Recap
We are studying this text Wheel of Sharp Weapons. In it, the author Dharmarakshita speaks about the way in which we can change our attitudes and cleanse them so that we get rid of the negative attitudes that we have that cause so much problems and. He speaks about how we can develop positive attitudes as well and this is done through a variety of methods, but the main focus here is on tonglen – giving and taking. This means taking on the problems of others and giving them our happiness, or the solution. This is done on the basis of seeing the disadvantages of the self-cherishing attitude with which we are concerned only about ourselves and seeing the advantages of cherishing others, of having our major concern be with their welfare. So, we do this tonglen practice – this giving and taking practice – on the basis then of the wish to take on others’ problems; and love for them – giving them happiness.
The text speaks about then the disadvantages of the self-cherishing attitude. The first part of it speaks about the various sufferings and problems that we experience; and what their karmic causes are; and what we would need to do to change our behavior so that we would no longer experience these types of problems. We approach these verses in terms of tonglen – of taking on that same problem that everybody has and giving them the same solution that we would need ourselves. This is because we see that these problems are not just our own private, individual problems, but they are everybody’s problem. Since we are part of everybody, therefore it is proper that we pay attention and take care of the problem for everyone.
Then the second part of the text has been speaking about what underlies the self-cherishing attitude and that was the misconception about how we exist and how everything exists. We tend to think in terms of ourselves existing in impossible ways. We think that, for instance, we are some sort of separate entity, somehow inside our body or inside our minds, that is independent of everything else and that is not affected by anything else. This “me” is in control of the body and mind and uses it like some sort of machine or tool; and on this basis it tries to get what it wants and get rid of what it doesn’t want and make itself secure and so on. But all of this is a myth. There is no such thing. Although we do exist – the conventional “me” exists – we don’t exist as some sort of separate thing, encapsulated in plastic, as it were, inside our heads. But we have this misconception, this concept of this false “me” which we think is the “true me,” the “real me,” and on that basis we get self-cherishing.
The text went through quite a number of examples of how we have very lofty wishes and aspirations, but they all get sabotaged and don’t work out because of this grasping for a solid me, the “true me.” We therefore have to smash this concept, and we call upon Yamantaka as a representation of the very forceful aspect of the wisdom, or understanding, or deep awareness of all the Buddhas. It’s the forceful form of Manjushri who represents that understanding or wisdom and we invoke that power not so much externally but internally as part of our Buddha nature factors that we have that energy, that strength, that we can call upon to smash through these misconceptions.
Practicing Tonglen
Now, we are up to, in the new translation, verse 93; in the old translation, verse 94. Let’s read the old poetical translation:
With all of the sufferings that others experience, smother completely our selfish concern. The sufferings of others arise from five poisons; thus, whichever delusion afflicts other beings take it to smother delusions of self.
The new translation, which is the more literal translation:
As much suffering that there is in samsaric beings, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on my grasping at a “true self!” As much of the five poisonous disturbing emotions that there are in anyone, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one, who’s the same class!
This is speaking in terms of the tonglen practice. Here, in the next verses, Dharmarakshita is putting great emphasis on tonglen as a way to smash through this grasping for a “true self.” We called upon Yamantaka. Yamantaka was that wisdom to understand that there’s no such thing as this impossible me and we invoked that strong force of Yamantaka in the verses that came just before here. Remember, we said in the previous verse:
We beseech you, free us from this enemy, with your great ferocious force! We beseech you, smash this bad thought, with your great discriminating awareness! We beseech you, protect us from karma, with your great compassion! We beseech you, demolish (this) “true self,” once and for all!
Having invoked this strong power, this strong force, then we want to use that to practice tonglen. In other words, we need to combine that understanding of voidness with the whole tonglen practice. Otherwise, to do the tonglen practice (the giving and taking practice) without some understanding of voidness can become really quite dangerous in a way; it can cause a great deal of misapplication of the method.
Now, what are we doing then in this practice of tonglen? It says, “As much suffering that there is in samsaric beings, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on my grasping at a ‘true self!’” We have this misconception, and we could imagine this misconception of a “true self,” thinking that we have a “true self” somewhere – for instance, in our hearts – as a very heavy thought that we have. What we want to do is to heap all the suffering of others on that: we want to have the courage to take on the suffering and the problems of others and have it destroy that concept of a “true self.” This can be done with many different types of visualizations – we’ll get into that. But we want to destroy that and how does that destroy it? Well, it destroys it in many different ways. First of all, we use very strong visualizations of things that we don’t want – things that naturally we are repelled by, repulsed by. We use stronger and stronger visualizations to help us to gain the courage to accept these thing, because it’s this concept of a solid “me” that says, “I don’t want to deal with these things.”
