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As the great eleventh
century Indian master Atisha has said, "The human lifespan is short,
the objects of knowledge are many. Be like the swan, which can
separate milk from water."
Our lives will not last
long and there are so many directions in which we can channel them.
We should be like the swan, which extracts the essence from milk and
spits out the water. There is so much that can be done: we should
practice discriminating wisdom and direct ourselves to essential
goals that benefit both ourselves and other beings in a way
affecting this and future lives.
Human goals should be
greater than those of beings such as animals, insects, and others
because humans have greater potential. We have a very special
intellectual capacity and can accomplish many things, even in one
short lifespan. The goal to be accomplished should benefit not only
ourselves but all sentient beings. Every sentient being hopes to
gain the highest state of happiness or pleasure and be free from all
kinds of suffering. All beings would like to attain a state of
complete freedom from every kind of trouble and misery.
A human being has the
potential to attain the highest happiness, the highest peace.
Everybody would like to have such a state of being. Alternatively,
everybody wishes to avoid misery and suffering. As spiritual
practitioners we should wish freedom from misery not only for
ourselves but for all sentient beings. Humans have an intelligence
capable of achieving these goals. They are able to practice the
teachings, the methods by which these goals are realized. A human
can begin from his own starting point and then gradually attain
higher levels of being, until final perfection is achieved. In
certain cases the highest goal, the state Buddhists call buddhahood,
enlightenment, or the pure light, can be attained in a single
lifetime.
In the
Bodhisattvacharyavatara (Guide to Bodhisattvas Way of Life) , the
great yogi and bodhisattva Shantideva wrote, "We all seek happiness,
but turn our backs on it. We all wish to avoid misery, but race to
collect its causes." What we want and what we're doing are in
contradiction. Our activities aimed at bringing happiness just cause
suffering, misery and trouble. Shantideva goes on to explain how
even if we desire to obtain happiness, because of ignorance we
usually destroy its cause. We treat the causes of happiness like we
would an enemy.
According to the Buddhist
teachings, people must first learn, or study. Is there a way to
attain the highest achievement, a state of peaceful freedom, the
perfect light? This opens the doors of spiritual inquiry. We then
discover that if we direct our efforts and our wisdom, we can gain
personal knowledge of that very goal. This leads us to seek out
methods or paths to enlightenment. Buddha set forth many different
levels of teachings. As humans we are able to learn these—learn not
only for the sake of learning, but to practice the methods.
What is the cause of
happiness? What is the cause of misery? These are important
questions in Buddhist teachings. Buddha pointed out that the very
source of all our troubles is wrong perception, or wrong ideation.
We are always holding some kind of "I," some sort of egocentric
thought or attitude. Everything we do is based on this wrong
conception of the nature of the self. From this wrong grasping, this
attachment to an "I," comes all self-centered thought and the
thought cherishing oneself over others. This is the basis on which
rest all the worldly thoughts and which creates samsara. The
problems of all sentient beings start from this point. This thought,
this ignorance creates all attachment to the "I." From "me" comes
"mine"—my property, body, mind, family, friends; my house, country,
work and so forth. From attachment arises anger at or hatred for the
things that threaten the objects of attachment. In Buddhism we call
these three—ignorance, attachment and aversion, or anger—the three
poisons. They are the real poisons. They are the real causes of our
problems. They are the real enemy. We usually look outside for our
enemies, but Buddhist yogis realize that there is no enemy outside.
The enemy is inside. Once one removes ignorance, attachment and
aversion the inner enemy has been vanquished. Pure consciousness
remains. Ignorance is replaced by correct understanding. There is no
longer any mistake in one's perception. The delusions are gone.
Ignorance, hatred and
attachment, together with their branches such as conceit, jealousy,
envy and so forth are very strong forces. Once they arise they
quickly dominate the mind. Then we fall under the power of the inner
enemy and no longer have control or freedom. These inner enemies
even cause us to fight with and harm the people we love; they can
even cause someone to kill their own parents, children and so forth.
