Index
Not For Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices
Ultimately, merely to hear and think about dharma is not enough; we must also practise it. So, hearing, contemplating and meditating on dharma are all vital to our spiritual path, with meditation lying at its very core.
the state of our minds is inevitably reflected in our everyday reactions.
As an aspiring bodhisattva, if you feel the need to indulge your sufferings, do it alone. Don’t drag anyone else into your emotional extravaganza, particularly if you are a tonglen practitioner and committed to taking on the suffering of all sentient beings rather than sharing it out.
One day, if you feel the shravakayana teachings might help clarify the benefits of renunciation, by all means apply them. If tomorrow, contemplating the illusory nature of phenomena is more inspiring because it helps you appreciate that you have almost nothing to renounce, don’t hesitate to apply that view. Be skilful and practise whichever method works for you at this very moment. And don’t restrict yourself, because as a beginner it is so important for you to develop a taste for practice. Once you find the one or two practices that work best, concentrate on them.
Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé said, you should rely on your guru for everything, including the blessing of no longer hungering for samsara.
pray to your guru, the buddhas and the bodhisattvas and beg them for help truly to accept the inexorability of death.
So be assured, it is not necessary to leave home in order to practise effectively.
Buddhist practices are techniques we use to tackle our habitual self-cherishing. Each one is designed to attack individual habits until the compulsion to cling to “self” is entirely eradicated.
the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful.
Not to react at all in either situation is a sign that your practice is bearing fruit and that you are becoming an authentic dharma practitioner,
you should never put off dharma practice until next year, next month or tomorrow, because the future may never happen.
We must pray to the guru, buddhas and bodhisattvas to grant their blessings so that we take to heart the certainty of death.
Patrul Rinpoche said there is no such thing as a person who has perfected both dharma practice and worldly life, and if we ever meet someone who appears to be good at both, the likelihood is that his skills are grounded in worldly values.
there is nothing necessarily wrong with morality, but the point of spiritual practice, according to the vajrayana teachings, is to go beyond all our concepts, including those of morality.
We should pray that one day we will have the courage to be just as crazy by daring to go beyond the eight worldly dharmas and care not one jot about whether or not we are praised or criticised.
The only view that truly works for a dharma practitioner is that there are no solutions to the sufferings of samsara and it cannot be fixed.
As Shakyamuni Buddha, compassionately and with great courage, explained to an autocratic king, there are four inescapable realities that eventually destroy all sentient beings: 1. We will all become old and frail. 2. It is absolutely certain that everything will constantly change. 3. Everything we achieve or accumulate will eventually fall apart and scatter. 4. We are all bound to die. Yet our emotions and habits are so strong that even when the truth is staring us in the face, we are unable to see it.
the point of dharma practice is that it penetrates our minds and diminishes our affection for our ego and worldly life by pressing us to detach ourselves from the eight worldly dharmas. Practice should intensify our devotion to the truth, increase the value we place on going beyond the worldly, never contradict the essential teachings of the Buddha and be in complete accord with his ultimate teachings, and if our version of practice fails to accomplish all this, it is not real dharma practice.
However beneficial a practice appears to be, however politically correct or exciting, if it does not contradict your habit of grasping at permanence, or looks harmless but insidiously encourages you to forget the truth of impermanence and the illusory nature of phenomena, it will inevitably take you in the opposite direction to dharma.
a spiritual path that involves absolutely no hardship at all simply does not exist.
actively seeking out a lama and creating the conditions necessary for practice
wealth is contentment—the feeling that you have enough and need nothing more.
However hard we have to work for worldly wealth, we must work that much harder for the noble wealth of renunciation mind, loving-kindness, devotion and compassion,
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said that the one thing dharma practitioners should never be content with is the amount of dharma teachings they receive, study and practise, because the wealth of dharma is the only kind worth having.
one of the first tasks for those new to the spiritual path is to revise your basic assumptions and fake it.
