Recap
We have been going through the preparations for being able to study and understand this text – the mind training or attitude training that’s called Wheel of Sharp Weapons, which was written by a great teacher Dharmarakshita and then brought by Atisha to Tibet. That’s the earliest version, actually, of this type of material, which then became very popular in Tibet.
We saw that, in order to really understand it, we need the basic foundation of the Buddhist teachings, and we went through this very briefly. That Buddha spoke about Four Noble Truths. The first is that we have various problems and difficulties in our life. Things don’t go the way that we would like, things happen to us that we don’t like. Our problems or difficulties with people, with dealing with sickness, or old age, just recur and recur – and not just in this lifetime but in lifetime after lifetime. The second truth – the second true fact – is that these problems come from a cause. This is basically our confusion about reality, about how we exist, how others exist, about how everything exists – and that causes us to act impulsively in terms of karma.
Karma is speaking about the impulses that drive us to do certain things, or to say certain things, or to think certain things. Due to acting out what we feel like – doing and acting out these drives that compel us to behave in a certain way – it builds up various tendencies and habits to repeat it. Then we continue to have feelings to repeat that type of behavior, and also, we get into situations in which something similar happens back to us. It’s like when a baby dirties itself, the baby has to live with that. We have to experience the mess that we make. It does not come from some external punisher or anything like that; it’s just what naturally follows. But a third fact or truth is that it is possible to gain a true stopping of this so that it never recurs. The true path that leads to that – or pathway of mind, a way of thinking and then behaving based on that – is to gain a correct understanding of reality. This refers to an understanding of how we exist, how others exist, how everything exists. It allows us to overcome our grasping for a truly existent “me” that exists autonomously, separately from everything else, and always has to have its own way – the center of the universe, the most important one in the world. With that comes along the self-cherishing or selfishness – we need to overcome all of that to realize that all of this is ridiculous, it’s not based on anything.
The text is speaking a lot about karma and about how to overcome this self-cherishing and this grasping for a solid “me.” We saw that in order to actually gain the strength of mind – a motivation to actually give up our self-cherishing and give up our grasping for a true existence – we need to develop ourselves through gradual levels of motivation. This is what’s described in the Tibetan teachings as lam-rim. It’s a Tibetan word, and it means “stages of the path.” We start out – we’ve discussed this – with the initial level of motivation, which is that we want to improve things in the future, and not just in the future in this life but in future lives as well. We want to always be able to gain a precious human life, with all the freedoms and liberties and enrichments that would allow us to be able to continue on the spiritual path. That means that we want to try to always have a rebirth that is free from being an animal or even worse; and free from being in a war zone, and starving to death, or being in a concentration camp. We want to be reborn in one in which we have all the possibilities to be able to study and practice, all the freedoms, and so on. We saw that if we have that now, we need to appreciate it very much and take advantage of it – not as a fanatic, because that just is self-defeating in many ways. But if we strive to take advantage of the opportunities that we have now, and the freedoms, then we can make some progress.
This precious human life that we have is not going to last forever. Death is going to come for sure and we never know when, and the only thing that will be of help and comfort is if we have acted in a constructive way, and built up constructive habits that will continue in the future. Then we saw that what we would need to do then is to put some sort of safe direction in our life now – that’s usually called “refuge” – with which we are going in a certain direction; our life has a meaning. What is that direction? It’s the direction indicated by the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The Dharma is the main thing – this is the attainment basically that Buddhas have, in which all these problems and their causes are removed, and all the good qualities are developed to the full.
The Dharma also includes the teachings that teach us how to get there. That’s what we’re aiming for to achieve that ourselves the way the Buddhas have done that in full; and the way the Sangha, the community of highly realized beings, have done in part. If we aim in that direction, then our life has meaning – otherwise very often we get very discouraged because it seems that our life is going nowhere. But basically – to put it in the simplest words – we’re working to improve ourselves, overcome our problems, and gain more and more good qualities, and evolve to the highest state. That’s possible. In order to make sure that we continue to have precious human lives, what we need to do is avoid acting destructively and act constructively instead. This is because acting destructively just brings further and further limitations, further problems and worse rebirth situations, whereas acting constructively brings happier states. So, on this initial level, what we’re doing is working to basically improve future lives, and to continue to have the basis to go further on the path, basically. That’s very important. Whether we take it just in terms of this lifetime or we take it in the full Dharma sense, which is for future lives, it is beneficial.
