Good Karma

OVERCOMING SPIRITUAL OBSTACLES

When all the religious rituals I perform go amiss,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For investing hope and expectation in forces of darkness;

From now on I will turn away from forces of darkness.

MANY PEOPLE DO religious rituals for health, long life, or wealth, or they request the sangha to do these rituals for them. While some people do these rituals with a Dharma motivation—meditators need a long life to have more time for practice, and a monastery needs funds to build a temple where others can practice—other people do these rituals with worldly motivations, for the happiness of only this life. When these rituals don’t bring the effects we wish, it is not because the buddhas and bodhisattvas have let us down; it is due to investing hope and expectation in forces of darkness.

Relying on forces of darkness has several meanings. It may mean relying on worldly spirits for success, instead of the Three Jewels. Here, instead of observing the law of karma and its effects, people propitiate worldly spirits. Another force of darkness is our wrong conceptions and disturbing emotions that cause us to create destructive karma. Even though we do rituals, they will not bear fruit because our destructive karma creates obstacles. Forces of darkness can also refer to bad friends. Instead of relying on our spiritual mentors and the teachings they give, we follow friends who encourage us to retaliate against people who harm us, to have extramarital affairs, or to cheat others to accumulate wealth. To avoid again creating karma that brings these undesirable results, we resolve to turn away from forces of darkness and to maintain our refuge in the Three Jewels purely.

When my prayers to the Three Jewels remain ineffectual,

It is the weapon of destructive karma turning upon me

For not entrusting myself to the Buddha’s way;

From now on I will rely solely on the Three Jewels.

When our prayers to the Three Jewels do not bear the fruit we want, we should not blame the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Instead, let’s acknowledge that we have not entrusted ourselves to the Buddha’s path. Instead of listening to the Buddha’s teachings with respect and putting them into practice, we may have been critical of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; we may have criticized them or stolen from them. We may have not abided by the refuge guidelines, the chief of which is to help others as much as possible and, if we can’t do that, at least to stop harming them.

Initially our faith in the Buddha and his teachings is not based on conviction. As a result, we may be able to talk about karma and its results intellectually, but we do not want to change our emotional, verbal, or physical habits. We’d rather listen to people who encourage our self-centered activities: those who tell us there’s no problem if we drink and take drugs, who help us justify spending the family’s money on our shopping or gambling addictions, who encourage us to lie or to drive recklessly.

When we put the Dharma teachings into practice sincerely, we discover that they actually work. Our mind becomes clearer and more peaceful. This firsthand experience increases our faith in the Buddha’s teachings. Faith is not blind belief. The Buddha advised us to examine his teachings like a goldsmith testing gold—by burning, cutting, and rubbing it. In the Kalama Sutra, he encouraged us to scrutinize the teachings by using reasoning and by practicing them to see if they work. If we do, then if we encounter someone who puts forth opposite views, our faith in the Buddhist path will not be shaken. In fact it will be strengthened because we’ll be able to see the faults of their wrong views.

By deciding to rely solely on the Three Jewels, we turn to them for guidance both when our lives are relatively calm and when we face difficulties. Turning to the Three Jewels for refuge does not mean we pray, “Buddha, please make this situation turn out well for me,” and think Buddha will do all the work while we drink tea! Rather we request inspiration to remember the teachings we’ve heard and to be able to practice them and transform our minds so that we can deal with the situation wisely.

For example, when we are sick, we may pray to the Buddha to recover so that we can continue our Dharma practice. However, in doing so, we should not see the Buddha as an omnipotent being who can cure us at will. The Buddha is not a god who controls or wills what happens to us. If there were such a god, he or she would be the cause of our misery. But in Buddhism, we say that our destructive actions are the primary cause of our suffering.

It is much more effective to pray to the Buddha for inspiration to transform the experience of being ill into the path to awakening by applying the thought-training practices. We should also pray for inspiration to engage in purification practices so that we can neutralize the destructive karma that is causing our suffering. In brief, the best way to change our situation is by changing our actions.

Each verse in The Wheel of Sharp Weapons gives us clues about the specific karma causing different situations. We can then think, “I will reflect on my life and acknowledge when I’ve done that type of action. I have probably done that action in previous lives as well. Now I regret such harmful behavior, and I want to make preparations by studying and practicing thought training so that when similar situations arise in the future, I will not act according to the same dysfunctional, habitual behavior. Instead I will know how to see the situation in a different light and transform it into the path.”

This is a wonderful way to take refuge in the Three Jewels. Based on this, visualizing Vajrasattva or Chenrezig and doing the four opponent powers will have a deep spiritual impact on us.

When my imagination rises as veils and possessor spirits,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For accumulating negative karma against deities and their mantras;

From now on I will vanquish all negative conceptions.

Imagination—namtok in Tibetan—refers to misconceptions, preconceptions, false assumptions, and fabricated stories and beliefs that our minds create. Some of these, such as the four distorted conceptions—seeing impermanent things as permanent, impure things as pure, things that are unsatisfactory in nature as pleasurable, and things that lack a self as having a self—are deeply rooted. (See verse 91 for more on the four distorted conceptions.) Others are grosser: they are the mistaken interpretations we have of events around us, our projections on others, and our assumptions about their motivations.

