Recap
We are studying a very important, great text called Wheel of Sharp Weapons or Throwing Star Weapon, which was written by the Indian master Dharmarakshita, who was a teacher of Atisha. There is a little bit of controversy as to whether or not Dharmarakshita actually wrote this, because part of the text, from the grammar point of view, is not a translation from Sanskrit but is purely Tibetan style. That either means that it was written in Tibet and later ascribed to Dharmarakshita; or it could mean that these were the teachings of Dharmarakshita, which Atisha brought and then they were written down by a Tibetan who added into it some Tibetan grammatical features. But, in any case, this tradition that this text comes from, which is the lojong – or mind-training, or attitude training tradition – is always ascribed to Atisha; he brought it to Tibet and then it spread to all the Tibetan traditions from Atisha and his disciples.
The text is speaking about how we overcome self-cherishing – the self-cherishing attitude with which we think just about ourselves; that we are the most important one; and we are only concerned about our own wants and desires and needs and we ignore everybody else’s. What we learn from the teachings on karma is that if we act on the basis of this self-cherishing attitude or selfishness, then it just creates a great many problems – problems not only for others but more specifically problems and sufferings for ourselves.
The text has several parts to it. The first part deals with the self-cherishing attitude itself and it points out how when we act under the influence of the self-cherishing attitude, we bring about certain problems. It lists the type of problems that we experience and the karmic cause for that and it traces the reason for acting in that negative way to self-cherishing. We think then to change our behavior and act in a way that is more cherishing of others. There is a long list of verses that deal with this and the way that it is practiced is in terms of giving and taking – the tonglen practice. This is a theme which appears over and again in the text, this giving and taking process. We think in terms of everybody having the same type of problem – not just us but everybody acting in a negative way under the influence of self-cherishing. When we give the solution, we think in terms of how to change our behavior and we think to give that to everybody. We work with this material in a tonglen type of fashion – a giving and taking type of fashion – and it’s completely appropriate that we think in terms of these problems being everybody’s problem. Therefore, since I am part of everybody, then it’s my problem to deal with that problem, which is much more universal, and this is very appropriate that we do that. If there were a problem that were affecting all human beings on the planet, like the environmental problem, then it’s not just my problem. It’s everybody’s problem and if I’m able to find a solution to that, it’s a solution that is for everybody, not just for me. With that example then we can see that this tonglen practice is something which is not so far-fetched or impossible to conceive of.
Then the second part of the text speaks about what lies behind the self-cherishing attitude and this is what is known as “grasping for a ‘true me’.” “True me” is actually referring to a false “me,” an impossible “me,” that we think is truly who I am. This false “me” – what it’s called in the text is the so-called “true me” or “true self”– is one which exists all on its own, if we put it in a simple way. It exists independently of everything else, independent of a body, a mind, independent of all other beings. It’s the one that’s talking inside our head and the one that, when we believe that that’s who we truly are, we then want to protect. We want to defend it. We attack anything that is challenging that and so we have self-cherishing and then all the disturbing emotions and attitudes that come from that and all the destructive behavior; or just karmic behavior in general – that derives from this self-cherishing.
The next part of the text identifies how, when we act with this belief in this false concept of the “true me,” it jeopardizes and ruins all our lofty plans. It points out why our plans never work out – and there are many verses with many different possibilities for it – and always identifies that the thing that we have to get rid of is this concept of a “true me.” We invoke here the force of Yamantaka. Yamantaka is a Buddha figure which is the forceful form of Manjushri. Manjushri represents the wisdom or the discriminating awareness of the Buddhas that is able to discriminate between what is true, what is false; what is helpful, what’s harmful; what’s reality, what’s fantasy. When the habit of believing in this misconception of the “true me” – what we think is the “true me” – so strong in us and it comes up so strongly in our minds and it feels as though we actually exist in this solid type of way, then we need very strong force to be able to smash that false concept and realize that it’s not referring to anything real. Therefore, we call upon the image of Yamantaka to smash that false concept. It’s not that Yamantaka is some external figure that we are asking to please come here and smash me, smash this false concept – although it sounds like that in the text. If we think on a deeper level, it’s referring to various aspects of Buddha nature that we all have; we invoke this forceful energy of the clear light mind that would be able to smash through any type of misconception that we have.