Then the intermediate level of motivation is to see that even when we are in the best of circumstances of samsara – this uncontrollably recurring rebirth – still we have problems, still we face impermanence. Any happiness that we have never satisfies; we always want more. We never know what’s going to come next, our moods will always go up and down, and so on. Having this type of body that we have, inevitably it’s going to get sick, grow old, and get weaker, and so on, and all the difficulties that go along with that – with dealing with that, and dealing with death, and always having to face that again and again. For example, facing going to school again and again, trying to make a living, trying to figure out how are we are going to make a living. This is really going to always recur and so what on a deeper level it’s referring to is that our desire, our attachment, our greed, our anger, these things, are going to continue as well; insecurity and so on; and the problems we have in our interpersonal relations, and so on. So, what we want to do is not just get a precious human life, but we want to do that without attachment to that precious human life. It’s not so easy to make that balance. We want to gain liberation from this uncontrollably recurring rebirth and these uncontrollably recurring problems altogether, and attain some sort of state called “nirvana,” in which actually we no longer have this type of body. We have what’s known as a body made of light – whatever that means – which actually would use this type of physical body to help others. But as a liberated being we wouldn’t necessarily do that; we could just go off and be liberated, as it were, in some pure land.
But the next level that we would aim for is to think, well, just that is not sufficient because everybody else is suffering as well. Everybody else has problems, and I’m totally interconnected with everybody else, and so how can I possibly just ignore everyone? We would want to continue to appear using a body like this, but without being caught up with all the problems of it, in order to be able to benefit others. This is the advanced scope of motivation, and what we’re doing here is aiming to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit everybody. What that entails is called bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is a mind and a heart which is first of all aimed at benefitting everybody and then aimed at our own individual future enlightenment that we’re aiming to achieve, with the intention that we are going to use that to benefit everybody. This is because that would be the best way to benefit others – if we were not only be liberated, but we also were able to remove from our minds all the limitations that prevent us from knowing cause and effect. In other words, we would know what the cause is of everybody’s present situation karmically, and what would the best thing be to teach, and what would the effect of that be, in order to choose the best method for helping each person. For that, we have to become a Buddha. We have to clear out all the limitations of the mind – not just the emotional ones that we need to clear out for gaining liberation. So, we try to develop this bodhichitta aim and then work as a bodhisattva – somebody that is aiming for enlightenment – to try to build up more and more positive force and deep awareness of reality, so that we can really break through all these limitations and obstacles.
Our text is speaking about that type of path of a bodhisattva. In order to work ourselves up to having that motivation – which is not so easy to do, we saw the steps – we started going through the steps that we need to go through. This started out first of all with equanimity. Equanimity is the state of mind that is free of being attracted to some, repelled by others, and indifferent to yet others. If we want to be able to benefit everybody, we need to be equally open to everybody. We need to not just want to help those that we like or those that we are attracted to and want to not help those that we dislike and those that we consider strangers. We saw the practices that can help us to develop this type of equanimity. It’s not at all an easy thing to develop, but we work with people whom we like, people whom we consider strangers, people whom we dislike, and we see that that situation can change very much. In all different situations in this life or in future lives, a status can change. Strangers can become friends, people that we like can hurt us and cause tremendous pain, people that we don’t like can change and become friends. When we start to work with that, one great Indian master suggested that we develop it in stages, on this equanimity. We start with strangers, and then people that we like a little bit, and people that we dislike a little bit, and try to equalize that. Then we add a little bit: people you like even more, people that you dislike even more, and eventually extend it to people that you really are in love with or whatever, and people that you hate. In that way, we extend it slowly. Otherwise, to try to equalize, all of a sudden, the ones that we have the strongest attraction and attachment, and the ones that we dislike the most, is certainly not going to work. This is a long process, to try to develop that, but something which is very important for working in this Mahayana way.
Of course, when we talk about equanimity and being open to helping everybody, we also have to be practical. In terms of practical everyday life, of course when we have limited time and limited ability, we would choose to spend more time with those that are more open to us and whom we actually are able to benefit more. But the willingness needs to be there to help anybody. It’s like if people ask us for information: if we are at an information desk, working there in a store or in the airport, we will need to answer the questions of everybody, not just our friends and not just the people who are good looking. That willingness is there on a general level and it’s very central actually to the practices that are indicated in this text.
When we talk about taking on – when we have certain problems – the same type of problem that everybody has, we give the solution not just to ourselves but giving it to everybody. For that to really be effective, it needs to be really on the basis of everyone, not just our favorites. We start with equanimity and then we go to equalizing our attitude toward others, which is a step greater than just this common type of equanimity. The common type, as I said, is to get rid of these disturbing emotions of attachment, repulsion, and indifference; whereas here when we talk about equalizing our attitude toward others, it is a more active state of mind in which we actually want to help everybody equally, not just the basic ground of being open to everybody equally. This is what we were speaking about last time. There are actually nine stages or nine steps that we can think about to help us to develop this willingness to help everybody equally – this is equalizing our attitude towards everyone.