So, what do we do? First, we imagine the suffering and the problems of others coming into us in the form of dirty substances – motor oil and grease and suds and coal, dust, ink, these sorts of things – toward which we would naturally have a feeling – at least most of us would – of “I don’t want to get dirty; I don’t want to get this inside me.” That concept of a solid “me” puts up resistance. But we’ve invoked that power of Yamantaka to have the courage to smash that concept of a solid “me” that says, “I don’t want to get my hands dirty,” so that we actually deal with the problems of others. Often, we don’t want to deal with the problems of others – “It’s too messy;” “I’m too busy;” “I can’t really get involved” – and this is what we want to smash. So, we imagine these things coming into us. We imagine that they come into us in these dirty forms, but what is important is to then dissolve this. We have some feeling of the suffering of others. It’s important to empathize, to imagine that we take it on, but it’s not that it just goes into us and leaves us, and you don’t feel anything. You want to feel something in terms of their problems, their unhappiness, or their suffering. But we also want it to be able to dissolve with an understanding of voidness – that these things arise based on causes and conditions and concepts, mental labels and so on. In that way we don’t think of the suffering or the dirty substances as some solid thing that’s now inside me and we freak out about that. You don’t want to hold inside you all the pain, but you want to be able to, in a sense, feel it – it’s the conventional truth – but also understand its deepest truth, that it doesn’t exist in these impossible ways. We can also do this in a Kagyu Mahamudra type of way. We think in terms of the mind calming down. These are like ripples on the water on the ocean. These are just waves of the mind and we can also imagine that the suffering and so on calms down.
We imagine these dirty substances coming into us and that smashes the resistance that comes up because of this concept of the solid “me” and believing in the concept of the solid “me.” That’s what we want to do. We have to have the courage to smash through that and that’s why we invoke the strong force of Yamantaka to smash through that. We’re going to accept that without feeling uptight because normally we would feel very uptight. The resistance that automatically comes up is an inner feeling of tension and uptightness. Then, once we have been able to calm that down with an understanding of voidness, in one manner or another, we contact or access, in a sense, the natural warmth and happiness of the mind – especially if you do this in a calming down way with an understanding of voidness in terms of the nature of the mind. Then on that quieter level, we can give happiness to others, the solution to others – whatever that might be. It could be a change in their behavior like we had in the first part of the text; or it could be giving them understanding, giving them warmth, giving them love – whatever it might be. That is the first round of visualization that we do.
Then we do it more strongly. If you’re able to deal with that level of dirty substances coming in, representing the sufferings and problems of others, then we imagine it coming in in the form of urine, feces, diarrhea, vomit, snot. This type of things you really don’t want to touch and get inside you and the resistance is even stronger. That way, you work with a deeper level of resistance. Then the third level is that you imagine the suffering and problems coming into you in the form of whatever it is you’re most afraid of. That might be spiders, or rats, or fire, or whatever it is that you are the most afraid of – you use that, because then that really is the strongest resistance that you put up, that this concept of a solid “me” puts up.
Obviously, we need a great level of emotional maturity in order to be able to do these practices. These are not things for beginners. These are not things for emotionally unstable people to practice – not at all; and it has to be combined with some understanding of voidness and, of course, compassion for others, which is why we are taking these things on. That we want to with compassion – remove these types of sufferings from others, smash through the self-cherishing and selfishness with which I don’t want to deal with it. In the process of doing that with our understanding of voidness, we want to smash the belief in the solid “me.” Then, on the basis of the natural warmth and the qualities of the mind, we want to give them whatever it is that will benefit them the most – whatever they need – with love: the wish for them to be happy and to have the causes for happiness. That’s the tonglen practice and that’s what is being mentioned here:
As much suffering that there is in samsaric beings, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on my grasping at a “true self!” As much of the five poisonous disturbing emotions that there are in anyone, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one, who’s the same class!