From where do such acts come? They come from the inner enemies, from
attachment, anger and ignorance. All conflicts, from those between
members of a family to international wars, arise from these negative
thoughts.
Shantideva said, "There is
one cause of all problems." This is the ignorance which mistakes the
actual nature of the self. All sentient beings are similar in that
they are all overpowered by this ego-grasping ignorance. On the
other hand, each one of us is capable of engaging in the yogic
practices that refine the mind to the point that it is able to see
directly the way things exist. One can then see the true nature of
the self and all phenomena. The workings of the illusory world no
longer occur. When ignorance is gone, mistaken action will not
occur. When actions are done without mistake, the various sufferings
will not arise. The forces of karma are not engaged. Karma, the
actions of the body, speech and mind of sentient beings, together
with the seeds they leave on the mind, are brought under control.
The causes of these actions—ignorance, attachment and hatred—are
destroyed, thus the actions that arise from them cease.
Buddha himself first
studied, then practiced, and finally realized Dharma, achieving
enlightenment. He saw the principles of the causes and effects of
thought and action, and then taught people how to work with these
laws in such a way as to gain freedom.
His first teaching was on
the four truths seen by an arya: suffering, its cause, liberation
and the path to liberation. First we must learn to recognize the
sufferings and frustrations that pervade our lives. Then we must
know their causes. Thirdly we should know that it is possible to get
rid of them, to gain liberation from them. Lastly we must know the
truth of the path, the means by which we can gain freedom, the
methods of practice that destroy the seeds of suffering from their
very root. There are many elaborate ways of presenting the path,
which has led to the development of many schools of Buddhism, such
as the Hinayana and Mahayana, but to all schools the four truths are
basic teachings. Each school has its own special methods, but all
are based on the four truths. Without the four truths there is
neither Hinayana nor Mahayana. All Buddhist schools see suffering as
the main problem of existence and ignorance as the main cause of
suffering. Without removing ignorance there is no way of achieving
liberation from samsara and no way of attaining the perfect
enlightenment of buddhahood.
What is ignorance? It is a wrong
understanding of the self and of the nature of all phenomena.
Buddhism talks a lot about the non-self or shunya nature of all
things. This is a key teaching. The realization of shunyata, or
emptiness, was first taught by Buddha, and then widely disseminated
by the great teacher Nagarjuna and his successors, who explained the
madhyamaka or middle way philosophy. Theirs is a system of thought
free from all extremes, that is, they hold that the nature of how
things actually exist is free from the extremes of absolute being
and non-being. The things we usually perceive do not exist as we see
them. As for the "I," our understanding of its nature is also
mistaken. This doesn't mean that there is no person and no desire;
when Buddha rejected the existence of a self he meant that the self
we normally conceive is not existent. Yogis who have developed
higher meditation have realized the true nature of the self and have
seen that the "I" exists totally other than the way we normally
conceive it. This is the emptiness of the self, the key teaching of
the Buddha, the sharp weapon of wisdom to cut down the poisonous
tree of delusion and mental distortion.
To use it we must first
study it, then contemplate it, and finally investigate it through
meditation. Then we can realize the true nature. That wisdom,
realization of shunyata or emptiness, will cut the very root of all
delusion and put an end to all suffering. It directly opposes the
ignorance of not knowing correctly. Sometimes we can apply more
specific antidotes—for example, meditating on compassion when anger
arises, on the impurity of the human body when lust arises, on
impermanence when attachment to situations arises, and so on. These
antidotes can counteract particular delusions, but they cannot
remove the root of delusion. To remove the root of delusion one must
realize shunyata. The wisdom of shunyata is like a sharp ax having
the power to cut the root of all distortion.