There’s another aspect that doesn’t come exactly in this, but is related to this, which is also equalizing ourselves with everybody. This is recognizing that not only is everybody equal, but everybody includes us as well. We would want to care of everybody including ourselves, and that actually becomes important when we change our attitude and take care of others the same way as we would take care of ourselves and have as much concern and care for them as normally we would have for ourselves. That comes a little bit later.
Then we have these nine points of view with which we can equalize our attitude towards everyone – I think we went through the first six, if I remember correctly. Just to mention what they were: first of all, if we haven’t seen our mother in ten years, or ten days, or ten minutes, or ten lives, she’s still our mother. It’s just a matter of time when we have seen her. Likewise, if we think in terms of a finite number of beings and an infinite number of previous lives, then at some point everybody has been our mother. Even though we might not have seen them for many, many lifetimes – millions of lifetimes – she would still be our mother. By this line of reasoning – that if we haven’t seen her in ten minutes or ten years, she still is our mother – the only difference is in terms of how long it’s been since we’ve seen her. This is the first point of view. We can see everybody as equal as being equally our mother in that way, and having been kind to us as a mother has been.
We could of course also turn it around and see everybody has having been our child as well. This works also but actually it’s not usually described that way. It’s usually described in terms of having been our mother. We could substitute our father as well, but the mother is the one who actually carries us in her womb and goes through the pain of giving birth to us and so on. In that sense, our mother has been more kind to us. She hasn’t for instance aborted us and not had us. I mean, it’s very nice that our mother didn’t have an abortion with us – very kind, if you think about it.
Then the second point of view is that we think in terms of this question that comes up: “Well, aren’t most people nasty to us or harm us more than they have helped us?” That’s not actually correct. If we think about it, then in fact our entire existence is dependent on all the work that other people have done. If we just simply look at everything in the room, everything in our house, every piece of clothing that we have, everything that we have eaten today, how we have travelled today – all of that is due to an unbelievable amount of work by other people. This includes animals, for instance, in terms of milk and meat (if we eat meat) – milk and wool from sheep and so on, and honey from bees. Or the wooden table – the people who chopped down the trees, and transported the wood, and made the road that it was transported on, and made the factory, and made the gasoline that the car travels on, and made the steel and the car, and the miners, and all the stuff. It starts to become unbelievable – the interconnectedness that we have with absolutely everybody in terms of how we are. Our lives are supported, and this is true not only in this life but in all lifetimes, and so from that point of view, everybody has equally helped us and they are equal in that way.
As an exercise, we looked around the room and tried to appreciate all the work of other people that went into every single item here. We also tried to see each other as having equally contributed to our welfare in this and other lives – either directly or indirectly. It doesn’t matter what the person’s motivation or intention is for doing the work that they do; nevertheless, we benefit from it. So, that’s the second point of view.
The third point of view was thinking in terms of death and impermanence. If we think about it, everybody is going to die, nobody knows when – it could happen at any time. If we were, for instance, with a group of people and we all were going to be killed and die in the next few minutes – let’s say bombs were coming or something like that – what would be the point in getting angry at some of them and spending our last minutes being nasty to anybody? Everybody would be equal in that same situation. Thinking in that way helps us also to gain an equal attitude toward everybody.
All of this so far was looking at it from our own point of view, but then there were three more points of view that had to do with looking at how other people consider things. First of all was the point that everybody wants to be happy, and nobody wants to be unhappy. Everybody is totally equal in that way, and it’s absolutely true – in fact not only people but insects and animals and so on. If there is an ant on the floor and you put your finger in front of it, the ant runs around it and wants to escape. It wants to be happy; it doesn’t want to be harmed. Everybody is equal in that way.
Then the second one was that everybody is equal in the right to have happiness. If we think in terms of hungry beggars, hungry children, or something like that – all of them are equally hungry and equally have the same right to be fed.
Then the third one was that everybody was equal in their right to be rid of suffering. If we were a doctor and there were ten people who needed some sort of vaccine for some disease, everybody has the equal right to get that cure, that preventive. If there was a group of sick people, everybody would have the equal right to be treated by us. From that point of view, everybody is equal. Again, we could look around the room – we did that last time – to try to see others in this equal way. These are also things that we can practice just anytime in the U-Bahn (subway), on the bus, and so on – to try to see everybody as equal. In a sense, it’s a little bit easier on the U-Bahn when we’re looking at strangers, a whole group of strangers, although we might be attracted to some and not so attracted to others just on the basis of how they look like. But if we can do this – including the people that we know and we like, and the people that we know and we dislike – then this is really starting to become an effective way of developing ourselves, opening up to others.
