THE SEVEN CAUSE-AND-EFFECT PERSONAL INSTRUCTIONS
2' The gradual training
a" Training the mind to be intent on others’ welfare
1" Establishing the basis for developing this attitude
(a) Achieving impartiality toward living beings
(b) Having affection for all beings
(i) Cultivating a recognition that all beings are your mothers
(ii) Cultivating a remembrance of their kindness
(iii) Cultivating the wish to repay your mothers’ kindness
2" The development of the attitude of being intent on others’ welfare
(a) The cultivation of love
(b) The cultivation of compassion
(c) The cultivation of wholehearted resolve
b" Training the mind to be intent on enlightenment
c" Identifying the spirit of enlightenment, the fruit of the training
2' The gradual training
The gradual training has three sections:
1. Training the mind to be intent on others’ welfare
2. Training the mind to be intent on enlightenment
3. Identifying the spirit of enlightenment, the fruit of the training
a" Training the mind to be intent on others, welfare
Training the mind to be intent on others’ welfare has two parts:
1. Establishing the basis for developing this attitude
2. The development of the attitude of being intent on others’ welfare
1" Establishing the basis for developing this attitude
Establishing the basis for developing this attitude has two parts:
1. Achieving impartiality toward living beings
2. Having affection for all beings [299]
(a) Achieving impartiality toward living beings
I have previously explained the stages of the preliminary practices and so forth in the context of the persons of small and medium capacities. Practice these preliminary practices here as well and then sustain your meditation.
From the outset establish an even-minded attitude, eliminating the bias which comes from attachment to some living beings and hostility to others. Otherwise, any love or compassion you feel will be biased; you will never feel unbiased love or compassion. So, cultivate impartiality. There are three kinds of impartiality: (1) equanimity with respect to application,30 (2) the feeling of impartiality, and (3) immeasurable impartiality. In this section, impartiality refers to the last one. Immeasurable impartiality is said to have two types: (1) wishing that living beings were free from such afflictions as attachment and hostility, and (2) being even-minded yourself after you have become free of attachment or hostility toward living beings. In this section, impartiality refers to the latter.
The steps for cultivating immeasurable impartiality are as follows. Since you can easily be impartial to a person toward whom you have neutral feelings, first take as the object of your meditation such a person, someone who has neither helped nor harmed you. Achieve an even-mindedness toward this person, removing your attachment and hostility.
Once you have attained this, then cultivate even-mindedness toward a friend. Your lack of even-mindedness toward this friend is either because of the degree of your attachment for him or her or because of the bias from your attachment and hostility.
After you achieve an even-mindedness toward this friend, cultivate it toward an enemy. Your lack of even-mindedness toward this person is due to your hostility, viewing him or her as totally disagreeable. After you are even-minded toward this person, finally cultivate it toward all living beings.
Question: Well then, what meditation eliminates attachment and hostility toward these three persons?
Reply: Kamalaśīla’s second Stages of Meditation offers31 two approaches: (1) Contemplate as follows, “From living beings’ viewpoint, all equally want happiness and do not want suffering. Therefore, it is inappropriate to hold some close and to help them, while keeping others at a distance and harming or not helping them.” [300] (2) Contemplate as follows, “From my viewpoint, if I have continuously been reborn since beginningless time, all beings have been my friends hundreds of times. To whom should I be attached? To whom should I be hostile?”
Furthermore, with regard to attachment to friends the Daughter Like the Finest Moon’s Discourse Sūtra (Candrottama-dārikā-vyākaraṇa-sūtra) says:32
Formerly I have killed all of you,
And you have slashed and dismembered me.
All of us have been mutual enemies and killed one another.
How could you be attached?
In accordance with my previous explanation in the section on the fault of uncertainty,33 think about how all friends and enemies can quickly change. By thinking in this way, stop both hostility and attachment.
In this context your contemplation requires you to make the distinction between friend and enemy. It is not the notion of friend or enemy that you need to stop but the bias that comes from attachment and hostility, which are based on the reason that some people are your friends and others your enemies.
(b) Having affection for all beings
Kamalaśīla’s second Stages of Meditation states:34
Moistened by love, your mind becomes like friable, fertile soil. When you plant the seed of compassion, it grows easily and bountifully. Therefore, after you infuse your mind with love, cultivate compassion.
