Recap
We’re discussing this text, Wheel of Sharp Weapons. Actually, the image of the wheel of sharp weapons is star with blades that the ninjas throw – they had that in India as well. In the text, what is being discussed here is the practice of tonglen: taking on the problems and sufferings of others and giving them our happiness. We start out here with two stages in terms of this. One stage is taking on our own problems and giving ourselves a solution and then doing it for others. Therefore, one of the things that is indicated in each of these verses in this first part of this text is what the karmic cause would be for various sufferings and difficulties that we have. We then accept that suffering that we ourselves have, and give ourselves the solution, which would be that in the future, we’re not going to commit the same karmic cause that produced this result. Then, in addition to that, we think in terms of everybody else who might be experiencing the same type of problem. We take that on from them as well and give them the solution: the same type of solution that we’re giving ourselves, basically.
We discussed before – and the more and more that I think about it and work with this, the more it makes really a lot of sense – that we can practice this type of tonglen either with or without an understanding of voidness. When you do it without some understanding of voidness, then what happens is that a strong “me” – a strong ego – resists wanting to take on these problems from others or dealing with it. So, you imagine it coming in, and it’s sort of like really punching the ego in the face and saying, “Come on, you need to do this to overcome fear of dealing with suffering” – whether the suffering is from intense anger or whether the suffering is whatever it might be. This image of Yamantaka is always there in this text in terms of that. But that I think is just the first level of working with this – that it knocks down the resistance of the “me,” especially if we do this with quite frightening visualizations of taking on the suffering of others in terms of a visual form of dirty substances, and excrement, and vomit; and then rats, or cockroaches, or whatever it is that we might be most frightened of. That’s one level.
But then I think that another level, which makes an awful lot more sense after this – or maybe skipping this, I don’t know – is with an understanding of voidness in terms of how Shantideva discusses this whole issue. Shantideva, in presenting the teachings on equalizing and exchanging self with others, says that just as the hand is connected to the foot in terms of one body, and if the foot is suffering – if it has a thorn in it – the hand, of course, is going to help the foot because they form one connected body. Similarly, all sentient beings form one body of life, and likewise it is necessary for us to be able to help everybody because we’re all interconnected the way the hand is interconnected with the foot. The hand doesn’t feel the pain of the foot, but nevertheless it’s connected to it. If the hand helps the foot, it doesn’t expect a thank you from the foot. Likewise, when we help others, we don’t expect a thank you either. What’s happening here is the basis for labeling “me” is being shifted: instead of being labeled just on “me” and this body, it’s labeled on everybody.
His Holiness explained this in a very nice way. Referring to himself, he said, “I am the Dalai Lama,” and so I can think in terms of “me” just limited to the Dalai Lama. But also, I could say, “I’m a Tibetan,” and because I’m a Tibetan, then all Tibetans are the basis for thinking in terms of “me,” and I would work for the welfare of all Tibetans. Then I can also say, “I am a human being.” “Tibetan” is a valid basis for labeling me because I am a Tibetan, and “human being” is also a valid basis for labeling “me” – I’m a human being. Likewise, then I would work for the welfare of all human beings. Further, I am a sentient being, a limited being, and so I could work for everybody. This is a valid basis for labeling “me.” That I think is a very clear way of putting it in terms of who it is that we can work for. When we take on the problems of all Tibetans, or all human beings, or all sentient beings, it’s like the hand taking on the problems of the foot.
This I think is a very helpful way of thinking in terms of exchange of self and others and taking tonglen. On the one hand, it’s compassion and taking away the problems of others; but on the other hand, everybody’s problem is actually my problem. I think in many ways that makes it a little bit easier to do this practice. At least for me it feels more comfortable, because when you’re doing it without this type of understanding, then we’re just identifying with little “me,” and little “me” taking on the problems of the world. Then of course you think, “Oh, my God, how can I possibly take on the problems of the universe?” and the “me” resists. Either that or you become the martyr. There’re many levels on which we can do this tonglen, and I think the deeper we go, the more we understand mental labeling. What do you impute “me” on? What’s the basis for saying “me?” If we expand that further, and further, and further in a valid way, then there is no problem with this – or less of a problem, I should say.
Karmic Causes of Other Faulting Us
We were up to verse 23. We had the poetic translation, in which quite a little bit is added, and then we had the literal translation. The poetic translation is:
When others find fault with whatever we’re doing, and people seem eager to blame only us, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we’ve been shameless, not caring about others, we have thought that our deeds didn’t matter at all. Hereafter let’s stop our defensive behavior.