Seeing Everybody as Equal
This is what we’ve covered so far. These things of course all sound very nice but it takes quite a long time and quite a lot of practice before it becomes spontaneous, automatic. In the beginning, with any type of these practices you have to accept the fact that it is going to be artificial. You force yourself to start to have this type of attitude and to see others in this way – but it is based on reason. There is a reason for seeing others as being equal. It makes sense, so you should push yourself to do it, but eventually it becomes natural and that’s what we are aiming for.
The last three points of view here – I’d like to go through and try to finish this material so that next time we can actually start the text – is seeing that everybody is equal from the deepest point of view. From the deepest point of view, the first point that is mentioned is that if people existed truly in the categories of “close” or “far,” then Buddha would have seen people like that as well. But Buddha wasn’t like that. Buddha had the same type of equal, loving attitude toward everyone – the classic example is his own son and his cousin, who was always trying to kill him and harm him. The way that it’s described is that a Buddha would have the equal attitude, loving attitude, toward someone who was massaging him with nice massage oil on one side, and someone who was chopping away his body with a sword on the other. Well, obviously that’s not something that we could do very easily, and it’s very difficult to relate to how Buddha actually saw people. But I think that if we have any experience with some of the great masters – the great lamas like his Holiness the Dalai Lama or his late teachers, we see this. I’ve seen them; I travelled with them, I travelled with my own teacher, Serkong Rinpoche, and with his Holiness (Serkong Rinpoche was one of the teachers of his Holiness). I saw, for instance with my own teacher, that equal type of attitude when we met the late pope and when we met a drunk on the street. The same type of attitude: not trying to impress the other person; being very humble; being very open and sincere; and taking everybody very seriously.
I remember there was once a very stoned hippie – I was in India during the hippie days – who came in to see Serkong Rinpoche and said, “I’d like to learn the Six Yogas of Naropa, teach me this tummo” – this internal heat type of thing. He was completely spaced out. What was really very wonderful was that Serkong Rinpoche took him totally seriously. He said, “That’s really very good that you’re interested in learning that. That’s wonderful, and here is how you would need to start.” He started him on the very first steps of it. This hippie turned out to be Jose Cabezon, who went on to become a university professor of Tibetan Buddhism. In this way, being equally open to everybody and taking everybody seriously is the way that the most highly developed beings are. When you see how his Holiness acts in front of a crowd of 20,000 people or even 100,000 people, he just acts totally relaxed and natural. I’ve seen him like that with presidents, with whomever; he is always the same in that way. If these highly developed beings are like that, and have this equal attitude toward everybody, then from the deepest point of view that must be the correct way of being – the most highly developed way of being. That is the first point that we think of in terms of getting this equal attitude toward everybody: seeing that this is so from the deepest point of view.
The second one point of view in this category is seeing that if people truly existed in the category of “close” and “distant” from us – or “stranger,” or “enemy,” or “friend” – then they would have to exist that way always. They would have to be permanently that way, which means that we could never get to know anybody who is a stranger that we didn’t know; they could never become a friend or somebody that we dislike. Likewise, friends could never hurt us, relationships could never end. We’re so attached to somebody, so attracted to somebody, and then it ends – that could never happen. Similarly, people that we dislike we would have to always dislike – that could never change. This is clearly not the case; people do change and are impermanently in those categories. From that point of view, everybody is equal. Do you follow that?
If we want to go back to doing a little bit of our exercises, we could look at each other – or just think of people if that’s uncomfortable for you – and try to recognize the fact that when we came here, maybe there were some people that we didn’t know. Now, after being together for some time, we start to know people and are being more relaxed, closer to each other. That has changed. But if they were permanently strangers, we could never change that feeling toward each other; it would always be the same. In that way, we see that everybody is equal; nobody stays permanently in any category. Let’s do that for a few moments. You can also look at the example of when you move away to another city, or a close friend moves to another city, inevitably you grow apart. When you move to a new city, inevitably you make new friends. There’s no permanence to who’s close and who’s a bit distant.