We have these verses and we’ve gone through all of that. When we work with this strong image of Yamantaka, there’s very strong language here of “smash” and “trample,” and “get rid of all these false concepts” – what that’s referring to is an understanding of voidness: that there’s no such thing as this so-called “true me.” Voidness is the total absence of it. The “true me” never existed that way. Although we exist conventionally, as the conventional “me,” we don’t exist as some sort of solid, independent entity sitting in our head that always has to be the center of attention and have its own way. But invoking this strong power of Yamantaka requires an understanding of this voidness because that’s what we are invoking; if we don’t have that, then all that we do with this type of imagery here is fortify our low self-esteem – “I’m so stupid, “I’m so bad that I’m doing this” – and we call in some strong force to punish ourselves. This is obviously not what is intended here. So, calling on these strong forces within us requires the understanding of voidness, because that is actually the strong force that we are invoking.
Now we are on the section that is emphasizing, again, the tonglen practice – the giving and taking practice – as a method for overcoming this self-cherishing attitude. What is suggested here then, of course, is a combination of tonglen practice with the understanding of voidness. These two have to go together. In the tonglen practice, we are aiming to take on the sufferings and difficulties of everybody, so their confusion, their disturbing emotions – the text often is going to specify that what we’re taking on are the disturbing emotions of everybody – because in doing that we are going to overcome those disturbing emotions. If we have anger, then anger is not exclusively our problem. It’s a problem of everybody and so we imagine taking on the anger of everybody.
That doesn’t mean that then we get super angry – that’s not the point. The point is to extend the basis of labeling “me” – conventional “me” – in terms of what I’m dealing with in life. What I’m dealing with in life is not just the individual, personal experience of anger, but it’s the much larger area of anger of everybody and so we extend the scope of our responsibility of what I’m going to deal with, how I ‘m going to help others. In that sense we take on the all the anger, or the attachment, or the greed, or jealousy, naively – or whatever it is – of everyone and we are going to try to experience with empathy the suffering that others have because of this anger, or greed, or so on. It’s very important to be willing to feel what that suffering is like and to empathize with the others. This is part of compassion. When we wish for others to be free of their suffering, then that is the counterpart of renunciation. We feel our own suffering and want to be free of it, so likewise we feel other people’s suffering as well and wish for them to be free of it as well.
In taking on the suffering and the disturbing emotions, then, we don’t want to just hold it inside us – that’s not the point. That’s why this practice has to be put together with an understanding of voidness, so that we realize what is behind this disturbing emotion – that it’s a misconception and there is no reason then for this to continue to be generated. If we have this understanding, then we don’t have this misconception about the false “me” and the self-cherishing to bring on all these disturbing emotions. In this way we are able to dissolve the disturbing emotion that we feel ourselves or we take on from everybody. We don’t keep it inside us and, in that calmer state, we are able to access the innate level of joy and ability to understand and so on, which is part of Buddha-nature. Then we are able to emanate that out and give that as the way for everybody to gain liberation and enlightenment. So, take away the problem and give them the solution and the result of applying the solution.
This is the general practice and as we have seen in our previous classes, the self-cherishing attitude and the belief in the self-cherishing attitude is what is going to put up resistance to taking on and dealing with the problems of others – so the attitude of “I don’t want to get my hands dirty,” “I’m too busy,” “I can’t be bothered,” and so on. Or it could be fear – “I’m afraid of dealing with your problems;” “I’m afraid that I’ll make a mistake, that I won’t be good enough.” There are many obstacles that could arise based on thinking in terms of this solid “me.” In order to smash through this self-cherishing attitude and dispel it, what we’re doing here is combining the understanding side – I don’t want to call it the intellectual side because that implies negative things in a Western context, but the understanding side – or the wisdom side of voidness; and you need some more emotional component to it. The emotional component to it is added with the very strong visualizations that we do with tonglen. In other words, I understand, but still I feel hesitation and still emotionally it is hard for me to digest this; and so we use very strong visualizations in order to smash that self-cherishing – smash the resistance.
In the very light beginner level of this practice, it’s just done with imagining black light coming in and white light going out. Black light representing taking on the sufferings of others – even though you know light can’t be black but, in any case, black light coming in – and white light going out. We always do this or try to do this in connection with the breathing. As we breathe in, we take in the suffering of others, we remove it from them. This is going in the right nostril; and out the left nostril would be white light and giving them happiness and so on. We saw that when we do this, it’s very difficult to do it in the beginning. Just alternating in and out like that – that’s much too fast. So, in the beginning stages, you just practice taking in for a while until that is established and then giving. When we become a little bit more familiar, then you can alternate it with each breath. Otherwise, as I say, it’s much too fast for us in the beginning to be able to actually do that successfully.