Literally, all the verse actually says is:
At times when people find fault with everything (we do), this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having belittled moral self-dignity and care for how our actions reflect on others. Now, let’s be shy with respect to uncivilized (behavior).
The problem here is that everybody finds fault with what we’re doing. We’re constantly criticized. It’s not indicating whether or not these faults are actually there or not, but presumably they are there in many cases, and so what is this coming from? This is coming from basically the causes for acting in a destructive way. The main causes for acting in a destructive way, which would result in things not going well – not being able to do things well and so on – are two mental factors that are very important to understand. One is called moral self-dignity and the other is care for how our actions reflect on others. These are not easy terms to translate, and I must say that over the years I’ve translated them differently. But the main emphasis on these, in these two terms, is caring about the effect of our behavior. The first one is caring about the effect of our behavior on ourselves. The second is not so much caring about the result of our behavior on others, because you never know what the result is going to be, but caring for how our behavior reflects on others.
So, the first is the sense of moral self-dignity. If we have a sense of self-dignity, self-pride, a sense of self-worth, then you don’t act in a destructive way. If I feel that “I’m worth nothing, and my life is worth nothing,” you might as well be a suicide bomber or act as a criminal. When you have a lot of violence with gangs and so on, usually these are kids who have been abandoned – street kids, and so on. Nobody has ever given any value to them, and because they don’t feel the sense of value themselves, then they act destructively. That’s one attitude.
Then the other attitude is this caring for how our actions reflect on others. If I act destructively, what are people going to think of my family? How does it reflect on my family? How does it reflect on my country? How does it reflect on, for a Buddhist, on Buddhism? How does it reflect on women, for a woman, or how does it reflect on men if we act in this type of way? I think that this is a very valid, constructive state of mind – to care for how it reflects on others. Particularly, let’s say, if we’re trying to follow some spiritual path and then we go out, and get drunk, and get into fights, and stuff like that, what do people think? “Oh, you’re supposed to following a Buddhist path. What is that?” It reflects badly on the teacher as well. Or if we go to, let’s say, a beach resort in Spain, and we get drunk, and we destroy the room that we’re staying in, and throw beer bottles all over the place, and so on – it gives a bad reputation to Germans, doesn’t it?
We always think in the West in terms of ethics, aside from it being based on following laws, being based on a humanitarian level on trying to cause harm to others – aside from not trying to cause harm to yourself. But from the Buddhist point of view, you can’t be certain whether what we do is really going to harm others or not. If you kill them, obviously that harms them, but many times we have no idea what the effect of our behavior is going to be, although we can guess. Obviously, if we think that it’s going to hurt somebody, we would restrain from acting in that way.
Here what it’s saying is the result of belittling having a sense of self-dignity and care for how our actions reflect on others. We find fault in what is the basis for constructive behavior, the most constructive attitudes. If we find fault with that and put it down, then everybody also is going to criticize and find fault with what we do. This the cause-and-effect relation here, of the effect being similar to the cause. “Now, let’s be shy with respect to uncivilized (behavior).” Uncivilized behavior is obviously just acting in a really crude and rough type of way. To be “shy” with it – the word that’s used in Tibetan is to shrink back, to be bashful, because you are bashful and you’re shy, you’re not going to say anything, you’re not going to do anything. This type of attitude is what’s recommended here.
We can think about this first in the level of our own experience. We find that people find fault with everything we do, whether there actually is some fault or not. The way you clean the house is no good; the way you take care of the baby is no good; whatever you do it’s no good, it’s not good enough. Sometimes that can come from our parents; sometimes it comes from people that we work for – whatever. Then think, is there some connection between that and our attitude of putting down self-dignity and care for how our actions reflect on others? In other words, do we act in ways in which we just put down anything that’s constructive, and so others put us down? Then we accept this suffering that we have: “Okay, this is something that I have to deal with, and the way that I will deal with that is to, in the future, shy away from acting in some sort of crude and uncivilized type of way.” We resolve to do that. Then we think of others who have this problem as well and take on the suffering and take on the cause of the suffering as well, so we remove both the result and the cause, and then give them the solution and the happiness that would come from that.
Then we think that this is, “I’m not the only one who has this problem, lots of people have this problem.” So, we think in terms of this removing that from everybody and giving them the same solution. We can do that with visualizations of nasty things coming in and white light going out, or just darkness coming in and light going out – whatever level you want to do that at. Also, it says in the Seven Point Lojong that you can combine this with words. Probably the best thing to combine it with is a mantra like “om mani padme hum.” You can recite while doing this. But the first step in all of this is to examine ourselves to see if we have this type of problem, this type of syndrome. If we have it, then the first step is to work with ourselves, then we extend it to everybody. Let me give an example. A couple of days ago I got an email from somebody through my website, finding fault with one of my lectures. There’s an audio file on the website, and I was speaking in this lecture about Alcoholics Anonymous. and I was saying that ex-alcoholics have to eventually overcome their addiction to Alcoholics Anonymous and then get on with their lives. This person who’s an ex-alcoholic who belongs to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he found fault with what I had said because it sounded as though I was saying that Alcoholics Anonymous is no good. He was saying that it continues to give him support; he’s been going to it for so many years, and it’s so helpful in his life, and so on. He also said that he’s very surprised that a Buddhist teacher, who is supposed to be sensitive to these types of things, would say something like that.
This is a good example. He found fault with something that I didn’t think there was anything wrong with. What was the cause? I didn’t really think how saying something like this about Alcoholics Anonymous would reflect on Buddhists, on Buddhism. But this was his interpretation: “How can you say this as a Buddhist teacher?” Because I care about how it reflects on Buddhism, and because I care about how it reflects on me as well, I wrote him back, and I clarified what I meant. Then he wrote back, and he was very happy with my answer. This is the type of thing that this is referring to. We say something or do something, and it seems okay, but we didn’t really think how it reflects on us or on others; and of course, other people find fault with it. The solution that I gave was immediately to back off from this statement and clarify it – as it says, it says to be shy about acting in an uncivilized way.
Were you able to think of any examples with others? I found a very good example with one friend of mine, a student. He’s very enthusiastic about Buddhism, and saying that he’s a Buddhist, and yet he is always getting stoned, smoking joints and so on, and acting in a completely spaced-out way. I’m always finding fault with him for what he’s doing. He gets bad grades in university and just really messes up things. What’s his problem? He has no sense of self-dignity, and he doesn’t care like what his mother thinks of his Buddhism – that it’s not doing anything for him, and that it just makes him more weird and more spaced out. So, what’s the solution? The solution is for him to restrain from uncivilized behavior of getting stoned all the time rather than dealing with his problems, because in his case it’s very clear that he is getting stoned to avoid facing himself and his personal problems. Anybody likes to share an example they found?
Karmic Causes of Having Disagreements with Loves Ones
Let’s go on with the next verse, 24. The expanded poetic version is:
When our servants and friends are annoyed by our habits, and after a while cannot stay in our homes, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we’ve imposed our bad habits on others; hereafter let’s change and show only kind ways.
In the literal version, this is:
At times when, as soon as we gather a circle, disagreements (arise), this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having peddled all around our bad ugly characters. Now, let’s act kindly toward anyone at all as our human characters.
All it says is that there are disagreements whenever we get into a group. “We gather a circle” – a circle of friends, a circle of relatives, any sort of group that we’re with – then there are always disagreements. We’re disagreeing with them, they are disagreeing with us, and so on. Where is this coming from? It’s coming from imposing our bad, ugly characters. So, let’s make our human characters good toward anyone at all – act decently toward others, with consideration and so on. This is the way that we will avoid disagreements and conflicts when we’re with others. Whatever our ugly character might be – it could be being inconsiderate, it could be getting angry, short-tempered; it could be becoming greedy for their time, clinging, hanging on to them, complaining all the time with them – nobody likes to listen to somebody complaining all the time.
People disagree with us not just because of our karma. What happens is not due to only my karma. That’s a very self-centered point of view – that everything that happens in the universe is the result of my karma. But whatever is happening is the result of everybody’s karma plus non-karmic type of things as well – things that aren’t directly affected by karma, like the weather. It’s the combination of many, many different karmic factors. Obviously, the others who are with us in that circle disagreeing, and finding fault, and so on – that also has a karmic cause. You have to avoid the two extremes. One is that I have no responsibility for what happens to me, and the other is that I’m the only one responsible. It’s a combination; we’re interconnected. That’s why karma is the most difficult thing to understand, because everybody’s karma is interconnected. That’s why one has to become a Buddha in order to really understand it, because you have to know everybody and everything that everybody has ever done in order to see all the different factors that are affecting what’s happening. That’s why if you really want to help, you have to become a Buddha. You want to help in the sense of knowing what you’re doing and not just guessing what’ll be of help, which is what we have to do basically – we guess. You give advice – it’s a guess. I don’t know if that’s going to help or not; I don’t know what the effect of that’s going to be. How can I know? Karma is very complicated.