To make believe that samsara is disgusting may feel odd and unnatural at first, but by training the mind again and again to accept this truth, a genuine sense of renunciation will eventually begin to develop in your mind. The same goes for devotion, trust, contentment or sadness. Once any one of these emotions has been fabricated and contrived for long enough, it will automatically become genuine, which is why beginners must be content to base the majority of their practice on make-believe.
To listen to a stream of words is one thing, but fully to understand what we hear is something else entirely and depends wholly on how much merit we have accumulated.
anyone can be a Buddhist practitioner, because whatever your situation in life and regardless of your lifestyle, there is nothing to stop you from also practising Buddhadharma
Buddhist practice of making vows is not a goal but a method,
Life is nothing more than a continuous stream of sensory illusions, from the obvious ones, like fame and power, to those less easy to discern, like death, nosebleeds and headaches. Tragically, though, most human beings believe in what they see, and so the truth Buddha exposed about the illusory nature of life can be a little hard to swallow.
it is only once we develop a genuine longing for enlightenment that, almost automatically, we start to learn how not to want to be ambitious in a worldly sense. Such a longing is not easy to generate, but without it, to step aimlessly onto the spiritual path would be utterly pointless.
we are contrary beings, and even though we are convinced we would shun a life built on self-deception, we continue to maintain a strong grip on the habits that are the cause of countless delusions.
Develop Confidence That the Worst Kind of Dirt Can be Washed Away
rather than allowing appearances to overwhelm you, remembering that all the dirt can be removed will give you confidence, and the whole process of following a path will become almost joyful.
Feelings of aggression, jealousy and pride come and go, and although all our emotional states and the very lives we pass through are illusory and temporary, we continue to make the mistake of believing them to be never-ending and permanent.
all emotions cause problems one way or another and each has a distinctive character.
Fundamentally, though, all emotions spring from one basic source, distraction.
There are an infinite number of methods for developing mindfulness that all fall into one of two categories: shamatha or vipashyana. The point of shamatha practice is to make mind malleable. But a pliant mind alone will not uproot samsara completely, we also need to see the truth, which is why vipashyana practice is so crucial.
mindfulness is difficult, mostly because we lack the enthusiasm to develop it, but also because our habit of longing for distraction is both deeply ingrained and extremely tenacious.
we should constantly remind ourselves about: the imminence of death; the futility of our worldly activities; and the worst news of all, that there is no end to samsara’s sufferings.
to maintain mindfulness for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea accumulates more merit than years of practising generosity, discipline and asceticism.
The first of Mara’s arrows is aimed at those who feel great pride in their accomplishments or in their material or spiritual wealth. The second is aimed at those who are ignorant because they have no idea which activities and attitudes need to be abandoned and which adopted. The third is directed at those with wrong views, such as not believing in cause, condition and effect. The fourth is fixed on those whose forgetfulness continually distracts them from mindfulness. The fifth strikes those distracted by the eight worldly dharmas.
we must learn to protect ourselves, either by wearing armour or cleverly camouflaging ourselves with: 1. discipline, to contradict and unsettle our emotions; 2. meditation, to subdue our emotions so they do not leap out of control the moment they are aroused; and 3. wisdom, to uproot all emotion.
The Buddha has provided us with an antidote or training for every one of these emotions. For those who want to escape suffering, he taught the shravakayana; and for those who long to escape the extremes of samsaric life, have no interest in nirvana and instead cherish the wish to help all sentient beings become truly happy, he taught the bodhisattvayana. Both these vehicles (yanas) are complete paths that ultimately lead to liberation from delusion.
The great Saraha also pointed out that what binds the fool liberates the wise.
Right from the beginning, great masters of the past have warned us over and over again that although we must aim to practise the resultant path, we should never imagine ourselves to be above the causal paths of the shravakayana and bodhisattvayana.
Outwardly we should practise the shravakayana, inwardly the bodhisattvayana and secretly the vajrayana.
