleepwalking through life. But rather that afflictive emotions and wrong views distort our experiences into an almost dreamlike state.

        ii.

        Our prayer begins by telling us that the voice of the Dharma is “Like the thundering roar of a dragon.” Remember that in eastern lore, Japanese dragons for instance, aren’t big scary fire-breathing monsters, but rather, “…powerful and wise guardians that shield us from universal dangers and impart their wisdom.” Keeping this in mind, why does the voice of the Dharma have to be “Like the thundering roar of a dragon”? It’s mostly because, like we’ve talked about, we are almost wholly asleep in samsara. It’s difficult to awaken us from our dreamlike experiences of samsara.

        Our prayer tells us that like a roaring thundering dragon, “the resonant voice of the Dharma awakens us. . .”.  Why resonant? Because the Dharma is the truth of how things are. A part of us is always awake, always knowing the truth of things as they truly are. We call this our Buddha Nature. More accurately, our Buddha Nature isn’t a “part of us”. It’s who we truly are. How do we know that? Because our prayer tells us of the “resonant voice” of the Dharma. What is it resonating with?

        iii.

        Where does the sky go on a cloudy, stormy day? Does it disappear? Well, yes and no. From our perspective, the sky disappears, but we know that once all the clouds blow away, what remains is a clear blue sky. Our Buddha Nature is like that. Just because we see rain clouds, we don’t believe the clouds are part of the sky. We know that in fact, nothing has changed about the blue sky. It’s still there. It’s just covered up by what one of our other prayers calls “incidental stains”.

        Why is it so important to understand that the clouds are merely laid over the blue sky? Because our Buddha Nature is much the same way. The incidental stains of afflictive emotions and wrong views merely cover our unchanging, ever-present Buddha Nature. This is why the voice of the Dharma is “resonant”. It resonates with our Buddha Nature.

        What’s this talk about how the voice of the Dharma “frees us from the chains of karma?” Don’t we want good karma? Don’t we want just our bad karma to go away? Remember, we were born into samsara, a realm of struggle and desire, because our karma drew us here to be born into bodies that are subject to birth, aging, disease, and death.  Even good karma is still karma, and it still binds us to samsara. What we want is to have no karma (or as little as possible) in the end.

        iv.

        If you lit a taper candle in a large blindingly dark room, would there be a little light? Or would that candle light up the whole room? We know from experience that we’d have a very small circle of light in a dark room. But the very last line of our prayer introduces us to the notion of a “sword of wisdom” that dispels “the darkness of ignorance.” Samsara is a dark place, full of the darkness of ignorance and the suffering of suffering. So what exactly does this sword of wisdom do? It dispels the darkness of ignorance. Our local friendly AI tells us that ‘dispel’ means to “make a (doubt, feeling or belief) disappear.”

        Wow. That’s impressive. Our prayer is telling us that the “resonant voice of the Dharma awakens” us and the sword of wisdom banishes ignorance. To go back to our earlier example, a simple taper candle would create a small circle of light in a dark room. How much brighter must be the sword of wisdom to banish ignorance altogether?

        In this new light we would see that our suffering mostly comes from our reluctance to see things as they are. This again is the power of wisdom – to turn the darkness of samsara into a brilliant light so that we can disentangle ourselves from the chains of suffering that bind us.

        This isn’t to say that wisdom will banish our suffering in a moment. But it does mean that we can use skillful means to uncover our own Buddha Nature a bit at a time. Each and every one of us has the capacity to awaken from the stupor of samsara, and use the wisdom of our Buddha Nature to free ourselves of the darkness of ignorance and the suffering of suffering.

        What are your thoughts?

        On the roaring dragon . . . (Part 1)
        by

        On the roaring dragon . . . (Part 1)

        Like the thundering roar of a dragon, the resonant voice of the Dharma  

        awakens us from afflictive emotions and frees us from the chains of karma.

        Dispelling the darkness of ignorance, the sword of wisdom cuts through all our suffering.

        What does this mean to me?

        i.