The Five Poisonous Disturbing Emotions
So, we take on not just the suffering of others, but we take on the causes of that suffering – these poisonous emotions or attitudes. That’s referring to (1) greed or attachment. There are two aspects here. Greed and desire are wanting to have something; longing to have things that we don’t have and exaggerating their positive qualities. Attachment is not wanting to let go of what we do have – again, exaggerating its positive qualities. That’s one poisonous attitude. The second poisonous attitude is (2) anger, repulsion: we exaggerate the negative qualities of something, and we want to smash it, destroy it, get rid of it, stop it. Then we have (3) naivety, with which we just don’t understand what’s going on in terms of the results of our behavior in terms of reality – and specifically it’s this type of unawareness that accompanies destructive behavior. That’s specifically what naivety is referring to when we use a very technical term here – “poisonous attitude.” You just don’t understand, or we have it wrong. Then there is (4) pride and arrogance, with which we think that we are better than everybody else in some way or another. Then there is (5) jealousy, with which we are envious of what others have and want it ourselves and we begrudge that they have it, unhappy that they have it.
These are the five poisonous emotions – so (1) greed or attachment, (2) anger, (3) naivety, (4) jealousy and (5) pride and arrogance. The verse says, “Heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one, who is the same class!” In other words, we throw it onto our own poisonous attitudes that we have, the same poisonous emotions that we suffer from. What you do when you do this practice is, when we ourselves are experiencing this type of disturbing emotion, then you transform it by thinking in terms of tonglen. “Now I am very angry” or “Now I’m very attached” – well, rather than getting completely caught up in my little problem of this and my anger and my attachment, we think of everybody’s attachment, everybody’s anger. “May everybody’s anger, everybody’s attachment come into me.” Like that, we have a much more universal picture of anger, of greed and it is much easier to realize that this is a terrible problem that everybody has, not just my own. If you have your own little one, then you identify with it – the self-cherishing – then you tend to act it out and get caught up in it. If you think in terms of the greed of the whole world, the attachment of the whole world, then my little attachment, personal attachment – they’re very small compared to that. You don’t get so caught up in it. When we have that courage to take on the problem, the universal problem – that also gives us the courage to be able to smash it. So, it works like that; “Heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one who’s in the same class!” – who has the same type of problems.
One thing that maybe I didn’t stress enough is that when we are taking on all the disturbing emotions of others, what is important is to see that what is behind these disturbing emotions. Why do I act with greed or anger and why do others act with greed or anger? It’s because of self-cherishing and because of grasping for a “true me.” In taking on these problems, we pile it on top of this. It says in the verse: “Heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on my grasping at a ‘true self!” We throw everything on that with the courage to overcome it and by doing these really horrific visualizations and invoking the force of Yamantaka – thinking, “Ahh, I want to do it” – and take on all this crap from others, that helps us very much to overcome that self-cherishing and that self-grasping which underlies these disturbing emotions. That’s why we’ll get in a few verses from now a repetition of the initial imagery of the text, which was that the peacocks live on poisonous plants and are able to transform them into something like medicine for themselves. This is what a bodhisattva does in terms of taking on the disturbing emotions of everybody and transforming them. Whereas if you’re not ready to be able to do that, then the image is that you’re like the crow who eats the poisonous plants and gets violently ill and could die.
Thinking in Terms of Buddha-Nature
This strength within us, I think, comes from thinking in terms of Buddha-nature – that we all have the qualities that will enable us to become a Buddha – and it’s basically to gain perseverance. Shantideva speaks about it: if flies and earth worms and so on can become a Buddha, why can’t I? It’s that line of thinking. Buddha started out the same way as I did, and he developed the courage to do this and so it’s necessary to develop self-confidence. Self-confidence is on the basis of the conventional “me.” That’s why if we have not affirmed the existence of the conventional “me,” but just refuted the false “me,” then we’re left with nothing; and if you’re left with nothing, you can’t have any self-confidence and strength. So, you have to confirm the conventional “me” – “Yes, I’m here. I’m doing this, I’m doing that” – but not a solid-entity “me.” This is a very delicate difference here. But the courage comes from self-confidence, which comes from understanding Buddha-nature on the basis of the conventional “me” – not on the basis of the false “me.”