In cultures where belief in spirits is strong, veils refer to demons or spirits that possess others. People attribute falling unconscious, strokes, and mental illness to interference from spirits. It is hard to tell what is actually due to outside forces and what is caused by medical or psychological ailments. His Holiness the Dalai Lama points out that many maladies or harmful events that Tibetans attribute to spirit interference are in fact due to other causes.

This verse points out that our misconceptions are ultimately responsible for such difficulties. While meditating, the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa was disturbed by spirits. He questioned them, “Why are you bothering me?” They replied, “Your namtok invited us to come.” In other words, these spirits were created by his misconceptions or invoked by them.

When we face interference, let’s recall that it is due to accumulating negative karma against deities and their mantras. In previous lives, we may have taken empowerments and not kept our precepts and our commitments. We may have promised to do the Six-Session Guru Yoga daily but not followed through. Our actions boomerang back to us as our experiencing mental difficulties or inexplicable illnesses.

The remedy is to vanquish all negative conceptions. In addition to the above description, negative conceptions also refer to what in tantra are called “ordinary appearance and ordinary grasping.” That is, things appear to us as ordinary and truly existent, and our minds assent to that appearance and grasp things as being ordinary and truly existent. For example, we appear to ourselves as being someone who is a truly existent person full of faults, lacking in love and compassion, and incapable of changing our bad habits.

In tantric practice, this view is opposed by a practice called “clear appearance and divine identity.” By means of clear appearance, those who have received tantric empowerment practice seeing themselves and their companions as deities, their environment as the deity’s mandala, their actions as the compassionate activities of buddhas, and the objects they use as pure objects of use. They also practice viewing all these as empty of inherent existence and existing dependent on terms and concepts. Doing this is the practice of abandoning ordinary appearance and ordinary grasping through cultivating clear appearance and divine identity.

When our preconceptions proliferate—“I know everyone dislikes me. They’re talking about me behind my back”—how do you use clear appearance and divine identity to counteract that? Someone who has received tantric empowerment sees himself or herself and the other person as deities, and the words that are spoken as mantra. As Chenrezig, you certainly won’t think, “Tara doesn’t like me; Manjushri doesn’t want to speak to me; even Vajrapani is talking behind my back!” Changing our view in this way counteracts the habitual, self-centered, mistaken conceptions that see others as enemies.

When I am lost and wander about like a powerless person,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For driving others, such as my guru, from their abodes;

From now on I will expel no one from their home.

People are displaced from their homes and countries due to a variety of reasons: natural disasters, wars, terrorism, epidemics, political problems, poverty, environmental disasters, or family conflicts. Here, you are homeless and lack the ability to engage in meaningful activity to change the situation. You are exiled from your home, distanced from people who could help you, and living in foreign places where you do not wish to stay.

What did we do in past lives or even in this life to create the causes for this? We drove others, such as our gurus, from their abodes. We may think, “I would never do this, even in my previous lives!” Consider what happened during the Cultural Revolution in China. People who were ordinarily decent and trustworthy turned on each other. Disciples turned in their spiritual mentors, accusing them of being counterrevolutionaries. Poor peasants joined the People’s Liberation Army with the thought to earn some money for their families and turned entire villages upside down, forcing people to flee. Or perhaps we were a landlord who evicted people from their homes, forcing them to live on the streets because they were in arrears in paying their rent. Maybe we were a greedy child who forced our elderly parent to leave the family house, or we were a roommate who made problems for a fellow roommate, so that he had to move out. Such actions bring about the result of having to wander about as a powerless person.

The antidote to that is to make a resolution: from now on I will expel no one from their home. Instead, we care about others and want them to feel secure and live in a safe place. We help build houses for Habitat for Humanity, work in a homeless shelter, or help homeless teens to stay in school.

When calamities such as frost and hailstorms occur,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For failing to properly observe my pledges and ethical precepts;

From now on I will keep my pledges and precepts pure.

In chapter 2, we spoke about karma and the results that a complete action brings. One of these is the environmental result, the place we live in. Situations where frost and hailstorms destroy crops and livestock, or where there is turmoil caused by climate change or outbreaks of disease are environmental results of karma, specifically, failing to properly observe our pledges and ethical precepts. This happens when we take the five precepts, bodhisattva ethical restraints, or tantric precepts and commitments but don’t live according to them. In the same way that frost and hailstorms destroy external crops, poor ethical conduct destroys the crop of spiritual realizations. This environmental result is the external manifestation of an internal process.

How do we remedy this? From now on I will keep my pledges and ethical precepts. Having experienced the faults of being negligent in our ethical conduct, we make the determination to keep them well henceforth.

I recommend people to go slowly in terms of taking precepts, pledges, and commitments. Take these when you know the benefits of keeping them and have some confidence in your ability to keep them reasonably well.

Before people take refuge and the five lay precepts, I suggest they participate in a refuge study group where you learn the meaning of taking refuge in the Three Jewels, study the five precepts, and make examples of how to keep them in your life. Discuss with others which precepts you will have the most difficulty keeping, the circumstances in which you could easily transgress them, and the attitudes you want to cultivate that will help you maintain them well. In this way, you will understand what you are doing when you take refuge and precepts. Your mind will be happy and confident when doing so, and there will be no regret or confusion afterward. Along this line, it is helpful to prepare in a similar way before taking monastic ordination, bodhisattva ethical restraints, or the tantric precepts and commitments. In this way, we are well informed, confident, and joyful about what we are doing.

When I am greedy but bereft of material wealth,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For failing to give charity and make offerings to the Three Jewels;

From now on I will exert effort in giving and offering.

