Recap
We have been studying this text, Wheel of Sharp Weapons, by the Indian master Dharmarakshita, which is in the tradition of lojong, or attitude training or mind training. This is the earliest text in that tradition, and it explains primarily from the point of view of the practice of tonglen, of giving and taking. It discusses it on various levels. One level that it starts off with is speaking in terms of using the tonglen method to help us to overcome the self-cherishing attitude. The text speaks about the various types of sufferings that we experience and then what the cause of that suffering is in terms of the karmic actions that would bring that about. The way of dealing with it is to basically change our behavior and change the habits of how we’ve been behaving so that we don’t experience that result anymore.
We think of this whole syndrome not just in terms of ourselves but it’s something which afflicts everybody. In the tonglen practice, we expand the scope of our concern about this problem to everybody, because we are a member of sentient beings, all limited beings. It is our problem, not just my problem. We think to take on the suffering and the cause of suffering of everybody having this similar situation, a similar experience and to give the change of behavior to everybody as the solution for being able to deal with that. In practicing this in the form of a tonglen practice, we get over this idea that it’s just me and “poor me,” and “I have to only be concerned about myself.” We expand our scope so that we can proceed or make progress on the Bodhisattva path to work to eliminate everybody’s suffering, which is after all what we’re aiming to do in Mahayana in terms of becoming a Buddha.
There’s no need to go into a lot of repetition of what we’ve discussed before, but tonglen practice is quite complex. It has many different parts to it and levels on which it can be practiced in terms of the visualizations that we use for imagining that these problems leave the people that they afflict. We use very strong visualizations in order to overcome and smash that self-cherishing attitude within ourselves that doesn’t want to be involved, doesn’t want to get our hands dirty and just wants to think just about myself. We use visualizations such as, on an initial level, imagining dirty substances leaving the people and coming into us that we would put up resistance against – oil and grease and ink and this types of things. Then on the second level, we think of these problems coming in in the form of diarrhea and vomit and snot and so on that we would really not want to take into us and deal with. On the strongest level, we imagine them coming in in the form of whatever it is that we’re the most afraid of – whether it’s spiders or snakes or cockroaches or fire or monsters or terrorists. Then we don’t hold these images inside ourselves, we don’t hold the feeling of the suffering of others inside us, although we feel that. We want to slowly, through an understanding of voidness and the pure nature of the mind, let that settle down, dissolve it. Then, on the basis on the innate happiness of the mind – which is part of the nature of the mind – we give that happiness to others, here in terms of the solution to this karmic syndrome of giving them more positive and beneficial way of acting.
Then we went deeper in the text to practice tonglen in terms of overcoming the grasping for a solid “me” – this concept of what we consider to be the true self, which is not true at all. We looked at various types of aspirations or wishes of all sorts of wonderful things that we aim for, and we looked at how we sabotage that – it doesn’t work out. The reason for it not working out it this false concept that we have of “me,” which is underlying the self-cherishing attitude. We want to smash that, and we do that again in this tonglen practice of smashing it with these strong visualizations: taking the same problem on from everybody else and giving them the understanding of voidness and the clarity of mind that results from that that will enable us to actually achieve our various positive goals. We invoke the very strong force of Yamantaka, which is the forceful form of Manjushri – the embodiment of the discriminating awareness of the wisdom of the Buddhas. Although once could look at Yamantaka as an external figure, on a more profound level we are invoking the very forceful, strong aspect of our own clear-light mind that will enable us to have the energy, the strength and the courage to smash through self-cherishing and grasping for this so-called true “me.”
After this, the text went to on to review the tonglen practice and to have a very strong resolution that this is really what I’m going to practice. Now we are up to the verses that follow that, which deal basically with reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation and our commitment to the bodhisattva path through this type of practice.
Recognizing Everyone as Having Been Our Mother
We are on verse 98 in the literal translation; in the old, poetical translation that’s verse 99. Let’s read first the old poetical translation, which is a very loose translation:
Till the time when all motherly beings and I gain the perfect conditions for us to be Buddhas, though the force of our actions may cause us to wander through various realms in the six rebirth states, may we always be able to help one another to keep our aim fixed on enlightenment’s shore.