The love mentioned here views living beings with affection, as if they were your dear children. By cultivating impartiality you eliminate the unevenness in attitude that comes from the bias of your attachment and hostility, and your mind becomes like a good field. Kamalaśīla says here that if you moisten your mind with the water of love which views all living beings with affection, and you then plant the healthy seed of compassion, you will easily generate great compassion. Understand this to be an extremely important point.
(i) Cultivating a recognition that all beings are your mothers
Because cyclic existence is beginningless, your births are also without beginning. Therefore you have died and been reborn time and time again. There is absolutely no kind of body which you have not assumed in cyclic existence. [301] There is absolutely no place where you have not been born, and there is no person who has not been a relative such as your mother. Asaṅga’s Levels of Yogic Deeds (Yoga-caryā-bhūmi) cites a sūtra as follows:35
I have difficulty seeing a place wherein you have not been born, gone to, or died in the distant past. I have difficulty seeing any person in the distant past who has not been your father, mother, uncle, aunt, sister, master, abbot, guru, or someone like a guru.
Moreover, all beings have not only previously been your mothers but will also be your mothers in the future a limitless number of times. Reflect upon this and become convinced that all beings have been your mothers. Once you develop this conviction, you will then easily remember their kindness and so forth. If you do not develop it, you will have no basis for remembering their kindness.
(ii) Cultivating a remembrance of their kindness
Bo-do-wa (Po-to-ba) said that after you have recognized that all living beings are your mothers, you will quickly remember their kindness if at first you cultivate a remembrance of your mother’s kindness in this lifetime. Do so in accordance with his presentation, as follows.
Imagine your mother clearly in front of you. Think the following a few times: “Not only has she been my mother at present but she has been so an incalculable number of times throughout beginningless cyclic existence.” As your mother, she protected you from all harm and provided you all benefit and happiness. Particularly in this lifetime she carried you for a long time in her womb. Then, when you were a helpless, newborn infant, she held you to the warmth of her flesh and bounced you on the tips of her ten fingers. She suckled you at her breast, used her mouth to give you soft food and to remove mucus from your nose, and used her hand to wipe away your excrement. So in various ways she nurtured you tirelessly.
Moreover, when you were hungry and thirsty, she gave you food and drink; when you were cold, clothes; when you were poor, she gave from her wealth those things which were very dear to her. Even more, what she gave to you were not things that she had obtained easily but that she had secured through great hardship while engaging in wrongdoing and receiving ill repute and suffering. [302]
If you suffered from illness, pain, or the threat of death, your mother made the choice from the depths of her heart that she would rather be sick than you be sick, she would rather be in pain than you be in pain, she would rather die than you die. By putting this feeling into action, she did what was needed to alleviate these troubles. In short, contemplate one-pointedly how your mother provided help and happiness and cleared away harm and suffering to the best of her knowledge and ability.
By cultivating a remembrance of your mother’s kindness, you will not remember it just in words. Once you have given rise to such a remembrance, recognize that other friends and relatives such as your father are your mothers and cultivate a remembrance of their kindness. Then do the same with persons toward whom you have neutral feelings. Once you have produced an attitude toward them which is similar to how you feel toward your friends, recognize that your enemies are your mothers and cultivate a remembrance of their kindness. When you have an attitude toward your enemies that is like the one you have toward your mother, recognize that all beings in the ten directions are your mothers, and then gradually and with increasing extensiveness cultivate a remembrance of their kindness.
(iii) Cultivating the wish to repay your mothers’ kindness
These beings, your kind mothers (whom you do not recognize due to the process of death and rebirth) are suffering and have no refuge. There is nothing more shameful than to do your best to liberate yourself from cyclic existence while considering these beings, your mothers, unimportant and abandoning them. Candragomin’s Letter to a Student states:36
While you see that your relatives are engulfed in the ocean of cyclic existence,
And are as if fallen into a pit of fire,
There is nothing more shameful than to work for your own liberation,
Neglecting those whom you do not recognize due to the process of death and rebirth.