In this situation, we are poor but full of greed. We have strong ambitions to possess wealth and status, but we cannot afford what we want. Rather than feeling like a victim, blaming others, and making a ruckus about how life is unfair, we need to realize this is the ripening of our own karma. It makes no sense to get angry at others when our suffering originates in actions we did under the influence of ignorance and self-centeredness.

In particular, here we failed to give charity and make offerings to the Three Jewels. Giving charity is done by aiding the “field of compassion”—those who are sick, poor, needy, and cannot take care of themselves; and those who are enmeshed in difficulties, are mentally depressed or physically incapacitated. Previously, when we had the opportunity to help these people, we were stingy or arrogant and turned our back on them. Perhaps we thought, “These people are poor because they don’t work hard. I’m not going to give them anything because they don’t deserve it.”

We have also failed to make offerings to the Three Jewels—also called the “field of merit” because making offerings of resources, service, or our practice to them creates great merit. We make offerings to the Three Jewels because they are endowed with so many good qualities. Offering to them forms a connection with them and creates the constructive karma that will enable us to have conducive circumstances to encounter and practice the Buddha’s teachings. Perhaps we justified our miserliness by cynically thinking, “The monastics should go out and get a job like everyone else, instead of just sitting there meditating and pretending to be holy.” In addition to creating the cause to be bereft of material wealth as human beings, miserliness also causes rebirth in the hungry ghost realm.

The remedy is to make a determination: from now on I will exert effort in giving [to sentient beings] and offering to the Three Jewels. It is important not to hoard our possessions and then claim that we are too poor to give to those who are lacking. Many of us have drawers full of extra things we don’t use. We fear that if we give them away, we won’t have them later when we need them. In the meantime, others need them now, but our miserliness prevents us from extending our hands to fellow human beings.

When making offerings to the Three Jewels, give things of good quality. For example, avoid putting the bruised fruit on the altar as an offering to the Three Jewels, while keeping the good fruit for you to eat. Whether making offerings or giving charity, our attitude should be one of delight in giving, free from the expectation of honor or reward in return. When giving to a Dharma teacher, temple, monastery, or Dharma center, we shouldn’t think, “I made a large donation, so they should pay more attention to me and give me a good seat.” When giving to those in need, we should avoid thinking, “Now they owe me something in return.” Such thoughts pollute our motivation and risk making our generosity just another activity done for the happiness of only this life. Instead, let’s ensure our motivation is aligned with the Dharma, at least aiming for a fortunate rebirth in the future. Better yet is the motivation to attain liberation, and even better than that is the intention to attain full awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings. What we give may be the same in these three cases, but our motivation is the dominant factor in determining the benefit and result of our action.

By giving with a good motivation, we immediately experience a happy mind that feels connected to others. Studies have indicated that people experience more happiness in sharing with others than in keeping things for themselves. Giving with delight creates so much good karma, and that gladdens our hearts. Generosity in this life brings wealth in future lives. Furthermore, even in this life, people are drawn to those who are generous and help them when they are in need.

In addition to giving money and possessions, we can give our time to offer service to those needing help to complete a project. We can give affection and support to those in need of emotional comfort or confidence. Protecting people, animals, or insects in danger is a form of generosity. The best generosity is the gift of the Dharma, giving teachings with the motivation to lead others on the path to awakening. Although we may not be capable of teaching others at this moment, we can share Dharma books with them, answer basic questions, and invite them to attend teachings or ceremonies with us. When friends have problems and ask us for advice, we can share the Dharma with them using everyday language without any Buddhist jargon. After all, so much of Buddhadharma involves changing our perspective, and this does not depend on any philosophy or theology and can be shared with secular people and those of other faiths as well.

When I am ugly and mistreated by my companions,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For constructing ugly images while in the turmoil of anger;

From now on I will be patient when creating sacred images.

We experience physical and mental suffering when we are born with a deformity or a handicap, or have an unattractive body. We also suffer when we are old and others shun us as useless or when we are very ill and people don’t want to be near us. While education is needed to counteract such discrimination and uncompassionate actions, we still need to deal with our feelings in that moment.

When we experience the pain of others’ reactions toward our body, instead of getting angry with them, we recall it is due to constructing ugly images while in the turmoil of anger. We may have destroyed stupas or statues with anger—like the communists did in Tibet and China—or made ugly images of the Buddha while we were angry. Having an unattractive body is, in general, a result of anger. It is easy to see the causal relationship. Right in the moment when we are overcome with anger, we become not only emotionally vile, but also physically ugly, with a red face, bulging eyes, and shrill voice. That angry state of mind also causes us to be unattractive in future lives.

There is a story about a monk who had an extremely ugly body but a beautiful voice. People loved to hear him chant but recoiled when they saw him. Someone who had clairvoyant powers saw that in a previous lifetime, while constructing a stupa—a monument representing the Buddha’s mind—he continually complained and showed an ugly face. When the stupa was completed, he had a change of heart and offered a bell with a charming and elegant sound to the stupa. His ugly body was a result of his anger while making the stupa, and his beautiful voice was the result of having later offered the lovely-sounding bell to the stupa.

We now resolve to be patient when creating sacred images. If we make tsa tsas, the small clay or plaster images of buddhas and deities, let’s do it respectfully with a happy heart, taking our time to ensure the image is beautiful and made correctly. When looking at buddha images, we don’t say, “This buddha is ugly.” A fully awakened being can never be ugly! However, the artistry may be poor.