However, merely using it
alone is not enough. An axe requires a handle and a person to swing
it. Meditation on emptiness is a key practice, but it must be
supported and given direction by the other methods. Wisdom must be
supported by method. Many Indian masters including Dharmakirti and
Shantideva have asserted this to be so. For example, meditation upon
the four noble truths includes contemplation of sixteen aspects of
these truths, such as impermanence, suffering, and so forth. Then,
because we must share our world with others there are the
meditations on love, compassion and the bodhimind, the enlightened
attitude of wishing for enlightenment in order to be of greatest
benefit to others. This introduces the six perfections, or the means
of accomplishing enlightenment—generosity, discipline, patience,
energy, meditation and wisdom. The first five of these must act as
supportive methods in order for the sixth, wisdom, to become stable.
To obtain buddhahood the
obstacles to the goal have to be completely removed. These obstacles
are of two main types: obstacles to liberation, which includes the
delusions such as attachment, and obstacles to omniscience. When the
various delusions have been removed, one becomes an arhat. In
Tibetan, arhat (Tibetan: gra-bCom-pa) means one who has destroyed
(Tibetan: bCom) the inner enemy (Tibetan: gra), and thus has
obtained emancipation from all delusions. However, this is not the
attainment of buddhahood. An arhat is free from samsara and all
misery and suffering; he no longer is prone to a rebirth conditioned
by karma and delusion. At the moment we are strongly under the power
of these two forces, being reborn again and again, sometimes higher,
sometimes lower. We have little choice or independence in our birth,
life, death, and rebirth. Negative karma and delusion combine and
overpower us again and again. Our freedom is thus greatly limited.
It is a circle: occasionally rebirth in a high realm, then in a low
world; sometimes an animal, sometimes a human or a god. This is what
is meant by 'samsara.' An arhat has achieved liberation from this
circle. He has broken the circle and gone beyond it. His life has
become totally pure, totally free. The forces that controlled him
have gone, and he dwells in a state of emancipation from compulsive
experience. His realization of shunyata is complete.
In the method side, the
arhat has cultivated a path combining meditation on emptiness with
meditation on the impermanence of life, karma and its results, the
suffering nature of the whole circle of samsara, and so forth. But
arhatship does not have the perfection of buddhahood. Compared to
our ordinary samsaric life it is a great attainment, but the arhats
still have a certain degree of subtle obstacles. The mental
obstacles such as desire, hatred, ignorance and so forth have gone,
but because they have been active forces within the mind for so long
they leave behind a subtle hindrance, a kind of subtle habit or
predisposition. Desire may have gone, but it leaves behind something
very subtle in the mind. Or, although an arhat will not have anger,
he may continue an old habit such as using harsh words. And he will
have a very subtle self-centerdness. Similarly, arhats do not have
ignorance or wrong views, but they do not see certain aspects of
cause and effect as clearly as does a buddha. These kinds of subtle
limitations are called the obstacles to omniscience. In buddhahood
they have been completely removed. No obstacles remain. There is
both perfect freedom and perfect knowledge.
With the ripening of wisdom
and method comes the fruit of the wisdom and form bodies of a
buddha. The form body has two dimensions, the samboghakaya and
nirmanakaya, which with the wisdom body of dharmakaya constitute the
three kayas. The form bodies are not ordinary form; they are purely
mental, a reflection or manifestation of the dharmakaya wisdom. From
perfect wisdom emerges perfect form. Buddhahood is endowed with many
qualities: perfect body and mind, omniscient knowledge, power and so
forth. From the perfection of the inner qualities is manifested a
perfect environment, a 'pure land.' A buddha has a cause. His cause
is a bodhisattva. Before attaining buddhahood one must train as a
bodhisattva and cultivate a path uniting method with wisdom. The
function of wisdom is to eliminate ignorance; the function of method
is to produce the physical and environmental perfections of being.
The bodhisattva trainings are vast: generosity, with which one tries
to help others; patience, which keeps the mind in a state of calm;
diligent perseverance, with which in order to help other sentient
beings one joyfully undergoes the many hardships without hesitation;
and many others.
As we can see from the
above example, the bodhisattva's activities are based on a
motivation very unlike our ordinary attitudes, which are usually
selfish and self-centered. In order to attain buddhahood one has to
change one's mundane thoughts into thoughts of love and compassion
for other sentient beings. One has to learn to care all the time on
a universal level. The self-centered attitude should be seen as an
enemy; the loving and compassionate attitude should be regarded as
the cause of the highest happiness, the real friend of both oneself
and all others.
