Recap
We are here discussing this text Wheel of Sharp Weapons or, more literally, Throwing Star Weapon – a Mahayana attitude training. This is one of our earliest texts on the genre called lojong, or attitude training, in which we want to cleanse ourselves of negative attitudes and train ourselves to have more positive ones and the main focus here is to overcome our self-cherishing attitude and what is behind it which is our grasping for a truly existent “me” – a “me” that exists in an impossible way as being some solid entity, totally independent of body, mind and so on, which, when we believe that we exist in that way, is the basis for our selfishness, the basis for our exclusive concern or dominant concern about ourselves. We use such methods as tonglen, which is the giving and taking method, in which we expand our view of who it is that we are concerned about. We’re concerned not just about ourselves, but we’re concerned about everybody because the type of problems that we all face in samsara are everybody’s problem; “It’s not just my problem, it’s everybody’s problem.” On that basis, we can think to take on the responsibility of dealing with everybody’s problems and give them the solution that we would give ourselves if we were dealing with it only for ourselves.
That helps us to overcome our self-cherishing attitude, our selfishness and then when we want to go deeper, we need to understand voidness of the self – voidness of all phenomena in general – in order to overcome our grasping for a solidly existent “me” which is behind this self-cherishing. We’ve also seen that that understanding of voidness is really important for being able to do the tonglen practice as well, because if we don’t have that understanding, then we tend to practice tonglen with a view a of a solid “me” – “I’m going to take on everybody’s suffering” – and then we grasp onto the me that now is suffering all of this and we’re not going to be able to deal with it at all. We need to understand that suffering arises from causes and conditions, can be eliminated through applying various methods and although various types of suffering are experienced on various individual being’s mental continuums, nevertheless the causes and conditions which bring that about are things which we all share in and so everything is interconnected, and nothing exists independently by itself.
In any case, we are dealing with the second main section of the text now in which we are looking at the various types of problems that arise because of grasping to this concept of a “true self” – the real, solidly existent me – and we are invoking or calling upon the image of Yamantaka, which is the forceful aspect of Manjushri – the embodiment of the wisdom, or clarity of mind, or discriminating awareness – whatever we want to call it – of all the Buddhas. It is an aspect of our Buddha-natures, an aspect of everyone’s mind, that has the strength to be able to cut through all the garbage that we involve ourselves with – the mental garbage of, “I don’t want to do this” and “me, me, me,” and like that. So, we need some strength to be able to cut through that and act in a proper, reasonable type of way.
Neglecting Helping Others Although Supposedly Following a Spiritual Path
We are also looking at two translations of the text: the old poetical translation that I had done many years ago and then the new more literal translation. First, so we’re up to in the poetical version, verse 63:
We promise to do many glorious deeds, yet in practice we give others minimal help. Our spiritual fame has been spread far and wide, yet inwardly all of our thoughts are repulsive not only to gods, but to demons and ghosts. 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.
In the literal translation this reads – verse 62:
Our spiritual promises are grand, yet our practice of helping (others) is tiny. Our spiritual renown is tremendous, yet when it’s examined, (even) worldly gods and demons would be ashamed. 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.
The verse is saying that, “Our spiritual promises are grand, yet our practice of helping others is tiny.” This can refer to taking bodhisattva vows. Very often, we take these type of vows that we’re going to help everybody and not get angry with them and not praise ourselves and put down others and all these sort of grand promises that we make in terms of helping others and yet our practice of helping others is tiny. Now we can look at in terms of the bodhisattva vows and bodhisattva practices, or we can look at it on a lesser level: this is not just speaking about regular promises to help others – although it could be like that – but it’s more a spiritual promise. When we are really trying to develop ourselves and we say, “I’m going to do better,” “I’m not going to get angry,” “I’m going to be patient with others,” and so on and we look at it as a spiritual practice – how sincere are we in that endeavor? Do we really mean it or is our spiritual practice just in a sense a show? Whether or not other people see it as something else but it can be a show also just for ourselves, that we’re really just playing, putting on an act – like a child pretending to be a grown-up, something like that; playing doctor or whatever we might be playing as a child – and yet in actuality we don’t really do anything to help others.
It’s quite interesting and you find this very frequently, that here the spiritual promises – might not necessarily be bodhisattva vows, it could be promises that we’re going to do various meditational practices, for instance – these people that take on tantric practices and recite various ritual texts and visualization practices and do all these sort of things and so they take on these practices, they promise they’re going to do them. Now what is behind that, of course, is the promise that you’re doing this in order to reach enlightenment and benefit everybody and yet they don’t actually help anybody. They just sit there and do their so-called holy spiritual practices, but when somebody asks them, “Can you help me do this or do that?” they’re not there.
This asks us then to look at our motivation, look at our level of sincerity in our commitment to the spiritual path and particularly to see that if we’re following the spiritual path that as Buddhist the main emphasis in it is being nice to other people and trying to help them as much as possible. The thing that is preventing us from doing that, from actually fulfilling our spiritual promises and what is causing us to help others only very little is this grasping, this concept of a “true self.” We’re thinking really in terms of just “me;” it’s a type of trip that we go on, an ego trip that we go on, with our spiritual practices and with our spiritual promises. It’s particularly true about taking vows. One of my teachers, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, always used to say that it’s very good that there’re only three sets of vows: the lay vows, the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows. It’s good that there’re only three sets because if there were more, we would take all of them and break even more of them, not keep them at all.