Although being good-looking is not our principal aim in life, if we want to benefit sentient beings, having a pleasant appearance is helpful so that people will be drawn to us. That then gives us the opportunity to share the Dharma with them. However, if you are a monk or a nun who is very attractive, it is much more challenging to hold your precepts! It is better to be somewhere in the middle, where we are pleasant looking, but not somebody others will ogle.

People often ask why monastics shave their heads. Aside from it being a symbol of our effort to renounce the three poisonous attitudes of attachment, anger, and confusion, it removes one of the chief things we associate with physical beauty—our hair. When I tell teenagers that I want to cultivate inner beauty—kindness, love, forgiveness, and so forth—rather than external beauty, their mouths drop open. I explain that people attracted to me because of inner beauty will be better friends than people attracted to me due to my looks, and they are surprised. In a society where physical beauty and sex are used to sell everything, the idea of cultivating our inner beauty and valuing others due to their inner beauty is a unique idea.

When attachment and anger erupt no matter what I do,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For allowing my untamed negative mind to become rigid;

From now on I will root out you, the “I.”

Sometimes our minds are overcome with neediness or hostility, and no matter what antidote we apply, these afflictions don’t seem to decline. We notice we are getting angry and try to meditate on fortitude or love, but our anger only declines a little. Or we meditate on the insides of the body, but the mind is still filled with lust. Our untamed negative mind is rigid and obstinate.

Why is this? In the past we had similar lust, hatred, jealousy, and arrogance and allowed them free reign in our minds, where they subsequently became well entrenched. Although we have heard many teachings on the disadvantages of self-centeredness and benefits of cherishing others, we have stubbornly hung onto “me,” “I,” “my,” and “mine.” If we did bother to curb them at all, it wasn’t because we cared about others; it was because we selfishly wanted to avoid criticism or a bad reputation.

The antidote is to root out you, the “I.” Here, the “I” refers to grasping an inherently existent self and to self-centered thought. We make a strong determination to note when self-grasping and self-centeredness arise and to counteract them. This is hard to do because we are so habituated to them that when they arise, we do not even notice them, let alone be aware of the havoc they wreak. Instead, we believe that their viewpoints are reality: there is an independent “me,” and we are the most important ones in the universe.

Courage, fortitude, enthusiastic perseverance, and deep understanding of the horrors of cyclic existence are necessary to chip away at these. We have to be willing to endure the temporary discomfort of facing our ignorance and self-centeredness in order to gain the long-term benefit of being free from them.

In general, if a particular action brings benefit in both the short term and the long term, we should do it. If it brings problems in both the short term and the long term, we should avoid it. If an action brings benefit now but problems later on, it’s best to avoid it, and if it brings difficulty now but benefit later on, we should do it. The last two are more difficult to do because, due to self-grasping and self-centeredness, we cling to our immediate happiness and pleasure. However, when we meditate strongly on the defects of cyclic existence and the limitations imposed on us by self-grasping and self-centeredness, our determination to be free from them and to attain full awakening increases.

The actual antidote to ignorance and the afflictions is the wisdom of directly realizing ultimate reality—the emptiness of inherent existence of all persons and phenomena. The antidote to self-centeredness is love, compassion, and bodhicitta. To cultivate the latter, we rely on two methods: the seven-point cause-and-effect instruction and equalizing and exchanging self and others. Rather than go into these in depth in this book, I will refer you to Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage, by Geshe Jampa Tegchok. It is a commentary on the “Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas,” another thought-training text. While we have this precious human life, let’s take its essence by practicing these methods taught by the Buddha to purify all defilements from our minds and bring all good qualities to their utmost development.

When all meditative practices fail in their aims,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning on me

For allowing pernicious views to enter my heart;

From now on whatever I do will be solely for others’ sake.

We do analytic meditation on the stages of the path to awakening (lamrim), but our minds feel like a dry desert; we meditate on a tantric practice, but uncertainty about the effectiveness of visualization floods our mind; we try to develop serenity, but we become drowsy instead. At this time, instead of allowing doubt and frustration to threaten our practice, we need to remember that these obstacles are due to allowing pernicious views to enter our hearts.

Pernicious views are wrong views we held in previous lives or in this life. They include thinking Dharma practice is unimportant, attaining full awakening is impossible, our actions have no ethical dimension, and being self-centered is useful to prevent people from taking advantage of us. Pernicious views also refer to the eight worldly concerns, bad motivations, and rebelling against our spiritual mentor’s wise instructions.

How do we ameliorate this? From now on whatever I do will be solely for others’ sake. We make a determination to turn our motivation around completely. Working for the benefit of others does not mean becoming a people pleaser, being kind only to avoid something unpleasant ourselves or to get what we want. Acting solely for others’ sake means considering others as equal to or more important than ourselves. In its purest form, it is bodhicitta, the aspiration to gain full awakening for the benefit of others.

Some people mistakenly believe that love, compassion, and bodhicitta entail making everyone happy, something that is impossible to do. Beings in cyclic existence are never content! However, we do wish them to be happy and do what we are capable of to bring that about with a kind attitude, when it does not involve harming someone else.