Therefore, reflect, “If abandoning such kind beings is unsuitable even for disreputable persons, how could it be appropriate in my case?” and then assume the responsibility to repay their kindness. The same text states:37
The infant on the mother’s lap cannot do anything
And suckles milk which flows through love,
While through that same love the mother endures many hardships.
Who, even among the very disreputable, would like to abandon his or her mother? [303]
Who, even among the most disreputable, wants to leave
And abandon those who provided a home,
Who carefully looked after the child with compassion,
And who are afflicted, without refuge, and suffering?
Triratnadāsa’s Praise of Infinite Qualities (Guṇāparyanta-stotra) states:38
“It is not my way to liberate myself while abandoning these beings
Whose blind ignorance ruins their intelligence
And who are my fathers and children, serving and lovingly helping me.”
Thinking this, I made aspirational prayers to liberate these protectorless beings.
Qualm: How can you repay their help?
Reply: No matter how much wealth and happiness your mothers obtain in cyclic existence, it all deceives them. Thus you must repay their help, thinking, “Formerly, my mothers were seriously wounded because the madness of the afflictions possessed them. Then, I produced a variety of further sufferings for these beings who were already suffering, as if I had applied sea salt to their deep wounds. Now I will establish these beings, who lovingly helped me, in the happiness of liberation, nirvāṇa.” Bhāvaviveka’s Heart of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka-hṛdaya) states:39
Furthermore, like applying salt
To the wounds of those who have been possessed
By the madness of their afflictions,
I created suffering for those sick with suffering.
Now, what else is there other than nirvāṇa
To repay the help of those
Who in other lives
Helped me with love and service?
It is said that a kindness unrepaid weighs more than the heavy burden of the ocean together with Mount Meru and that repaying others’ kindness occasions the praise of the learned. The Verses from the Nāga King’s Drum (Nāga-rāja-bherī-gāthā) says:40
The ocean, Mount Meru, and the earth
Are not a burden to me. [304]
Whereas not repaying others’ kindness
Is a great burden to me.
The learned praise persons
Whose minds are not excited,
Who recognize and repay others’ deeds,
And who do not waste others’ kindness.
In brief, your mother is crazed, unable to remain composed. She is blind, has no guide, and stumbles with every step as she approaches a frightful precipice. If she cannot place hope in her child, in whom can she place hope? If her child does not take responsibility for freeing her from this terror, who should take responsibility? Her child must set her free. Likewise, the madness of the afflictions disturbs the peace of mind of living beings, your mothers. Thus they are crazed because they have no control of their minds. They lack eyes to see the paths to high status [rebirth as a human or deity] and certain goodness [liberation or omniscience]. They have no true teacher, who is a guide for the blind. They stumble because their wrongdoing cripples them at each moment. When these mothers see the edge of the precipice of cyclic existence in general and the miserable realms in particular, they naturally take hope in their children, and the children have a responsibility to get their mothers out of this situation. Therefore, with this in mind, repay your mothers’ kindness by definitely causing them to emerge from cyclic existence. Śāntideva’s Compendium of Trainings (Śikṩā-samuccaya) states:41
Crazed by the afflictions, blinded by ignorance,
Stumbling with each step
On a path with many a precipice,
You and others are always subject to sorrow—
All beings have similar sufferings.
Although it is said that it is improper to look for others’ faults and that it is wonderful to notice even a single virtue, here it is appropriate to consider how others are helpless.
2" The development of the attitude of being intent on others, welfare
The development of the attitude of being intent on others’ welfare has three parts:
1. The cultivation of love
2. The cultivation of compassion
3. The cultivation of wholehearted resolve
(a) The cultivation of love
In order to understand the cultivation of love you must know the following topics. The object of love is living beings who do not have happiness. The subjective aspects are thinking, “How nice it would be if beings were happy,” “May they be happy,” and “I will cause them to be happy.” [305]
With respect to the benefits of love, the King of Concentrations Sūtra (Samādhi-rāja-sūtra) states:42
Always offering to superior beings
As many countless offerings
As there are in billions of lands does not equal
A portion of the benefit of a loving attitude.