Now, this image of the black light coming in and the white light coming out is, as I say, just on a very beginner level for accustoming us to the practice. To just sit there and have nothing going on in terms of understanding or really doing tonglen and just imagine black light in, white light out, is totally trivializing the practice and is quite meaningless. The understanding and really taking on the problems of others – really dissolving it with understanding and voidness, really giving them happiness – is what it’s all about.
Now, the stronger visualizations are, first of all, to imagine that the problems and sufferings of others come into us in the form of dirty substances – so motor oil, car grease, muddy, dirty water, tar – these types of dirty substances that normally we would put resistance against: “I don’t want to get my hands dirty. I don’t want to get that all over me.” This is what we need to overcome here in this practice: that emotional resistance that says, “I don’t want this,” because what is behind this “I don’t want this” is, of course, the self-cherishing attitude: “I don’t want to be involved with the mess of your problems” is what this represents. So, we imagine the problem coming in in these form of the dirty substances. Then we imagine not just white light coming out but actually what the other person might need – whether it is food and clothing and a house for homeless people, poor people, or teachers, or more intelligence, or more compassion, or peace of mind, or liberation, or enlightenment – whatever it is that we want to give them.
Now, the second level of the strong visualization is to imagine that the suffering and problems come into us in the form of vomit, diarrhea, urine, snot, the nose, spit – these sorts of things that we would put even more resistance against; “I really don’t want to take the diarrhea of somebody into my heart.” Emotionally, it’s stronger to overcome that resistance and that’s what we’re working with – to overcome that resistance so that our hearts are open. Actually, one works with the physical feeling of the heart being open, because you feel a tightness when you have this self-cherishing and this resistance: “No way do I want to clean up somebody else’s diarrhea.” But we want to be able to open up to that because, again, this will help us to get rid of that self-cherishing.
Then the third level of these strong visualizations: the strongest one is to imagine that the problems or suffering of others comes into us in the form of whatever it is that we are the most afraid of. So, for some people that might be cockroaches, or snakes, or rats, or fire, or monsters, or terrorists. Whatever it might be, you imagine that it comes in in this form because whatever it is that we’re the most personally afraid of is likely to be what we offer the most resistance against and what makes our heart the most closed.
Now, obviously these practices are only for those who are emotionally stable. They are not for people who are not emotionally stable, because if you’re not emotionally stable and you don’t have some general understanding of voidness, this is likely to completely freak you out, to upset you terribly and that is not at all recommended. So, I’m giving this type of explanations, but these are quite advanced type of practices. In general, tonglen is a very advanced practice to do sincerely. A lot of people try to do in an early stage of their practice and usually what they’re doing is trivializing the practice – “Black light in, white light out, la-di-da” – without it really being any deep practice in terms of overcoming self-cherishing.
So, this is the tonglen practice and we have repeated this several classes now already. It’s time to actually just go through the verses. The verses here are reaffirming this tonglen practice. We had last time, or the time before, verse 93 which specifically mentioned this problem and the practice. We are reading an old translation that I did in 1974, which is much more poetical but not very literal; and then my new translation which is more literal. That verse that we’d covered already, just as a review, in the old translation was verse 94:
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.
That’s clearly the tonglen practice. More literally, in verse 93:
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!
Negating the Solid Self Through Reason
Then we go on to the verse from today – in the old version, verse 95:
Though we have not a doubt, for we recognize fully the cause and the root of mistakes we all make, if there is still left a part of our minds that would tend to support this delusion of self that we have, then destroy the firm hold of this part of our minds that, against our true wishes, makes fools of us still.
In the more literal translation, verse 94:
Although we’ve identified, through reason, beyond any doubt, the root of our faults, like this, barring none, if you can expose (any part of us that’s) still taking its side, we beseech you, demolish that very one who’s taking it!
This is referring to the fact that through reason – in other words, through logic – we are going to refute that we exist in this false way as some independent, solid self and we’ve gone through various lines of reasoning before about why that is impossible. If there were a solid “me,” then it should be either identical with a solid body and mind and so on or completely different from it and neither of these are absolutely possible at all. If the self were the same as the body or the mind, then how is it that we think “my body” and “my mind?” You would have to say, “the mind’s mind” or “the body’s body.” So that doesn’t make any sense that they’re totally the same thing. If they were something totally separate, then you should be able to take away the body and the mind and the emotions and everything and there should still be a “me” that’s left and obviously there isn’t something like that that we can find. We tend to think, however, that there is a separate “me” that somehow you think, “Oh, I wish I could have a mind like that person has;” “I wish I could have a body like that person has” – things like that which are really quite odd type of thinking. Also, if we were totally identical with the body, then if you lost a hand, you would no longer be “me.” That also doesn’t make any sense. So, there are many lines of reasoning that help us to identify what the root is of all our faults. It’s the self-cherishing attitude and the grasping for the self that’s underneath that.
It says, “If you can expose (any part of us that’s) still taking its side” – in other words, if there’s still part of “me,” part of my understanding that still believes that I exist this way, because of tendencies and habits and so on, then “I beseech you.” In other words, we’re calling on the strong force of Yamantaka – “demolish that very one who’s taking it!” In other words, smash that false concept with which I believe that I exist in that way.
Meditating on Kindness
Then the next verse, 96 in the old translation:
All that is wrong can be traced to one source our concern for ourselves whom we cherish the most, we must meditate now on the kindness of others. Accepting the suffering that they never wished for, we must dedicate fully our virtues to all.
In the more literal version, verse 95:
Now, having placed all the blame on one thing, let’s meditate strongly on kindness toward all beings. Having taken on our own mind-streams what others never wished for, let’s dedicate to every wandering being the roots from our constructive acts.
“Now, having placed all the blame on one thing” – that is a line that we find repeated later in the Seven-Point Lojong – the Seven Point Mind Training – in which we say, “Put all the blame on one thing,” which is the self-cherishing attitude. We’ve placed all the blame on that self-cherishing attitude – the blame for all our problems and sufferings. They arise because of that and so what we want to do then is practice the tonglen procedure. We meditate on kindness toward all beings – we not only have compassion for them to be free from all their problems but also love, which is the wish for them to have happiness and the causes for happiness. So, in practicing this tonglen procedure with others, obviously it’s very kind to others.
As we’ve mentioned in previous weeks, chances are that the practice won’t actually work to eliminate any problem from anybody else. It only works if we are super advanced practitioners and have a super strong connection with the other person. But what the practice does is it builds up our courage as a bodhisattva to actually help everybody and it also smashes that self-cherishing. It accomplishes these things with respect to ourselves, and whether or not it actually will help somebody else is open to question. That depends on many other things besides just technically doing the practice correctly.
Then, “with the kindness toward all beings” – so with the proper motivation of love and compassion, “Having taken on our own mind-streams what others never wished for.” That’s an important point: they never wished for the suffering that they have. Often, we tend to blame others: “You acted so stupidly;” “You acted so negatively and therefore you got all this suffering, so you deserve it.” But Shantideva also has a line similar to this, in which he says that it’s not that anybody wants suffering. Suffering isn’t just sitting somewhere out there like some demon, saying, “Aha, I’m going to cause trouble to this person,” and the person that it strikes certainly didn’t want that. It’s certainly not like that, that sort of paranoid vision of problems and suffering. But nobody wanted to be suffering. Nobody purposely acts with a disturbed state of mind in which then they bring on more and more problems to others. I mean, somebody might very intentionally shoot somebody – that’s true; but nobody really wanted the problems that might come from that.
This is what it’s saying: nobody wants the suffering. Nobody wants all these problems so don’t blame them, in that sense, but just think in terms of kindness toward them. How often you can be in a close friendship or a partnership or something and you say something stupid that hurts the other person’s feelings and then they get all upset and then we have an argument and the whole thing develops into an ugly scene. Well, I didn’t want that. That wasn’t my wish behind saying what said. I wasn’t thinking about what I said. I wasn’t sensitive enough to the other person and I wasn’t mindful of my speech. I think that we can understand this from our own experience: when these ugly scenes come up, that certainly wasn’t what I wanted and likewise it’s the same thing with everybody else. Nobody wanted that.
