Recap
We are discussing the text Wheel of Sharp Weapons or Throwing Star Weapon, a Mahayana attitude training text. The author has basically been speaking about how to overcome, first of all, our self-cherishing and only thinking in terms of ourselves. For this, we need to think in terms of everybody having the same type of problem and, with the tonglen type of practice of giving and taking, taking on the problems of others and giving to them the solution or happiness – this attitude of cherishing others. Then the section that we’re in now is talking about overcoming grasping for a “true self” – grasping at ourselves as existing in some impossible way – and how our various problems come about because of that. We’re up to verse 61 in the new translation. In each of these verses we are invoking or calling upon Yamantaka as the representation of this forceful aspect of wisdom or discriminating awareness to be able to discriminate the way we truly exist from the way that we don’t exist – what’s impossible – and to smash our grasping for a “true me.”
Studying with More Teacher Than We Can Manage
It’s verse 62 in the old translation:
We have many great masters and teachers to guide us, yet shirking our duty, ignore what they teach. We have many disciples, yet do not ever help them; we cannot be bothered to give them advice. Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this selfish concern. Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release.
Verse 61 in the new one:
Our spiritual teachers are numerous, yet our ability to carry the load of our spiritual bonds is minute. Our disciples are abundant, yet it being time to nurture and help them is rare. 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 saying that we have many spiritual teachers. You know how some people run after teachers: anybody who comes to the town they run after – especially if they have the title Rinpoche or Tulku, then for sure they go. They commit themselves to this teacher, as opposed to what His Holiness says, which is just go in the form of going to a lecture, like at university, without really having any commitment to this teacher. But if we do make a commitment, it says here, “our ability to carry the load of our spiritual bonds is minute.” In other words, if you make a commitment to a spiritual teacher – which doesn’t mean that you have to actually speak to teacher, but it’s in your own mind that you say, “Now I take this person as my teacher,” particularly if you take some sort of tantric initiation from them – then that is very heavy, that’s very strong. You have formed a special relationship with this teacher and then you have a spiritual bond with this teacher and it’s very important to keep that spiritual bond or connection pure. It says here that we take on so many teachers, but we don’t have the ability – it says we can’t “carry the load” – to really keep the spiritual bond with all these teachers pure.
The reason for that is that we’re just running to more and more teachers, basically thinking in terms of the “true me” – “How wonderful I am, I want to be the highest, I want to be the greatest” – and going basically for ego reasons. We have to be really very certain of a teacher; examine them very carefully; and ask other people about them. Go just in a non-committed way to a lecture if we want to go but certainly don’t take an initiation from them unless we have really checked out this teacher and the practice that they’re giving an initiation for and so on. When we speak about keeping a spiritual bond pure, what that means is having great respect for the teacher; following their advice; and not focusing on negative qualities that the teacher might have but only focusing on the positive qualities. This is without being completely naive – thinking they’re perfect gods – but realizing that there is no point in focusing on negative qualities or shortcomings – who knows, it could be an inflation from our own minds. But even if there are shortcomings, we shouldn’t emphasize that. We also have a spiritual bond with all the other people who take initiations from this teacher – they are vajra brothers and sister – so we don’t get angry with them and certainly don’t get angry with the teacher. This becomes quite difficult when you don’t check out the teachers properly because sometimes what happens – and this has happened to many people – is that they have these initiations and spiritual bonds with teachers who disagree with each other.
Now, unfortunately there have been some sort of Star Wars-level splits within various lineages: in the Gelug tradition over a protector issue, in the Karma Kagyu lineage over the Karmapa issue and people were in a very difficult situation because they had received initiations from great lamas on both sides of the disagreement. Within the Gelug tradition, the disagreement was about a protector and in the Karma Kagyu tradition it was about which candidate was the real Karmapa. That becomes very difficult. Which side do you support if you have a pure spiritual bond with all your teachers? In that case, the only advice that was given that seemed to be appropriate was not to get involved in the issue; that these are, in a sense, almost political issues and don’t get involved. And if through your own examination you find that one side makes more sense to you than the other side, don’t have disrespect for the side that you disagree with and those teachers, but keep a bit of a distance. You don’t have to continue to have further teachings from them or consult with them. But that spiritual bond – it’s the Sanskrit word samaya or the Tibetan word damtsig (dam-tshig) – with the teacher is very important. It’s important to feel this close connection of trust.
Even in the area of trust, that doesn’t mean that you can’t see that teachers make mistakes. Great masters do make mistakes sometimes. His Holiness has said himself that when you look at some of the great masters who supported this protector issue, you could say that, well, most of their teachings were really great. On certain points they made mistakes and that’s not a breach of the relation with the spiritual teacher. It’s not that you lose respect for the teacher or anything like that or break with them. You can disagree with your teacher – then you would debate, for example. Tsongkapa disagreed on various philosophical issues with his teachers; so did Atisha, so did many. Marpa made a big mistake with his teacher Naropa when Naropa manifested a Buddha figure, a vajra and said to Marpa, “Which one do you prostrate to first, the teacher or the vajra?” Marpa said, “Well, I see you every day, this is the first time I have seen a vajra, so I prostrate to a vajra first,” and so he did that; and Naropa said, “You did make a big mistake.” He snapped his fingers and then the vajra disappeared and he said the source of all these figures is the guru. Nobody disrespects Marpa, but nevertheless he made a mistake. That shouldn’t be a source of a problem.