It says that the benefit of love has far greater merit than continually making vast offerings to the highest recipients [buddhas and bodhisattvas]. Also, the Array of Qualities in Mañjuśrī’s Buddha-realm (Mañjuśrī-buddha-kṩetra-guṇa-vyūha-sūtra) states:43
In the northeast is the land of the Conqueror Buddheśvara called “Decorated by a Thousand Universes.” There living beings have a happiness which is like the bliss of a monk who experiences a cessation. If you generate a loving attitude here in Jambudvīpa toward all living beings for merely a snap of the fingers, the merit produced greatly surpasses the merit gained by keeping pure conduct there for one trillion years. Is there any need to mention the merit of abiding in a loving attitude both day and night?
Moreover, Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland states:44
To offer three hundred small pots of food
Even three times a day
Does not equal a portion of the merit
Of a fraction of an instant of love.
Even if you are not liberated through love
You will attain its eight good qualities:
Deities and humans will love you,
They will also protect you.
You will have joy and much physical pleasure;
Poison and weapons will not harm you.
You will attain your aims effortlessly,
And be reborn in the world of Brahmā.
If you have love, deities and humans will love you and will naturally gravitate toward you. Moreover, the Conqueror defeated Māra’s armies with the power of love, so love is the supreme protector, and so forth. Thus, although love is difficult to develop, you must strive to do so. The Compendium of Trainings says that you should think wholeheartedly about the verses of the Sūtra of the Golden Light (Suvarṇa-prabhāsa-sūtra) which discuss the cultivation of love and compassion. [306] It further says that you should at least recite and meditate on the following verse from this sūtra:45
Through the sound of the sacred Golden Light’s great drum
May the sufferings of miserable realms, the sufferings brought on by the Lord of Death,
The sufferings of poverty, and all suffering be extinguished
In the three realms of the universe of three billion world systems.
The stages of cultivating love are as follows. First, cultivate love toward friends. Then, cultivate love for persons toward whom you have neutral feelings. Next, cultivate love toward your enemies. Then, cultivate it gradually toward all beings.
The way to cultivate love is as follows. Just as you can develop compassion once you have repeatedly thought about how living beings are made miserable by suffering, develop love by thinking repeatedly about how living beings lack all happiness, both contaminated and uncontaminated. When you become familiar with this, you will naturally wish for beings to be happy. In addition, bring to mind various forms of happiness and then offer them to living beings.
(b) The cultivation of compassion
In order to understand the cultivation of compassion you must know the following topics. The object of compassion is living beings who experience misery through any of the three kinds of suffering. The subjective aspects are thinking, “How nice it would be if living beings were free from suffering,” “May they be free from suffering,” and “I will cause them to be free from suffering.” The steps of cultivating compassion are first to cultivate it toward friends, then toward those beings for whom you have neutral feelings, and next toward enemies. When you have equal compassion for your enemies and friends, cultivate it gradually toward all living beings in the ten directions.
Kamalaśīla, following the discourses on knowledge, set out this way of gradually cultivating impartiality, love, and compassion while distinguishing specific objects of meditation.46 It is an extremely important point. If you train in these attitudes of impartiality, love, and compassion without distinguishing and taking up specific objects of meditation, but only using a general object from the outset, you will just seem to generate these attitudes. Then, when you try to apply them to specific individuals, you will not be able to actually generate these attitudes toward anyone. But once you have a transformative experience toward an individual in your meditation practice as explained previously, you may then gradually increase the number of individuals you visualize within your meditation. Finally, take all beings in general as your object of meditation. [307] When you sustain this practice in meditation, you will generate these attitudes correctly, whether you are dealing with individuals or a group.
The way to cultivate compassion is as follows. Consider how these living beings—your mothers—experience general and specific sufferings after falling into cyclic existence. I explained these sufferings earlier.47 Moreover, if you have developed an awareness of your own general and specific suffering by training in the path of a person of medium capacity, you will assess your own situation and cultivate compassion toward others. By following this method, you will easily generate compassion. Considering your own suffering creates the determination to be free. Thinking about others’ suffering creates compassion. However, if you do not first consider your own suffering, you will not reach the key point of the practice.