In the Mahayana we find a
very special practice called "changing the self for others." Of
course, you can't change you into me or me into you; this isn't the
meaning. What we must change is the thought or attitude of "me
first" into the cherishing of others. "Whatever bad things must
happen, let them happen to me." Through meditation one learns to
hold the self-centered attitude as the enemy and to transform
self-cherishing into love and compassion, until eventually one's
entire life is dominated by these positive forces. Then everything
one does becomes beneficial to others. All actions naturally become
meritorious. This is the influence and power of the bodhisattva's
thought—the bodhimind, the inspiration to obtain enlightenment for
the benefit of other sentient beings as a means to fulfill love and
compassion.
Love and compassion have
the same basic nature, but a different reference or application.
Compassion is mainly in reference to the problems of beings, the
wish to free sentient beings from suffering. On the other hand, love
is in reference to the positive side, the aspiration that all
sentient beings might have happiness and its cause. Our love and
compassion should be equal toward all beings and have the intensity
that a loving mother feels towards her only child, taking on
ourselves the full responsibility for the well-being of others. A
bodhisattva regards all sentient beings with that kind of attitude.
However, the bodhimind is
not mere love and compassion. A bodhisattva sees that in order to
free sentient beings from misery and give them the highest happiness
he himself will have to be fully equipped, fully qualified. First he
himself must attain perfect buddhahood, the state free of obstacles
and limitations and possessed of all power and knowledge. Right now
we cannot do much to benefit others. Therefore, for the benefit of
other sentient beings we must obtain the enlightenment of buddhahood
as soon as possible. Day and night everything we do should be in
order to obtain perfect enlightenment quickly for the benefit of
others.
The thought characterized
by this aspiration is called bodhicitta, the bodhimind, the
bodhisattva spirit. Unlike the self-centered, egotistical thoughts
of ordinary people, that lead only to desire, hatred, jealousy,
anger, and so forth, the bodhisattva way is dominated by love,
compassion and the bodhimind. If we ourselves practice the
appropriate meditative techniques, we shall become bodhisattvas.
Then, as Shantideva has said, all our ordinary activities—sleeping,
walking, eating or whatever—will naturally produce limitless
goodness, fulfilling the purposes of many sentient beings.
The life of a bodhisattva
is very precious, and therefore in order to sustain it one sleeps,
eats and does whatever is necessary for staying alive. Because this
is the motivation in eating, every mouthful of food gives rise to
great merit, equal to the number of the sentient beings in the
universe. In order to ascend the ten bodhisattva stages leading to
buddhahood he /she engages both method and wisdom: on the basis of
the bodhimind s/he cultivates the realization of shunyata, or
emptiness. Seeing the emptiness of the self, her / his wrong
grasping and attachments cease. She / He also sees all phemonena as
being empty, and as a result all things that appear to his/her mind
are seen like illusions, like a magician's creations. The audience
believes in a magician's creations, but although the eyes of the
magician see the same show as the audience does, his /
her understanding of the spectacle is different from theirs.
When she / he creates a beautiful woman, the audience experiences
lust; when she / he creates "terrible" animals they become afraid.
The magician also sees the beautiful woman and the animals, but she
/ he knows they are not real. She / He sees how they are manifest
but knows that they are empty of existing as they appear. Their
reality is not like their mode of appearance.
Similarly, the bodhisattva
who has seen emptiness sees all as an illusion, and the events that
previously had caused attachment or aversion to arise in him no
longer are able to do so. As Nagarjuna said, "By combining the
twofold cause of method and wisdom, the bodhisattva gains the
twofold effect of the mental and physical dimensions (Sanskrit:
kaya) of a buddha." His accumulations of meritorious energy and
wisdom bring him to the first bodhisattva stage, where he directly
realizes emptiness and overcomes the obstacles to liberation. He
then uses this realization through meditation to progress through
the ten stages of a bodhisattva, eradicating all obstacles to
omniscient knowledge. He first eliminates the coarse level of
ignorance and then, through gradual meditation on method combined
with wisdom, attains the perfect achievement.
