Chagdud Gonpa

Within the Buddhist tradition, we have both scriptural authority and correct reasoning to attest to this fact. In one of the sutras, the Lord Buddha stated that if one counted every particle of earth in this great planet of ours, the number of times a single being has been our mother would be greater than that number of particles. The great Nagarjuna of Buddhist India condensed the same example into a verse in one of his works.

If we apply our reasoning to this, we can understand that certain kinds of beings, it is true, are miraculously reborn. Hell beings and gods come into their worlds fully formed without going through the process of womb birth or egg birth, without having to rely upon parents. But, in the case of other beings, certainly the beings that we can see directly with our eyes, human beings and forms of animal life, there is a process whereby a male and female procreate and become the parents of a new generation. Even the ants in an anthill, whose numbers we couldn't begin to count, come from eggs and those eggs come from a mother. Infinite other forms of life that are continually taking rebirth, by and large, involve the agency of a mother, conceiving and bearing a child or laying an egg that produces an offspring.

To recognize this incredible situation in which every being has been our mother so many times is to recognize that every being has been as loving, as kind and as caring about us as our parents have been in this lifetime.

There are many, very basic ways in which our mother has shown us kindness. First of all, she gave us our physical body. Before we were conceived, our consciousness was wandering in the bardo (the intermediate state between death and rebirth) disembodied, without any resting place. There was no food for us to eat, though our mind could experience hunger, no clothing for us to wear, though our mind could experience cold. There was no wealth, no security, nothing upon which we could rely. It was a terrifying state of utter confusion. But at the moment of our conception, our consciousness entered our mother's womb and united with the sperm from our father and the egg from our mother. By giving us a physical body, our mother gave us security, some basis for happiness, some respite from the bardo. Many things go into carrying a child to full term. The mother has to avoid certain activities and certain substances that might injure the child. She has to be very careful to observe restrictions that might not be to her liking. Much of the nutritive essence of the food the mother ingests during pregnancy goes to the child, and her own body suffers. The Tibetan texts compare the child to the wick of a butterlamp drawing up all of the oil and burning it at a fantastic rate. But she's willing to make those sacrifices for the sake of her unborn child. Not only did our mother bring us into this world, she also made sure that we survived and that we were raised to the best of her ability.

What is it that all of these beings who have shown us this great motherly kindness want? They want simply to be happy, but they don't know how to go about it. As the great Shantideva of India wrote, "Although all wish to be happy, in their ignorance, they defeat their own happiness as though it were their worst enemy." What is the real cause of happiness? The true cause happiness is virtue, which is to say faith, which is to say the desire to liberate oneself and others from the cycle of rebirth, which is to say bodhicitta, the loving and compassionate concern for the welfare of others. All of these are virtuous qualities of mind. The results of these virtuous qualities and the actions that are motivated by them are, in the short term, a higher state of rebirth as a god or a human and,ultimately, buddhahood.

The Suffering of Sentient Beings

The pure path of virtue is very difficult for beings to discover, and once discovered, it is very difficult to remain on, because there are so many negative and harmful tendencies in our makeup that continually draw us off of it. And so, although unenlightened beings seek happiness, through their efforts they only sink deeper and deeper into the mire of suffering, like someone running into quicksand.

All sentient beings experience an inconceivable variety of pain and suffering. In the hell realm, they suffer largely from intense heat and cold. In the realm of the pretas, or tormented spirits, the primary source of suffering is deprivation due to intense hunger and thirst. In the animal realm, the principal suffering is imposed by stupidity and ignorance, which forces animals to prey on others, to serve humans, or in some other way to be dominated by other species. In the human realm, the primary forms of suffering are those of birth, aging, illness and death. In the demigod realm, the primary suffering is due to intense jealousy and the quarreling and strife that it generates. And in the deva, or god realm, the principle source of suffering is the fall from that relatively high state into lower, more painful states.

If we talk about suffering in a more concise way, we can see that it manifests in our own experience in three basic ways: there is the suffering of change, overt suffering and a subtle level of all pervasive negativity and suffering. The first kind, the suffering of change, is due to the fact that everything, by its very nature, is impermanent. For example, you might wake up one morning happy, but by midday may have heard something or encountered something that has completely changed everything and made ou miserable. The happiness that you counted on in the morning is gone—it's changed.

The second kind of suffering, overt suffering, is much more unpleasant to talk about because it is suffering that is compounded by other suffering. The loss of one of your parents, for example, might be immediately followed by the death of someone else very close to you, which is immediately followed by some other tragedy. Perhaps you lose your fortune, and, on top of that, some other unwelcome circumstance arises in your life. It's one thing after another.