The literal translation of it, which is what we follow in our explanation:
Till the time when we and all who have been our fathers and mothers attain enlightenment in Akanishta, the Realm Beneath None, may we mutually (help) one another to uphold but one mind ( – the bodhichitta aim – ) although, through our karma, we may roam through the six wandering states of samsara.
This verse is hinting at quite a number of things that we find in the bodhichitta meditation. Most prominently, it is referring to all sentient beings or all limited beings as those who have been our fathers and mothers. This is quite interesting: it’s one of the rare places where we find mention that we can look at everybody as having been not only our mother in some previous lifetime, which is the way that it’s found in most texts, but the text says quite specifically “our father or our mothers.” That indicates that basically what we are looking at is those who have been the kindest to us – it can also be extended to fathers as well as mothers. Some people might have difficulty with that; they can also think in terms of their closest friends or whoever if might be. But the significance of the mother and father is that obviously they are the ones that gave us our life. If we’re working with a precious human life, then that’s even more significant that they have been very kind to conceive me and so we have that. Even if our mothers might have been abusive and cruel to us, at least they didn’t have an abortion and did actually give birth to us. There’s at least that minimum level of kindness that every mother has shown to her child.
There are various logical arguments that we can use to demonstrate that everybody has at one time been our mother or father – let just stay simply here in terms of our mother. That is quite important to become convinced of. For developing the bodhichitta aim, there are two methods which are used. The bodhichitta aim is when we have our hearts and our minds focused on the not-yet-happening of our future enlightenment. In other words, what can we focus on? All that’s happening is the present moment – the present moment of our mental continuum. But we can think in terms of our future enlightenment and at the moment, now, what we can impute on our mind stream is not yet happening. So, the not-yet-happening of our future enlightenment – that’s going on right now, so we’re focusing on that because that exists. We understand that on the basis on Buddha nature – and on the basis of a lot of hard work that we would need to do – it is possible for that not-yet-happening to become a presently-happening enlightenment.
This is what we are focusing on: we’re talking in terms of our own, individual personal enlightenment. We’re not talking about enlightenment in general; we’re not talking about the enlightenment of Buddha Shakyamuni – that’s his enlightenment. We’re talking about our own enlightenment, which has not yet happened, but which can happen. Our motivation for wanting to achieve that is love and compassion and taking this exceptional wish, the exceptional resolve to actually lead everybody to enlightenment as best as we can – what His Holiness refers to as “universal responsibility.” Moved by that, we’re focusing on this not-yet-happened future enlightenment – the not-yet-happening of it – with the intention to achieve it: to make it a presently-happening enlightenment and benefit everybody by means of that.
When we are thinking in terms of that, that compassion is the great compassion: it’s for everybody, every single limited being. That is a finite but uncountable number – in other words, it’s enormous. If we think in terms of all the beings who at present are in an insect rebirth, there’s an awful lot. It’s not just limited to this planet, from a Buddhist point of view: there are many other life forms as well, which are mentioned later in this verse. Great compassion is aimed to benefit all of them and benefit them not in just giving them a meal or something like that, but also in helping to lead them to liberation and enlightenment. When we are enlightened, then obviously we want to help everybody – that’s everybody and everybody equally. What is the basis for everybody being equal? As I said, there are two ways of how to develop bodhichitta: one is the seven-part cause and effect meditation and the other is the meditation of equalizing and exchanging the attitude about self and others. In the second method – which is where this tonglen practice comes – what makes everybody equal is that everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to be unhappy. On that basis everybody is equal. In order to be able to develop that understanding, we need equanimity toward everybody in the sense that we are not attracted to some and repelled by others and indifferent to yet others. We have an equally open mind to everybody and then realize everybody is equal on that basis of wanting to be happy and not wanting to be unhappy.
In the seven-part cause and effect meditation – on the basis of this equanimity that is free from attraction, repulsion and indifference – we recognize everybody as equal from the point of view of having been our mothers in some previous lifetime. On the basis of that, we can understand that they have been very kind to us. On the basis of everybody wants to be unhappy and not unhappy, we recognize that everybody has been kind to us even when they’ve not been our mothers, because if we consider everything that we make use of now, in this lifetime – the house we live in and the food we eat and the furniture and everything – all of that comes from the hard work of others. Whether they did it for out benefit or not is irrelevant; the fact is that they did the work. If it were not the work of everybody, including the animals and so on – not only now but going back through all of history – we could not survive and live the type of life that we live. So, there’s a more general view of the kindness of everybody here in this equalizing and exchanging of self with others.
The other seven-part cause and effect meditation is a little bit more emotional. It’s calling on a little bit more emotional feeling – assuming that you have an emotional bond with your mother. What is it referring to? It’s referring to kindness. Just thinking that not just that somebody ploughed the fields and built the road and built a truck that allowed the food to be transported to the market is not going to, for most of us, evoke a strong emotional feeling of appreciation and gratitude. But if we think in terms of our mother and our mother dressing us and taking care of us when we were a baby and teaching us how to walk and talk and helping us with our homework and cooking for us a child and all these other things – there’s a little bit more emotional feeling there to remembering the kindness and appreciating it.
This is very important in terms of developing what’s called heartwarming love, which is the foundation for the usual type of love that speak about in Buddhism. The usual type of love in Buddhism is the wish for everybody to be happy and to have the causes for happiness – equally for everybody. Heartwarming love is the step before that, which comes on the basis of appreciating and feeling gratitude about the kindness of others. Often that’s translated as wanting to repay that kindness but that sounds more like a business deal. It really has more the feeling of gratitude and appreciation. On the basis of that – and the emotional feeling of, “Wow, that’s really fantastic what they did” – we develop this heartwarming love, which is that when we think of the person it warms our heart. We would be very sad if anything terrible happened to them. We have a very warm, cherishing attitude toward them, so there’s an emotional content here which is a positive one. His Holiness says that when love and compassion are based on reason, it’s far more stable – the reason is everybody is equal, everybody wants to be happy and not unhappy, so if everybody’s hungry, everybody wants to be fed, so they’re all equal in that way – but if you add to love and compassion that’s based on reason some sort of emotional feeling as well, then it makes it even more moving. Simply on the emotional level, if often tends to be favoritism: you’re attached to somebody, you’re attracted to somebody; you like them, they make you feel good in some way or another. That’s favoritism and that’s not the type of love or appreciation or anything like that that’s the basis for our bodhisattva practice.
The logic for recognizing everybody has having been out mother in some previous lifetime is based on, first of all, beginningless time. If there’s beginningless time and there’s a finite number of beings (although countless) and everybody is equal – in the sense that everybody wants to be happy, no one wants to be unhappy – then you can say that everybody at some point has been my mother. The reason for that is that if one person was not my mother in some previous lifetime, then nobody could have been my mother in a previous lifetime, because the point is that if one person has been my mother, everybody has been my mother, because everybody is equal and there is infinite time. Why? Because if one was not my mother, then you’d have to say that nobody was ever my mother, because everybody is equal: if nobody’s never been my mother, then my mother in this lifetime has not been my mother. If one has been my mother, everybody’s been my mother, because they’re all equal. Because if one was not my mother, then nobody could’ve been my mother, because they’re all equal. One = everybody because not everybody = not one. That’s the structure.
Based on that line of reasoning – you don’t find that in the standard text, but I checked with a geshe and he agreed that the logic was sound – we can become convinced that everybody must have been our mother at some point or another. Equally, everybody could have been our father at one point; it’s a little bit trickier to say everybody’s been our close friend, because biologically we always had to have had a mother or a father. There’s no biological imperative that says that we always had to have close friends, whereas you did have to have a mother and a father.