A great Indian master used a very lovely example: he said that being together with each other is like leaves blowing in the wind in the autumn, when they fall off the trees. For a little while the winds of karma can keep some leaves together, but inevitably the wind blows them apart and blows other leaves together. When we can see others as being equal in this way – that “close” and “far” are not permanent categories, that people equally change – I think one of the great benefits of that is that then we become equally open to become really close friends with anybody. Sometimes we are so attached to one or two people that we’re not really open to anybody else for developing a close friendship. When those people who are close to us move away, we get really emotionally destroyed. Whereas with this attitude, we can be equally open to anybody. Of course, a problem always comes along with the management of your time: how much time do you have for many close friends? But I think what’s important here is our attitude, our openness, our willingness to let more people into our lives. Any comments, any questions?
Then the last point of view of these nine, from the deepest point of view, is relativity – that everything is relative. When we’re on the near mountain and look to the other mountain, then that becomes a far mountain, but when we go over to the other side from the far mountain, that now becomes the near mountain and the near mountain from before becomes the far mountain. Similarly, people who are near and far – that is relative. We can think in terms of self and others: everybody considers themselves the “self” and considers “others” the other, and so that is relative to each other. Also, we might have some people that are distant from us but then there are others who are more distant. Let’s say the people in the U-Bahn we might feel that we don’t know, they might feel distant from us, but compared to people in Africa or in China, they are closer to us than the people there. We can relate a little bit more to them. Similarly, it’s the same thing with the people who are close to us: there are some that are closer, some that are more distant; our best friend and somebody who is just a friend. Well, compared to somebody that we don’t know at all, the friend is close, but compared to our best friend, the person is distant. So, everything is relative. “Close” and “far” – it all depends on what point of view we look at things from. Again, that allows us to develop an equal attitude toward everybody because really, whether we consider them close or far, or how close or how far, is all relative.
Again, for a few moments we can try to think of people in our lives like that. If you feel comfortable, look at each other with that understanding. Is my being close to you closer than somebody else’s being close to you? Again, everything is relative. What is close, what is far? It’s really just a subjective measure, isn’t it? So rather than making a measure that “I’ll be close to you 3.2” and “I’ll be close to this one 5.7,” just be equally open and willing to help everybody. This is what we’re aiming for here. It’s interesting how feelings of “close” and “far” can also be relative to our mood and relative to the mood of the other person, even with just one person. Sometimes, somebody that we feel is very close to us is in a bad mood or does something that we don’t like, or we’re in a bad mood, and all of a sudden, they become very distant, or we become very distant. Again, it’s very relative, isn’t it – to our moods and their moods. That’s the case with one person; it will be the same with everybody. Isn’t it amazing that people that we are the most attached to and feel the closest to are often the ones that annoy us the most, when they do something that we don’t like, or we don’t want them to do? That will come very shortly – what’s the reason for that? It’s self-cherishing, because “I want them to be like this and to do like that and they are not.”
This understanding actually is extremely helpful and practical in life, because inevitably people that we are very close to and attached to or whatever are going to annoy us at some times. They are going to be in a bad mood, or we’re going to be in a bad mood; they are going to be busy; they are going to be sick or something like that, and they don’t speak very nicely to us, don’t pay much attention to us. It’s really important in times like that to realize that this is just relative to a mood – a mood that they are in, a mood that I’m in – and it passes. So, we combine here both this understanding of impermanence as well as relativity. So, we don’t fix people into permanent categories. As I said, the main emphasis is of course being open to everybody equally – seeing that this is equally true about everybody. But also it’s very helpful to apply that to any one person as well.
All of these exercises, actually, are very practical in terms of applying them in our lives. If we’re dealing with customers in a store or as a therapist – all of them want to be treated equally and all of them have the same right to our attention, to our openness, whether it’s in a store or whatever. Or if people ask us questions and send us emails – everybody wants an answer equally, just as we would like an answer for our emails. Think about that email sitting at the bottom of the pile, which we would like to ignore – perhaps you can reply with what’s appropriate. I think it’s always important to combine – as we had in our discussion of the five types of deep awareness in the sensitivity training – taking in the information about any individual person, having an equal attitude toward everyone, but respecting their individuality. The way you relate is based on that individuality, it’s based on the information, but while being equally open to them all. This is very important. Then you add to that the flexibility of changing, as a situation and encounter with a person changes and develops over the course of a conversation or the course of a longer period of time. This is very important for relating to other people.