The third kind of suffering is much more subtle. You may think to yourself, "My life is based on positive actions; I don't commit any overt harmful actions. I have just enough to wear on my back, I have  enough food to eat, and I'm content with that." But there is still some level of involvement with suffering and negative action that we can't avoid. For example, in order for the rice that you eat to have come to your table, it was planted, harvested and processed. During each of these steps, sentient beings, for example insects, were being killed. Negative karma was being perpetrated, even if inadvertently. There is an all-pervasive level of suffering that taints everything that we come in contact with in this world.

As unenlightened beings, we are caught in suffering the way a moth is attracted to the light of a candle, only to die in the flame; the way a deer that is attracted to the sound of a flute follows the sound to where the hunter is lying in wait; the way a bee is attracted to the scent of a carnivorous flower, only to be caught in the plant and die; the way a fish is attracted to the delicious bait on the hook, only to be impaled; the way an elephant seeks the coolness of the mud in the noonday sun and then cannot escape. It is because of our attachment and craving that we as unenlightened beings are continually suffering. It is very important for us to understand that every being, who has been our mother at some  point, is tormented by this suffering, because it impresses upon us the necessity of using our precious human existence in the best possible way to repay the kindness of each such being. That is why in our practice we maintain an awareness of the fact that all beings have been our mothers, an awareness of their kindness, an intention to repay their kindness and a deep-seated awareness of and empathy for their suffering.

Understanding the suffering of beings, we give rise to bodhicitta, which has both a relative and an ultimate aspect. The relative aspect consists of two categories: aspiration and involvement. Aspiration involves realizing the equality of ourselves and others, exchanging ourselves for others, and making a shift in which the welfare of others becomes more important to us than our own welfare. There's a kind of progression there. The involvement in relative bodhicitta is expressed in what are termed the "Six Perfections": generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditative stability and wisdom.

When we first give rise to bodhicitta as a formal step on the path, we do so in a ritual context in which a teacher transmits the bodhisattva vow in a formal ceremony. The point of this is to lead us to the path of vision whereby the true nature of reality becomes directly evident, which is the ultimate aspect of  bodhicitta. That does not depend upon a ceremony, but on our own inner transformation through practice.

In all of the Buddhist yanas, or spiritual approaches, including the very pinnacle of approaches, a great deal of importance is placed on those qualities of mind that we term the "four immeasurable attitudes": love, compassion, joy and equanimity. In theoretical examinations of these attitudes, they are discussed in that order. But when we're actually doing spiritual practice, it's important to begin with equanimity.

Equanimity

The Tibetan word for equanimity is tang nyom. Tang connotes "response," literally something one is sending forth. Our normal way of responding is to decide that certain people are our enemies, or that certain situations are threatening, and to react to them with hatred, anger, jealousy or envy, or to decide that other people are our dear friends and to respond to them with attachment or possessiveness. The idea of tang nyom is one of equal response, or equanimity. It means responding to every being in every situation without attachment or aversion, without bias or prejudice.

We have to realize as practitioners that no situation we find ourselves in at any given time is guaranteed to remain the same. For example, a family may get along very well up to a certain point, but then there's complete discord and disharmony, the children won't listen to the parents, there are all kinds of problems and the family members end up loathing the sight of one another; yet before, there was that powerful positive connection that seemed so stable and reliable.

It may very well be that due to our powerful karmic connection, an enemy in this lifetime will be reborn as our best friend in the next. An enemy is not always an enemy. Someone who seems to be your enemy may, by their actions, set up circumstances whereby you come in contact with the dharma, which will be of enormous benefit—the best thing that has ever happened to you. Now, is that person an enemy or not? So to always respond to a person who is behaving in a very negative way toward you as if that person were your enemy doesn't make sense. Your closest friend may end up being your worst enemy in the next lifetime. The only important thing is that there's a powerful karmic connection between you. Whether it becomes positive or negative is something we can't predict. Nothing is stable or predictable.

A great Buddhist master whose name was Katyayana, once saw a woman holding a child in her lap and eating a fish while a dog ran around snapping at her and begging for food. She beat the dog away from her, then threw the bones to the dog and he began to devour them. The master could see with his higher insight that the child had been the woman's worst enemy in a former lifetime, that the fish had been her father and that the dog had been her mother. Katyayana said, "To see someone eating her father's flesh and beating her mother, to see a wife gnawing on her husband's bones and to see someone holding her worst enemy in her lap as her nearest and dearest—samsara is truly absurd!"

