Recap
We have been studying this great text, Wheel of Sharp Weapons or Weapon Wheel of Blades, which is probably the earliest version of this genre of lojong – mind training, or cleansing of attitudes, or training of attitudes. It was written by the great master Dharmarakshita. It is the earliest version of this type of text. We have been working slowly through the first section of it, which is basically the practice of tonglen – giving and taking. This is a practice in which we extend our scope from thinking just about ourselves and our own problems to thinking that the type of problems that I have are the same as everybody else’s problems, and just as I want to be free of this problem so does everybody else. We start to think on a much larger scale of everybody.
Not only do we imagine that we are taking away everybody’s problems and sufferings and giving them happiness, and not only do we practice doing what we would do as a Buddha, but we expand our scope to think of everybody. In the process of doing this, of course, what we have to overcome is this self-centeredness, with which we think just to deal with my own problems; we think that those are bad enough. In order to overcome that, we usually do this tonglen practice with some very terrifying visualizations which we normally would have a lot of resistance toward doing. For instance, when we imagine the problems of others leaving them and coming into us so that we deal with them, we imagine them coming in in the form of all sorts of dirty substances: excrement, urine, and the most extreme level, whatever it is we’re most frightened of. But this is extremely helpful. It’s not meant to completely freak us out, but rather to help us to smash the ego-grasping that we have that says, “I don’t want to deal with this.” That ego grasping puts up the resistance to these terrible things that we visualize coming into us. If we can overcome that hesitation or resistance, that helps us to overcome this ego grasping. But that smashing of the ego grasping is discussed in the next section of the text. Now we’re focusing more on the actual giving and taking practice. We’re not really emphasizing in our explanation these difficult, terrifying visualizations that are usually done with the tonglen practice, but rather we are thinking here more on the emphasis of expanding our scope to think of everybody who has the same type of problem, and being able to deal with everybody’s problem, in a sense, simultaneously.
The way that we are now, we are very limited. We have our own disturbing emotions. We have no idea really of what other people’s situations are – what all the causes for them having their problems are, at least on a superficial level, and what the effect would be of anything that we teach them. Aside from those limitations, we have the limitation that we just don’t have time. There are so many people and so many problems, and we’re so limited in our time and ability. We can only really deal with maybe one or two things at a time, whereas as a Buddha we would be able to multiply ourselves into an infinite number of forms and be able to deal with everybody simultaneously, which is really quite extraordinary. If we start to get asked by a lot of people to help them, we really start to appreciate how wonderful that would be if we could really multiply ourselves and help everybody, and not have to sleep, and not have to eat, and not have to do anything like that. It starts to make a bit of sense, the more that we get involved with helping others, and this tonglen practice helps us to expand our scope to think more and more in terms of helping as many beings as possible at once. In the process of doing this, what we have been doing with each verse is looking at a particular problem or type of suffering that we experience, and seeing what the karmic cause for that is. Once we know what the karmic cause is, then not only do we want to stop doing that, but also each verse recommends what we can do instead as an antidote for that.
When we do this tonglen practice, first we think in terms of ourselves with this problem. Most of these problems are problems that we all seem to have faced. Even if they aren’t problems that we personally have faced, there certainly are many others who have faced this type of problem. We start, as I say, first in terms of myself accepting this problem, dealing with it, dissolving into clear light mind, the nature of the mind; the nature of the mind is free of all of these things. We can calm down, and we accept all of this suffering comes into us, but it calms down like returned from the agitation on the top of the ocean to the depth of the ocean, like we did in the sensitivity training course. Then from the natural state of peace and happiness, which is the actual nature of the mind, we’re able to give happiness to others. If we don’t think in terms of that, it’s very difficult to do tonglen. You take in all sorts of horrible suffering, and how do you instantly turn to happiness and give happiness to others? That’s very difficult without this understanding of, basically, the Mahamudra approach to the mind and the voidness of the mind.