Although human beings may attempt to visualise poison as medicine before consuming it, those who try but lack the peacock’s capacity for transforming the poison will die.
the boundaries between body and mind are, if not nonexistent, very small indeed.
no one path is more precious or higher than another.
the hardest part of this process is to convince ourselves that we have all always been perfect buddhas.
We tend only to believe what we can see, and what we see is always filtered by our personal perception
Yet the most powerful kind of antidote often looks exactly like the problem it seeks to resolve.
As practitioners, we should exploit every method available to try to discipline ourselves, and for those who are able to practice in retreat, dividing each day into three or four sessions is also an excellent method.
the most profound of all paths, guru yoga.
you will constantly make mistakes, large and small, and it is through these mistakes that you learn.
Bear in mind that between starting to practise and the achievement of your first real taste of dharma will be a lengthy period of intense effort.
These days, though, asking too many questions has become yet another rather sophisticated form of laziness. It’s as if you want someone else to do it all for you: practise, answer your questions, make the necessary arrangements and fix it so that all you have to do is experience realisation
to practise in cemeteries brings many blessings and great accomplishment very quickly.
To sit by running water is said to develop a sense of urgency about practice that encourages renunciation and a revulsion for samsara,
rocky places is very beneficial, as it helps a sense of sadness about the sufferings of samsaric life to arise in our minds. Therefore caves are good
pacify mental dullness on mountaintops where our minds are naturally clearer, so if you are ever offered the opportunity to spend time in the mountains and have received teachings on practices related to visualisation, shamatha and vipashyana
The most crucial prerequisite for the practice of dharma is complete isolation,
For those who know how to use it, sadness is a fertile ground from which all kinds of beneficial thoughts can spring with very little effort.
sobriety is none other than wisdom.
So keep it simple and do your best to be completely alone for an hour or two every day.
He also said it is only possible to see the flaws of samsara and the benefits of nirvana in solitude. So pray from the bottom of your heart that one day you will encounter such an opportunity.
As Kongtrul Rinpoche said, of all experiences of isolation, the segregation of mind from confusion is the supreme retreat, the supreme solitude, the supremely secluded place. So, when you find yourself caught up in a crowd, perhaps at a party or a football match, try, for a few moments, not to be involved with what is going on around you.
frustration with your spiritual path is often an indication that you are becoming a genuine dharma practitioner. GOOD DAYS AND BAD DAYS The character of our practice will change depending on whether we are in retreat or practising in everyday life.
Always remember, though, that frustration with your spiritual path is often an indication that you are becoming a genuine dharma practitioner.
An exasperating lack of concentration, devotion or inspiration might be just what you need to make the extra effort to tune in to your practice fully.
when suddenly faced with bad circumstances and obstacles, consider them all to be the compassionate blessings of the guru and the dharma, and the result of practice.
Difficulties are therefore a sign that your practice is working and should make you happy.
Each step may seem to take forever, but no matter how uninspired you feel, continue to follow your practice schedule precisely and consistently. This is how we can use our greatest enemy, habit, against itself.
By becoming accustomed to regular dharma practice, though, we use our enemy against itself by countering our bad habits with the good habit of practice. And as Shantideva pointed out, nothing is difficult once you get used to it.
the purpose of a shrine is as a support for your practice,
Buddha himself said that in the future he will appear as writing on a page, so we should always wash our hands before handling sacred texts.
no matter how tumultuous your life, today, this very moment, is the best time for you to start to practise,
as long as we remain attached to our belongings, house and family, we will not even attempt to extricate ourselves from samsara.
we should begin by practising generosity and discipline.
we need to practise patience and diligence.
No matter which dharma practice you engage in, from ngöndro to offering a single candle, always do it with the intention that your practice will benefit all sentient beings.
it is easy for dharma practice to become self-serving. It’s vital always to bear in mind that we practise for the sake of all other beings,
everything we see, do and think is an interpretation created by our mind, which itself is an important stepping-stone towards the practice of nonduality.
