Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

This is my contemplation on the last two lines of verse eight of the root text. I made the assumption that the “essence of the Dhama” refers to the idea that the only way to be truly happy is to work for the happiness / enlightenment of all sentient beings. This contemplation is written from that point of view.

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“Of course what we want is our own good,

So we have to be honest with our own selves:

If we don’t accomplish the essence of the Dharma for our own sake,

Won’t we be ruining our own life?”

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

How many times do we say, “I’m doing this so that someone else can be happy? How much happiness I get out of this doesn’t really matter” and really, honest-to-god mean it? If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is almost never. And if we do mean it, the underlying belief is that not wanting our own happiness will lead to being happy.

The Dharma teaches that the only way to successfully work for our own happiness is to work tirelessly for the happiness of others. How can that be? Isn’t that a total contradiction? Worse, isn’t that a kind of martyrdom?

Well, not exactly.

If we take a look, what’s being said is to work for the happiness of all sentient beings. That includes my happiness, too. That includes my enlightenment, too. That includes freeing myself from suffering, too.

Our idea of working solely for our own happiness or for the happiness of a very small family group comes from the wrong view of separation. Let’s say that we could somehow achieve our own happiness. That’s it. You’re there. You’ve arrived. You’re happy. Now what? Well, unless you live in a very tall, very isolated tower, or a in very deep cave, your happiness won’t last. As you go out into the world, you’ll find yourself clinging to your happiness in a world of suffering. You would soon find that your ‘happiness’ had become something to defend, rather than something to be enjoyed. And wouldn’t that ruin your own life, your happiness?

On the other hand, if we work for the happiness of others with the view that there is no separation between you and other, then there’s nothing to cling to. There’s nothing to hoard. How many of us have ever said to ourselves, “I found this really great wonderful thing, but I’m not going to share it with myself?”

No. Of course not. Once we recognize that separation is a wrong view, we see that the only way to work for our own happiness is to work for the happiness of the so-called ‘other’.

***

Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

I went through a couple of years in my life, recovery, rebuilding my life, after a pretty hellish decade. During that time, my sole aim was to be happy. I didn’t think about anyone else. In fact, I tried vehemently to keep everyone else out of my happy world. I was on the Happiness Mission and it was all about me.

Looking back on those years, I can notice how I suffered quite a bit. Happiness was always elusive. Even though I was doing all the things I was told in twice-weekly therapy sessions—assert your independence, realize it wasn’t your fault, educate yourself about what happened, do small things for yourself, blah, blah, blah—I wasn’t happy. I’ll grant that I wasn’t suffering as much. But I didn’t walk away from my old life to turn the pot of my misery down from a hellish, vigorous boil to a roiling simmer.

This complete inability to find happiness I viewed as yet another of my personal failings. Looking back, I can notice that in fact, there was a great deal of happiness in my new life, but I spent all my time grasping onto it, holding on for dear life, afraid it would slip away. This led to a lot of suffering because of course, it did slip away, as everything does in the phenomenal world.

Had I been able to take just a half step back from my frantic grasping, I may have noticed how there were millions of women and men and children all over the world, just like me. And just like me, they wanted to be free of the misery they were living through. If I could have seen that, I might have noticed that working for my own happiness, working with my own karma, might mean that someday I would have a chance to help them find a way out.

I believe that had I worked this way, finding happiness would have become a less burdensome task and a far more joyous one, because I would have been working from the perspective of my own natural perfection.

***

Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is finding a job. It is incredibly hard to stay grounded in the Dharma as I go through this process. I find myself with thoughts of laying ambush, “Just wait till I’m not here anymore…you’ll see”, or thoughts of my next job as the ultimate panacea, “When I get out of here, this happy bs will be over”. I find myself wishing for the suffering of others. These thoughts and afflicted emotions are very painful. In working toward my own happiness (being free of my current job), I am sowing the seeds of my own future unhappiness. Because of course, wherever I go, there I’ll be…with all my karmic formations.

If I take a step back from my desperate, clawing need to get out of my current job situation, I can notice that every single person I see at work every day is seeking happiness. I can notice that by feeding my thoughts of ambush and resentment, I am contributing to their suffering. I’m not particularly a happy-face at work. It will probably be to their great relief when I leave.

Having noticed these things, I can ask myself a few questions. Wouldn’t it be better to work toward the happiness of others, even now, in a place where I feel so miserable? If I’m able to do that, with just one person each day, then haven’t I increased my own happiness? Yes. I have. There’s no separation.

When I leave my job, when I leave this lifetime, what state of mind do I want to take with me? What obscurations do I want to travel with? Do I want to take with me a state of mind that is wrathful, vengeful, and actually seeds my future (or my next life) with unhappiness? Or, do I want to take with me a state of mind that cultivates working for my own happiness by working for the happiness of others?

Since there’s no real separation, whatever I do to others, I do to myself. From this point of view, am I not ruining any chance of my own happiness whenever I harbor thoughts of ambush, or resentment, or vengeance?

As Dilgo Khyentse says, it’s time to do myself a big favor, and think about it.

***

Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

In about an hour, I have to go to work. That very thought fills me with despair and a brand of desperate unhappiness.

Today, as with every day, every moment of my life, I have a choice. I can work with this unhappiness in a way that will increase my suffering, or I can work with it in a way that will increase my peace and clarity. I’m already quite experienced with increasing my suffering. It works admirably well. So perhaps it’s time for a different approach.

When I go to work today, and these thoughts come up, I can realize that every person within my sight at that moment is feeling something similar. It may be a sick child, a bad marriage, a mortgage payment that can’t be made—whatever. The point is, just like me, they’re suffering. The point is, just like me, they want a way out of their suffering.

If I were walking down the street and I saw someone lying on the sidewalk bleeding, and in terrible pain, it wouldn’t occur to me to kick them in the wound, then go on my way. No. I would offer words of comfort. I would dial 911 and call for experts to come and alleviate this stranger’s suffering.

Today at work, I might remember that the people I see are no less wounded, and to my knowledge, none of them know the Dharma. None of them know there’s a way out of suffering.

But I do.

Today at work when afflicted emotions arise, I’m going to breathe and silently say, “May we all be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. May we all embrace happiness and the causes of happiness.” I don’t know if this will work, but I do know it will be better than what I’ve been doing up to now.

Through this experience of looking for a job, I’m coming to see that our wrong view includes the idea that there is a specific, localized cause of unhappiness. But this experience is teaching me that this isn’t so. The true cause of our suffering is samsara itself.

The true cause of our happiness, therefore, must be to work for the happiness of all sentient beings, which would dissolve samsara and the causes of it.