Many people take vows well before they’re ready, including taking the refuge vows. Some people think that refuge vows are things that one does first day you walk into a center and that is really an improper way of approaching Buddhism. One only makes a spiritual promise to – in the case of refuge – put a certain direction in one’s life, that this really is what I’m doing with my life, the meaning that I’m giving to my life of working to overcome my shortcomings and realize all my potentials the way the Buddhas have done it in full, the way that the Arya Sangha has done in part. You’re really serious about it. It’s only when we’re really, really serious about and we understand what it’s all about that then you make a spiritual promise to go in that direction. So, in the beginning, are we playing? I don’t know. So, that’s the question: what does it mean to play? I think when people do rituals, especially tantric rituals and have no idea what they’re doing and they’re just playing at being a yogi with vajra and the bell and the drum and they might even wear a certain costume and wearing the beads around their neck, the rosary and all of that sort of stuff – that’s playing. That’s playing and I really don’t think that that’s a very healthy thing to do. I don’t think it’s a very respectful thing to do. I think it’s very disrespectful.
Everything depends on the motivation. If we’re just wearing a costume and playing, then that’s not proper. But, in the beginning, it’s very difficult to have 100 percent commitment. It makes me think of the mental factor of indecisive wavering. There are types of indecisive wavering; indecisive wavering is when you wave back and for between one decision or the other, so commitment or not commitment. There is one type that tends in the direction – in our case here towards not committing ourselves. There is one form which is evenly balanced and then there is the other form which is tilting in the direction of becoming committed. I think when we have that type of indecision in which I can’t say I’m 100 percent committed, but I’m certainly more in that direction – sure, then we can proceed. But if it’s more, “Well, I don’t think so,” then I don’t think it’s proper to really make a promise. Here it’s talking about a promise; it’s not really speaking in terms of a practice. I think you can start practicing things like meditating on your breath and so on as a trial – I don’t quite know, but I’ll I try it out – I think you can do that but certainly not any sort of tantric ritual, that’s absurd. That’s absolutely absurd. Here it’s talking about a promise which is going in that direction of a vow; that you certainly don’t do until you’re really quite sure of what you’re doing. In the Tibetan sense, if it’s a lay person’s vow or a monastic vow, that’s for life; if it’s bodhisattva or tantric vow, it’s from now until enlightenment. That’s fairly serious. I really wonder how many people take it so seriously.
Let’s think about this point: “Our spiritual promises are grand, yet our practice of helping others is tiny.” We think we’re following a spiritual path. We promised to follow the spiritual path and yet how does that translate into our behavior with others? What is our understanding of the Mahayana spiritual path? Is it ritual or is it helping others? Is it empty promises or is it actually giving our help when it’s needed? Think about that for a moment.
We have to evaluate our capacity in terms of what our talents are. Some people have the talent to be able to speak to others and comfort them and help to make people more relaxed and so on; other people have capacity to write and make things clear; other people have capacity to heal; some people have capacity in art – we see where our talents lie and use that to help others. We have certain limitations but within those limitations, do we try to maximize what we can do? What I was asking is, what about responsibilities that we have in personal relationships, how does that fit into the formula? Again, I think that requires really evaluating what do we want to do with our life; it requires a great deal of maturity. Then, of course, when biology takes over and we fall in love and all these other things that can throw our bodhisattva path out the window for a while – that’s not so easy.
His Holiness says that we have to decide: are we someone who will have the capacity to live in retreat most of our life or to be involved with society? His Holiness has also said in terms of that that there are very few people who really have the capacity to do intensive meditation as the main thing of their life. For most people, it’s better to be involved with society in some form or another, depending obviously on your talents. That also can be a big ego trip; as Geshe Dhargyey always used to say, everybody thinks that they’re Milarepas, but you’re not.
Let’s go on with the verse: “Our spiritual renown is tremendous, yet when it’s examined even worldly gods and demons would be ashamed.” This is indicating that when we are known for being a spiritual teacher, a spiritual practitioner, meditator, or we’re a monastic, a monk, or a nun, people get the impression that we are so holy and so wonderful, but yet if we examine our conduct, it’s really very shameful. Again, I’m reminded of certain bodhisattva vows in which we vow not to do anything which would give people a bad impression of Buddhism – to put it in different words. It’s not exactly the way that the vow is stated, but, basically, we have a certain responsibility if we’re going to be known by others as a follower of Buddhism – whether as a monastic or lay person and so on – to act in a proper way. And acting doesn’t have to be only externally; what about internally? It’s like somebody who is off in a retreat and everybody thinks, “Oh this person is so great, they’re in retreat,” but what’s going on in this person’s mind is just pornographic movies all day long. So, that’s an example of our conduct when it’s examined even worldly gods and demons would be ashamed of how our minds work, what’s going on. So, again, this second aspect, the second part of the verse, is referring to our sincerity in our practice. How sincere are we?
The point is to examine ourselves: how much are we like this verse? How much would we, if it were somebody else who is needing help, actually get involved? It might be that “When it’s examined, (even) worldly gods and demons would be ashamed” of what really our level of willingness to get involved with other people’s problems actually is. Let’s think about that.
Dedication
Let’s end with the dedication. We think 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.