While practising or performing dharma activities, we must remain constantly aware that everything we do is illusory
Remembering everything you experience is created by mind is also the direct antidote to pride and ego, and once it becomes second nature, you will no longer cling to your dharma activities. This does not mean you will not practise. On the contrary, in the same way someone dying of thirst cannot resist taking large gulps of water, once you know everything is an illusion, your only thoughts will be about the dharma.
start by trying to remember that everything you see and experience is merely the product of your own perception.
At every opportunity, get used to the thought that everything you perceive is produced by mind and there is no such thing as a truly existing “holy” activity. These realisations will have a profound effect on the way you function, first and foremost because they release you from the consequences of defilements like pride and jealousy.
Always conclude your practice by not only dedicating any merit you may have attained towards your own well-being, but also for the benefit and enlightenment of all sentient beings. And you don’t have to wait for the end of your practice session to do it; you can dedicate at any time,
it’s all a matter of motivation.
To consider the candle to be the light of wisdom that illuminates all sentient beings, with the aspiration that wherever its light falls becomes the mandala, is the attitude of a tantric practitioner
If you light a candle merely as a decoration for the living room, your motivation is that of an ordinary person. If you light it with the wish to accumulate merit and eventually destroy samsara, you share the attitude cultivated by shravakayana practitioners. To light the candle with the wish that any merit attained be dedicated to the enlightenment of all sentient beings, your attitude is the same as that of bodhisattvayana practitioners. To consider the candle to be the light of wisdom that illuminates all sentient beings, with the aspiration that wherever its light falls becomes the mandala, is the attitude of a tantric practitioner.
All any one of us needs to do to accumulate a vast treasury of merit is to seal our every action with the motivation of bodhichitta.
these are the three noble principles. If you can remember to apply them to all your daily activities, you will quickly become a great dharma practitioner.
Every time a thought comes along, remind yourself about how rare and precious it is to have been born a human being, the imminence and unpredictability of death, the terrible sufferings of this life, the karmic consequences of your actions that cannot be avoided, and anything else you can think of that will help develop a sense of renunciation for worldly life.
discipline is the ground, or foundation, for all virtuous activity.
Were depressed people to apply a little discipline to their lives, I feel sure that a huge chunk of their depression would simply disappear.
all phenomena is “dependant arising” and that includes the body and the mind.
The purpose of vajrayana visualisation is to occupy our minds with extraordinary rather than mundane thoughts, and to get caught up in too much detail is precisely the kind of activity that will open the door for obstacles to enter your practice, such as falling back into your ordinary, habitual way of thinking. Simply follow each step of the practice, and when one step has been completed, move quickly on to the next.
The vajrayana is the path that transforms our habitually impure perception so we can perceive everything and everyone we encounter purely.
convince yourself beyond any shadow of doubt that you are in a completely pure realm.
Dualistic perceptions are considered “impure” when you get stuck with the idea that a ceiling can only be a ceiling, or a floor can only be a floor, or a thousand people could not possibly fit into a broom cupboard. In other words, the dualistic distinctions you make limit the manifestation of a phenomenon to a specific purpose.
“What I see is not how things are.” Tell yourself that all the “things” you are surrounded by are not bound by bricks, mortar, highways and traffic, nor hosts of heavenly angels. Each “thing” is infinite, and each object, such as the pen lying on your desk, encompasses billions and billions of pure realms.
transformation of perception is the quintessence of vajrayana practice, but it is important it is not mistaken for the complete elimination of perception. To transform perception is to change your attitude to the way you perceive the world and is a process you should go through daily.
when the opportunity to enjoy the luxuries of leisure time and personal security presents itself, we really must try to appreciate and use it well. To be born a human being is extremely precious because, to some degree, human beings have the intellectual capacity to understand the nature of suffering and its causes.