The main subjects of this
discourse—renunciation, emptiness and the bodhimind—were taught by
Buddha, Nagarjuna and Tsong Khapa, and provide the basic texture of
the Mahayana path. They are three keys for those who wish to obtain
the enlightenment of buddhahood. In terms of method and wisdom,
renunciation and the bodhimind constitute method, and meditation on
emptiness is wisdom. These two are like the wings of a bird,
enabling one to fly high in the sky of Dharma. A bird with one wing
cannot fly. In order to achieve the high stage of buddhahood, the
two wings of method (bodhicitta) and wisdom are required.
The principal Mahayana
method is the bodhimind. To generate the bodhimind one must first
generate compassion-the aspiration to free sentient beings from
suffering, which becomes the basis of one's motivation to obtain
enlightenment. However, as Shantideva has pointed out, one must
begin with compassion for oneself. One must want to be free of
suffering oneself before being able to want it truly for others. The
spontaneous wish to free oneself from suffering is renunciation.
Most of us do not have this renunciation. We do not see the faults
of samsara. We cannot ourselves continue being entranced by samsaric
activities while speaking of working for the benefit of other
sentient beings. Therefore one must begin with the thought of
personal renunciation of samsara, a wish to obtain freedom from all
misery. In the beginning this is very important. Then this quality
can be extended to others, as love, compassion and the bodhimind.
These two combine as method. When united with wisdom, realization of
emptiness, one has all the main causes of buddhahood.
Of course, to develop these
one must proceed step by step, and therefore it is necessary to
study, contemplate and meditate. We should all try to carry out a
daily meditation practice. Young or old, male or female, regardless
of race, we all have the ability to meditate. Anyone can progress
through the stages of understanding. The human life is very
meaningful and precious, but it also can be lost to temporary goals
like seeking sensual indulgence, fame, reputation and such things,
which benefit this lifetime alone. Then we become like animals; we
have the goals of the animal world. Even if we don't make great
spiritual efforts, we should at least try to get started in the
practices that make human life meaningful.
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Question: Could you clarify
what you mean by removing the suffering of others?
Answer: We are not talking
about temporary measures, like hunger or thirst. One can do acts of
charity with foods, medical help and so forth, but these provide
only superficial help. Giving can never fulfill the world's needs
and can itself become a cause of trouble or misery. What beings lack
is some kind of perfect happiness or enjoyment. Therefore one
cultivates a compassion for all sentient beings that wishes to
provide them with the highest happiness, happiness which can last
for ever. The practitioners, yogis and bodhisattvas consider this as
the main goal. They practice giving temporary things as much as
possible, but their main point is to produce a higher happiness.
That is the bodhisattva's main function.
Question: Buddhism believes
strongly about past and future lives. How is this consistent with
the idea of impermanence taught by Buddha?
Answer: Because things are
impermanent they are changeable. Because impurity is impermanent,
purity is possible. The relative truth can function owing to the
existence of the ultimate truth. Impurity becomes pure, imperfect
becomes perfect. Change can cause conditions to switch. By directing
the way our life builds and develops, we can stop negative patterns.
If things were not impermanent there would be no way to change and
evolve.
In terms of karma and
rebirth, impermanence means that one can gain control over the
stream of one's life. Our life is like a great river, never the same
from one moment to the next. If we let negative sources flow into a
stream it becomes dirty. Similarly, if we let bad thought, distorted
perception and wrong action control our lives, we evolve into
negative states and take a low rebirth. Alternatively, if we control
the flowing of the stream skillfully we evolve positively, take
creative rebirths and perhaps even attain the highest wisdom of
buddhahood. Then the coming and going or imperfect experiences
subside and the impermanent flow of the pure perfection comes to us.
When that happens the human goal has been achieved.