        As a westerner, it’s hard for me to appreciate what dragons mean in eastern lore. My local friendly AI tells us that in Japan, dragons are “. . . powerful and wise guardians that shield us from universal dangers and impart their wisdom.”

        Samsara is loud. Even if you live in a country setting, there’s noise, particularly today with electronic devices all but dominating our lives. And that’s on a ‘quiet’ day. When the storms of afflictive emotions rage within us, the noise can be unbearably loud.

        Our prayer starts out strong and says, “. ..the resonant voice of the Dharma…” is heard in samsara “Like the thundering roar of a dragon.” Notice that it’s not just the roar of a dragon, but a thundering roar. That’s pretty loud. It’s certainly loud enough to be heard over even the most roiling violent storms of afflictive emotions.

        What’s most interesting to me here is that the voice of the Dharma is “resonant”. What does it mean to resonate with something? It means there has to be a matching tone or feeling so the two can resonate together. In this case, I believe the prayer is talking about our inherent wisdom, as in the ability to see clearly, to see things as they truly are.

        ii.

        Our prayer tells us that even though we may feel we are awake to our afflictive emotions, samsara is very much a deep sleep in a loud storm. We sleep and have the nightmare of afflictive emotions. This is why the voice of the wisdom of the Dharma must be like the “thundering roar of a dragon.”

        But even with all of this, our prayer reinforces that our inherent ability to see clearly, our wisdom, is already there. This is why the voice of the Dharma is “resonant”.

        With just this line of the prayer, we are told that the “resonant voice of the Dharma” thunders like the roar of a dragon. Why does this roar have to be so loud? One of my favorite things to do during those sub-tropical storms we had in Florida was to sleep through them at night. The only sounds were the thunder, and rain, and wind. It blocked out everything else.

        iii.

        When I first started studying the Dharma, I wanted all my ‘bad’ karma to go away and to only have ‘good’ karma left. We were born into samsara, drawn to this realm of struggle and desire by our karma. As my teacher, the Venerable Tashi Nyima says, “chains of gold are still chains.” With our ‘bad’ karma, we live through it with as good a grace as we can.

        ‘Good’ karma on the other hand is not something valuable that we want to hold onto. After all, karma is karma. That’s why in our other prayers we “dedicate all merit to Great Benefit.” But why does the prayer say the “resonant voice of the Dharma” will “…free us from the chains of karma”?

        I think we first have to ask, what is karma? Very simply put, karma is what arises when we put in place causes for suffering or causes for happiness in our life. So how does the thunderous sound of wisdom free us from suffering? Remember that ‘wisdom’ has its root in ‘vision’, as in to see reality as it truly is. Wisdom is necessary for enlightenment, as another of our prayer reminds us, “May all attain the union of wisdom and compassion.”

        When we see things with our inherent wisdom, which this prayer tells us is possible because the voice of the Dharma resonates with something already within us, why would we ever place causes for suffering onto our path? We wouldn’t. As for ‘good’ karma, we would have the wisdom to always dedicate the merit. Like this, wisdom cuts through the chains of karma that bind us to samsara.

        iiii.

        The last line of the prayer talks about dispelling ignorance and cutting through “all our suffering.” That’s quite a claim to make, to be able to cut through all suffering. But the first line of the prayer already told us that wisdom is like, “the thundering roar of a dragon.” When I picture a roaring dragon, I get a mental image of a dragon spewing powerful flames.

        By the time we get to this last line of the prayer, the roaring dragon is “dispelling the darkness of ignorance.” What is darkness, in general? It’s simply an absence of light. As I read this line, the sword of wisdom seems to be a fiery sword born of the “thundering roar” of the voice of the Dharma. This line seems to sum up the lines that have come before. Without the roaring dragon, before the “resonant voice of the Dharma” there is only the suffering of samsara, afflictive emotions, and the darkness of ignorance.

        However, in this last line, this isn’t a tiny light that’s going to shine. It’s a full on fiery sword wielded by the power of a thundering, roaring dragon speaking the resonant truth of the Dharma. This is the power of wisdom, to cut through all suffering in a moment, if we let ourselves resonate with that resonant voice of the Dharma.