We think in terms of giving the solution to ourselves, which is the type of behavior that the text recommends for each verse, and then we think in terms of everybody who has this problem. As we saw, this is quite reasonable and proper to do, because if we think in terms of whom we identify with, we can identify with just ourselves – “This is my problem” – but we can have a family problem, and so we label “me” in terms of the whole family: “This is my problem because it’s my family’s problems.” Or we can think in terms of our nation: “This is the problem of all Germans,” “This is a problem of all Mexicans” or “of all the people of the world,” or “of all beings of the world, and I am one of them.” Therefore, it’s proper to think in terms of this problem that everybody faces being my problem, just as the problem that all Mexicans might face is my problem because I’m Mexican. A problem that all sentient beings face is also my problem because I am a sentient being. It’s on this basis that we can be confident that this practice of tonglen, and taking on everybody’s problem, is actually reasonable. It’s not something which is an exercise in masochism, or martyrdom, or something like that. This is what we have been doing.
Spiritual Teachers and the Three Gems
Now, there are some points that I want to go back to in one of the verses, because it touches on a very important topic that some of us might have some confusion or problems with. That was verse 33:
At times when our requests to the Three Precious Gems do not reach fulfillment, this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from not having had confidence in the Buddhas. Now, let’s entrust ourselves exclusively to the Precious Gems.
This, you recall, dealt with when we make requests and turn to the Three Precious Gems, and it doesn’t work. The reason for this is that we haven’t had confidence in Buddhas, in Buddhahood, and in the Three Gems in general. “Now,” we need to “entrust ourselves exclusively to the Precious Gems.”
The point that I wanted to bring up with this has to do with spiritual teachers and the relation of the spiritual teachers with the Three Precious Gems. We often find in the teachings that the guru is the embodiment of the Three Gems – that, in a sense, the guru’s mind is the Buddha’s, that his speech is the Dharma because the teacher is the Dharma, and the body is the Sangha. That comes from the tantra teachings where you have the body mandala of various parts of the body being transformed into different yidams – into different members of the mandala of a particular deity system. This is where it comes from. But a lot of people look at this teaching in terms of seeing the guru as a Buddha, which we find in so many of the texts, and they take that quite literally. Then when they see a particular teacher that they had, whom maybe they had confidence in, not really acting like a Buddha at all, and they find many faults in the teacher, this causes them to lose faith and confidence in the Three Gems in general. This is a big mistake.
First of all, when we approach a spiritual teacher, it’s very important to examine very much the qualities and the qualifications of that teacher. Very often we go to a teacher and we study with that teacher without really having examined very well. It could be because there are no other teachers available, so this is the only one; or it could be that everybody else is going to this teacher, and they have a big name, and so we feel that I should go too. “If I don’t really follow this teacher, then something is wrong with me, because all these other people like this teacher so much.” These are not very good reasons for going to a teacher. If the teacher is the only one that’s available, well, it’s the only one available, so we go, but with a very critical mind. We see whether or not the teacher is qualified and we can benefit from some of the things they teach, but other things we might have to question very seriously.
But we come across these teachings that say, “Well, if you see a fault in the teacher, you should see that that is a mistaken perception on your side because the teacher doesn’t have any faults.” That also has to be understood properly. It says very clearly in one of the texts that it is very difficult to find a teacher who has all good qualities and no negative qualities – let’s be realistic. You look for somebody that has more outstanding good qualities than negative qualities, and you focus on those good qualities because you can gain inspiration from them. If you focus on the weak points of the teacher, you’re not going to gain inspiration; it is going to get you discouraged and depressed. There is no benefit in doing that, but you don’t deny that either. The Fifth Dalai Lama says that very clearly in his lam-rim text: it’s not that you’re naive and stupid about the teacher’s shortcomings; it’s just that you don’t want to focus on that.
If you’re seeing just the faults in the teacher, first of all, you have to check: are they actually faults or are they things that I’m projecting? That’s very important. Similarly, you need to check the good qualities that you see: is that just a projection or is that really so? Likewise, you have to check the negative qualities that you see as well: is it just gossip that has no foundation or is it true? For this, you have to rely on various criteria. Chandrakirti says this regarding manifest things that you can actually see or hear from what they’re saying. Rely on that – if you actually see them do this or actually hear them do this. If it’s something that you haven’t seen yourself, does it come from a reliable source of information or not a reliable source of information? Check that out. Or it’s something that’s a little bit obscure, which you can only infer from the way the teacher’s behaving: if the teacher is very greedy, if the teacher is pretending, putting on a big show, you can infer that something is wrong here.
As Serkong Rinpoche said, “Teachers are not intended to be clowns or entertainers; teachers are intended to teach you. If you want to go for entertainment and a good laugh, go to the circus, don’t go to a Dharma teaching.” If the teacher is just putting on a show and then people rationalize it – “Well, he is so charismatic, so entertaining; they have to do that, otherwise the people fall asleep or leave” – well, that’s not true, that’s not valid. The method in teaching in Dharma is that you don’t try to entertain the people, you don’t try to make it nice and easy for them, because the people who are only there for easy things aren’t serious students. You want to weed out the ones who are serious and the ones who are just casual. For those who are casual, you can just say, “Well, be a nice person” and all of that – that’s fine and that helps those people. But if you’re talking about a serious student, then it’s different.
The Dharma training is to train somebody’s personality; what you want to do is help the person to develop perseverance, to develop patience, to develop hard work, to figure things out for themselves, to start to really be able to analyze. If they don’t analyze ever and try to figure things out themselves, they’re never going to make progress on the path. The teacher purposely sets up situations like that so that if you ask the teacher for something, they don’t give it immediately. In the traditional way, they would certainly not give it immediately. You have to ask several times, and if you’re not serious, you won’t ask again; only if you’re serious will you ask again. Look at Milarepa – how many times he had to ask for teachings. Are you really serious or is it just, “Well, hey, would be nice to study this?” Teachers who are really not doing that and are more interested in having a lot of students, and getting the money to pay for the Dharma center, rent, and these sorts of things – that’s not a proper teacher. Of course, there is the reality that you have to pay the rent – that’s something else. But in any case, one needs to examine and try to see: what are the qualities of the teacher? What are the shortcomings of the teacher? Likewise, in terms of various practices, you would ask questions about certain questionable practices that various teachers do.
I think in terms of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s references to Pabongka Rinpoche. Pabongka Rinpoche was the main source of this whole protector controversy. He’s the one who revived it and spread it, and everything comes from him, basically. Pabongka wrote a lam-rim; so many of these lineages come through him of the various deity practices, and he composed the sadhanas that people do nowadays. (Mind you, Tibetans are totally into plagiarism; for them to make a sadhana just means copying what other people in the past did and changing a few words here and there, and maybe adding a little thing here and expanding. That is the way that they do it.) But in any case, what His Holiness said was that there is no problem with these other things that Pabongka did. Regarding the protector, he was wrong, he made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean that the other things are invalid. It’s like looking at the good qualities and the negative qualities, the good points and the shortcomings. The shortcomings you don’t deny; they are shortcomings, they are mistakes. That means that when you see a teacher as a Buddha, you don’t take that literally – that they’re infallible like God or something like that. They make mistakes, but it doesn’t mean that you throw everything away of that teacher. Now, if you find more negative qualities to the teacher than positive qualities, and you jumped in and accepted them as a teacher too soon, then it says very clearly in the Kalachakra tantra, you keep a respectful distance. You don’t say, “Ah, he is a terrible person.” There is no need to say that, there is no benefit from that; but you don’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the teacher anymore.
That means that you don’t go to their classes, you don’t write to them or visit them, you don’t have any contact anymore. You don’t have to have contact with them if you don’t find that beneficial anymore, but acknowledge the positive things you got from the teacher and don’t be naive about the negative qualities of that teacher. This is just the way it is. Remember, we talked in sensitivity training about how to deconstruct the disturbing emotions into the underlying deep awareness. Anger – what does that deconstruct to? That deconstructs to discriminating deep awareness. You’re able to discriminate: “It’s like this, and it’s not like that.” All that is underlying it is the ability to discriminate: “This is a good point, that was a negative point” – that’s all. It’s just a fact, no big deal.