None of us has much time. Today might be the last day of your current life; tonight’s supper might be your last; and there is absolutely no guarantee that any of us will live long enough to see tomorrow, let alone live forever.
Without being aware of it, everything we do in pursuit of independence, wealth and success is also the cause of all the subsequent causes and conditions we experience that will rule and control the direction our lives then take.
Only by accepting our vulnerability are we able to loosen our grip on the false assumption that our lives will always go as planned.
in order to attain enlightenment, we must exhaust all our karma, both good and bad, not merely collect as much good karma as we can and get rid of the bad.
Karma is by nature conditioning, and since all our activities are conditioned by karma, they can only be a direct contradiction to our independence. Therefore it is not possible for any of us to be truly independent. The point of thinking about cause and effect before we start to practise each day is not merely to gather knowledge about karma’s complex functions and systems, but to remind ourselves that we have no control over anything at all.
Uncertainty is one of samsara’s cruelest flaws.
The imagination is therefore one of our most powerful tools, and working with it by changing and diluting how we look at our world is what we call the “practice of visualisation.”
according to vajrayana theory, your perception of this world is unique; it is not seen or experienced in the same way by anyone else because what you see does not exist externally.
The main purpose of visualisation practice is to purify our ordinary, impure perception of the phenomenal world by developing “pure perception.”
What, then, is really meant by “impure perception”? As we have already seen, “impure” does not mean that the object of our visualisation is covered with dirt or polluted or defiled in any way; the impurity isn’t “out there.” “Impure,” in this context, means that the problem is “in here.” We look at the world through emotional filters that we label “desire,” “jealousy,” “pride,” “ignorance” and “aggression.” Everything we perceive is coloured by myriad variations of these five emotions, many of which do not even have names.
we perpetually forget that everything we perceive is a product of our own minds, and instead we fixate on perceptions “out there” that we are convinced truly exist. This is what we work with during the vajrayana practice of visualisation.
even though a rainbow is empty, we can still see it. Both the reflection of the moon and the rainbow are simultaneously empty and visible. So, “nonduality” here means the nonduality of appearance and emptiness; nothing we perceive, not the guru, the student nor anything else, truly exists externally. And until we fully realise nonduality, the exercise of dissolving or merging the deity or the guru with ourselves is an extremely useful tool.
Louise may think of herself as “Louise,” but she would never describe herself as a “visualisation of Louise,” even though that is precisely what she is. In fact, every one of us is a visualisation of ourselves
Those who see my body as ordinary form, And hear my voice as ordinary sound, Have set out on a mistaken path. Such people do not truly see me.
take the example of visualising Guru Rinpoche as small as a sesame seed, sitting in a palace as large as Mount Meru, or in some cases the whole universe. It sounds awkward and ugly, but in practice it works perfectly because the container is neither too big nor the contents too small, and the difference in size between the sesame seed and Guru Rinpoche presents no problems at all. Other visualisations involve imagining the palace to be as small as a sesame seed and Guru Rinpoche the size of the whole universe, but he still fits into his tiny palace quite comfortably. This is an exercise in nonduality and is used in visualisation a great deal.
get used to believing in the unbelievable
tantric practitioners have to get used to believing in the unbelievable. Our aim is to unite and dissolve subject and object so they are one: the desire with the anger, the heat with the cold, the clean with the dirty, the body with the mind. This is known as “the union of jnanas and kayas,” and is the ultimate kind of union.
The path of vajrayana is nondual. In fact, the whole point of the practice is to actualise that nonduality, and so in the process, we must learn to be as open and relaxed as possible about all the details.
The teachings even mention a visualisation of the guru in your throat, so that as you eat or drink, you are automatically making offerings to him. The choice of possible visualisations is limitless.
“four authentics”: the authentic words of the Buddha (his teachings); the authentic clarification of the teachings that can be found in the shastras (commentaries) written by great masters of the past;
on the most profound level, the guru is not just our teacher but our entire spiritual path.
