Recap
We’re here studying what I’ve usually translated in the past, in the old translation, as Wheel of Sharp Weapons, in the new translation Throwing Star Weapon, because that’s actually literally what it is: a throwing star. It’s in the genre of what’s called in Tibetan lojong, which means attitude training or mind training. It’s not so much mind training in the sense of training our intellect or powers of concentration but basically cleansing ourselves of negative attitudes and developing positive ones. The text is probably the oldest in this genre. This text speaks about, primarily, tonglen which is a practice known as giving and taking in which we take on the suffering of others and give them happiness. This is basically about overcoming what’s called the “demon” here, which is grasping for a “true self” – in other words, imagining that we exist as the center of the universe, the most important one. We imagine that there’s some sort of solid entity inside my head which is talking all the time and has to have its way and that everybody has to pay attention to me. This is basically the deepest troublemaker that causes us all our problems. Because we identify ourselves with this, we build up all sorts of negative karma through destructive behavior based on disturbing emotions like longing desire – “I have to get something in order to make that me secure;” or “I have to get something away,” so anger, in order to protect that “me.” It’s on the basis of this belief that we exist in this way that we have selfishness and self-cherishing, with which we consider ourselves the only one that counts; we’re the only one that we take care of, we don’t care about anyone else and this again causes so much of our problems and suffering.
The author here calls upon the image of Yamantaka (Skt. Yamāntaka). Yamantaka is the very forceful form of Manjushri (Skt. Mañjuśrī). Manjushri is the embodiment of the Buddha’s wisdom, clarity of mind and clear discriminating awareness to know reality: to discriminate between what is false and what is correct. We do exist, of course; the conventional “me” exists. I’m here, I’m talking to all of you. But we don’t exist in this impossible way as this “true self” that is so solid and seems to be so central in our thought and in our experience. Yamantaka, then, is a very forceful form of Manjushri, used to smash through the confusion with which we identify ourselves with this my “true self.”
Basically, a “true self” is an inflation of the conventional “me” that does exist – I’m here, I’m doing things and so on. Why do we feel this way? Why do we inflate it? Because naturally it feels as though there’s some solid “me” inside me. That’s what’s so horrible about samsara (Skt. saṃsāra): it feels as though there’s some solid entity “me” inside our head which is the author of the voice that’s talking there all the time and is the focus for our worries. I’m worried about me: “What do people think of me?” “What should I do now?” whereas in fact all that’s occurring in each moment is the arising and knowing the various objects – the five aggregates basically explains that. It’s just many things changing all the time: awareness, consciousness from different senses, feelings, etc. The way to put it all together in terms of a stream of continuity is “me” – the conventional “me” – but not some solid “me” which is either identical with some part of it or the whole of it or separate from it. We believe in it basically because it feels as though that’s how we exist in this impossible way. Everybody feels that way, including animals; it’s quite instinctive. That’s one of the really nasty things about samsara. It tricks us, it fools us – Dharmarakshita (Skt. Dharmarakṣita) uses that type of terminology.
We’ve gone through the first half of the text already, in which the author points out all sorts of different suffering problems that we might experience and points out their karmic cause in our previous behavior. We want to change that behavior and act in a more positive type of way. We think in terms of ourselves: we accept the problems, accept responsibility for the suffering that we have, based on the causes that we’ve built up. It’s the weapon of karma coming back at us from what we’ve done. We resolve not to repeat it. Then we do a process of tonglen, of identifying on a much larger scale with everybody. Everybody has this problem and we’re one of the people that have this problem and so it needs to be addressed in terms of everybody. We do tonglen: we take that problem on ourselves and try to dissolve the disturbance and the suffering in terms of the voidness of the mind and waves settling on the ocean. Then we give happiness to others: the solution, discipline, change of behavior, etc.
We are up to, in the new translation, verse 53. What we’ve been doing is also looking at the old translation which I did in 1973, which is a poetical translation – the one that was published as Wheel of Sharp Weapons by the library in Dharamsala (Skt. Dharamśālā) with Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey’s commentary. It is a very loose poetical translation that incorporates a lot of the commentary from Geshe Dhargyey. That is the reason why it was necessary to do a new translation which is just literally what actually Dharmarakshita says.
Calling on Yamantaka to Free Us from Self-Grasping
In the old translation, it is verse 54:
Hum! Hum! Show all your powers, O mighty protector. Dza! Dza! Tie up this enemy; do not let him loose. P’at! P’at! Set us free by your might, O great Lord over Death. Cut! Cut! Break the knot of self-interest that binds us inside.