These are simple illustrations of how to meditate. Intelligent persons should meditate in detail on the one hundred and ten sufferings that are observed with compassion. These are explained in the Bodhisattva Levels.48
Furthermore, it is said that the bodhisattvas’ thoughts of suffering during their cultivation of compassion are more numerous than śrāvakas’ thoughts, which perceive suffering with an attitude of disenchantment—the final and actual knowledge of the truth of suffering for the śrāvakas. If you reflect from limitless viewpoints on how beings lack happiness and have suffering, you will develop much love and compassion. Moreover, if you think about this for a long time, your love and compassion will be strong and steady. Therefore, if you are satisfied with just a little personal instruction and neglect to familiarize yourself with the explanations of the classical texts, your compassion and love will be very weak.
Moreover, after you have thoroughly distinguished the objects of meditation according to the previous explanations—how compassion is the root, how the development of the spirit of enlightenment is the entrance to the Mahāyāna, and so forth—you must then analyze these explanations with discerning wisdom and elicit the experience produced after sustaining them in meditation. You will not achieve anything with the unclear experiences that come when you make a short, concentrated effort without precisely clarifying the topic with your understanding. Know that this is true for other kinds of practice as well. [308]
Kamalaśīla’s first Stages of Meditation gives the measure for the development of compassion:49
When you spontaneously feel compassion which has the subjective wish to completely eliminate the sufferings of all living beings—just like a mother’s wish to remove her dear child’s unhappiness—then your compassion is complete and is therefore called great compassion.
Here Kamalaśīla says that when you spontaneously feel compassion for all beings commensurate with a mother’s compassion for her very dear and small suffering child, then you have completely perfect great compassion. Through this, understand the measure for the development of great love as well.
Taking that passage as point of departure, Kamalaśīla says: 50
When you have committed yourself to being a guide for all living beings by conditioning yourself to great compassion, you effortlessly generate the spirit of enlightenment which has the nature of aspiring to unexcelled perfect enlightenment.
Here he says that great compassion, which he explained above, is a necessary cause for developing the aspirational spirit of enlightenment. Understand from this too the measure for the development of the spirit of enlightenment. Furthermore, this statement pertains not just to the development of the spirit of enlightenment for someone who has reached a high path, but to a beginner’s initial generation of the spirit of enlightenment as well. Asaṅga’s Mahāyāna Compendium (Mahāyāna-saṃgraha) states:51
That which has the attributes of goodness,
The power of wishing, and firm aspiration
Always initiates the bodhisattva’s
Three immeasurable eons.
So even a bodhisattva who is at the start of the three countless eons of practice must develop such a spirit of enlightenment.
So, suppose that you are not anywhere near these objectives and that you give rise to the mere thought, “I will attain buddhahood for the sake of all living beings, and in order to do this I will cultivate this virtue.” You may make the great error of entertaining the false conceit “I have attained it” with regard to something you have not attained. If you then hold that the spirit of enlightenment is the core personal instruction, yet instead of training in it you search for something else and work on that, then you are only making a claim to have passed through many of the levels of attainment. [309] If those who know the key points of the Mahāyāna see you doing this, they will ridicule you. Many books say that the excellent conquerors’ children train in the spirit of enlightenment for many eons, holding it as their most important practice. So what need is there to mention that it could not be attained by those who have nothing more than a superficial understanding? This is not to say it is unsuitable to meditate on other paths, but it is to say you must hold the training in the spirit of enlightenment as the core instruction and then sustain it in meditation.
There are those who, even without having gained the experiences as explained above,52 know about the Mahāyāna trainings and have firm conviction in the Mahāyāna. They first develop the spirit of enlightenment and take the vow through the ritual, and then train in the spirit of enlightenment. For instance, in Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds53 first there is a description of adopting the spirit of enlightenment and taking the vow and then a detailed explanation of how to practice the spirit of enlightenment in the context of meditative stabilization (a section within the six perfections, which are the trainings subsequent to generating the spirit of enlightenment). However, even in order to establish yourself as a proper recipient for these practices, you must first train in many kinds of earlier attitudes. After you have trained your mind by thinking of the benefits, by practicing the seven branches of worship, and by going for refuge, and after you have come to understand the trainings, then you develop the desire to maintain the spirit of enlightenment.