So, we imagine taking on these sufferings of everybody and “dedicate to every wandering being” – wandering through the various realms of samsaric rebirth – “the roots from our constructive acts.” In other words, when we act in a constructive way, then that leaves a certain positive force – it’s sometimes called “merit” – on our mental continuum. That positive force and positive tendencies and so on that it leaves – the impression that it makes – acts as a root from which happiness and nice things will ripen in our experience and so we dedicate that in the sense that, “May whatever positive force I have ripen into something that the other person can enjoy,” in terms of a really nice experience or happiness. When we’re dedicating to others or when we’re doing the giving practice to others, we can, of course, think of it on the level of Buddha-nature and the innate joy of the mind and so on and giving them that happiness. I think that there’s a certain benefit of thinking like that, because as we have in the sensitivity training course, how do you go switch from feeling sad at the suffering of others to feeling happy and giving the happiness to them? That’s not very easy. Think of a regular situation in which you’re with a friend and the friend is really upset and is in a lot of pain and so on and we feel their pain and suffering and sadness – how do you cheer them up? You can’t just stay feeling depressed that the other person is suffering. That doesn’t cheer them up. Or starting to cry yourself because they’re in such a terrible situation. That doesn’t cheer them up.
The only way to really deal with that and we had this in the sensitivity training, is to see that unhappiness like waves on the ocean – the ocean being the mind. If you are calm enough you feel the sadness, but the sadness calms down and you’re able to access these inner qualities – these innate qualities of the mind, one of which is innate joy – and if you’re calm enough with that, then wouldn’t be a “I’m so happy” type of joy, but it is a warmth that then you can transmit to the other person. That’s very important to be able to do and so that’s one way that we can do this. Here it’s thinking more in a mental sense: “May those positive forces within me, that I’ve built up, act as causes for others to be happy.” We dedicate it to them. Just as we combined an understanding of voidness with these really strong visualizations of these dirty substances coming in us, we have both a mental way of dealing with this and an emotional way. That is, if we can make that division like we do in Western thinking. Tibetans don’t make that type of division but, anyway, as Westerners we make that division. Likewise, I think that this method of dealing with the innate joy that I just described is dealing on the emotional level of giving happiness to others; and on a mental level, an understanding level, we give them the roots of virtues, as it’s sometimes translated – the roots of our constructive actions – that it ripens on others. And this is something that, of course, we can do in our imagination, but it also, I think, is very important to try to do that in real life.
How do we do this in real life, in real encounters? Let me give an example. If we have a lot of experience in life and we know a lot of people, we have a lot of very good connections with people who can help with this or that, then we don’t just use those connections for our own benefit. If somebody else needs help, then we make that connection for them – “Go to this person, they’ll be able to help you” – and we give a recommendation. This is a very simple example of how, what we have built up through our efforts, we can dedicate so that other people can benefit from it as well. Or if we have a lot of education and understanding, we can teach others and not just keep the knowledge for ourselves, whatever it might be – we’re able to fix things; we’re able to deal with health; we’re able to deal with emotional problems. Whatever it is that we’re able to do, you don’t just keep it for yourself. That we’ve built up through our efforts, but that root of constructive things, may it ripen on others. I will use it to benefit others, share it with others. That comes from widening the sphere of the basis for labeling “me,” as I said earlier on; “I’m dealing with everybody’s problem and what I have built up through my constructive behavior, my constructive actions of studying the Dharma – meditating, getting an education, whatever it might be – I’m doing this for everybody. I’m not just doing it for myself.” This is what is indicated here in the verse.
So, the verse says:
Now, having placed all the blame on one thing, let’s meditate strongly on kindness toward all beings. Having taken on our own mind-streams what others never wished for, let’s dedicate to every wandering being the roots from our constructive acts.
Helping Others
Although it is very nice to think in terms in our meditation practice of tonglen – of giving to others the roots of our positive things that we’ve built up, like our understanding and study – it’s difficult in life to actually give that to others because people often are not receptive. They don’t want our advice, or they are not able to actually understand what we say or apply what we say. First of all, you only are able to help those who are receptive to you. That’s very true. Even Buddha couldn’t help everybody. But the person has to be open, so it has to also depend on what’s going on with the other person. The example that is used for how a Buddha helps is that a Buddha is like the sun and the sun shines for everybody who wants to come out into the sunlight. But if you stay in a cave and don’t come out into the sunlight, the sun can’t do very much for you. It’s like what I try to do with my website. It’s just there for anybody who wants to use it. If they’re receptive, they benefit from it; if they don’t care about it, they’ll never look at it. So, there are those ways of trying to help, in general, anybody, but when working with specific people, then you basically see, what can I do to help this person? Are they receptive? And, on the other hand, do I have the experience and knowledge to be able to help them?