The point is here if we have taken on so many teachers but we’re not really able to maintain that close spiritual bond with all of them, then we really have to examine ourselves. Why are we running after collecting more and more teachers, more and more initiations and isn’t it just an ego trip? That’s what’s behind it. That’s why Yamantaka asks to smash this concept of a “true self” that I have to be the greatest, the highest, have to get everything.
So that’s this line: “Our spiritual teachers are numerous, yet our ability to carry the load of our spiritual bonds is minute.” Let’s think about that for a moment from our own experience. Do we go running after teachers, but we can’t really take the responsibility of having this close bond with them or how do we take this bond with a teacher? Do we take initiations really lightly just because they are given and everybody else goes, or what is it?
Now, bear in mind that there’s nothing wrong with having many teachers. Atisha, I think – the one that the Kadampa tradition in Tibet – had a 154 teachers, but the point is, are we able to maintain the spiritual bond with all our teachers purely? What happens when many of them ask for our help in doing this or that, can we actually do that? There is one rule, and I think that’s very important when you have many teachers, which is: don’t ask the same question (in terms of advice) to more than one teacher, especially a mo – this throwing the dice to get some prognostication of what to do when you have a difficult situation. If you ask a teacher for a mo, that means you’re going to follow whatever the mo says. It’s not that you continue to ask different teachers for a mo until you get the answer that you want, which happens. If you ask different teachers to do a mo and you get different answers, then you get very very confused. That’s part of the spiritual bond: if you’re going to ask a teacher to do a mo, then you’re going to follow what they say. Now, of course, if you ask a Dharma question and you are not satisfied with the answer – you have reached the limit of what that teacher could explain – you can ask another teacher, of course, but not in terms of personal advice – that’s dangerous.
Neglecting Our Own Students
The second half of the verse is: “Our disciples are abundant, yet it being time to nurture and help them is rare.” This is of course speaking about teachers who take on students or disciples; we have so many disciples and take on so many disciples, but we don’t have any time for them – to actually help them, to take care of them, to nurture them means to help them to grow in their spiritual practice, to help them just in general. This also is a big responsibility. If we accept somebody as our student, then, if they ask us questions, we need to be able to take care of them. If they need our help, we need to be able to help them. Of course, there are differences. There are the great gurus, the great lamas – His Holiness the Dalai Lama has only some personal students. He gives grand teachings to huge numbers of people, but the actual personal students that he directs – that’s relatively small. Mostly it would be the people who are in these lifetime retreats up in the mountains above Dharamsala. They come down – they used to go see Serkong Rinpoche, they also go to see His Holiness – these are the ones that require somebody of the level of His Holiness to be able to guide them further in their practices. But His Holiness takes care of them. And taking care of disciples also, in the context of a monastery, means being responsible to feed them, so taking care of their needs in general.
Now, how does this apply to us? This applies to us in terms of if we offer to help others – which would be equivalent to accepting somebody as our student – then do we really have the time to be able to help them? If we don’t, then just saying to more and more people, “Oh, you always can count on me, I’ll always be able to help you, blah blah blah” when really we don’t have the time and we can’t take care of them – again, that’s an ego trip, isn’t it? Of course, we let other people down. How easily do we actually offer our help to others? Do we really think in terms of the responsibility that that entails? This verse is really speaking about responsibility toward teachers and responsibility towards students. When we get into that type of relationship, it’s a very serious relationship and we really need to care for them. Often, I could imagine, some people are just moved by emotion to say, “Yes, I’m going to help you. I’m going to do this; I’m going to do that. You can always call me” and so on, but then when they actually do start calling you and asking you for things, we don’t answer. We can’t be bothered, or we just don’t have the time, we’ve overextended ourselves. How do you deal with that?
The thing is how to set certain limits – to say, “I only help you a little, but for something else you need to go to someone else.” Or when people say, “Can I ask you questions in the future?” I explain to them that I’m very busy, I get a tremendous amount of email every day, so please only ask what you really can’t find out from anybody else, and which is really urgent and important. You set certain limitations from the start, otherwise it gets quite out of hand. At least what I do with emails is that I have my computer on all day long and, when something comes in, I try to answer it immediately, just take care of it and then it’s finished. If I leave it till later, it’s a disaster, because the emails just pile up one after another and it gets buried and lost and I forget. Something which I should learn from His Holiness –I’m good at emails but terrible in class – is that His Holiness, at the end of his lectures, always asks for questions and he gives short answers to the questions. I’m terrible at that. I always give long answers to questions. Just say enough, don’t say more than is necessary.
In any case, we have this verse:
Our disciples are abundant, yet it being time to nurture and help them is rare. 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 the point that we really need to focus on in this whole discussion here: what is behind just blindly following out the emotion that, “Oh, I want to help everybody” and,”Yes, I’m going to always be there for you” and so on without being able to actually carry through on that? What’s behind that really is thinking in terms of this big, solid “me:” “I will be able to solve everybody’s problems of the universe, now.” Don’t just leave it on the level of naivety as being the cause of it. What this text is really trying to point out is that it’s this concept of the “true me” – this is the butcher, this is the one that ruins our chances for liberation because we’re promising more than we can deliver and then we disappoint people, or then we get angry when they actually start to ask us for our help. Or we lie: we say that we don’t have time when actually we don’t want to help them. All these things – what’s behind it is this concept of a solid “me:” “I can do this; I will help you.” This is the thing: is helping others in a sense an ego trip, unconsciously? Saying that you can do more than you actually can – it’s considering yourself more able than actually you are, so it’s an exaggeration of the self. Let’s think about that for a few minutes and then we’ll end.
Dedication
Let’s end with the dedication: we think whatever positive force has come from this, whatever understanding, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a course for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.