The unpredictability of samsara is not limited to ordinary beings. Even highly realized beings are subject to it, at least on a conventional level. For example, while the great master Padmasambhava was teaching in Tibet at the invitation of the dharma king, Trisong Detsen, the king's young daughter died. The king was very confused, because he felt that having been born the daughter of a powerful king, and having met the great master Padmasambhava, she must have had some very good karma. Why, then, he asked Padmasambhava, was it necessary for her to die so young?

Padmasambhava said, "She did not take rebirth as your daughter because of her great karma. The reason she did so dates from a much earlier lifetime when you and I were brothers engaged in building the great stupa of Boudhanath. One day, a fly bit you. You swatted and killed it, establishing a karmic debt between you and the fly. The consciousness of the fly was eventually reborn as your daughter. The fact that she was your daughter wasn't due to your being a great and powerful king; it was due to your swatting that fly in a previous lifetime."

This was the dharma king whom Padmasambhava predicted would be an eighth-level bodhisattva. He was not an ordinary person, but someone of very high spiritual realization who nevertheless found that the unpredictability of karma was part of his life, too. The passport to spiritual practice is being mindful of this quality of karma. When we begin to do practice, it's important that we meditate first on our enemies, on those whom we would normally hate or want to eliminate from our lives, and use skillful  means to develop a sincere concern for their welfare. Then we can meditate on people about whom we feel neutral or apathetic. And then we can meditate on people to whom we're very attached. Finally, we can extend our focus beyond the human realm to the animal realm, to the preta realm, to the god realm, and so on, gradually developing an equal response to all beings. That is the first quality of the four immeasurables, the quality of equanimity, and it's important to begin with that.

Love

Love, in this context, means the wish that others have happiness and the causes of happiness.There is a Mahayana prayer that says, "May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May they be free of suffering and the causes of suffering." The first line expresses the immeasurable attitude of love for sentient beings. All beings are identical in that they want to be happy. They are identical in that they wish not to suffer. But they remain fundamentally ignorant of how to go about gaining happiness and avoiding suffering. Everything they work and strive for is geared to their desire to be happy. What they dream about at night is that happiness. But they don't know how to get it. And so we cultivate the aspiration that they will find the happiness they seek.

This love is a quality that we can express physically, verbally and mentally. We express it physically by the way we conduct ourselves around others, even by the expression on our faces. We also express it with our words. When we meet someone to whom we take an immediate dislike or someone with whom we have had a long-standing negative relationship, it's hard to find pleasant words to say.

But as practitioners, whether we're talking to a friend, an enemy or someone about whom we feel completely neutral, we try to speak the same pleasant, kind, honest words, rather than harsh or abusive ones. Finally, we express our love through our minds by maintaining an attitude of wishing to be of benefit to all beings we meet.

The great Atisha of India, who was instrumental in bringing Buddhism to Tibet, said, "To be kind to a guest who has come a long distance, or to a person who has been ill for a long time, or to your old parents—to be kind to those people is equal to meditating on emptiness."

Compassion

The third immeasurable attitude, compassion, is expressed in the line of the Mahayana prayer that says, "May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering." We cultivate compassion in meditation by actually putting ourselves in the place of beings who are suffering. To begin with a very graphic example, you might imagine yourself as a sheep being dragged by the butcher to the slaughterhouse. It's relatively easy to understand the pain and fear the animal must go through, smelling the blood of other slaughtered animals, knowing that it's being led to its own death. You might think, "Suppose I were a sheep being helplessly dragged toward my death without anyone to protect me or to stand by my side, the doorway to the bardo looming closer and closer as the slaughterhouse got closer and closer. How would I feel?" By imagining yourself in that position, you gain some empathy, some sensitivity to the suffering that that particular being is experiencing.

The value of cultivating compassion in our meditation should not be underestimated. One of the sutras states, "If you wish to awaken to buddhahood, don't concern yourself with a lot of different dharmas; focus on one dharma." What dharma is that? Great compassion. Everything hinges on that quality of compassion, that's how crucial it is to our practice.