What’s relevant to this verse here is that you don’t lose confidence in the Triple Gem themselves. Just because some teachers are very disappointing and maybe are even scoundrels – doing really improper things, destructive things, lying, and so on – that doesn’t mean that you equate the teacher with the Triple Gem: the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Just because there have been some practices that people do, saying that this is Dharma – like these protector things, and that’s a mistake – that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the Dharma. As it says here, one needs to have confidence in Buddhas; that doesn’t mean confidence in all the gurus. It means confidence in Buddhahood – that there is such a thing, that there are Buddhas or have been Buddhas; and that it is possible to become a Buddha, and it is possible for me to become a Buddha by following the Dharma. Turn to the actual Dharma: the real Dharma, the Dharma Gem, is the third and fourth Noble Truths. It’s that state of a mind that’s free from suffering and its causes and has all the qualities and understanding. That’s where we’re aiming for. The Buddha has it in full, the Arya Sangha has it in part. That’s it. The nature of my mind is pure; all the junk is just on the surface, and it’s possible to get rid of it. Period. That’s what I’m aiming for. I’m aiming for that because I want to be able to help everybody, not just because it would be nice for me. When you see the teacher as a Buddha, the point of that is to be able to see this Buddha-nature in the teacher, and see that as pure. Then guru yoga to try to inspire to see that in myself, and that I could become like that. That’s the essence. It’s not guru worship, and any teacher who tries to establish it as guru worship and make it a personality cult is on a big ego trip. That’s totally not the Dharma. Then you would avoid such a teacher, but not lose faith in the Triple Gem.
Participant: How much can I trust my feelings and intuition by finding a teacher?
Dr Berzin: How much can you trust your feelings and intuition? Actually, the Tibetans put in a great deal of faith in that, I must say. Although feelings and intuition can be sometimes incorrect, they say if you meet somebody and immediately you feel a connection, that certainly is a very good sign. They even say that when you go to see the teacher for the first time, if they’re there, that’s very good; if you go and they’re not there – and every time you go they’re not there – that’s not a very good sign. When Dromtonpa went to Atisha, Atisha knew that he was coming and was waiting at the door for him, and said, “Oh, I was expecting you.” That obviously is a very clear, open sign.
Participant: I just think it’s very difficult for people with little knowledge about Dharma to check the teacher.
Dr Berzin: That’s why, as His Holiness says, in the beginning you just go to teachers like you would go to a school lecture. You’re going to a lecture by a professor – nothing more – and you check out: how is this teacher? Do you get a feeling they know what they’re talking about, or are they just putting on a good show, or they’re just interested in the numbers of how many people show up? What’s going on? What I’m always very suspicious of are teachers, especially Westerners, who go on what I call The Great White Guru Trip. It could be that they are wearing special yogi robes or something like that; or they sit themselves on a thrown; or they have everybody prostrate to them, which I think is not so appropriate for a Westerner to do to another Westerner; or they start calling themselves a lama, and all of a sudden they are a Rinpoche – Lama This and Lama That. I think this is absolutely going on an ego trip.
You have to discriminate. This, I think, in the future is going to be the big issue – discrimination – because the amount of information that is available is just growing at an unbelievable pace, and it’s just going to continue to grow at a much larger pace. It’s not like in the past where only one type of Buddhism was available in the place where you were, or only a couple of teachers with the internet, and so on. Every form of Buddhism is available and an unbelievable amount of information – I mean, just google it and you find many millions of things on Buddhism. In the future, a young person who’s interested in Buddhism, how do they discriminate? How do they make their way through all this information to find what is really worthwhile? This, I think, is going to be the biggest challenge of the future with this information age.
Karmic Causes of Being Ugly and Insulted
Let’s return to the text. We’re up to verse 38. As we have been doing in the past, first I read my old translation from 30 years ago, which was a looser more poetical translation, and then my new translation, which is more literal to the text.
Verse 38, poetic version:
When our bodies are ugly and others torment us by mocking our flaws, never showing respect, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we’ve made images lacking in beauty, by venting our anger, we’ve made ugly scenes; hereafter let’s print books and make pleasing statues, and not be short-tempered, but be of good cheer.