Let us begin by stopping talking and quieting down by focusing on the breath. Based on these nine points of view with which we equalize our attitude toward everybody – and here we can include ourselves as well – we come to five decisions that follow from this. The first decision is, “I’m not going to be partial.” “Partial” means that I’m only going to help some people, not others. “I’m not going to do that because I realize that everybody is equal. For this reason, I’m definitely going to stop having this attitude that I only want to help some.” It’s very important, actually, to come to a decision. Whether we keep that decision or not of course is something else, but in order to make any changes in ourselves, we have to decisively determine, “This is what I’m going to stop doing, this is what I’m going to do” – make a decision. Decisions are best made if they are based on reason. We thought it through; it’s not just something on the spur of the moment, because then that often will change. Sometimes we think, “Oh yes, let’s just be spontaneous,” and make a decision to go to a movie, or do things like that, or go out to eat. Well, that’s one thing; but then another spur of the moment decision could come up as well. “Let’s not go here, let’s go there;” “Let’s do this, let’s do that.” Well, in leading ordinary life with ordinary trivial things, that might work, but it is not a good policy to follow when we’re talking about basic attitude changes and trying to work on improving our attitudes. Because then, as quickly as we decide to change, we can decide to change to something else. We need to come to a decision and definitely going to at least try to stop. You can’t promise that you’re never going to have this partial attitude again, but at least say, “I’m going to try to stop just thinking to help some people,” being partisan. We try to be open to everybody.
We try to build ourselves up to that you go through the nine points that we just went through. (1) It’s just a matter of time when everybody has been our mother or close friend. (2) The help that people have given us in terms of helping support our life outweighs any harm – everybody has been equal in that way. (3) Everybody could die at any moment. (4) Everybody equally wants to be happy and not to be unhappy. (5) Everybody has the same right to be happy. (6) Everybody has the same right to be free from suffering and sickness and so on, and everybody equally would like our help with that matter, if we can help them. (7) Highly developed people don’t see people as close or near. (8) Nobody is permanently in one category or another. (9) These categories are all relative anyway. For that reason, everybody is equal, and I will try my best not to be partisan – in other words, to just want to help those I like. The decision becomes more and more firm, the more that we think about the reasons to coming to that decision.
Overcoming Self-Cherishing
Then the next two steps are very important, which are to think about the disadvantages of cherishing myself, which would prevent me from helping others. If I cherish just myself, which means selfishly thinking just about me and what I want – that actually is the root of all our unhappiness. This is said very strongly in the Buddha’s teachings and it, and particularly in this genre of attitude cleansing. As it says in a later text, you can trace all the source of your problems to one thing: self-cherishing, selfishness. We go to a dinner and there is something that’s served that we didn’t like, and we get all unhappy and all angry. Why? Because we’re just thinking about “me:” “It had too much salt; I didn’t like the salt.” Well, the people who made it certainly didn’t do it on purpose.
Self-cherishing is to think that I’m the most important one and only take care of my own needs and not anybody else’s. It’s the attitude of “me first.” “I’m the most important;” “We should go to the restaurant that I want to go to if we’re going out;” “You should always be available for me.” We’re unhappy that somebody is busy, we wanted to see them; or they are not home when we call, we just get the answering machine. Why are we unhappy? Because I want them right now – they should always be available for me – as if we were the only person in their life. But that’s how we act, that’s why we get angry. We get frustrated and we get unhappy. We go down the stairs of the U-Bahn station and the train is pulling out and we have to wait. We get unhappy – why? We’re just thinking about “me:” “I’m inconvenienced.” What about the people in the train who would be inconvenienced if they sat there and waited for us to come down? “Come on already! Go! Why are you waiting at the station?” – aren’t you like that also when you’re sitting in the U-Bahn, and they are waiting for the train across the tracks to come? The train on the other track is late and your train sits there for two minutes waiting, and you’re unhappy – why? Because of “me:” “I want to go now. I’m the most important. Who cares about the people in the other train?” It’s really true.
Shantideva always says, “Rejoice when other people are happy – that’s you wishing to bring everybody to enlightenment”. Then you should be happy when they are happy and not be jealous. This is really a very interesting point. If we love somebody, what do we want for them? We want for them to be happy – that’s the definition of love in Buddhism. So, if they are happy, then why would I be unhappy? If I really loved them, I should be happy that they are happy, even when they are happy with somebody else. You see this with your children: I would like my child to find a partner and be happy and so on. But then some parents don’t want to let go. Then there is also the whole thing that this partner the children found is not good enough. That also is a very subtle self-cherishing: “The partner should meet my standard, not my child’s standards.”
We think like this – and it really is very helpful when you’re in a bad mood, when you’re annoyed with somebody, annoyed with work, annoyed with whatever – to really see what the problem is. It’s my self-cherishing attitude: I’m just thinking of “me”. “What a terrible party” – why is it a terrible party? “Because I’m having a bad time.” It doesn’t matter that everybody else is having a wonderful time. “It’s a terrible party, isn’t it?” This is helpful to think about, and not just for a minute here but in general in life. Because then we identify what it is that we need to work on: self-cherishing – not just looking at things from my own point of view but exchanging out point of view and seeing the point of view of others. “I didn’t get a place in the university” – well, somebody else did. So, that’s the second point.