Other people believe that working for the welfare of others entails ignoring ourselves. This, too, is incorrect. We have to take care of ourselves wisely, keeping our bodies healthy and our minds content and eager to learn. This is done without self-indulgence, but for the sake of maintaining our precious human life as the best vehicle for Dharma practice.

By now, you may be thinking, “Can’t Dharmarakshita go easy on me for a while? Does he have to keep saying that everything is my fault?” Actually Dharmarakshita isn’t attacking us. He’s simply pointing out that the self-grasping ignorance and self-centered thought that we previously thought were our friends are actually the cause of our misery. He isn’t blaming us, because he understands that these two mental attitudes are not who we are; they are adventitious factors that we can oppose and eliminate through cultivating wisdom and compassion. In fact, Dharmarakshita has full faith in our ability to abandon these obscurations and attain full awakening. For that reason, he put time and energy into writing this poem. So don’t become discouraged when recognizing the machinations of our confused minds. Instead feel relieved because now you know what to do to bring about a state of lasting peace and fulfillment for yourself and others.

When my mind remains untamed, despite my spiritual practice,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

For eagerly pursuing mundane ambitions;

From now on I will concentrate on aspiring for liberation.

This situation is familiar to most of us. Our mind is rough, unruly, and rebellious. Despite our efforts to practice, disturbing emotions continue to arise, and we find ourselves again doing the very action we vowed not to do. We do prostrations, but rather than become more humble, our arrogance increases: “I’m such a spiritual person!” We do Vajrasattva to purify negativities and become jealous of others who finish the retreat before we do.

This is caused by our “constant companion,” the eight worldly concerns, especially attachment to being important and having a good reputation. We want to be president of the company or director of the Dharma center. We would like to be featured in a magazine as an excellent horse trainer, gardener, rock climber, or executive. We may go through the motions of doing pure Dharma practice, but due to a corrupt motivation seeking fame, approval, offerings, and praise, we are not able to transform our mind.

A few centuries ago, a Tibetan monk heard his benefactor was coming to visit. He proceeded to set up his altar nicely with beautiful offerings to impress his benefactor in the hopes the benefactor would then make an offering to him. Suddenly he realized what he was doing and threw dirt on his altar to foil the plot his self-centered mind had invented. His teacher, who had clairvoyant powers, noticed this and commented, “This monk just made a pure offering by countering his self-centered thought.”

Instead of seeking worldly gain, which results in our continued rebirth in cyclic existence with the same untamed mind, we need to learn and practice the meditations that will transform our motivation into a genuinely spiritual one. Topics to meditate on are impermanence, the unsatisfactory nature of cyclic existence, the conditions for afflictions to arise, and the process of taking rebirth in cyclic existence through the twelve links of dependent arising. Getting a feel for what it means to be under the influence of ignorance, afflictions, and polluted karma, and how these bring us and others repeated misery turns our mind toward liberation and full awakening. When our mind is intent on liberation or awakening, our motivation is upright because it is focused on a spiritual goal. It is impossible for the eight worldly concerns to be present in our minds when at the same time our motivation is pure.

When we are convinced that the glitter of the eight worldly concerns will not make us happy, it’s easier for our minds to generate renunciation of cyclic existence and the determination to be free from it. Such a motivation makes our minds much more peaceful because instead of fretting about irrelevant things, it is focused on something meaningful. This motivation must be cultivated with effort. Then, if somebody criticizes us or blames us, we don’t care much because we are focused on liberation. If you are in prison and want to get out, you don’t worry about dust in your prison cell because you’re focused on how to escape.

When I feel remorse the moment I sit down and reflect,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

For being shamelessly fickle and clamoring for high status;

From now on I take my associations with others seriously.

Sometimes we sit down to study or reflect on the teachings and instead of feeling inspired and eager, we feel remorse that we may be missing out on another interesting activity, social event, or opportunity to advance our career. Wondering if our practice will bring the desired results, we get confused and agitated. Or we have great expectations—we meditate a little and think we will have great realizations and visions of the Buddha. When this doesn’t happen, we get discouraged, regret that we even tried, and want to give up. We think, “I could have gone to the beach with this great guy instead of doing retreat.”

This boredom, disappointment, and remorse are the results of being shamelessly fickle and clamoring for high status. Seeking fame and recognition, we buttered people up in the hope that they would do something for us. But as soon as another person could do more for us, we deserted our previous companions and took up with new ones. Similarly, we might go “guru-hopping”—forming a relationship with one teacher, but when he or she doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, we leave and find another teacher who does. In short we don’t know how to be a good friend to our friends or a good student to those who kindly teach us the Dharma.

We may have boasted of doing great practices that we cannot accomplish because we haven’t yet established the firm foundation necessary to do them. We may have a lot of ambition, wanting to make a name for ourselves as a great teacher or practitioner, and so take one empowerment after another but do not do the corresponding practice. Or if we do it, we get bored and jump to another practice, another Dharma center, or another spiritual mentor. In our daily life, we go from one friend to another friend, from one job to another job, all due to having a fickle mind that is trying to eke out the most possible pleasure for ourselves.

The remedy for this is to take all my associations with others seriously and to be vigilant in forming and nurturing beneficial relationships. Before making a commitment, we should determine whether we’ll be able to follow through on it. If something unexpectedly comes up, we communicate well with others instead of leaving them high and dry. We take our connections seriously and try to create long-term, durable relationships with mutual respect.