As I said, this adds in a lot from Geshe Dhargyey’s commentary.
The literal what the text says is:
At times when our faces and bodies are ugly, and our circle insults us, this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having made ugly images and disturbed (others) with our anger. Now, let’s make (beautiful images of) deities and be long-suffering in temperament.
This is referring to situations in which we are ugly, it says – not very good looking, not very attractive – and our circle – that means people around us – are always insulting us. This is a karmic consequence of having made ugly images and made ugly scenes with our anger. What we want to do is to try to make beautiful images of deities, and beautiful books, and things like that; “be long-suffering in our temperament” means that we’re able to endure suffering for a long time with patience, without getting angry and making an ugly scene. As we have seen with all these verses, the karmic cause and the result are quite similar; they have many things in common.
There’re always these stories; the story that I know is, somebody went to a temple, and they heard somebody chanting with a beautiful voice, and they said, “Oh, I’d like to see the person who’s chanting so beautifully.” The abbot said, “No, no, no, you don’t want to see this person, just listen to their voice, they have such a beautiful voice.” But the person insisted, and when he went to see this person, the person was an ugly deformed dwarf, but had such a beautiful voice. He asked, “What’s the reason for this?” and the abbot and the teachers said that in a previous lifetime this monk was involved with building a stupa and was one of the builders, and he was always complaining that, “Oh, you’re making it too big, you’re spending too much money on it, why make all this ornament? Why make all this decoration? It’s unnecessary,” and so on. He was always complaining like that about the stupa but, when it was finished, rejoiced in how pretty it was. He offered a bell to the stupa, and so because of offering the bell the voice is so beautiful, but because of always saying, “Oh, you don’t have to make the stupa so beautiful and so big,” he was born as a small, deformed dwarf.
It’s an interesting phenomenon because, for instance, they want to build this huge Maitreya statue in Bodh Gaya. It’s very easy to complain about it, because they’re making this the biggest statue in the world, bigger than anything that’s ever been built. It’s quite easy to say, “Ah, why do they have to make it so big? Why do they have to spend so much money?” It’s very easy to do that, and what is said here is that this is not a very positive thing to do. Although one could say, “Well, they could use the money to feed the beggars in the area,” and stuff like that, the point is that the Chinese people who are giving all this money would never give the money for that. It’s just theoretical that they should use that money for something else; it’s not as though they have 100 million dollars just sitting in the bank already, and they’re deciding how to use it. It’s like this thing about making offerings that we had – I think it was in this class last time: if you’re going to make offerings, make beautiful offerings. Don’t offer leftover food or things you don’t like; make a good offering.
As the old Serkong Rinpoche used to say – because I would always bring him something when I went to see him almost every day: khatags, incense, and stuff like that – “Stop bringing me this stupid stuff.” What do I need khatags for? (Khatag is the white scarf.) What do I need all this incense for? Don’t bring me this junk. If you want to bring me something, bring me something that I like or something that I need.” Bring a teacher something that he likes if you want to make an offering. Actually, I found that very good advice. Especially when you see these lamas who have this huge stack of khatags and huge stack of these incense boxes – I mean, what in the world are they going to do with all of this stuff? Anyway, so the point is that if you’re going to make statues, if you’re going to make images, if you’re going to paint a picture of the Buddha, make it nice. Don’t make something which is really displeasing and don’t complain about others that they have made it too nice, or that they have spent too much. It’s difficult from our Western mentality viewpoint because we go and we see these temples in India that the refugees have built, and they have spent so much on it. His Holiness always advises them beforehand, “Don’t make it so elaborately” and “Whatever happened to going back to Tibet and leaving this stuff here in India?” But once it’s already built, or they’re already in the process, then that’s not the time to complain.
About this thing about being ugly, we could say, “Well that’s prejudice against ugly people” – short, ugly, or fat people, or stuff like that. But it’s actually in the list of the eight additional favorable circumstances of a precious human life: one of them is to be good-looking. Why? Because people are attracted to you. Now, they may be attracted to you for disturbing reasons, but they’re attracted to you. It’s much easier. People will listen to you, pay attention to you, if you are good-looking. If you are repulsive-looking, people make fun of you – “Oh, look at that obese, ugly person” and so on – they don’t take you seriously, and they don’t want to be in your presence because you’re not nice to look at. Even though it’s a very worldly thing – and it doesn’t mean that we need to be vain and spend all our time in front of the mirror and doing our hair – it is a beneficial quality to have, a helpful quality to have, if you’re good-looking.
Also, beauty is in the eye of the beholder – that’s very true. In some places, if you are skinny, it’s beautiful; in other places, if you’re skinny, you’re a poor peasant and only fat people are really attractive. But again, we’re talking about a particular society. But it’s very interesting: there is this point about looking like a Buddha, and one of the qualities of a Buddha is that not only do they not have attachment, and greed, and desire, etc. toward other people, but their whole vibration (if you want to use that word) is such that other people won’t have that type of attitude so easily toward them.
It’s not only being ugly, and deformed, and unpleasant looking; it’s not just from making ugly statues, or ugly offerings, or ugly books; I think it’s the same thing with writing: you’re going to write something about Dharma, put it in beautiful, nice language, not in horrible, difficult language. That also I think is very important, especially when translating prayers and practices which are meant to be said out loud. If you can’t get your mouth around it because it’s difficult to say, it’s not going to be very conducive for people wanting to practice it, because it’s not nice-sounding. If you look at the Sanskrit, and then the Tibetan, and the Chinese as well, and the Pali – it’s extraordinary. It’s all in metered verse; it’s in completely different types of meter and poetry because the languages are so totally different, and yet they put it in this unbelievable verse and meter in each language.
It is possible to do that in our Western languages – there is no reason why not. Look how people translated Shakespeare into German and made it incredibly beautiful German; that’s not easy but it was done. It can be done. Therefore, these things are important. But the other point that’s mentioned here strongly is to be patient, not make an ugly scene. Anger is the cause for being ugly because we make an ugly scene when you get angry. Your face becomes ugly when you scream and yell, and everything around you becomes ugly, nobody wants to be there. You create an ugly atmosphere by getting angry, and the opposite of that is to be patient and be able to endure a difficult situation without making a scene. Just think about it: when you’re in traffic, say, and then somebody starts to beep their horn, and get out of the car, and scream, and yell foul language on everybody, and so on, it’s a very ugly scene. Or the same thing when you’re just standing in line and somebody starts to get angry; it doesn’t help. We try not to make ugly scenes either around us.
Let’s do this as a tonglen practice. First what we do is, if we ourselves are not particularly good-looking – and that is very relative – and “our circle insults us” – that means that people make fun of us in terms of what we look like – then we think, “Okay, I accept this karma, I take this suffering on myself, I accept it,” and see that this is the karmic cause. If there is this situation with ourselves, usually we can find a trace of that karmic cause still in our attitude or our behavior – that still we might make ugly scenes, still we might criticize things: “You’re building that temple too big,” “You’re making that statue too big,” “Why do you want to put so much gold on it,” and so on. We have this attitude, and that we want to first accept it, quiet down, and give the solution in my own behavior: from now on I will try to make beautiful images if I am able to do that; if not, at least I’ll rejoice in other people making things very beautifully and not complain about it, and be patient and not make ugly scenes. Then we extend: “I’m not the only one;” we think, “I’m one of many people who are in this situation and this is not just my problem, it’s everybody’s problem.” I accept this and think in terms of giving this better behavior – more beneficial, positive behavior – to everybody. In this way, we can think in terms of taking on and giving away. If you want to do it with visualizations, very good; if not, then at least with our attitude: we could imagine taking on the difficulty with others. As I said, the main point of taking on and giving away with those visualizations is to overcome this hesitation in ourselves, in which we don’t want to do that. Let’s do that for a few minutes.
Dedication
Let’s end here with a dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from this, let it go deeper and deeper, and act as a cause for everybody to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all of us.