Jigme Lingpa said that it is extremely important to examine both the guru and your own motivation for choosing him.
To accept advice from someone who has not practised, said Kongtrul Rinpoche, is like consulting a book on healing when you are ill: it may be an intellectually satisfying read, but when you really need help—practical help—a book is utterly useless.
nothing happens randomly and everything arises out of causes and conditions, therefore we have no choice but to depend on the right causes and conditions to achieve liberation
the only true indicator of your spiritual progress is whether or not your devotion for your guru and your compassion for sentient beings increases.
How, then, can one helpless refugee give refuge to another? As Shantideva said, to be protected by someone more powerful than yourself makes it possible for you to give protection to others. Therefore, once you have taken refuge in the Buddha, dharma and sangha, you will also be able to give refuge, support and protection to others.
Yet the cup and the dirt are two separate entities. You do not wash the cup, you wash the dirt; if you were to wash the cup, it would disappear completely. So, it is the dirt that is washable, and it has nothing at all to do with the cup.
“How long should I practise taking refuge?” the answer itself, “Until the refugee and object of refuge become inseparable,” is a reminder that the ultimate object of refuge is not an external one, but in the nature of their minds.
theoretically, the main purpose of the vajrayana teachings is to show us how to transform impure perception into pure perception.
Crucially, what we need to rid ourselves of as quickly as possible are any impure perceptions we have of our guru. When he yawns, sleeps, shops excessively, or behaves oddly, instantly remind yourself that what you see is your own mind’s interpretation and this very interpretation is precisely what needs to be transformed
Visualisation is very like thinking about the person who is closest to you in this life—your mother, for example.
the confidence you feel in your visualisation is of utmost importance.
difficult relationships provide the most fertile ground for practice.
Now begin your prostrations. As you practise, visualise that everyone, your friends, family and all the countless sentient beings that exist, prostrate and take refuge with you.
absolutely anything that will inspire you to practise dharma has some value,
When you need a rest, sit quietly in meditation posture and continue reciting the prayer. Try refreshing your motivation after every twenty-five prostrations, or ten if you prefer; it can really help. Regularly remind yourself that you are practising in order to benefit all sentient beings with the confidence and certainty that your guru is actually there watching you, and arouse bodhichitta
doing prostrations without “feeling” anything at all. When this happens, just keep prostrating.
One way of breaking through your resistance is to intersperse your prostrations with sitting meditation. Other good methods include focusing on physical sensations, like the pain in your knees; or think about how each prostration is bulldozing lifetime after lifetime of bad karma; or that when you do a prostration properly, you accumulate infinite merit.
According to Patrul Rinpoche, we should follow the example of the hungry yak, who eats every blade of grass he sees without even thinking of saving a patch for later. Try to capitalise on every moment you have to practise and never forget to count.
you can discipline yourself to think of bodhichitta every time you walk through a door, or hear a phone ring. Do bear in mind, though, that whatever you choose to use as a reminder will quickly become old and degenerate into another meaningless ritual. So keep your practice fresh by constantly changing your reminder.
bodhichitta is the wish to bring all sentient beings to complete enlightenment
Mahayana practitioners not only wish to liberate all sentient beings from suffering itself but also the causes of suffering, the root of which is the dualistic mind.
Once we grasp a fuller picture of bodhichitta, we begin to realise that it is not a person’s appearance and behaviour that demonstrate whether or not they are a bodhisattva but their understanding of shunyata, the essence of which is compassion.
Begin your practice motivated by the wish to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment and remind yourself that everything you do is your own idea and a manifestation of your mind.
you will need what the teachings describe as “strength” or “determination,” and you will only find this strength once you come to realise the illusory nature of all phenomena, or in other words “emptiness.”