I observe my spiritual mentors’ behavior in order to learn from it and am continually impressed with their peaceful, humble, and compassionate manner in all situations. These are the kind of people I want to be around in this and future lives. I want to form strong relationships with them so that they will continue to influence me in positive ways. By making sure our motivation for Dharma practice is sincere and by following our teachers’ instructions in this life, we’ll create the causes to meet them and be their disciples again in future lives.

When I first met the Dharma, I was young, foolish, and lacked the ability to discriminate between authentic and false spiritual mentors. I was extremely fortunate in meeting my teachers. This was not due to luck, but to prayers made in a previous life. Knowing this reminds me to create merit and make similar dedications, because I want to meet qualified teachers and have good Dharma friends in future lives.

When I am deceived by others’ treachery,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

For being conceited and greedy;

From now on I will minimize attachment to everything.

It may happen that others take advantage of us without our realizing what is happening. Perhaps we gave people money to use for great projects, but they squandered it. Perhaps someone pretended to have excellent qualities he lacked and hid his faults, and we fell for it. We thought that person was marvelous, followed their suggestions, and ended up in a predicament. Our self-centered, unclear mind thought there was something to gain from getting involved with this person, but it backfired.

Why are we susceptible to such deception? It is the result of being conceited and greedy. We can see that having such mental states in previous lives creates the karma for this to happen now and that our present self-centeredness provides the condition for that karma to ripen. For example, we may have taken advantage of others in previous lives by returning their kindness with ingratitude or deceiving them with our ploys. Full of ourselves, we thought we could conquer anything or anyone that got in our way. Such attitudes and behavior ripened in the causally concordant experiential result; that is, we experience something similar to what we caused others to experience.

We blame others for deceiving us, but we also need to look at why we fall for their schemes. Why did we naively believe this person? Often we find there was some kind of selfishness, arrogance, or greed in our mind that led us to follow him or her. We were looking for a shortcut or had inflated expectations of gain and fame. To remedy this we must minimize attachment to everything and be more discreet and honest.

Doing the taking-and-giving meditation will help us in this situation. In this case, with compassion, we take on the pain and difficulties of others who are being used and deceived, and whose trust is betrayed. This will decrease our selfishness, conceit, and greed and make us more attentive so that we will quickly notice these emotions and apply the antidotes when they arise in our minds. Then we imagine giving our body, possessions, and virtue—plus whatever we have procured due to deceptive and treacherous behavior—to others and imagine all their needs being fulfilled. Having all conducive conditions for Dharma practice, they generate renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom; they enter the Vajrayana path and attain full awakening.

When my studies and teaching fall prey to attachment and anger,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

For failing to contemplate the ills of the demons in my heart;

From now on I will examine these hindrances and eliminate them.

We may have faith in the Buddha’s teachings, but when we sit down to study them, our minds wander to objects of attachment and anger, such as the good-looking person we’d like to get to know or the colleague who insulted us. We are jealous of those who receive teachings we have not; we scheme to get invited to give a talk to people who will certainly give us a hefty offering afterward.

Such situations are due to failing to contemplate the ills of the demons in my heart. The demons refer to afflictions, and the ills of the demons refer to their disadvantages. Self-centered thought and self-grasping ignorance, in particular, are the real demons. There is no external demon or devil. Instead of letting afflictions distract us or influence how we study and who we teach, we must focus on the teachings themselves and use them to counteract our afflictions.

While we may not believe in an external devil, we still blame others instead of understanding the faults of our inner afflictions and selfishness. When self-centered thought speaks, we are at its beck and call. We do not realize this is the demon that has been cheating us all this time. In fact, we may have a great deal of fear about giving up our self-centeredness: “If I do not look out for myself, I will be left behind and nothing good will come to me.”

In fact, our self-centeredness has gotten us into one jam after another, whereas all of our knowledge and possessions come due to the kindness of others. Others grew our food, sewed our clothing, built our homes, constructed the roads we drive on and vehicles we ride in. Others taught us and encouraged our talents. We have so many advantages in life not because we selfishly took care of ourselves, but because others helped us. Examining how this functions in our own lives, we realize we have been the recipient of tremendous kindness. We can relax and trust the universe a little, instead of thinking we have to control everything.

Let’s challenge our fear of letting go of self-centered thought. Other sentient beings have been protecting us and caring for us all these years, while our suffering and problems have come from self-centered thought. Others taught us how to read and write, as well as the skills we use to earn our living. Our financial problems are due to our greed and ignorance. When we see that everything we have comes due to the kindness of others, the fear that giving up our self-centered thought will make us vulnerable seems totally ridiculous!

What do we do to counteract the blindness that prevents us from seeing the defects of the afflictions? From now on I will examine these hindrances and eliminate them. That is, we identify our afflictions and then apply the antidotes to counteract them. It is important to see ourselves as a patient suffering from the disease of cyclic existence, caused by the virus of self-grasping ignorance and self-centered thought, and then turn to the Buddha, Dharma, and sangha for guidance on the way to attain good health.

When all the good I have done turns out badly,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

For repaying others’ kindness with ingratitude;

From now on I will respectfully repay others’ kindness.

Sometimes we do a project with a kind motivation, but all sorts of problems and competitiveness result, or we undertake an ingenious project to help others but experience obstacles. We reach out to assist someone, and they scream that we’re interfering in their lives. Our temptation, then, is to feel hurt, angry, and defensive: “Look how hard I worked for these people and they treat me so badly!”

