Geshe la's Teaching: Sunday, 30 March 2008
By discussing consciousness, name and form, the senses, and contact (the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth links of the twelve links of dependent arising), Geshe la introduced us to the heart of karmic interplay. As I have mentioned earlier, the theory of karma is very much like quantum theory in this sense: we can understand it as deeply as we wish, from Karma for Dummies to the advanced physicist's inscrutable cyphers on the blackboard. The point, however, is that the depth of our understanding has no influence on karma's effect on our daily lives. So while Geshe la spoke of how these particular links interact with each other and with our own lives, his teaching was more directed at showing us how, first, to observe the daily workings of karma as they shape us minute by minute, and, second, how to begin to alter these sequences to secure our genuine happiness.
After all, you don't have to understand how the fuel injection system of your car operates to drive the car to the grocery store and arrive at your destination. Similarly, you don't have to understand the subtlest actions of karma to learn how to turn its central force to your own advantage and happiness.
Naturally, we are concerned to stop our negative actions--although another way of accomplishing this, by-the-by, is to focus on positive actions--so Geshe la spoke of the three "gateways" or reasons that lead us to undertake harmful actions:
- Ignorance--Ignorance causes us to harm ourselves, others, and our environment without our knowing that we are doing so. Ignorance of the law, as they say, is no excuse, but in karmic matters, it is a mitigating factor. If we hurt somenone unintentionally, it is not the same thing as hurting someone purposely.
- Habit--Habit causes us the greatest problems. Most every harmful action that we undertake, we undertake out of habit, from the simplest reaction to the daily news to the most profoundly ingrained habits of viewing ourselves as inadequate, or unequipped to handle productively the lives that we have been given. Habitual reactions are very difficult to change, and they require our full attention to do so.
- Carelessness--Carelessness permits us to act in ways that we know are unproductive. We allow those factors that we know to be destructive, such as hatred or revenge, to control us, while knowing full well that they are destructive.
Geshe la then spoke of the qualities necessary to prevent our approaching these three gateways to
wrong-doing: mindfulness, alertness, cautiousness. Mindfulness refers to the undisturbed quality of a mind focused on its object, while alertness safeguards that mindfulness, watching for anger rising, or desire, or anything that will remove the mind from its focus. And, of course, cautiousness simply refers to our beginning to realize, ahead of time, when the disturbing emotions will arise. We can then be ready for them, alert to the possibility of our mindfulness being disturbed. It is often said that alertness is a natural component of mindfulness. Wherever you find mindfulness, you will also find its sidekick, alertness.
The most important concept to understand regarding karma concerns that of "causes and conditions." The effect of any action or thought or emotion will manifest itself only when the conditions are right for it to do so. These conditions are often immediately present, such as when you place your finger over a candle's flame--the pain is instantaneous. But cultivating hatred, for example, is different. While it might immediately raise our blood pressure, and while it might manifest in the gloomy way that we view the world, it will often come to full fruition only when confronted with its object. We see our enemy, and we curse him, which immediately, of course, sets another chain of reactions into motion. And some of these actions or emotions will not manifest for many lifetimes. But like seeds lying dormant in the desert, the life that is in them will eventually appear in one form or another, and so we are compelled helpessly from life to life until the process is completed.
The problem is that every day, every hour, every minute, every second, we are initiating sequences of causes and effects that have radically different arcs of completion. Some will require seconds, some will take minutes, some will need hours, some will take days, some will use up years, and some lifetimes to complete their arc. And so each second witnesses the sowing of new seeds and the blooming of old ones, sown anywhere from a second ago to a lifetime ago.
It is all very complex, very fast moving, and very volative. But it shifts the emphasis of our attention squarely on the present as the staging ground for our future happiness. If part of our future lies squarely in our past actions, then a large part of it lies squarely in our overall outlook right now. We are currently making our future as we view the world. Of course, it is very easy to maintain tranquility in tranquil times. But our difficulties haven't been created by our minds in their tranquil states; our difficulties have been created by our reaction to difficult times, when we lose our tranquility, and begin to wish, for example, that the person who has taken our job fall on hard times so that we might get that job. Or when we feel sorry for ourselves because we have been denied those things that we want, or when we envy others their good fortune, or feel anger toward those who don't recognize the good work that we have done . . . these are the times when we are creating for ourselves a difficult future. And so these are the times, as Geshe la pointed out, that most require our mindfulness and attention.
With mindfulness and alertness in place, it is during these hard times that we must practice what Geshe la called "transformation," a central concept in Buddhism, and at its highest level, the fundamental idea of tantric practice. The logic of transformation is simple. When hardship comes our way, we must learn to be appreciative of its arrival because it exposes our selfishness, our egocentricity, far more clearly, far more completely, than when things are going along well. Fully exposed by hardship, our egocentricity can then be most clearly identified and dismantled. When we are happy, the ego is too well camouflaged for us to work productively with it. Hard times strip away the camouflage, and we are left with our throbbing egos in full view. When we learn to feel fortunate to have so clearly identified the problem, regardless of the hardship we had to endure to see it, we are practicing transformation.
So the trick is to bring mindfulness and alertness to our most difficult moments. It's hard to do, but it's also highly productive because it involves sowing seeds that will bloom with equanimity and tranquility in the future when difficulties arise again. When do this repeatedly, we are replacing unproductive habits of thought with productive ones.
Finally, Geshe la mentioned the notion of "divine pride." Again, this is essentially a transformative practice, often found in discussions of tantric Buddhism. Like many Buddhist ideas, it is at once very simple and very profound. One of the most helpful discussions of the idea comes from a book that Lama Yeshe wrote, entitled Becoming Vajrasattva. The quotation I'm providing here comes from page 110:
The way to abandon feelings of guilt and low self-esteem, such as 'I'm bad; I'm negative,' is to generate divine pride and thereby transform all your negative thoughts into blissful wisdom energy. With this technique you can deal with any situation that arises: take that energy and transform it into divine white radiant light . . . You have to overcome your ego trip. Whenever the mundane thought 'I am' arises, mundane body, speech, and mind manifest immediately. The moment you generate divine pride and experience transcendental transformation, you eliminate all ordinary conceptions. And while it is essential to do this during your meditation sessions, of course, it is also necessary during the breaks. Instead of coming down when the session finishes, going to lunch, and allowing old habits to arise, looking at each other with lust or anger, maintain the energy of divine pride.
It is difficult to think of better, more relevant advice. See ourselves once as the deity, manifest the energies of the deity once without the presence of ego, and we learn that it is an energy, that it is a way of viewing ourselves, really, that only our bad habits can compromise.
Divine pride is innately ours; it courses through our nervous systems and powers our virtues. It is only our habitual patterns of thought that make it so difficult to access.
So our task is to break these bad habits, and there is no time like the present to do so.
Sidney Burris, Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas
