| In this book, Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Jampa Tegchok explains how we can train our mind away from self-cherishing, the cause of all suffering, and develop compassion, the cause of everything that is good. He bases his explanation on Kadampa Geshe Chekawa’s classic text, The Seven Point Mind Training, which, amongst other things, teaches us how to transform problems into happiness.
You can read this book here or order a print copy or ebook version of the book from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. |
The Kindness of Others
The Kindness of Others: Editor's Introduction
Chapter One: Motivation
Chapter Two: The Seven-Point Mind Training
Chapter Three: The First Point - The Preliminaries as a Basis for the Practice, Training in Bodhicitta
Chapter Four: The Second Point - The Actual Practice,Training in Bodhicitta
Chapter Five: The Third Point - Transforming Adverse Circumstances into the Path
Chapter Six: The Fourth Point - The Integrated Practice of a Single Lifetime
Chapter Seven: The Fifth Point - The Measure of Having Trained the Mind
Chapter Eight: The Sixth Point - The Commitments of Mind Training
Chapter Nine: The Seventh Point - The Precepts of Mind Training
Chapter Ten: Conclusion
Appendix: The Seven-Point Mind Training
Bibliography and Recommended Reading
Chapter Five: The Third Point - Transforming Adverse Circumstances into the Path
The text now returns to the training in conventional bodhicitta.
The general meaning of bodhicitta is the determination to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings—we want to benefit others in the highest way, we see we have to attain enlightenment in order to do so, and therefore we generate bodhicitta. However, in order to make progress on the path we have to combine our bodhicitta with the realization of emptiness, and when we engage in these profound practices we often encounter hindrances. Therefore we need a method for dealing with them.
By hindrances I mean adverse circumstances or difficult conditions such as getting sick, being in pain or having other things go wrong in ways that harm our mind and stop us practicing. So the discussion of hindrances on the path concerns not only how to prevent them from harming us but also how to transform and use them to enhance our progress.
Insights from this particular explanation on transforming difficult situations into the path are obviously useful for the Buddhist practitioner but even a non-Buddhist can find many ideas here that will be helpful in daily life.
There is a brief explanation followed by an extensive one. The brief explanation is in the next two lines:
When the environment and its inhabitants overflow with unwholesomeness,
Transform adverse circumstances into the path to enlightenment.
When our world is full of pollution and negativity and we, the inhabitants, are also full of negativities and faults, we should transform all this into the path. This means transforming difficult situations into helpful ones, turning hindrances into sources of help, and thinking that those who seem to be harming us are actually helping us achieve enlightenment— seeing them as very kind, as helping us in our practice, particularly that of patience.
Atisha’s teacher, Lama Serlingpa, said that difficult situations encourage us to practice because they trigger thoughts of virtue within us and provide us with the best conditions for practicing it.
For example, if we discover that we have a terminal illness and have only two or three more years to live it can encourage us to do better in the short time that we have left. It can make us kinder, more generous and friendlier to our parents and family and people in general—in other words, make us practice Dharma that much more.
Thus, when things go badly for us in any way, through the practice of transforming adverse circumstances into the path we can view any misfortune as a kind of miracle, like a gift from the Buddha to help us in our practice, or as a broom sweeping away our negative karma.
Sometimes when people get sick they ask a lama for a divination to see what practices they should do and then they do them. In other words, their illness gets them to practice. It’s also said that suffering is a way of waking us up to reality—for example, sickness, pain or any other kind of suffering brings home to us that we are living in the first noble truth, true suffering.
The second noble truth is the true origin of suffering; suffering comes from its true cause—afflictive thoughts and emotions and karma; specifically, suffering comes from the karma we create under the control of afflictive thoughts and emotions. The root of all these afflictions is the self-grasping mind, which is fundamentally mistaken with respect to its objects. It is completely wrong because the way it apprehends things to exist is the complete opposite of their reality. It apprehends objects to exist truly; the actual reality is that everything is completely empty of true existence. In this way our suffering encourages us to reflect on and develop insight into reality.
It is also helpful to think that whatever suffering we’re experiencing is the result of karma we have created in the past—in a previous life, perhaps—and that that karma is ripening here, right now. It had to ripen at some time but if it had ripened in a future life it might have made things more difficult for us. For example, at the moment we have the means—money, doctors, medicine and so forth—for dealing with any illness from which we suffer; in future lives that may not be the case, so we should be happy to experience it now, under these favorable conditions.
Moreover, it’s helpful to recognize that when we’re experiencing suffering we’re purifying our negative karma because once that result has ripened we won’t have to experience it again.
And the best part is that this is how things actually work. We’re not just playing a trick on our mind, distracting ourselves from what’s really happening. On the contrary, it makes sense—if we’re experiencing suffering we must have created its cause and will eventually have to experience the result. Therefore it’s completely valid to think that any suffering we’re experiencing is the result of causes we created ourselves.
When we engage in purifying practices such as circumambulation, offering, prostration or meditation we should not think that by doing so we’re going to avoid every little problem in this life. However, we should understand that these practices will help us to purify much of our negative karma—just not all of it.
For example, it’s extremely important to meditate on love and compassion because doing so, even briefly, is a very powerful way of purifying our negative karma. But even though this is true, we can’t expect it to stop every little problem. On the contrary, we should expect to experience suffering in this life and understand that when we do we’re purifying negative karma. In other words, we purify negative karma by doing certain practices and also by experiencing suffering.
Therefore, for the above reasons, it’s good to be ill. But it’s also good not to be ill, because when we’re well we’re happy and have lots of energy for practice. This is particularly important at the moment, while we have this precious human life with all its potential; when we’re well we have the energy to fully exploit it. When we’re healthy there’s little we cannot do. We can do all the physical practices, such as prostration, verbal practices, such as mantra recitation, and mental practices, such as meditation on love and compassion. There’s essentially nothing we can’t do when we’re well.