The literal translation of it – I’ll explain it on the basis of the literal translation – is:
Hum! Hum! Produce miraculous emanations, o great Buddha-figure! Dzah! Dzah! Bind this enemy up tightly! Phat! Phat! Free us, I beseech you, from all our fetters! Slash! Slash! I beseech you, cut the knot of our grasping!
This verse has onomatopoetic words; some of them are seed syllables, some of them are just regular words in Tibetan. “Onomatopoetic” means words that are just used for the sound value; I’ve never heard really explanations of why these particular ones were chosen. “Hum! Hum!” – “hum” is usually the seed syllable for the mind of the Buddhas. “Produce miraculous emanations, o great Buddha-figure!” – “great Buddha-figure” here is referring to Yamantaka; and “miraculous emanations” is referring to how any Buddha can emanate and appear in any number of forms – in fact, an infinite number of forms. We’re asking Yamantaka to go out in all these various forms. It’s like for instance when you do any type of tantra practice and you visualize yourself as a Buddha-figure; or here, we would have the Buddha-figure in front of us. We imagine that, if there are interferences, they send out emanations. Many figures go out with rays of light and then, “Dzah! Dzah! Bind up this enemy tightly” – the enemy here is self-grasping and our self-cherishing, which is the attendant – what follows after the self-grasping. Self-grasping is grasping to ourselves as existing as this true solid self. “Dhza! Dzah! Bind up this enemy tightly” – so that it can’t continue to cause us trouble.
“Phat! Phat!” is a forceful syllable. “Free us, I beg you, from all our fetters!” – we’re talking about our wisdom here, our own wisdom on the basis of our own Buddha-nature. To free us “from all our fetters!” – a fetter is something which ties us up, which binds us so that we’re not able to really act compassionately with understanding. Then, “Slash! Slash!” – which is a word that means to cut; “I beg you, cut the knot of our grasping!”– grasping for the solid “me.” This is often what we visualize in graphic form when we have some of these forceful figures. They send out all sorts of emanations and they do this work of chopping off the various interferences that we have. I think it’s important to understand here that we’re not talking about external enemies; we’re talking about, basically, the enemy inside us: our wrong concept, our sense of an inflated ego. We want to use a very strong force of not so much an external figure coming and saving us like the great white knight on the horse, but rather we’re thinking more in terms of the strength of our own inner understanding. We’re cutting away this belief that we have that we exist as this impossible “true self.”
You call Yamantaka as an aspect of yourself which has the power and the strength to smash it. Often, we might think that we don’t have the strength, but actually we all do. It’s part of the Buddha-nature. There is strong energy there and it can be used. Instead of using that strong energy in a negative way, use it in a positive way to smash the selfishness in us, but without being self-destructing in a negative sense. We’re not whipping ourselves or we’re not beating ourselves because we think, “I’m bad” and “I’m stupid, I’m no good,” and put down ourselves, because the object of that would be the “true self.” We’re thinking of the “me” as the “true self,” and this “true self” is so stupid and so bad; but actually this “true self” – “I have to find the true me,” “I have to express the true me”– is a myth, it doesn’t exist at all. There is no such thing. We are all unique individuals, that’s for sure: I’m not you; if I eat, that doesn’t fill your stomach. But as my teacher, Serkong Rinpoche, would say, nothing special: nobody is special, we’re all the same. So, “produce miraculous emanations” is like getting our energy into a certain shape that is going to take care of this foolishness that we have inside, which is out real enemy. Let me read the verse again and then we can take a moment to reflect on it:
Hum! Hum! Produce miraculous emanations, o great Buddha-figure! Dzah! Dzah! Bind this enemy up tightly! Phat! Phat! Free us, I beseech you, from all our fetters! Slash! Slash! I beseech you, cut the knot of our grasping!
Particularly, I think it’s helpful to reflect on whether we actually have that inner energy to cut through all this confusion and so on; is that something that you can actually draw upon? Think about that. If you can draw upon it, try drawing upon it. After all, what we’re using here so much in tantra – and this text goes in that direction whereas most other lojong text don’t – is our powers of imagination. You use your imagination to draw on these energies; that’s the tool that we use, particularly in the beginning.
The key to this whole process really is the understanding of voidness and so it’s a little bit circular: we need to draw on this energy in order to have the strength to use and apply the understanding of voidness, but you have to have some understanding of voidness already in order to use it. In other words, what you do is really to call up this energy you have to already dissolve this “true self” in terms of voidness. Voidness is a total absence: “There is no such thing.” Voidness is an absence of something that was never there. We need to understand this is impossible: there is no such thing as this impossible “me.” If there were this impossible “me,” well, what is it? Is it the same as my mind? Then when I’m asleep, then am I no longer me? If I lose my memory, I have Alzheimer’s disease, is that no longer “me?” No, that doesn’t make any sense. Or is it just my body? Well, how much of my body? My body has changed every moment of my life; there is not even a cell that’s the same from when I was a baby, so is it still “me?” What is the “me?” Or is “me” something that’s separate from that? If it’s separate and existing by itself, how can I have any relation to a mind or a body?
You go through these logical arguments, and you realize that this is impossible that there is a solid “me” that is like some sort of isolated ping pong ball, existing by itself inside me. Then on the basis of that then you can draw out this strength to apply it more strongly, because it’s the belief in the “true me” that puts up the resistance and so it feels as though the “true me” is putting up the resistance and fighting against us. First you have to dissolve it – at least to a certain extent – because it’s the belief in this “true me” that makes us feel, “Oh, I can’t do this,” “I am weak,” “I’m no good,” This is ridiculous,” and so on; it puts up all sorts of excuses. You have to dissolve that at least to a certain extent with some understanding. Then, when you’re not thinking so strongly from this point of view of the “true me,” you can draw on this energy; and then, as it says in the verse, the refrain, over and over again: “Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a ‘true self,’ our foe.”
We have to really identify that this is the enemy: this is what’s causing me so many problems and it is like a butcher (“butcher” here means a slaughterer) that’s killing my chance for happiness and for liberation. But all of this tantra transformation and use of this energy absolutely doesn’t work unless you have some understanding of voidness and some bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) – that you’re doing this aiming for enlightenment – because the energy that you’re drawing upon is the Buddha-nature, enlightenment type of energy. You have to want that. You have to be aiming for that in order to really be able to utilize it properly.
The Five Poisonous Disturbing Emotions
Then the next verse is the last verse of this transition set of verses and in the old translation it is:
Appear Yamantaka, O wrathful protector; I have further entreaties to make of you still. This sack of five poisons, mistakes and delusion drags us down in the quicksand of life’s daily toil. Cut it off, cut it off, rip it to shreds!
The actual, literal translation of it – verse 54:
Come here, fierce Yamantaka, you Buddha-figure! Pray burst, right now – pow! pow! – this bag of karma and five disturbing emotions of poison, which keeps us stuck in the swamp of samsaric acts.
We are again calling forth fierce Yamantaka, this Buddha figure, raising up this energy: “Pray burst, right now – Pow! Pow! – this bag of karma and five poisonous disturbing emotions which keeps us stuck in the swamp of samsaric acts.” This is acting in a samsaric way, which means acting on a basis of this belief in the “true self” – we act destructively, for example – and it is a swamp. What keeps us in the swamp and drags us down, is a bag of karma – like a big bag around our head, filled with all our negative karma, the karmic aftermath from our negative destructive actions that’s going to ripen.
This bag is full of not only karma but the five poisonous disturbing emotions. These are the disturbing emotions of (1) longing desire with which we exaggerate the qualities of something and then think, “I’ve got to get it” – this “true self” has to get it. Or (2) longing desire and then anger and repulsion, in which you exaggerate the negative qualities of something, make it into some solid horrible thing and think, “I’ve got to get rid of it” – away from this “true self.” Then there is (3) naivety with which we’re just so confused. We stay inside this belief of the “true self” and don’t understand anything; we’re just unaware. Then (4) arrogance and pride: “I’m so much better than everybody else in this point or that point;” and (5) jealousy or envy: “This other person got it, and I didn’t; I should get it, they don’t deserve it.” These are the five poisonous disturbing emotions. They’re disturbing; the definition of a disturbing emotion is that when it arises it causes us to lose our peace of mind and self-control. It’s because of these disturbing emotions that then we act in a destructive way, or it can even be a constructive way: I’m so attached to you that I do nice things to you so that you’ll never leave me. That also is karma, and it also keeps us in samsara, even though it might give us some happiness and we’re actually doing something positive for somebody. Nevertheless, inevitably there’s going to be problems that are involved with this.
That is the bag that we all carry around with us – this big sack around our neck. It’s dragging you down. We walk around with this big bag tied around our neck, full of our karma and these disturbing emotions and it keeps us stuck in the swamp of samsara and our samsaric acts. It’s a very lovely poetical image, I must say. What we ask Yamantaka – this inner strength and wisdom of ourselves – is to “burst, right now – pow! pow!” Stick a knife into it – “pow! pow!” – break the bag so that we’re free of it. This is the image that is used here. These interim verses are helping to draw up this strength that’s within us that then is going to be used in all these 40 or so verses that follow from here, in which we say, “Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a ‘true self,’ our foe.” This is what I used to translate as, “Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this treacherous concept of selfish concern. Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release.” It’s a more poetical way of saying it, but I think the new, more literal way, is not bad either. We can use both or either of the translations; it doesn’t matter.
Come here, fierce Yamantaka, you Buddha-figure! Pray burst, right now – pow! pow! – this bag of karma and five poisonous disturbing emotions, which keeps us stuck in the swamp of our samsaric acts.
I think it’s very important to recognize that it’s these disturbing emotions and the karmic results of them – based on the destructive behavior that these disturbing emotions bring – that really is dragging us down in samsara and keeping us there. You have to recognize who the true enemy is. It’s this belief in a “true self” and then all the disturbing emotions that come on the basis of wanting to assert it, defend it and protect it and worrying about it. There’s also indecisive wavering – that’s another major disturbing emotion: “What should I do?” “Should I do this, should I do that? You can’t decide what to eat from the menu or what to wear, as if this “me” is so important – it’s so important what I actually eat, what I actually choose from the menu. Whether I wear a red shirt or a yellow shirt – what difference does it make? But we get into so much worry about things like that. We need to recognize that this is the bag that keeps us stuck in the swamp of samsaric up and down: sometimes things go well, sometimes they don’t go well; sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re unhappy; sometimes people are nice to us, sometimes the same person is not nice to us. That’s samsara. We’ll take a five minute break and then we’ll continue for the last part of our class.
The Three Worse Rebirth States
Now we start the second half of the text with the second major section, with which we want to identify all the various problems and negative attitudes that we have, or negative syndromes that we have, based on belief in this “true self,” this “true me.” We start with verse 56, in the old, poetical translation:
We are drawn to the sufferings of miserable rebirths, yet mindless of pain, we go after its cause. Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this treacherous concept of selfish concern. Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release.
The literal translation, verse 55:
Though having brought on ourselves the sufferings of the three worse rebirth states, we rush toward their cause, not knowing to be alarmed. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.
We’ve “brought on ourselves the sufferings of the three worse rebirth states.” Through our negative actions – like a wheel of sharp weapons, this karmic weapon wheel – we’ve brought on ourselves the sufferings of rebirth in the three worse rebirth states. That is the joyless hell realms, where the suffering is very intense; and then there are the clutching ghost realm or hungry ghost realm and the animal realm. We brought on ourselves these types of suffering – these types of terrible rebirth states – yet “we rush toward their cause.” In other words, we run after doing the negative actions that are going to cause this continuing horrible consequence, “not knowing to be alarmed:” we don’t know to be shocked at ourselves that we’re acting so stupidly. Why are we acting this way? Because of this butcher, the “true self,” the enemy. And so, we want to “crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept!” – this concept of the “true self.” “Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher – we deal the death blow with the understanding of voidness – “to the heart of this butcher, a ‘true self,’ our foe.”
First of all, what do we think of these three worse rebirth states? Is that something which is just a myth – these joyless hell realms, the ghost realm – or is that something that we can actually take seriously? The animal realm we can understand; it’s certainly not nice to be an animal. I like to call them “creeping creatures” – I think that’s a much better, more literal of what the word is both in Sanskrit and in Tibetan. It’s something that moves bent over, literally. The image is not somebody’s pet poodle in an apartment with pink toenail polish (although I think such a poodle probably is suffering a lot) and certainly we don’t think of Bambi and nice things in a Disneyworld type of setting, a cartoon setting. We think in terms of cockroaches and rats. It’s really quite awful to be hunted in the jungle: to be, if you’re an insect, eaten alive by other insects. It’s really quite horrible to be an animal, always living in fear of having your food taken away or being beaten by somebody else and just be under the influence of your instincts. But what about the ghost realm and the so-called hell realms? What do you think of those?