Understanding Akanishta
Till the time when we and all who have been our fathers and mothers attain enlightenment in Akanishta, the Realm Beneath None,
“The Realm Beneath None” is the literal translation of Akanishta. There are two things here. One is, “Till the time we and all who have been our fathers and mothers attain enlightenment” – that means we are going to work to help everybody achieve enlightenment. We’re not just going to reach the goal and sit back and not do anything to help anybody else. That’s one thing here. The second thing is Akanishta and to explain that is going to take a little bit of background of what that is. Samsara is uncontrollably recurring rebirth, which is going on with no beginning. It involves not just the suffering of suffering, which is gross pain and not just the suffering of ordinary happiness, which is the suffering of change. (The more ordinary happiness you have, let’s say of eating your favorite food, it’s going to turn into pain, into suffering. If it were real happiness, the more you ate at more sitting the happier it would make you. But obviously we reach a limit and all of a sudden if you eat more it becomes suffering of pain.) We’re not talking just about those types of suffering; we’re talking about the all-pervasively affecting type of suffering, which is the fact that we have this type of aggregates – the body and mind – that will be the basis for the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change. That’s going on and on and on and on and is generated by the force of karma – basically, the force of unawareness of reality, having a false view of reality, an inverted view. On the basis of that, we have disturbing emotions and attitudes; and, on the basis of that, we build up the karmic force that propels this whole uncontrollably recurring cycle.
Within the sphere of this uncontrollably recurring rebirth, any individual can be reborn on three different planes of existence. One plane of existence is the plane of sensory desires – that’s often translated as the desire realm. It’s where we are involved with the desires. We have attachment and desires for various sense objects: sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations. In one way or another we are involved with that. Then there is the plane of ethereal forms – it’s called the form realm – in which there is a more subtle forms of phenomena, not like the gross physical things that we have in our plane of sensory desires. What these ethereal forms would be like is hard to imagine, but there are more subtle forms, like forms that you see in dreams. They’re not material. Then there is the plane of formless beings, sometimes called the formless realm. When we are born on that plane of existence, we don’t have a gross body – only a very subtle body and subtle energy. There could still be attachment there. There are disturbing emotions and attitudes on all these different planes of existence. We can have a body which is on the planes of sensory desires, but we could have a mind that is a mind of any of these three planes of existence. We could also have a body of any of these three planes of existence as well.
To attain enlightenment, we need to have a precious-human-rebirth body, which is a body on the planes of sensory desires, but we need to have a mind of either the realm of ethereal forms or the realm of formless beings. How do we characterize these minds? You can have these types of minds either by karmic force, by birth; or you can achieve them in meditation. In meditation, they are states of complete concentration – they are beyond the level of shamatha. Shamatha is a stilled and settled state of mind. It’s completely stilled of all mental flightiness – going off to objects of desire; and mental dullness – just being dull and unclear. It is not just simply free of these – to be free of these would be a state of samadhi, as it’s called in Sanskrit, or absorbed concentration – but in addition we have a sense of fitness which is a very exhilarating feeling of both body and mind. It’s the feeling that we are able to focus on anything that we want to, for as long as we want to. It’s like when an athlete feels very fit, completely well-trained – “I’m able to run as long as I want to;” this is same thing coming from meditation. So, it has this in addition to absorbed concentration (that’s shamatha, a stilled and settled state of mind). We need that plus, in this case, vipashyana, which adds to it a second sense of fitness, which is the sense of fitness that the mind is able to analyze and understand anything. On the basis of shamatha, you have vipashyana. Vipashyana means an exceptionally perceptive state of mind.
We can go beyond this to achieve what’s called in Sanskrit the dhyanas. Dhyanas are states of mental constancy, mental stability. When we get to these levels of mental stability, these higher levels of mental stability, we’re talking about a mind of the plane of ethereal forms. Beyond that, there are also the absorptions of a mind of the formless beings. Within this plane of ethereal form, there are four levels of stability of mind; within the plane of formless beings, there are also four. In that fourth state of mental stability, there are again different levels within it. Some of them are levels of an ordinary mind, an ordinary being and some are level of an arya mind – an arya is someone who has had nonconceptual cognition of either the Four Noble Truths, if we look at it in general; or of voidness, if we look at it specifically from a Mahayana point of view. Akanishta is the highest of these arya realms, on this fourth dhyana.