Some say rightly, though merely uttering the words, that in order to progress on the path you must go on increasing your knowledge of emptiness. In order to progress on the path you must likewise first sustain the spirit of enlightenment in meditation and then increase it in an ever more special way the higher you go, but those persons do not even merely utter these words. This is the one way traveled by all the conquerors, the twenty-two kinds of spirit of enlightenment taught in the Ornament for Clear Knowledge.54 Understand this from the great trailblazers’ explanations concerning how to progress on the path by means of these two, the spirit of enlightenment and the knowledge of emptiness. [310]
(c) The cultivation of wholehearted resolve
At the conclusion of meditating on love and compassion think, “Alas, these dear living beings for whom I feel affection are deprived of happiness and tormented by suffering; how can I provide them happiness and free them from suffering?” Thinking in this way, train your mind in at least this thought in order to take on the responsibility to liberate living beings. Even though this thought was described in the context of the practice of repaying your mothers’ kindness, here it indicates that it is insufficient to have the compassion and love which merely think, “How nice it would be if they had happiness and were free from suffering.” For, the thought that assumes responsibility shows that you must develop the compassion and love which have the power to induce the resolve, “I will provide happiness and benefit to all living beings.” It is very effective if you practice this continuously, being mindful of it in all of your physical activities during the period of post-meditation and so on, not just during the meditation session. Kamalaśīla’s second Stages of Meditation says:55
Cultivate this compassion toward all beings at all times, whether you are in meditative concentration or in the course of any other activity.
Here compassion is just one example; you must do the same when sustaining any meditation. The great master Candragomin states [in his Praise of Confession (Deśanā-stava)]:56
Since beginningless time the tree of the mind
Has been moistened with the bitter juice of the afflictions
And you are unable to sweeten its taste.
How could a drop of the water of good qualities affect it?
Thus he says, for example, that you cannot sweeten the very bitter and large trunk of the Tig-ta tree by pouring just one drop of sugarcane juice onto it. Similarly, the mind-stream which has been infused since beginningless time with the bitter afflictions will not change at all from just a short cultivation of the good qualities of love, compassion, and so forth. Therefore you must sustain your meditation continuously.
b" Training the mind to be intent on enlightenment
Once you have been inspired by the aforementioned process and have seen that you need enlightenment for the sake of others’ welfare, you develop the wish to attain it. [311] However, this is not enough. First, increase your faith as much as possible by contemplating the good qualities of the Buddha’s body, speech, mind, and enlightened activities as previously explained in the section on going for refuge.57 Then, as it is taught that faith is the basis of aspiration, develop the desire to attain those good qualities from the depths of your heart and induce a certainty that it is absolutely necessary to attain omniscience even for your own welfare.
Although there are many causes for the development of the spirit of enlightenment, the Concentration of the Tathāgata’s Sublime Wisdom Gesture Sūtra (Tathāgata-jñāna-mudrā-samādhi-sūtra), cited in the first Stages of Meditation, says that it is most special to develop it on your own, overcome by compassion. 58
c" Identifying the spirit of enlightenment, the fruit of the training
The general definition of the spirit of enlightenment follows the meaning of that given in the Ornament for Clear Knowledge [“The development of the spirit of enlightenment is the desire for perfect enlightenment for others’ welfare”] cited earlier.59 With respect to its subdivisions, Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds follows the Array of Stalks Sūtra and says that it is both aspirational and engaged:60
Just as one distinguishes
Between wishing to go and going,
Similarly the learned should understand the division
Of these two in accordance with this sequence.
Although there are many disagreements about what these two are, know that the aspiration is either “May I become a buddha” or “I will become a buddha” for the sake of all beings and that as long as you have not taken the [bodhisattva] vows it is the aspirational spirit that is present, whether or not you are training in the deeds of generosity, etc. Once you have taken the vows, the spirit present is the engaged spirit of enlightenment. The first Stages of Meditation states:61
The aspirational spirit of enlightenment is the initial intent, “May I become a buddha in order to benefit all beings.” The engaged spirit is present once you have taken the vows and engaged in accumulating the collections of merit and sublime wisdom.
There are many arguments over this, but I will not elaborate on them here. [312]