Every one of these qualities springs from the realisation that the drug addict, her problem, that she can be healed, and even the idea that she needs healing are all merely the products of your own mind. None of it truly exists outside mind. And having realised this truth, you can go on to develop the strong and genuine compassion that is bodhichitta.
Relative bodhichitta has two aspects: the bodhichitta of aspiration or intention, and the bodhichitta of application or action.
In this mundane world it is the thought and the wish that counts, so do not make the mistake of imagining, as some do, that arousing the bodhichitta of aspiration is not “walking the talk” because it is, and it is also an important part of our spiritual training.
The bodhichitta of aspiration is,
For example, when you see someone in need, think, “May all sentient beings have everything they need.”
We must therefore actively practise arousing an intense longing in our minds to bring all sentient beings to the ultimate happiness of enlightenment. As Longchenpa said, for beginners, aspiration is our sole mission and task.
We have no idea if our actions will really benefit the being we are trying to help, and since our bodhichitta is immature, although we may start out with great enthusiasm, when the person or creature fails to change or get better, we are likely to become discouraged, disappointed or angry, and may even give up trying altogether.
Sutra on the Lion’s Roar (the Srimaladevi Sutra),
If you have any mission at all, it is to pray and aspire that one day you will become a hero.
Usually, though, beginners consider prayer and aspiration to be a poor alternative to “action” because we feel so useless when we are not busy.
loves you, cares for you and only wants the very best for you, misses you when the two of you are apart and wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about you. Now imagine that every single sentient being has loved and cared for you in this way.
try to be content with your practice, whatever it feels like, even when you are doing little more than paying it lip service, because at least you are making an effort.
Resolve never to give sentient beings what they think they want, but only what they really need: freedom from all dualistic distinctions, obsessions and entanglements, and freedom from constantly falling into the extremes of good and bad.
If I do not exchange my happiness For the suffering of others, I shall not attain the state of buddhahood And even in samsara I shall have no real joy.
when we pray, “May all sentient beings be enlightened,” we automatically imagine that bringing all beings to enlightenment is a measurable goal and that there is an end to the process. But there isn’t. If there were, we would be contemplating “the four measurable thoughts.” So, we must get used to the idea that our spiritual path has an immeasurable goal and that we follow it with an immeasurable attitude and an immeasurable motivation. In other words, no goal, no end to the process and a goal-less motivation.
six paramitas. They are the practices of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, samadhi or meditation and wisdom.
ask yourself why you acted as you did to create the karma that caused someone else to harm you.
“Absolute” patience is to recognise that you, the act of harming and the one who harms are all illusions. This is how we develop patience.
Once you have completed the practices of taking refuge and arousing bodhichitta, dissolve the field of merit into you and mix your mind with the mind of your guru. Then remain for as long as you can in the state of inseparability (a few moments, a minute or even an hour) without fabricating in any way.
when you find yourself rubbing shoulders with people you really dislike, try to focus your mind on thinking good thoughts, however weak, fake or even hypocritical they may seem. Remind yourself that your reaction to others is merely your own interpretation of who they are, and instead try to put yourself in the shoes of the person who is getting on your nerves.
In every situation, always try to develop a good heart. After all, a good heart is the key to love, compassion and bodhichitta.
our physical body is as much a vessel as our mind is, and it too must be cleansed and purified.
as our physical body is the most tangible and obvious part of us, it can be used as a tool at every stage on the path, not just as a slave or a vessel.
the “obstacle” they so desperately wanted to eradicate was actually the best thing that ever happened them.
bear in mind that Buddhist teachings, particularly those from the vajrayana, have nothing against the dirt, and that the dirt is not the cup but a totally separate entity.
As a ngöndro practitioner, when you chant the Vajrasattva mantra, you should believe, with one-pointed trust and devotion, that the mantra is Buddha Vajrasattva—even during sessions when your mind is wild and chaotic.