Another thing that can discourage us is being poor but the commentary says that poverty should be a source of happiness. The way to realize this is to reflect on the many difficulties that rich people experience in working hard to accumulate their wealth; worrying about protecting, investing, increasing and profiting from it; and being concerned about its being stolen, losing value, diminishing and so forth. Poor people have none of these problems.
If we look closely at all the fights and arguments we see around us we’ll find that they’re often over money; sometimes we see big fights over little money. Money can cause many problems.
However, if we’re wealthy, we should be happy about that too. From the Dharma point of view there’s no problem in being rich because we can then make all the offerings we want—or go wherever we want on vacation! So we should also be happy to be wealthy because of the many options it gives us. We can give money to the poor, donate it to schools, hospitals, poor countries and so forth.
However, the best way to use wealth is to accumulate merit because merit allows us to achieve anything. All happiness, whether short term—such as that we experience from time to time in this life—or long term—liberation and enlightenment—results from merit. Once we’ve created enough merit, there’s no happiness we can’t experience. Wealth is useful because it allows us to create such merit.
The commentary then says that when we approach the time of death, instead of shaking with fear, worrying and feeling very unhappy about having to die, we should feel, “It’s OK to die now because I haven’t created any extreme negative actions, such as the five immediate negativities or the ten non-virtuous actions in a heavy way. I haven’t done anything too bad, so it’s OK to die.”
Thinking like this at the time of death gives us a better chance of following a path created by merit and being reborn where we can again meet a qualified master who teaches the path to enlightenment and in that way continue following the path.
Of course, if we’re ill it’s better to regain our health so that we can keep on practicing and strengthening and nourishing the imprints we’ve already created during this life. Just as seeds gradually develop when we keep adding water and nutrients to the soil in which they’re planted and will stop growing if we don’t, similarly we need to keep nurturing our karmic potential. Doing so gives us a better chance of getting the results we seek from our practice not to mention a good rebirth.
On top of all that, when we experience difficulties, suffering, pain and the like, we should recall the verse in the Guru Puja that says,
I seek your blessings that all karmic debts, obstacles and sufferings of mother beings
May without exception ripen upon me right now,
And that I may give my happiness and virtue to others
And, thereby, invest all beings in bliss.23
I mentioned before how it can be helpful to think that when something bad happens it’s the result of karma, that this is a good way of keeping our mind happy and allowing us to cope when things go wrong. We need to understand that we cannot have everything go the way we want just because we want it or stop unpleasant things from happening just because we don’t want them to. Things don’t happen the way we want. Rather, they happen according to our karma.
Furthermore, when we do face misfortune and think how this is the result of our karma we should also remember that other sentient beings similarly experience a great deal of suffering and use that recollection to inspire us to meditate on compassion. We should also think how much more suffering others are experiencing than we are.
The next part is about transforming our attitude through bodhicitta in order to purify our mind and accumulate merit. The root text says,
Apply meditation at every opportunity.
This means that in all situations and locations, whether we’re experiencing happiness or unhappiness, we should bring that experience into our meditation and not allow it to distract us from the meditation we’re doing.
When things are going well and we’re feeling happy we should think, “May all beings be happy and may I be able to benefit them and bring them happiness”; when we’re experiencing problems we should think, “Through my experiencing this problem, may no sentient being ever have to experience a single problem again. May I experience all beings’ suffering and as a result may the ocean of samsara dry up and completely empty of sentient beings!”
As well as this we can also think that any happiness or suffering we’re experiencing is a teaching from our guru on how to practice.
Whenever people criticize us, even without reason, we should think how useful it is because it subdues our mind and prevents us from getting arrogant. Moreover, it helps us identify our faults. If nobody were to ever point them out to us we’d continue to think that we were perfect. When somebody points out our faults it encourages us to rectify them.
We should also be careful when things are going well—we’re making money, our relationships are working out, life is good—because at such times we’re in danger of our delusions causing us to do things that we should not.
Next, the commentary says that suffering is the path to happiness, which we can relate to the Buddha’s teaching on the four noble truths—suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering. What this means is that the experience of suffering can make us investigate its nature, see where it comes from, realize it can be ended and follow the path to its cessation and everlasting happiness.
The idea that happiness is an obstacle to spiritual progress and suffering is useful may be found in the small, middle and great scopes of the lam-rim and is also found here in the mind training teachings.
On the small scope we reflect that the usual happiness we experience is not genuine happiness but simply the appearance of happiness. When one type of suffering diminishes we have the impression, or mental appearance, of happiness, but it is not actual happiness, merely a reduction of one manifestation of suffering. By thinking about this, we gradually begin to practice refuge and so forth.
On the middle scope we recognize that even were we to achieve the aim of the small scope—rebirth as a human or a god—the happiness we’d experience would also not be satisfactory or reliable because sooner or later it would come to an end. By thinking about this, we gradually work towards the happiness that completely transcends cyclic existence.
The commentary then explains how on the great scope, for the sake of others, we willingly practice taking their suffering onto ourselves. It also says that if we don’t renounce our own personal happiness we’ll never be able to generate the mind dedicated to the benefit of others and if we can’t willingly accept difficulties we’ll never complete the practice of the six perfections.
The supreme method is accompanied by the four practices.
These four practices are:
(a) Accumulating merit in order to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings;
(b) Purifying the negativities that hinder our practicing the path;
(c) Offering tormas to spirits and other harmful beings by thinking of their kindness and feeling compassion for them; and
(d Requesting the Dharma protectors to provide conditions conducive for our mind training practice to improve.
Notes
23Lama Chöpa, verse 95. This verse is so important that it is recited three times. [Return to text]