Instead of falling into self-pity or self-righteous anger, we need to recognize this is due to previously having repaid others’ kindness with ingratitude. In the past, we have done exactly what we are accusing others of doing. To remedy this, we should spend some time thinking about the kindness others have shown us and how we have responded. Many times we were ungrateful, or we misinterpreted their actions and criticized them. For example, our teachers gave us some good advice, but we got angry because the advice did not match what our ego wanted to hear.

In Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, one meditation to help us cultivate bodhicitta involves considering our relationships with different people: parents, teacher, older and younger siblings, managers, colleagues, employees, and children. With each we contemplate how they have helped us, our responsibility toward them, and how we treated them. This meditation is very humbling, because we often discover that others have benefited us, but we have responded in inappropriate, ungrateful, or even negligent ways. We have accepted their affection, care, and kindness without any thought of helping them in return.

The remedy is to respectfully repay others’ kindness. Instead of keeping a balance sheet—“I’ve done this for you, so you owe me this”—we need to recognize our interdependence with others and make an effort to repay their thoughtfulness with appreciation and gratitude by both extending kindness to that person and by “paying it forward” by helping someone else. In this way, we cultivate the attitude that takes delight in giving. Doing the positive action is the reward in itself. We do not need somebody to notice it, thank us, or praise us.

Our constructive actions should always be done respectfully: we offer a gift with both hands. We point out someone’s good qualities with a smile. We stand up to greet others, give them the best seat, fill their glass with water. There are so many small actions we can do with respect that make people feel cared for.

This poem is not theoretical. We can see ourselves in these situations, think about the kind of actions we may have done, do the taking-and-giving meditation, and resolve to act differently in the future. This mental spring cleaning will benefit us. We have to start looking under the rugs and behind the furniture, hauling out stuff that we have tried to ignore for a long time. A lot of rubbish has been stored in our mental house. It smells awful, but until now we’ve tried to cover it up with the scent of Internet, shopping, and fun. Now, instead of trying to cover up our dirty motivations, we decide to clean the house, to clean our hearts and minds. This process is liberating and refreshing, and the result is joy and peace.

In this section, each verse has a similar structure. It begins with an undesirable situation that we are experiencing, which prompts us to question, “Why is this happening?” The middle two lines answer that question, saying it is the weapon of destructive karma returning full circle upon us and explaining the karmic causes of that kind of situation—what we did in previous lives or even earlier this life that brought it about. The last line presents the attitude to cultivate or action to do to avoid creating the causes for these undesirable situations in the future and to instead create the causes for happiness. Now Dharmarakshita will summarize the chief points that he has made so far.

In brief, when calamities befall me like bolts of lightning,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

Just like the ironsmith slain by his own sword;

From now on I will be heedful of nonvirtuous acts.

When we fall ill, when someone dies, when plans created with painstaking care don’t work out, we are surprised—it seems like calamities befall me like bolts of lightning—because we believe life is not supposed to be like that. Especially when we live in a wealthy country that is relatively peaceful, it’s easy to take our good circumstances for granted. However, as long as we are in cyclic existence, unsatisfactory experiences and outright suffering will naturally come to us. Suffering is not a punishment, and it does not indicate failure. It is simply the weapon of destructive karma returning upon us like an ironsmith slain by his own sword. The smith crafted the sword in order to earn a living but was killed by his own creation. Similarly, we do harmful actions thinking they will further our ambitions, but they plant the seeds for our misery.

No one else is to blame for this situation. We made the weapons. If we did not make the weapons, nobody could take them and throw them at us. If we did not create the karma, pain and frustration would not come our way. Rather than accusing others of being the source of our misfortune, we need to investigate our situation well and see that we are being slain by the weapons we created through the force of our own self-grasping ignorance and the afflictions it nourishes. In this way, we begin to take responsibility for our experiences. That gives us real power, because we see that we can change our experiences by changing our attitude and actions.

This is one aspect of the satisfaction I find in working with the incarcerated. Prison inmates who write me are interested in the Dharma and are usually ready to take responsibility for their lives. They have done things they deeply regret, and they do not blame others, cover it up, or rationalize their mistakes. They own their misdeeds and go about the hard work of releasing anger and resentment.

One prisoner I correspond with murdered someone when he was seventeen. When he told me the story, he said, “I was sentenced for first-degree murder, and rightly so.” He did not try to shirk responsibility or blame anybody else. This is the first step in doing powerful purification, for the degree of purification corresponds to the intensity of our regret. When we take responsibility, we have genuine regret and a strong determination not to repeat the action.

Learning from our mistakes, we pledge from now on I will be heedful of nonvirtuous acts. This involves developing the conviction that suffering arises from self-centeredness and happiness springs from cherishing others, instead of the other way around. Making many examples from our lives will help us understand this.

Now we practice being heedful of nonvirtuous acts. This means we cultivate conscientiousness, an attitude that cherishes virtue and guards the mind from defilements. To do this, recall a time in your life when you cherished noble aspirations and virtuous intentions. Recall how happy you felt then, and notice that your mind was free from afflictions at that time. The attitude that cherishes virtue prevents ignorance, anger, and attachment from arising. And if they do start to arise, we immediately recognize this and direct our attention back to our positive intention. Conscientiousness is the root of all the paths and grounds leading to awakening. One condition of our precious human life is having interest in the Dharma, and we are interested in the Dharma because we are conscientious; we cherish virtue.