Question: In the example of
a stream of water, the content of the stream is flowing water,
sometimes muddy and sometimes clear. What is the content of the
stream of life?
Answer: Buddhism speaks of
the five skandhas, one of which is mainly physical and four mental.
There is also a basis which is a certain kind of propensity that is
neither physical nor mental, a kind of energy. These five impure
skandhas eventually become perfectly pure and then manifest as the
five Dhyani Buddhas.
Question: What is the role
of prayer in Buddhism? Does Buddhism believe in prayer, and if so,
since Buddhists don't believe in a God, to whom do they pray?
Answer: In Buddhism, prayer
means some kind of wishing, an aspiration to have something good
occur. In this sense a prayer is a verbal wish. The prayers of
buddhas and bodhisattvas are mental and have great power. These
beings have equal love and compassion for all beings. Their prayer
is to benefit all sentient beings. So when we pray to them for help
or guidance they have the power to influence us.
As well as these
considerations, prayer produces a certain kind of buddha-result.
Praying does not mean that personally you don't practice at all,
that you just leave everything to Buddha. That is not the case. The
buddhas have to do something and we have to do something. The
buddhas cannot wash away our stains with water, like washing
clothing. The root of misery and suffering cannot be extracted like
a thorn from the foot. The buddhas can only show us how to pull out
the thorn. The hand that pulls it out must be our own. Buddha cannot
transplant his knowledge into our being. He is like a doctor who
diagnoses our illnesses and prescribes the cure that we must follow
through personal responsibility. If the patient does not take the
medicine or follow the advice, the doctor cannot help, no matter how
strong his medicines or excellent his skill. A doctor must give
medicine to a patient who will take it and follow his advice in
order that his efforts will be successful. If we take the medicine
of Dharma as prescribed and observe the supportive advices, we can
easily cure ourselves of the diseases of ignorance, attachment and
the other obstacles to liberation, and also the obstacles to
omniscience. To turn to the Dharma but then not to practice it is to
be like a patient burdened by a huge bag of medicine while not
taking any. Therefore Buddha said, "I have provided the medicine. It
is up to you to take it."
Question: Sometimes in
meditation one visualizes Buddha Shakyamuni. Did Shakyamuni himself
visualize anything when he meditated?
Answer: What should we
meditate upon? How should we meditate? Shakyamuni Buddha himself
meditated in the same way as we teach: on subjects such as
compassion, love, the bodhimind, the four noble truths, and so
forth. Sometimes he also meditated on perfect forms, like that of a
buddha or a particular meditational deity. These deities symbolize
perfect inner qualities, and through meditation on them one is
brought into proximity with the symbolized qualities. Both deity
meditation and ordinary simple meditations tame the scattered,
uncontrolled, elephant-like mind. The wild, roaming mind must be
calmed in order to enter higher spiritual practices. Therefore, in
the beginning one tries to stabilize the mind by focusing it on a
particular subject. This is shamatha meditation. The main aim of
this type of meditation is to keep the mind focused on one point
without any wavering or fatigue, abiding in perfect clarity and
peace for as long as one wishes without any effort.
As for the object to be
visualized in this type of meditation, there are many choices: a
piece of lamp, a statue, an abstract object, and so forth. Since the
form of an enlightened being has many symbolic values and shares the
nature of the goal we hope to accomplish, visualizing such an object
has many advantages. But it is not mandatory; we can choose anything
else. The main thing is to focus the mind on the object and not
allow it to waver. Eventually one can meditate clearly and
peacefully as long as one wishes, being able to remain absorbed for
days at a time. This is the attainment of shamatha. When one has
this mental instrument, all other meditation becomes far more
successful.
At first when one tries
this kind of practice one discovers one's mind to be like a wild
elephant, constantly running here and there, never able to focus
fully on or totally engage in anything. Then little by little,
through practice and exercise, it becomes calm. Even concentrating
on a simple object like breathing in and out while counting will
demonstrate the wildness of the mind and show the calming effects of
meditation.
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