With that level of mind, you don’t have any sensory consciousness; you have a temporary cessation of temporary consciousness: no seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or a sense of physical sensation – only mental consciousness. In terms of feeling, feeling a level of happiness – you only have a feeling of equanimity. There’s no happiness or unhappiness; there’s just total equanimity. That means that temporarily you are free of the suffering of suffering – that’s the gross pain and happiness; and temporarily free of the suffering of change – that’s our ordinary happiness. All you have is the all-pervasively affecting type of suffering. On the basis of a precious human body, which is on the plane of sensory desires, if in your meditation you become an arya – achieving nonconceptual cognition of voidness with combined shamatha and vipashyana – then you have a type of mind that’s very conducive for gaining liberation and enlightenment. This is because you then only have to deal with the all-pervasively affecting type of suffering: basically, you have to overcome and get rid of the disturbing emotions that will activate your karmic aftermath that will generate further rebirth. You only have mental consciousness to deal with that; you don’t have any sense consciousness. That’s referring to Akanishta. That was a little bit complicated, perhaps and a little bit advanced and technical, but it’s good to have some sort of explanation.
So, this is saying: “Till the time when we and all who have been our fathers and mothers attain enlightenment in Akanishta, the Realm Beneath None” – in other words, the most conducive state of mind. It’s not that we’re reborn as a god in this realm; we’re talking about achieving it in meditation. The verse goes on: “may we mutually (help) one another to uphold but one mind.” That’s all that the texts says, but it’s referring to the bodhichitta aim. We need to be able to help each other to uphold bodhichitta. We can look at that on many levels. From one point of view, bodhichitta is aimed at our own not-yet-happened individual enlightenment. Why? To be able to benefit everybody else. So, of course it’s totally dependent on everybody else. We are helping one another to achieve it because if everybody else didn’t exist, how could we develop bodhichitta? How could we develop compassion, how could we develop love? So just on a very basic level, we help each other.
The Six Realms of Samsaric Rebirth
But then also we can help one another in terms of practices like tonglen – that my own disturbing emotions become a situation in which I can practice tonglen in terms of taking on everybody else’s disturbing emotions in order to smash my disturbing emotions. In that way, we help one another. May everybody be able to help one another to uphold this one mind, the bodhichitta aim. We’re helping each other uphold the bodhichitta aim – that’s from the first explanation that I gave, that it’s to be able to help everybody else. That helps us to uphold the bodhichitta aim or indirectly, through the meditations.
Then is says: “although, through our karma, we may roam through the six wandering states of samsara.” Within these three planes of samsaric existence, we have six realms of samsaric rebirth. On the plane of sensory desires, going from those who have the most suffering to the least suffering. It’s usually translated as the hell beings; I prefer to call them the trapped beings of the joyless realms – that’s a more literal translation of the connotations of the words in Sanskrit and Tibetan. In Sanskrit, it’s naraka, which means someone with no joy. It’s a place with no joy, no happiness. Nyalwa, the Tibetan word, has the connotation of “difficult to get out of” – so trapped beings in the joyless realm. Then there are the clutching ghosts. The Chinese translate it as hungry ghosts but that’s from Chinese culture. Their minds are completely tight because of miserliness; their throats are tight, they can’t swallow anything and they’re always clutching for something which they can never get.
Then there are the animals – I prefer to call them creeping creatures so that we don’t think of Bambi the deer or Fifi the poodle or something like that. It’s supposed to evoke the image of a cockroach – something that if you see, you just want to step on; something that’s creeping and crawling along the ground (although obviously it includes birds as well). The Sanskrit and Tibetan words both are literally something that walks bent over, something that moves bent over – so “creeping creature” I think is fairly faithful to the terminology. Then we have the human beings – I think it’s better to call them humanoids because we’re talking about many different types of humanoid species, not just the ones that we have here on this planet. Then we have what’s usually translated as the anti-gods or quasi-gods – these are the gods I refer to as divine beings, because we’re not talking about gods like creator-gods. These are would-be divines, the ones who want to be like the gods but aren’t and so they’re jealous and always fighting with them. Then there are all these god realms, the divine beings, where everything is so divine and wonderful. Some of them are on this plane of sensory desires; some of the plane of ethereal form; some on the plane of formelss beings.