The third point is to see the advantages of cherishing others – that if we think of others, this is really the source of happiness. If we are depressed, the best medicine to get us out of the depression and feeling sorry for ourselves is doing something for someone else or at least having contact with somebody else – any sort of contact with others. It’s very interesting, even from a medical point of view – if you are connected to other people, this keeps you alive. Old people often die of feeling they are irrelevant and not connected to anybody. Nobody visits them at the old age home, in the nursing home. Nobody cares if they are alive or dead. They just give up and they die very quickly. Whereas if you feel connected – that other people need you, want you, care about you – this really brings some sort of happiness, it brings life. It’s the same thing with a small infant. If a small infant has no connection with anybody, it dies; if it’s just fed from a machine, it dies. So, on a very basic biological level even, the source of happiness in life is connectedness with others – cherishing others, appreciating others. The decision here is, “I shall try to cherish others as my main practice”. First, in the second point, you think of the disadvantages of self-cherishing and make the decision, “I’m going to try to get rid of that;” and then you think of the advantages of cherishing others. I think when you make a meal – most people enjoy making a meal for someone that they like, as opposed to “I can’t be bothered to just make it for myself” – you just take some bread for yourself or something. If you’re doing something for somebody else, particularly someone you feel connected to, it makes you happy.
You could mix this with helping others and doing things for others because of self-cherishing. “I’m going to cherish others because I cherish myself and want the benefits from that.” But as his Holiness the Dalai Lama says, “If you’re going to be selfish, be intelligently selfish”. We’re not going to be rid of self-cherishing and selfishness until we are an arhat, a liberated being, and attained nirvana. Along the way, we’re going to have a certain amount of that, so if we’re going to have a certain amount of it, at least have it in an intelligent way, not in a self-destructive way.
Ringu Tulku, who often comes to Berlin, I had asked him a question and he explained very nicely. When you are trying to help others and many people ask for your help, how do you divide your time? He said that obviously those that you can help the most and that other people aren’t really helping. But also, you have to add into that the ones that make you feel good when you help them, and when you’re with them. There are some people that are a complete drain on your energy, and other people that, when you’re with them, your energy increases. You can’t totally ignore that – being just an ordinary human being. That’s okay to put that into the formula of how you divide your time in terms of helping others. I found that very helpful. We make the decision: “Definitely I’m going to try to cherish others as my main focus,” and think of others in whatever way we can. For instance, if you’re starting university for studying social work, if you think just in terms of “me” and “all the homework that I have, and this paper that I have write and blah blah blah,” then you could become very unhappy. But if you think in terms of the people that I might be able to benefit when I finish this education – that gives you certainly at least some more peace of mind, and a sense of feeling good about what you’re doing. Likewise, when one is on a spiritual path and there are hardships involved, one thinks of the benefit that I can bring to others: I’m not going to make them so nervous when I’m with them; I’m going to be able to give them good advice, calm them down, help them in one way or another. That enables us to be able to endure difficulties. But if you’re thinking “oh poor me,” you just suffer. So, we make this decision, therefore: “I’m going to try to cherish others as my main practice.”
Then the fourth point is to think, “Am I capable of changing my attitude and cherishing others?” – in other words, taking others as the most important just as the way that I used to consider myself the most important. When we talk about exchanging our attitude here of self and others, it means that instead of considering myself the most important, now I’m going to consider the others most important; and instead of considering others’ purposes as being stupid and not caring about them, similarly I’m going to ignore my own purposes when they are just selfish.
Obviously, we need a balance. We have to eat and we have to sleep – that’s beside the point; but when it’s just selfish, then I’m not going to do that. I’m going to think of others more than myself. When we cut the cake, are we going to take the biggest peace for ourselves or think of others? We think in terms of, “Am I capable of changing my attitude and having as much concern for others as I do for myself and taking care of others the same way as I would take care of myself?”. We consider how – Shantideva said this – our body is actually something which came from the sperm and egg of two different people, not ourselves. It didn’t come from our own sperm and egg, and so we are taking care of and cherishing a part of somebody else’s body as if it were me. If we’re capable of taking care of this body as “me,” then we are equally capable of taking care of any body. What’s the difference between wiping my nose, wiping my baby’s nose, and wiping the nose of a drunk on the street? There’s no difference – it’s just a nose, isn’t it? Thinking like that, we say, “Yes, I am capable”. The decision is that, “Yes, I am capable.” I decide that I am capable of changing my attitude – that I could think of others the same way as I’ve thought of myself, because of this example with this body, which is actually from somebody else’s body. If I can take care of my own baby, I can take care of anybody’s baby. If I can clean the rear end of my baby when my baby goes to the toilet, why can’t I do that with any other baby or adult, for that matter? What’s the difference? There is no difference. If we consider others more than ourselves and totally ignore ourselves, we could burn out. That’s why we have to go a middle path and not to be extreme here. But when we say not to consider me; we’re talking about not being selfishly concerned only with me. There has to be a balance.