This is why we want to become a Buddha; because, in fact, unless we are a Buddha, an omniscient being – which means that we know all the factors that have caused the person to be like this and that are affecting the person – and unless we know all the results that will follow from saying this to them or saying that to them, it’s very hard to choose the right method for helping them. So, we train in skillful methods. That’s one of the great qualities that we need to develop – being skillful in advising various methods for people to follow. It’s not very easy in the beginning and we do make mistakes. This gets into a bit of contradiction. On the one hand, you don’t want to make false claims – pretend that you know the solution and then you tell them what to do – because that might not be honest and might not be true, what you say. On the other hand, you also want, like a doctor, to inspire the other person to have confidence in you, in what you say. If the doctor says, “Well, I don’t really know what’s wrong with you but maybe this. I don’t know if it will work but try it” – a lot of people don’t have very much confidence in the doctor. How do we make a balance between not pretending that we are omniscient and claiming that we have all the answers, but on the other hand not making the other person feel that we don’t really know what in the world we’re talking about? That requires quite a delicate balance. You can say, “From my experience, this is something which is effective, but I can’t promise that it is going to work. People are different.” I think a certain amount of honesty is good, but without seeming as though you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Also, if you’re not able to help, say so. I always remember with Serkong Rinpoche, my own teacher – somebody came to him, this one person asking for help about a certain problem. He said he was being attacked by evil spirits and ghosts and stuff like that. Whether he understood what the problem was correctly or not is irrelevant here, but he was obviously suffering and Serkong Rinpoche said to him, “I don’t have the connection with you to be able to help you with this problem.” He said so very honestly, but then he recommended somebody else and said, “But this person, I think, can help you.” So, he suggested that he go to another lama in Dharamsala for help. This is that ability to be honest and admit without feeling ashamed that, “Well, I don’t really know what will help you. Why don’t you try asking this person or try doing that?” I think this is very good as well. And, sometimes the only way that we can help somebody who is pitying themselves, for instance, is just offer them an ear to listen to them, which is not judgmental and is understanding. Often that is at least a minimum level of help that we can give. It depends on the person. Sometimes you have to be a little bit strong and say, “Stop it already, enough already.”
It’s like when people have lost a loved one who’s died – some of them are able to get on with their lives; others stay in terrible mourning for years. My sister had a friend who died, and the husband for years kept all his dead wife’s clothes in the house, in the drawers, in the closets and so on and was completely depressed about the loss of the wife. I think that sometimes you have to just say to the person, “Okay, mourning is perfectly fine but give yourself a time period of how long you’re going to mourn. Don’t make it indefinite.” For each person it might be a longer period or a shorter period. Let’s say, “I’m going to mourn for four months, but then I will give away the clothes and get on with my life.” Sometimes you have to be a little bit strict. It depends very much on the person. My sister actually was in a good position to help the husband of her friend because her husband had just died about the same time (my sister’s husband) and so she was speaking from experience with the same type of problem.
Practicing Tonglen
Let’s try to do a little bit of this tonglen practice with whatever level of visualization we feel comfortable with. Usually, one should always start with the gentler visualizations. You imagine that the self-cherishing is like a hard lump in your heart (which is what it feels like in any case) and that whatever comes in destroys that. Only when you’re able to relax with one of these gentler visualizations and really be willing to take that on and smash the self-cherishing, are you ready to go on to the next level of visualization. Let’s do that for a few minutes and then we’ll end. When we do this, what is most effective is to think in terms of some disturbing emotion or some destructive type of behavior that we ourselves have been just recently doing or are feeling now and then use that as the basis for tonglen – to imagine taking on everybody’s similar problem.
There are far more things that need to be explained in doing this type of practice. I’ll just mention two very briefly. First, when you’re imagining and visualizing these things, don’t just imagine the dirty substances coming into you and the light going out and the nice things going out. Don’t forget the people, the beings that are the ones that are the aim here, which is to remove their suffering and to give them happiness. It’s not just taking dirty things and give out happy things, nice things. The main emphasis is on these beings, on these others who are suffering. The second thing that I wanted to mention is although we are visualizing their problems and suffering in the shape of these substances, don’t forget the problems themselves – what dirty substances stand for, what they represent, because that’s really what we’re taking on. When we’re doing a multilevel visualization like this, it’s actually very difficult; on many levels, this is a very advanced practice. Therefore, don’t expect it to be easy and don’t get frustrated.
Dedication
Let’s end here with the dedication. We think whatever positive force has come from this, whatever understanding, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.