Of Bodhicitta & Pure Land

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1. May12

   Fadime

   something about ten thousand doalrls not being allowed. I thought oh, that is a disaster if they are asking me to prove that I have more than ten thousand doalrls in my pocket. I said I beg your pardon and the police said you are not allowed to carry more than ten thousand doalrls. Where do you carry your money? I showed them my wallet and said, I don’t have even close to that much money. They asked me to lean against the wall, with my hands up and not moving. They checked all over my body. They even pulled up my robe and removed my socks. Eventually a flight attendant came and said, Are you done? We’ve been waiting for you. They then let me go.On the plane I kept thinking how stupid the New York airport police are, how rude and what jerks they are. Why did they only stop me among hundreds of passengers. I couldn’t sleep easily; after sleeping I woke up with the same disturbing emotions. Then I realized this was anger and kept thinking this is really disturbing. I suddenly thought, I am a Dharma practitioner and I am supposed to train my mind. This is the perfect opportunity to train it. My calmness and freedom returned at that instant.As a warrior needs weapons and martial skills to defeat their enemies, the meditation practitioner also need weapons and skills to fight and defeat their afflictive emotions. These weapons are our practices of mindfulness, wisdom awareness, and love and compassion. These skills have no limitations. The first very important thing is to recognize afflictions as afflictions, to see them as negative as they actually are. They are afflictions to the mindstream, causing it to be unsettled and uncomfortable. Certain kinds of negative emotions not only cause temporary discomfort but they cause problems for us directly or indirectly for a long time. For example, fear is an uncomfortable feeling but not an affliction or negative emotion. Attachment is not a really uncomfortable feeling much of the time, but it causes problems, so it is an affliction.If the meditator is a foe destroyer, then who are the enemies? The enemies are the five poisons or kleshas; attachment, anger, ignorance, pride and envy/jealousy. As the Buddha discovered, they are the causes of our suffering. These are what the afflictions or negative emotions are, according to Buddha’s teachings. There is no accurate word in English for klesha in Sanskrit and Nyon mong in Tibetan. It is usually translated as affliction or negative emotions but not all of the five poisons are emotions. Ignorance is one of them but, it is not an emotion. But whether we call them afflictions or negative emotions, it is important for a meditator to be aware of these five poisons.Attachment is our mind not letting go of thoughts and objects, leading to the experience of dissatisfaction as we grasp onto impermanent things that our minds mistakenly perceive to be permanent. It is easier to understand what attachment is when you practice nonattachment. There are many skills to practice nonattachment but one of the most effective skills is to contemplate the nature of impermanence. It is not enough to just understand the concept of impermanence. We have to meditate on it, so our mind becomes always aware of it.Anger is a very destructive, uncomfortable emotion. It is easy to understand why it is negative or a cause of suffering. In this case, anger includes resentment and hatred. To get rid of anger or the feeling of being angry, you need to practice love and compassion while you are not angry. It is difficult to feel love and compassion by the time the anger is burning in your mind. The moment when anger arises in your mind is your greatest opportunity to practice patience, forgiveness, and tolerance. You have to remember that this is the only time you can practice them.Ignorance refers to our mental obscurations. Ignorance in a worldly sense means a lack of education or being close-minded. This definition of ignorance is not how it is defined in the Buddhist teachings. The Buddhist view of ignorance refers to an active quality of not seeing reality. For example, because of our ignorance we don’t see that everything that exists arises through interdependent origination. We don’t see the essence of our own mind as pure awakened enlightened mind as it is. We don’t understand the workings of the law of cause and effect, known as karma. We don’t see anything correctly as it actually is, not even ourselves. This is what is meant by ignorance. Maybe we can understand some of these things intellectually through science or philosophy, but we do not perceive reality as it really is. It is only an intellectual understanding and not something we see directly.There are many skills to eliminate our mental obscurations or ignorance. One of the most profound ways is practice mindfulness and wisdom awareness meditation (shamatha and vipasanna). These practices help your mind become freer of mental projections. Each time you practice meditation, you take off layers and layers of your mental obscurations.Pride is quite straightforward; thinking oneself is superior to the others and treating them as being inferior. Pride is unlike anger and is hard to recognize. Sometimes you don’t notice that you have pride but others see it and becomes dislike you. The Buddhist tradition believes and logically proves that all the living beings have Buddha nature; that is all beings have the seed of enlightenment. All sentient beings possess this nature which gives them the potential to become Buddhas. This means that while our appearances may be different from one another, but we are all equally valuable. Practicing being a humble person is the entirety of a wise man or woman’s life. The practice of exchanging oneself for others is called Tonglen. This sending and taking meditation is generally helpful and is especially good for ridding oneself of envy, jealousy and pride.Jealousy is clearly a conflicting emotion and there is no way to be happy and peaceful while experiencing it. When you are jealous the happiness of others becomes a punishment to you. You become unhappy at others happiness and that is the ignorance which we mentioned earlier. If you learn to be happy for others happiness, then you are actually getting a portion of their happiness. Some people think jealousy motivates your business and study. That is again what we call ignorance and it is a very wrong approach. Being diligent certainly makes a difference, but not jealousy. The practice of equalizing yourself with others is the remedy for jealousy.These five are what we call afflictions or negative emotions and they cause us problems both directly and indirectly. These are the root causes of all other emotional problems and mental afflictions. We are lucky in these days, there are plenty of people everywhere we go to help us train our mind. This cute little nasty guy is here to help you destroy your anger. That attractive person there is helping you to get rid of attachment and perhaps somebody else is here to help you subdue your pride. In other words, you can use the adversity you encounter in life to further your practice.Atisha, one of the greatest Kadampa masters, was invited to Tibet at the beginning of the second propagation of Buddhism in the Eleventh Century. A story tells how Atisha brought a very difficult Bengali attendant to be the object of his mind training, because he had heard that the Tibetans were extremely nice people. However, it wasn’t long before he sent the attendant home. When asked why, he replied, I don’t need him any more. I have you Tibetans. Such stories are common in the Kadampa tradition because they demonstrate that mind training practice is about strengthening the mind, Instead of giving in to despair in the face of adversity.We grow more quickly if we are open to working with difficulties rather than constantly running away from them. If we could be more serious about our mind training, a mountain of problems would be just a tiny issue that could be resolved instantly. Once, Karen, a student of mine, had a rough day. She had some problems with her property and would have to spend twenty thousand doalrls. She told me about her problem and how even though she practiced meditation it didn’t help. I suggested her that she should apply mind training practice and that maybe sitting meditation alone would not help unless her sitting meditation was fortified. After she applied the mind training practice I recommended, she said that she could easily let go of her mental turmoil and her peaceful mind returned.For a dharma practitioner, difficulties and unfavorable circumstances are a great opportunity to train our fragile ego grasping narrow vision mind to cultivate compassion and wisdom, and respond with fortitude, understanding, and openness to ameliorate the situation rather than constantly focusing on our problems and struggling. Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche said, The great strength of the mind training teaching is the idea that we can train our minds to turn these unfavorable circumstances around and make them work to our advantage. The main criterion is that we never give up in the face of adversity, no matter what kind of world we are confronted with at the personal or political level. When we think there is nothing we can do, we realize there is something we can do, and we see that this something’ is actually quite tremendous.

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