All of this has to go together with knowing our limits – knowing when to say no, being able to say no. But when we say no, do that on the basis of thinking, “Still I care about you.” Either I’m totally incapable – so “I’m sorry” or “I just can’t do it now – but not get angry with the person; or what is always best is, if I can’t do it, to direct them to somebody else who could. This is the best when we say no. Of course, it’s difficult when somebody just wants to be with us all the time and that’s not possible. But then what you need to do in most cases is give them a time: “I can’t be with you now but, next week, this is going to be your time at this time.” Give them something; don’t just totally reject them. One has to teach others that saying no doesn’t mean a rejection. That you have to be very careful about – it’s very important actually. “No” doesn’t mean a rejection; often we feel that when other people say no to us. Why do we feel bad? Because we’re thinking just about “me” – “poor me” – not that they are busy, or they are tired, or they have other people that they want to meet, other friends. What we want to stop is being selfish and thinking only of “me.”
The fifth point is thinking, “I shall exchange my attitude and consider others more important than myself” in terms of whom I put the emphasis on. Traditionally, in the Buddhist teachings we think of the ten destructive and the ten constructive actions. If I kill somebody or hurt somebody physically, that’s because I’m thinking just about “me:” “I don’t like this person, I want to get rid of them because I don’t like them, I don’t want them.” Whereas if we think in terms of not hurting somebody or being physically kind to somebody, we’re thinking of them. Happiness comes from that. Because if we hurt somebody and so on, then from a karmic point of view we’re going to have difficulties as well. If we steal, that’s because I’m thinking of “me.” If we don’t steal but we give to others, we’re thinking of them. If we sexually abuse somebody, it’s because we’re thinking of “me.” If we have a loving sexual interaction in which we are thinking of the other person, that comes from thinking of them and brings much more happiness. Like this, one goes back and forth in terms of the destructive actions and the constructive actions and makes that definite decision now. We confirm that “I’m going to change my attitudes.” Based on this line of development, then we can get into the whole practice of giving and taking, which is emphasized very much in this text.
There is no need to explain it now because we can do that while we do the text, but it’s based on thinking, “I’m going to take on and deal with your problems as if they were my own”. This is based on compassion, which is the wish for others to be free of their problems and the causes for it. And “I’m going to give a solution to you and try to take care of your problem just as I would if it were my own problem.” This is the giving aspect, and it’s based on love – the wish for others to be happy and to have the causes for happiness. This is a very central theme in this whole text. It’s going, in the first part, through all the sorts of terrible things that could happen to us, seeing that this happens to lots and lots of other people as well. So, “I want to take that on and consider it as if anybody else has the problem – consider it as seriously and as importantly as if it were my own problem. I want to not only change my own behavior to get rid of the cause and to bring happiness instead, but I imagine giving that to everybody else so that everybody else can come away from this problem.”
That is a very central thing in this text. It’s based on compassion – the wish for others to be free of suffering and its causes; and love – the wish for others to be happy and to have the causes of happiness. Then – just to finish it out – based on this, we have what’s called the “exceptional resolve.” With this, I resolve that “I’m really going to help them – not just to bring them ordinary happiness and get rid of ordinary suffering, but I’ve decided I’m going to try to bring them all the way to enlightenment.” Then that leads to bodhichitta, which is the realization that in order to do that, I myself have to become enlightened. So, we aim for our own future enlightenment and constantly working to improve – to reach that goal and practice the six far-reaching-attitudes or six perfections. These are: (1) being generous; (2) having ethical discipline to restrain from hurting others; (3) patience – not getting angry; (4) perseverance, with which we stick to the hard work, no matter how hard it might be; (5) mental stability, concentration; (6) and discriminating awareness, with which we discriminate what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate; what’s helpful, what’s not helpful; what is reality, what is not reality. That’s the general Mahayana path, and these are the main topics that will be discussed in the text.
With that as preparation, I think we’re ready next time to start the text.
Dedication
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever positive force and understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper, and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.