The energy is there. We have to realize that we all have energy. That’s one of the basic qualities that we have of it that could be considered to be like a Buddha-nature quality. We have energy. That energy can vibrate at a peaceful level or at a strong level. That’s why you have, in many of these mandalas, the so-called peaceful and wrathful deities. We have both levels of energy. Our energy can vibrate on either level depending on the situation and the necessity and the stronger that we feel connected to others, then the stronger our compassion will be and that gives us the courage. So, if we really can develop equanimity toward everybody – see everybody has having been our mother, or father, or closest friend – and the kindness that we have been shown and develop the appreciation of that kindness and the wishing to do something in return, then we will develop this heartwarming love. With it, whenever we see anybody, our heart warms up like when seeing our most beloved close friend, our own child. Then naturally we develop the courage to want to help this person and take away their suffering, because we would naturally have that courage if it were our own child, or our own mother, or father. If we could develop that type of recognition toward everybody, then that gives the courage. So, there are many different ways to gain the courage and strength. Buddha-nature, compassion – these are the main aspects; and an affirmation of the conventional “me” – that I can do it. Any other questions or comments?
Practicing Tonglen (Continued)
Now, as I said, there are various visualizations that we can do with the tonglen practice. The simplest, most tame version of it is that we imagine black light coming in – although, of course, light cannot be black, but put that aside. We imagine black-colored light coming in and white light going out when we do this tonglen practice. That’s fairly tame. Imagine, as we breath in, black light, representing all the sufferings of others, coming in through the right nostril; and when we breath out, our happiness and so on goes out in the form of white light to everyone. If you’re not ready to be able to practice the stronger visualizations – and that each person has to judge for themselves – then they can do it with this level of visualization. If you’re really emotionally unstable, don’t do this type of tonglen practice because you’ll freak out.
If you have indifference toward the suffering of others – well, indifference can be for several reasons. One is that you feel that we’re not connected to each other. But we all form one body of life, as Shantideva says, so to feel indifferent would be like the hand being indifferent to the problem of the foot, the pain of the foot. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s one level of dealing with indifference. Indifference could mask being afraid and so you are indifferent. You don’t want to deal with the problems of others because you’re afraid you might fail, you might not be good enough, this type of thing. Indifference could be based on laziness and then we understand that laziness gets us nowhere and our precious human life is going to pass very quickly. Death will come all too soon. If we’re lazy and we do nothing, then what’s going to happen? We can think in terms of “I’m indifferent to others,” would I want others to be indifferent to me and to my problems? Just as I wouldn’t want others to be indifferent, they don’t want me to be indifferent to them. I don’t want others to ignore me if I’m hit by a car and lying on the street, bleeding and hurt. I don’t everybody to ignore me and not wanting to get involved, so likewise, they don’t either. In this way, we can practice on a simpler level equalizing and exchanging self with others.
We had a very complex exercise in the sensitivity training course dealing with blocked feelings. It’s very important to calm down and develop equanimity toward everybody. Remember, we had the exercise in which you tickle your hand, or you scratch your hand very hard, or you just hold your hand, to see that they’re just feelings. That way, we learn not to be afraid of feelings, because when we deal with the suffering of others, it’s important to actually feel that suffering, to empathize with it, but not to go overboard. When we take on all the greed of others, then that doesn’t mean that now we become super greedy; or we take on the anger of others, that now we become super angry. It doesn’t mean that. Or if we take on the stupidity of others, now we become super stupid. But you try to feel the suffering that’s involved with that and to understand that and to develop empathy and concern, in which we take the other person seriously. This is way to overcome indifference: is when we feel indifferent toward others, we are not taking them seriously. In other words, we are ignoring their conventional reality. There are two extremes that we always want to avoid in Buddhism: one is to make ourselves or others into solid, truly existent entities; but the other extreme is to deny their existence altogether and so we could be indifferent toward others because we deny their existence altogether. They are like characters in a movie or on a television screen and it’s just me sitting in my head watching them as entertainment, like watching the war on television, but it’s not real to us. So, we’re denying their conventional existence.
Let us do a little bit of practice then. The practice is best when we are actually experiencing some disturbing emotions. Often you do it when you’re sick. You have a cold or something like that, so rather than thinking “poor me” – or you have cancer, “poor me” – you think of everybody. “There are so many people who have colds. There are so many people who have cancer. So, I will think of all of them, take all of that on myself to overcome my self-pity of poor me,” because when you think of everybody, it smashes your self-pity: “I’m not the only one; what about everybody else?” Smash that self-cherishing and develop concern for everybody. You have to find a cure for cancer not just for me but for everybody who has it.