Certain ingredients are vital if the practice of Vajrasattva is to work: 1. the belief that Vajrasattva has the power to purify you; 2. genuine regret and remorse for all your negative activities of the past, present and future; 3. the resolution and determination never to repeat those negative actions again; and 4. absolute conviction in the power of the practice.
The fences protecting vajrayana students are even more sophisticated, as they are grounded in the development and maintenance of pure perception.
Although beginner vajrayana practitioners will, without doubt, break these vows and samayas on a daily basis, with a little care and attention they are easily restored (for example by reciting the hundred-syllable mantra) and, like a golden pot mended by a master goldsmith, may even end up being more beautiful.
For beginners, to keep all the vajrayana vows and samayas is virtually impossible, so focus on trying to do no harm, help wherever you can and aspire to keep samaya.
We are unable to listen intently, and at times do not listen at all, because mind is so easily distracted. Even if we do listen, we cannot truly hear, interpret or consider what we have learnt from any other angle.
You can test and experience the power of merit for yourself. Read a dharma text once, then make some mandala offerings as thoroughly and with as much concentration and determination as you can muster. Now read the same text again. You will find that your understanding has been transformed.
split second spent on doing something beneficial that also brings you closer to the truth, however unpleasant or unfashionable, is far more valuable than engaging in an extravaganza of more enjoyable and ostentatiously helpful activities that merely result in a higher rebirth, or other worldly boons.
As Chandrakirti said, giving without reference to the one who gives, the gift, or the recipient of that gift is described as a paramita that “transcends the world.” And to give without the slightest attachment to giving, gift and recipient is said to be the “perfect action of the worldly ones.”
methods available for accumulating merit, there are many. For example, be generous, disciplined and patient; make offerings, both material and visualised; confess; rejoice at other people’s good fortune; and arouse love, compassion and bodhichitta. Taking refuge is also an important method.
The offerings are as follows: prostration, offering, confession, rejoicing, requesting the turning of the wheel of the dharma, asking buddhas not to pass into parinirvana and dedication of merit. (You can choose to recite any of the seven-branch prayers from the sutras and Buddhist practices and consult the root texts and commentaries of your tradition to find out where in the ngöndro practice it appears.)
Obviously we should all try to make material offerings, but perhaps for beginners, imaginary offerings are less risky.
don’t limit your offerings to what is desirable in your own culture.
Confession is one of the most effective ways of countering aggression
Imagine you are in the presence of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas who already know what happened in the past, what will happen in the future, and what is happening in the present, then expose everything you regret and are ashamed of having thought and done, as well as the deplorable thoughts and actions you might be party to in the future, without leaving anything out.
rejoice at the good fortune of others.
To request the wheel of dharma to be turned is not just to ask to receive teachings in conventional ways;
anything that provides the spark to ignite your compassion and realisation of the futility of this life is a “turning of the wheel.”
The Buddha said that whenever any one of us feels devotion, he will be right there with us. He is therefore turning the wheel of the dharma continuously, and such teachings can never be stopped.
The minds of samsaric beings are dualistic, and dualistic minds are, by nature, full of doubt, which in turn breeds wrong view.
It is believed that doubts become sharper the more our intelligence increases, which makes perfect sense since the more intelligent we are, the more intelligent our doubts seem to become. That we have so many doubts in the first place is one of our biggest obstacles, because apart from anything else, they take up so much of our time. The worse it gets, the more likely we are to find ourselves stuck in a state of serial self-condemnation, which in turn diverts our attention from the right view, causing loss of faith in the laws of cause, condition and effect (karma), and corroding our belief in the ultimate truth of interdependent reality, shunyata and the triple gem.
we must always dedicate our practice and positive actions quickly so we waste none of the merit we accumulate.
If we do not dedicate immediately, the merit could be burnt away in a sudden flash of anger, or any of the other extreme negative actions or thoughts to which we are prey.
The “highest” of these methods is to welcome obstacles as blessings
the practice of mandala offering, which is the most profound of all merit-making methods.
TODO
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