An example from the history of the Buddhist tradition in India will illustrate this point. The great Indian master Asanga was in retreat meditating on the Buddha Maitreya, the bodhisattva of the future and of loving kindness. He practiced for more than twelve years without ever being graced by a vision of Maitreya. At one point, he gave up and left his retreat. He came across a person who had taken a large iron bar and was rolling it back and forth on a rock to wear it down into a fine needle. He thought, "If this person has that much diligence for something so mundane, who am I to give up my retreat?" He went back into retreat and practiced for a number of years, but again without any results. He left his retreat again and came upon someone who was trying to wear down a mighty mountain with a feather because the mountain kept the sunlight from reaching her house. He thought to himself, "If this person has that much diligence for something so mundane, how can I give up my retreat?" And he went back into retreat.

When, after another twelve years, he had still received no sign that he was any closer to his goal, he gave up for good. He walked out of his place of retreat and came across a female dog lying on the path, her body infested with maggots. He was so overcome with compassion for the dog that he wanted to remove the maggots from the open sores on her body; yet he didn't want to hurt the maggots because he felt compassion for them too. So he got down on his knees and, disgusted by the sight of the dog's rotting flesh, closed his eyes. He stuck out his tongue to lick the maggots off of her body, but his tongue hit the ground instead, and when he opened his eyes, Maitreya was standing in front of him. "I was never very far away," Maitreya told him," but your karma was not sufficiently purified for you to see me directly. Now, with this act of compassion, it has been purified, and you are beholding me."

Maitreya took Asanga to the Tushita heaven, where he conferred upon him the texts known as the five treatises of Maitreya, which Asanga brought back to the human world and disseminated. All of this was possible because of that moment of compassion, which was the turning point in Asanga's practice.

Joy

Like the others, joy is an immeasurable attitude because the frame of reference is the immeasurable number of sentient beings. Joy in this context means rejoicing in the happiness of others. For example, if you call to mind, without a trace of jealousy or envy, the idea of the gods experiencing incredible delight and happiness, bliss and prosperity, and simply rejoice in that thought, wishing that all beings could have the same things then you are practicing this kind of joy.

Joy is a direct antidote to envy. When we are confronted with someone's success, happiness or prosperity, we can either rejoice or feel envious. When our mind is overcome with envy, it is very difficult to appreciate others' positive qualities, and therefore we risk destroying the seeds of our liberation because our envy prevents us from developing those qualities in ourselves. We can't gain enlightenment through our envy. It was envy that caused a scholar to poison Milarepa, who was an actual buddha. The scholar wanted to be a successful and wealthy teacher with many students.

Sensing that Milarepa was going to outshine him, he had Milarepa served poisoned yogurt, which was the incidental cause of Milarepa's eventual passing.

Because of his envy, he was unable to appreciate any of Milarepa's qualities. Had he not been envious, he would not have created the karma that he did. He simply would not have been motivated to poison Milarepa.

One of the Buddha's relatives, Legpe Karma, served as the Buddha's attendant for many years. He memorized everything the Buddha ever said, but he never put it to any positive use because his mind was filled with envy for the Buddha. When he died, he was reborn in the preta realm because all of the knowledge that he had acquired had been corrupted by his envy.

To summarize: in our spiritual practice, everything hinges on our basic attitude, whether it is positive or negative. If our attitude is noble, our path is a noble one, and we attain noble levels of realization. If our attitude is negative, our path is a negative one, and what we attain is only negative. Our path and the levels of our development are entirely dependent on our attitude as we pursue the path.

There was once a mother and a daughter who were carried away by a flood. They were not practitioners; they didn't really understand anything about dharma. But so great was their compassion for one another that each one thought, "If only the other could be saved, I would willingly drown." As it turned out, both of them drowned, but because of their noble motivation, they were immediately reborn in a god realm.

There was another case of a beggar who was very envious of the king of his region. He kept wishing the king would die and that he would take his place. This was impossible, since the king had sons and daughters who were in line for the throne and many ministers who would never allow a common beggar to take the throne. Nonetheless, envy was this man's constant motivation. All that happened, finally, was that one day he fell asleep by the side of the road and a chariot ran over him, broke his neck and killed him.

Revealing Our Buddha Nature

In addition to the four immeasurable attitudes, the four contemplations that turn the mind to practice—the contemplations of the precious human existence, of death and impermanence, of karma and of the sufferings of samsara—and the practice of the Six Perfections constitute the conduct of a noble path, one that leads to the attainment of enlightenment. But when we think of ourselves as sentient beings attaining enlightenment, we shouldn't create a great dichotomy in our minds between buddhas and sentient beings. It's not as though we start at a certain place and go far away from it to become something that has no relationship to what we are now. There is no ultimate distinction to be made between buddha and sentient being, because both possibilities exist in our mindstream right now.