Let’s work with this verse.
At times when, as soon as we gather a circle, disagreements (arise), this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having peddled all around our bad ugly characters. Now, let’s act kindly toward anyone at all as our human characters.
I think a very good example of this verse is the negotiations between different countries, in which you get a group of countries together to try to settle this problem with the nuclear research in Iran or anything like that. Of course, nobody can agree, they are constantly disagreeing. What’s the cause for that? Many of the people there are imposing their bad characters on others, trying to be bullies, trying to push for this or that, not thinking of anything except themselves, and so on. So, of course there are going to be disagreements. They never agree, and it’s not just a matter of being polite but really having a good character of thinking about the others and their situation is, and trying to figure out what the best would be for everybody and not just the best for our own side. I think that’s a good example here.
Karmic Causes of Close Ones Becoming Enemies
Verse 25, the poetical form:
When all who are close turn against us as enemies, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we’ve held grudges inside us with anger with thoughts of sly methods to cause others pain; hereafter let’s try to have less affectation, nor pretend to be kind while we harbor base aims.
Literally what it’s saying is:
At times when all who are close rise up as our enemies, this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having harbored inside us bad thoughts (about others). Now, let’s continually minimize our pretense and cunning.
This is referring to a situation when we’re close to people, and then all of a sudden something happens, and we break up. We’re no longer friends, and we hate them, and they hate us – this type of thing that often happens when close friendships end with bad feelings. This is coming from having kept inside us bad thoughts about others. What often happens in a relationship is that something bothers us about somebody else, but we never say anything. You keep this negative thoughts inside and you never discuss it, and then finally it reaches a point where it just explodes. Then the relationship breaks up, and you really can’t stand each other. The antidote for that is to continually minimize our pretends – that’s pretending to be nice when you’re holding all sorts of negative things inside; and cunning – using devious methods of not being honest, trying to get what we want in a very clever way, not really thinking about the other person, which is why they would have difficulty with us as well. Pretense is pretending to have good qualities that you don’t really have; you pretend to be so kind and friendly whereas inside you’re not, and cunning goes together with that: that’s hiding our negative things, pretending that we don’t have them.
This I think is quite a common syndrome because often we are afraid of losing a relationship, and then we’re alone, we’re abandoned, and we’re not going to get anybody else, and all of these sorts of things. So, we put up with a lot of garbage from somebody else but never say anything, and then it explodes, and then we become enemies. So, now let’s not keep negative thoughts inside us about others but be honest, not pretend and be all smiles; but if there’s something which is bothering us, to say so and work it out. But you have to wait for the right moment, and you have to reassure them that “I love you very much, but there are some things that you do that really bother me; how can we work on this?” You need to always be willing to compromise and always be willing to accept that I’m not perfect myself. If we want to improve the friendship, improve the relationship, if we agree that the most important thing about our relationship is to try to make it as healthy and positive as possible, then we set the guidelines from the beginning, if we can. It’s better to start from the beginning – if not, we can start a new beginning – that we’re going to be honest with each other, and if anything bothers us, we’re going to say so and not just let it sit and get worse and worse and worse. But then you have to be sure that it’s not just that I’m in a bad mood, and it’s not really the other person’s fault. Usually, it’s good to wait a little while, until when you’re not in such a bad mood. You come home and you’re in a bad mood, you’ve had a bad day, and everything that the other person does is wrong. Actually, they are not doing anything different whatsoever from what they usually do; there is nothing wrong from their side, it’s just we’re in a foul mood. You have to check, to make sure that’s not what’s happening. But if you see something repeatedly that’s annoying, say so, work it out, discuss it. Otherwise, it’s going to end up as it says here: you’re going to become enemies. Do the tonglen with that, and then we’ll end.
I should clarify what I said if it wasn’t so clear. Sometimes, when somebody does something that really hurts you, you need to say it quite immediately and not wait because the situation has changed and you just remain feeling hurt. That’s not good to keep inside. What I was saying was to check whether or not the way that you’re reacting is just because you’re in a bad mood from something else and has nothing to do with what this person just said or did. That’s the thing to watch to watch out for. If that’s the case, then wait until that bad mood passes. If we’re in a bad mood, and if we find that everything that the other person does is annoying, say it: “I’m in a bad mood so please it’s best that we keep a distance from each other.” Say it; don’t pretend be honest. This is the whole point here: be honest.
These are our three verses for today. I think that’s a good speed if we go through three verses each week, and we’ll continue.
Dedication
We have the dedication. Whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper, and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.