When I undergo sufferings in the lower realms,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

Like a fletcher slain by his own arrow;

From now on I will be heedful regarding destructive actions.

When the seeds of our destructive actions ripen, we find ourselves in unfortunate realms of existence. While some people think of these as psychological states, when born there, they are just as real to us as our human life is now. In the hellish rebirths, there is not just the physical suffering of extreme heat and cold, but also the mental suffering of not knowing where to turn for help. Our minds are immobilized by fear and animosity, and although we want happiness, our suspicion blocks us from seeing a trustworthy person who can help us. We can see that same mechanism at work in our current lives. There may be a lot of kindness around us, but our mental state or our karma prevents us from seeing it.

In the hungry ghost realm, beings are totally dissatisfied. The mind that is tight, greedy, and stingy becomes our whole life. There is constant dissatisfaction and frustration because we can’t get what we want. On a physical level, there is the suffering of hunger, and on a mental level there is a feeling of insatiable craving.

In the animal realm, beings suffer physically from being hunted or eaten, but what may be even more torturous is the deep stupidity and ignorance that overwhelm their minds. Imagine being in a body when your biological structure restricts the functioning of your intelligence. To me, this is very frightening.

In previous lives, we have been born in such rebirths numberless times. It is remarkable that we have the opportunity we have right now with our present precious human rebirth with all its conditions to learn and practice the Dharma. All the suffering we experienced in unfortunate realms is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon us like a fletcher slain by his own arrow. We put negative energy into the environment through our distorted thoughts and harmful actions, and it comes right back to us as our experience, like the fletcher killed by the arrow he made.

The conclusion is from now on I will be heedful regarding negative actions. We will be conscientious by treasuring ethical conduct, mindful of our precepts and values, and use introspective awareness to continuously be aware of our thoughts and actions.

Many people do not understand the purpose of precepts or monastic vows and see them as rules imposed from outside. In fact, they are tools to help us be aware of our thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds. We may notice that we want to drink or take drugs “to relax.” Remembering we have a precept regarding this, we recall the precept’s purpose: we don’t want to numb our mind but to keep it alert so that we can make wise decisions, connect with people on the heart level, engage in wholesome deeds. Then we investigate our mind: “Why do I want to drink or take drugs? What do I think I’ll get out of doing this?” This puts us in touch with our internal restlessness, our feelings of being socially awkward, our desire to fit in, or our wish to zone out and not have to deal with life. In this way, precepts act as a mirror that helps us to see what we are actually feeling and thinking inside ourselves. Then we can ask ourselves, “What do I actually need at this moment? Is it communication? Connection? Creativity? Exercise?” By determining what our actual emotional need is at that moment, we can offer ourselves empathy and think creatively about how to fulfill that need in a way that harms neither ourselves nor others.

Instead of continuing to be like an ironsmith slain by the sword he made or fletcher killed by his own arrows, we realize that we can do something about our situation. We cultivate a mind that cherishes others and wants to aid them, creating an “arrow” of bodhicitta that will pierce our self-centeredness. We develop wisdom that understands dependent arising and emptiness and use it as the sword to cut off the ignorance that is the root of our cyclic existence.

When the sufferings of householders befall me,

It is the weapon of destructive karma returning upon me

Like parents slain by their own cherished children;

From now on I will rightly renounce worldly life.

The sufferings of householders refer to relationship problems, financial difficulties, problems with your children, parents, or siblings. You fall in love, but the other person either does not pay enough attention to you or is too possessive. You suffer when there are hindrances to having children, but when you have them, you have other problems. You have so many hopes and aspirations for your children but cannot make them become what you would like. Your children come into this life with their own karmic seeds and tendencies. When you have a child, you have no idea what you are getting. You have the responsibility to give your children love and life skills, but you cannot control what happens to them.

Then there are job problems. You need a job to provide for your family. Your spouse wants you to work more, so the family has more money, or she wants you to work less, so you are at home more. You strive for financial security, but who do you know who feels completely financially secure?

The analogy of parents slain by their own cherished children is poignant. It refers to the disappointment we experience when our great expectations fall flat. We believe that material possessions, family, success at work, and physical comforts will bring us happiness, yet even when we have them, something in our hearts is still not peaceful. Fulfillment eludes us.

The remedy to this is to renounce worldly life. This could mean renouncing mundane life and taking monastic ordination, which is often called “leaving the householder life and entering the homeless life.” Or it could mean that your mind—no matter if you are a lay practitioner or a monastic—relinquishes the attachments of a householder to family, money, possessions, job, house, and so forth and turns toward nirvana. Instead of focusing on the happiness of this life or even a good rebirth in cyclic existence, you aspire for liberation or full awakening. Sometimes we may think we have given up attachment, when a small event shows us we have not. For example, many of us may say, “I’m not attached to my shoes.” But if we go outside and our shoes are gone, we discover we are actually attached to them! We’re angry that they’re gone and want them back.

Taking the five lay precepts or monastic precepts provides structure and discipline that sets parameters on how far we can go in acting out our attachment. It puts us face-to-face with our craving, because we may want to do something, but previously we reflected on the situation and voluntarily took a precept saying we will not act or speak in a certain manner. Our precepts are like a burglar alarm saying, “The thief of attachment or anger is trying to steal your joy and your virtue!” We then apply the Dharma antidote to subdue that affliction, so it doesn’t lead us into misery.