Yet now, we are not able to experience our buddha nature directly. If we were, we wouldn't need to practice, and the pinnacle path of the Great Perfection would be meaningless. But as the great Longchenpa said, "The ground that is already inherently enlightened must be enlightened again through realization." Realization is not an ordinary way of thinking; it is the direct revelation of our innate enlightened nature.

What prevents us from recognizing it is our negative karma and the adventitious distortions of our minds. It's as though a veil is obscuring the fundamental fact of our enlightenment. Once these distortions are removed, what is already he case becomes evident. Our own enlightened nature is like a crystal embedded in rock. We can see the shape of the crystal and we know it's there, but we can't see it directly until we've ground away at the rock and polished it, and then the crystal is revealed. All of the activity that we take part in when we do practice amounts to the process of grinding away and polishing the rock, knowing that the crystal is there but simply not evident.

Training on the Path

There are different schools of Buddhist thought about the empty nature of phenomena. There are the Yogacharya schools, which maintain that all phenomena are mind. Yet here there is a subtle concept of mind as some existent thing. There is the Madyamika, or Middle Way, school, which says, "The Yogacharya philosophy has a subtle concept of the self-nature of phenomena; only the Middle Way school has true realization of the non-self of the individual personality and the lack of self-nature of phenomena"; and so forth. It is true that there are subtle philosophical points to be explored on the path of Buddhism. But they become more evident as we proceed through the various stages of the path. The important way to begin is to train our minds by cultivating the four immeasurable attitudes, and bodhicitta; on the basis of that mental training, to exert ourselves in gathering the two accumulations, the accumulation of merit and that of pristine awareness; and finally to dedicate the virtue resulting from this practice for the benefit of others.

When the great Atisha of India was invited to Tibet, he was escorted by the great Tibetan translator from Rinchen Zangpo. Along the way Atisha began asking Rinchen Zangpo how much he knew about Buddhism. Rinchen Zangpo was an immaculate scholar; there was nothing he didn't know in the field of Buddhism. And so impressed was Atisha with his responses that Atisha said, "Well, there's no need for me to go to Tibet; they've got you already. Since this kind of knowledge already exists there, what need is there for me to go?"

But the more Atisha inquired, and the more lengthy and involved the Tibetan's responses became, the more Atisha realized that although Rinchen Zangpo's knowledge was extensive, there were holes in his training. At last, Atisha said, "I think I need to come to Tibet after all, because you know a lot but you don't really know how to synthesize your knowledge to benefit a student's mind." It's all very well to have a vast wealth of information, but if you can't make it accessible and useful for practice, then you're missing something.

Sectarianism and Spiritual Pride

When we do Buddhist practice, we're constantly referring to all sentient beings. It's important to have an expansive, unbiased outlook toward all beings, including those in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism. We need to understand that other teachers with other sanghas command just as much respect and devotion from their students and bring just as much benefit to their students as our precious lama brings to us. This is a direct expression of our ability to realize the equality of ourselves and others, to put ourselves in others' places, to realize the importance of the welfare of others over our own welfare. Sectarian bias is poison. In fact, all of the mental poisons—desire and attachment, aversion, stupidity, pride and envy—are contained in sectarian attitudes. As practitioners, we must try very hard not to fall into the pitfall of being prejudiced and narrow-minded.Instead we need to develop an all embracing view.

Spiritual pride is another flaw that we have to guard against. It's like a drop of virulent poison that when added to a dish of food ruins the whole thing. As much as you understand and as much as you've experienced in your practice, don't show it off.

Don't walk around parading what you know. If you behave like that, you will only ensure that your mind will be reborn in hell and that other people will partake of your negative karma, as well. For example, they may take you as a representative of the Buddhist tradition and say, "Well, if that's Buddhism, no thanks." Or they may develop very wrong views about the dharma. Or they may be impressed with you and try to emulate your arrogance and spiritual pride and incur the same kind of negative karma themselves. By our spiritual pride, we accumulate negative karma not only for ourselves, but for others.

So we should acknowledge this flaw and all of our other flaws, and defeat them with our practice. We don't have to worry about our positive qualities growing. They'll grow by themselves. When we drop a rubber ball on the ground, we don't have to lift it up; it bounces up automatically. The more we subdue and eliminate our own faults through our practice, the more our positive qualities will spontaneously express themselves.

MAY ALL BEINGS BENEFIT!

This booklet was produced from a transcript of a teaching given by Jigme Tromge Rinpoche and translated by Richard Barron at Rigdzin Gatsal in March, 1992.