We’re talking about rebirth states and the way that I like to explain them – I find it makes it much more understandable – is to think in terms of the spectrum of what we can experience. For instance, in terms of vision, using the hardware that we have as human beings we only can perceive part of the spectrum. But there’s much more to the spectrum of light than just what humans can see; there many animals that can see in the dark, which we can’t see so well in and so on. With sound as well, we’re limited; a dog can hear much higher frequencies than we can hear. By extension, we can think in terms of the physical sensation of pleasure and pain and the human hardware – the human apparatus – can only experience part of that spectrum. If it becomes too painful, the body automatically first goes into shock and then goes unconscious, so there’s a limit to how much pain we can experience before the body shuts down. Similarly in the other direction, with pleasure, we destroy it. For instance, if you analyze an itch, an itch is intense pleasure, actually. I had a horrible rash for many years on the top of my head and face and neck and the only way to deal with it was to view it as pleasure and then relax and enjoy it, because it is intense pleasure. But we feel it’s too much, so have to destroy it, you have to scratch it. It’s very interesting to observe an itch next time you have one. It’s the same thing usually when you approach the more and more intense bliss – as with approaching orgasm – then automatically the body goes faster and faster and basically you want to destroy it, because then it’ll stop.
There are limits to the part of the spectrum that we can experience. But I think that just as a dog can hear more, likewise it should be possible to imagine different type of hardware that would allow us to experience more on the pain level of the spectrum and more on the pleasure side of the spectrum. We’re talking of a mental continuum, our mind stream. The mental continuum is based on the type of hardware that we have: a body that can experience different parts of these different sense spectrums. “The trapped beings in the joyless realms” is literally how you translate it: you’re trapped there – it’s very difficult to get out – and there’s intense pain. These would be the hell realms. The clutching ghosts are those that are suffering intensely from hunger and thirst and pain in the belly and they can never satisfy it. Anything that they drink turns to acid or their neck is so small that nothing will go down. They run after mirages of food and when they get there, there is nothing; it turns into some monster that eats them or something like that. That’s another level of pain. Then animals have their own pain, like an insect being eaten alive by a spider, or a fish being eaten alive by other fish – it’s really quite horrible. That’s how I understand this. Then the god realms, these divine realms, would be experiencing more on the pleasure side of the spectrum than we can with our physical hardware. I understand it like that.
Obviously, we have brought on ourselves, by our own destructive behavior, experiences of far more pain and suffering than we could as humans in these three worse rebirth states. Yet we are not alarmed at the fact that we are rushing toward their causes – that we continue to do those negative actions, those destructive actions that will cause us to experience such pain. This pain is not a punishment. We have a lot of pain in this lifetime as well. Whether it’s physical pain, emotional pain, psychological pain – a lot of pain comes from destructive behavior. Where does this destructive behavior come from? It comes from thinking of ourselves as this true solid “me” that has to assert itself, has to always argue and get its own way. If the other person disagrees, then you have to really argue and fight with them because “I’m always right.” Belief in that “true self” is the enemy, the butcher that causes us to continue to run after the causes for these worse rebirth states. That’s what this verse is all about.
Though having brought on ourselves the sufferings of the three worse rebirth states, we rush toward their cause, not knowing to be alarmed. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.
We have a concept of ourselves as this “true self” and that’s what you want to destroy: the concept, the belief in this. It’s just a distorted concept that we have of how we exist, of who I am. This true solid “me” that, if I’m frightened, hides behind the walls, afraid of coming out because “I’m going to get hurt again.” That’s the “true self” – belief in the “true self” – as if there were some frail little thing inside that could get hurt and, if it comes out, it’s going to get hurt. All we have is our moment-to-moment experience. Somebody yells at us, somebody rejects us; we get on with life. Now, that’s not so easy, of course, but one has to get used to observing that it is so. Somebody rejects us – what are they doing? They’re saying various words to us which are just vibrations of air, of which we understand one word at a time. We attach some meaning to it and then we don’t see the person anymore, so we don’t have a visual perception of the form of that person’s body. That’s all that’s happening, it’s all that we’re experiencing. But then it’s a concept: “I, poor me, have been rejected by horrible you,” and then we keep on thinking about that over and over again. These are all concepts, and it makes us miserable.
Let’s think about this verse once more and then we’ll end the class.
Though having brought on ourselves the sufferings of the three worse rebirth states, we rush toward their cause, not knowing to be alarmed. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.
Dedication
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from all this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.