These are the six realms. Each of us can be reborn in any of them and we have been reborn countless times in any of them. They differ in terms of the amount of suffering or the amount of happiness that we experience in that realm. In order to appreciate it, I think that the main way is to think of a mind. Everybody is basically an individual imputed on an individual, subjective mental continuum – a continuum of moments of individual, subjective experiencing. When we talk about experiencing, we can experience levels of happiness and unhappiness. Don’t confuse it with pleasure and pain, which is a tactile sensation, but it’s very closely associate with tactile sensations of pleasure and pain. When we talk about happiness and unhappiness, it’s physical happiness and unhappiness and mental happiness and unhappiness, which is referring to a feeling that accompanies either a physical sense consciousness or a sense consciousness. You can have a sense consciousness of pain, and it can be accompanied by happiness or unhappiness. Usually, it would be accompanied by unhappiness – you don’t want it, you want to get rid of it; a masochist might like it.
In any case, if we think of the spectrum of happy and unhappy, or even pleasure and pain, extends very far, doesn’t it? From the most intense suffering to the most intense happiness, or the most intense pleasure and the most intense pain – it’s a little bit easier to understand in terms of pleasure and pain. The human apparatus is only capable of experiencing part of that spectrum. It’s the same thing with sights: the human body is only capable of experiencing certain wavelengths of light; we can’t see ultraviolet or x-ray or in the dark very well. The same thing with sounds: dogs can hear much higher frequencies than we can hear. Dogs can also smell much better than we can smell. So, there’s no reason why that can’t also be the case with pleasure and pain and happiness and unhappiness. The human body, when we experience a certain degree of pain, you get unconscious. When you reach a certain level of unhappiness, you often kill yourself, or you get into denial or shock.
With pleasure of happiness, usually we destroy it if it gets too intense. If you analyze an itch, an itch is actually intense pleasure; but it’s too intense, so you have to destroy it – you have to scratch it. Actually, when I had this intense rash on my neck for several years, the only way of dealing with it was to consider it as pleasure and just relax and enjoy it rather than scratch it and make it worse. The same thing with orgasm: as you approach the level of bliss of an orgasm, basically you rush ahead to have it, which destroys it – it ends it. There’s no reason why there couldn’t be a physical basis that would allow our mental continuum to experience further on the direction of either pleasure of pain or further on the level of happiness or unhappiness.
By this way of thinking, we start to slowly accept the possibility of these other realms of rebirth. Of course, it’s all based on firm conviction in beginningless mind, in past lives and future lives. But on that basis, I think it is understandable: that a physical basis that would allow for such experience of more intense suffering or more intense pain, or more intense happiness or more intense unhappiness, would be the bodies of these other realms – whether we can see them or not, as a human being with our physical sensors.
The verse says: “although, through our karma, we may roam through the six wandering states of samsara.” It doesn’t matter how we are reborn – in other words, what life form any of us might be reborn in due to the force of our karma. Karma is referring to the impulses, these compelling impulses. There are many different theories of but if we speak just in general: it’s an impulse that then drives us to act or would drive us to take another rebirth. When we act in a positive or negative way, constructive or destructive way, based on unawareness of reality, we build up karmic aftermath – there are many different kinds of that – on the mental continuum. They get activated at the time of death by a whole mechanism described in the twelve links of dependent arising, but basically by disturbing emotions. Then there’s a throwing karmic impulse that propels us, without any control, into the next wandering state of samsara, the next rebirth. So, through our karma, we roam through the six wandering states of samsara.
So, this is a prayer, an aspiration. That’s what the section here is all about: prayers or aspirations.
Till the time when we and all who have been our fathers and mothers attain enlightenment in Akanishta, the Realm Beneath None, may we mutually (help) one another to uphold but one mind ( – the bodhichitta aim – ) although, through our karma, we may roam through the six wandering states of samsara.
Dedication
This verse is a perfect dedication. May this act as a cause for all of us to continue to help everybody and help each other reach enlightenment, so that we all reach enlightenment for the benefit of everybody..