Likewise, we have to find a cure for anger, for attachment, for arrogance, for whatever it might be – laziness, attachment, low self-esteem – whatever type of problem we have. At that time when we are experiencing it, rather than getting into the downward spiral of feeling sorry for ourselves and then acting on the basis of that disturbing emotion, do the tonglen practice with the aim to smash that self-cherishing. Sure, you want to, in the process, give the solution to everybody else, but realistically speaking, it’s not going to work. You’re not going to give it to everybody else unless we have some super karmic relation, and some super thing is going on. In a few cases that’s possible, but in most cases what it is the most effective for is developing the courage of a bodhisattva to deal with others’ problems and smashing the self-cherishing attitude and the self-grasping. Then it can be very successful. It is also effective for generating a state of happiness and kindness in the face of our suffering, rather than nastiness.
If there is some particular disturbing emotion that we have been feeling lately – maybe we’re not feeling it right this moment unless you’re feeling boredom and indifference about what I’m talking about – then you can use that. But, in any case, try to do this tonglen practice in terms of that. You can do it on a very tame level with the black and white light, or we can try, if we are emotionally more stable and mature, with these stronger visualizations of dirty substances; then oil and grease and then the diarrhea and vomit and urine; and then whatever it is that we might be most afraid of: insects or rats, or snakes, or whatever it might be.
Let’s try that. First you need to calm down, focusing on the breath and think of the suffering of others and on the basis of compassion for them, love for them – we’re all interconnected and so on, we all face the same problems. Then do the tonglen practice. Also, I should mention that although what, ideally, we want to be able to do is with each breath take on the suffering from others and each outbreath give them happiness, that’s extremely difficult to do, especially in the beginning. So, we can do a longer phase of taking on the problems of others and then, after that, a longer phase of giving them happiness. It’s only when we’re very familiar with this that you can alternate these with each breath.
Also, I find that when you do this – let’s say, you take the problem of loneliness, for example and then you think of all the lonely people in old age homes and so on and you think of that – it really does give you much more courage to deal with their problem because it’s not just me. If it’s just me, then it’s very hard to generate contentment, enjoying your own company – this type of things. But when you think of all these really suffering people in the old age homes that are basically ignored there and they’re lucky if some relatives come on Sunday to visit them for a half hour or an hour and feel uncomfortable with them, then it gives you much more courage and energy to generate a sense of contentment and generate it toward them – “May they have this.” In doing that you feel that as well for your own loneliness. Actually, it can be a very effective way of dealing with these different problems and trying to change the mindset so that we generate the appropriate opponent mindset to give to others and in the process of doing that we give it to ourselves. You overcome the resistance to doing this with these visualizations and, of course, there has to be some understanding of voidness, as I said. It’s a very complex practice. It’s not a simple practice and by no means should we ever trivialize this practice. But it is a very powerful one, a very effective one and you really have to get into it before you start to appreciate a little bit how it works. It’s not just simply black light in, white light out, black light in, white light out, la-di-da, without feeling anything or thinking anything.
Coming here on the subway, I was sitting across from someone who was really drunk, who was guzzling big bottle of beer the whole time with the beer dripping down his chin while he was drinking it. He was really drunk. Now you could feel indifferent and just feel uncomfortable – “I wish this guy would leave already” – or one can also then think in terms of the suffering of this poor person and how sad that is. Now, you can take on the suffering and think of the suffering of all alcoholics and so on, but here what it’s saying is that although that’s a very good practice to do and you would smash your self-cherishing as well that would say, “I really don’t want to get involved with this drunk.” Nevertheless, there is this whole other level of practice that is even more powerful, which is, as it says here, “Heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one who is the same class,” when we have the same problem and you take it on from others. That’s even stronger. We’re the same. We may not be alcoholics, so that example is not so relevant to us, but anger certainly is. All of us get angry, or have attachment, or longing desire, or these five poisonous attitudes or as it says, five poisonous disturbing emotions: greed or attachment, anger, naivety, pride or arrogance and jealousy or envy. We all have those from time to time, so we work on that.
Then let’s end the session here with reading the verse once more:
As much suffering that there is in samsaric beings, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on my grasping at a “true self!” As much of the five poisonous disturbing emotions that there are in anyone, heap it, definitely, I beseech you, on this one, who’s the same class!
Dedication
Let’s end then with the dedication. We think whatever positive force has been built up by this, whatever understanding, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a course for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.