Acharya Lhakpa warmly welcomed everyone, including those who were newly joining, to our third session in the series, Meditation for All: 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. After our usual opening chants, our resident teacher provided brief instructions regarding our physical posture in the practice of śamatha, or calm-abiding meditation. He also pointed out that whenever our minds wander, or we get distracted, we need to bring our attention back to the movement of our breath, in and out, and continue our meditation practice.
Preparing ourselves
The previous Sunday, Acharya Lhakpa posed the question: “How can we make our human birth meaningful?” He stated that the first verse of Ngulchu Tokmé’s text The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva provides the answer. This verse teaches us how to prepare for becoming Mahayana practitioners who intend to liberate ourselves and all sentient beings from samsara, or the bewilderment of ignorance. We do this through the practices of listening, contemplation, and meditation.
The preparation for a bodhisattva can be likened to learning how to swim in order to help someone who is drowning — if you don’t know how to swim, then you are not able to help a drowning person. Thus, the need to master listening, contemplation, and meditation represents our first swimming lesson. With that understanding, we then turned towards the second verse.
Protecting the sprout of compassion
The second verse reads as follows:
“Attachment toward our close ones stirs us up like water.
Aggression toward our enemies burns us like fire.
Dark with ignorance, we forget what to adopt or reject.
To abandon one’s homeland is the practice of a bodhisattva.” (2)
– from: A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, translated by Christopher Stagg)
Acharya Lhakpa reminded us that on the path of the Mahayana, compassion is indispensable. It is the foundation of all practices and is taught in the Sūtras to be like a seed, in the beginning. While we endeavour to benefit all sentient beings, including ourselves, we first need to protect the sprouting seed well. Our intention is great, but our ability is limited because the seed of loving-kindness and compassion is just sprouting, and therefore is very fragile.
Failing to protect the new growth would become an obstacle to achieving liberation and omniscience, or complete buddhahood. When the sprout has fully grown and starts to bear fruit, we no longer need to worry. Yet, until that point, we need to safeguard the sprout of loving-kindness and compassion. How to do so? That is what this verse teaches.
Nourishing the sprout of compassion
The verse speaks of abandoning one’s homeland as the practice of a bodhisattva. When we think of “homeland,” Acharya shared, we can consider the place where we grow up. With time, we develop an attachment to our house, the places where we play, our family, and so forth. Attachment to these will stir us up like water, constantly moving toward things, places, and beings close to us.
Interdependent with this, we have people, places, and things we don’t like. Towards those, we develop aggression or anger. This, in turn, will burn the virtue we have accumulated and whatever merit follows future virtuous activities. It will burn the sprout of compassion.
So, why does Ngulchu Tokmé write about abandoning one’s homeland? Attachment and aggression will lead us to forget what is virtuous and non-virtuous; what to accept and what to reject. Forgetting this, we will fall into the darkness of ignorance. We won’t know where to go and where not to go. To prevent this and to nourish the sprout of compassion so it can become stronger, we must abandon our homeland.
The elephant’s tail
Acharya Lhakpa pointed out that “homeland” serves as an example. There is no guarantee that you are free of attachment and aggression by just abandoning your homeland. Rather, it points to any place or environment that causes us to forget what to adopt and what to reject. Places that give rise to attachment and aggression are what a bodhisattva must abandon or distance themselves from.
To illustrate this, our resident teacher shared an expression: “Not abandoning the objects giving rise to attachment and aggression in our mind-stream is like the tail of an elephant that gets stuck in the door, when the elephant walks through it.” We may move away from our physical homeland, but we have not abandoned the hidden homeland within ourselves. To free ourselves from attachment and aggression is like freeing the tail of the elephant from being stuck in the door.
No homeland
What is the hidden homeland Ngulchu Tokmé is pointing to? Contemplating deeper, we can see that the real homeland is self-attachment, self-cherishing, or grasping at a self. What do we mean by this? Sometimes, Acharya taught, we have thoughts like, “I am good. I am special.” At other times, we may think, “I am not good. I am weak.” Whether we have good or bad thoughts about ourselves, both are a sign of having self-fixation.
As a consequence of this grasping at a self, the notion of ‘other’ arises. The other, in turn, gets separated into friends and enemies and leads to attachment and aggression, respectively. Thus, as Ngulchu Tokmé points out, “Attachment toward our close ones stirs us up like water. Aggression toward our enemies burns us like fire.” Therefore, abandoning our physical homeland does not help to abandon the root or basis; it is the inner homeland of self-clinging that we need to abandon.
How to do so? Acharya explained that while we all have the thought that there is a self, if we investigate closely, there is no self to be found. Realizing there is ultimately no self means we abandon our homeland from the very base or root. If we have abandoned it completely, it no longer matters where we go and stay. There is no homeland anymore to abandon. In fact, there was no homeland from the start.
So, abandoning our homeland, in the sense of an outer, physical homeland, is very important in the beginning. Yet, ultimately, we need to abandon this inner or hidden homeland of grasping at a self. This is the second practice of a bodhisattva.
Poisoning the sprout of compassion
The third verse is closely related to the second yet points towards its opposite. The verse reads as follows:
“When we abandon negative places, the afflictions gradually diminish.
In the absence of any distraction, virtuous activity naturally increases.
Through clear awareness, certainty in the dharma arises.
To keep to solitary places is the practice of a bodhisattva.”
If the three mental afflictions of attachment, aggression, and ignorance are present in our mind-stream, then they will form an obstacle for engaging in virtuous activity. This being so, they are known as the three poisons. Acharya commented that these are not easy to abandon or purify overnight. Yet, since not doing so would poison the sprout of compassion, we understand that on the path of a bodhisattva, we must abandon our homeland to diminish our afflictions and give up our self-cherishing attitude, which we typically focus upon one-pointedly.
Leaving behind our outer and inner homeland means we distance ourselves from mental afflictions like attachment and aggression. No longer finding ourselves in negative places, our afflictive emotions decrease. Likewise, without distractions, virtuous activity naturally increases. This will benefit or support the flourishing of the sprout of compassion.
Isolation from samsaric distractions
The virtuous activity in the context of the path of the bodhisattvas, Acharya explained, refers to the six pāramitās (perfections): generosity, moral conduct/discipline, patience, joyful diligence, meditative concentration, and insight or wisdom.
If, as the text teaches, we keep to solitary places, virtuous activity increases. In contrast to what happens when we grow dark with ignorance, “through clear awareness, certainty in the dharma arises.”
So, what does it mean to “keep to solitary places”? Similar to there being an outer and inner homeland, “solitary place” can be understood in two ways. Usually, we think of a solitary place as being far removed from our homeland, in the sense of physical distance. Yet here, solitary place means being free of the distractions of samsara, wherever we are. The three poisons are what we really need to distance ourselves from and to leave behind. Being free of attachment, aggression, and ignorance, is the genuine solitary place.
Acharya then commented that in our 21st century, relying on solitary places in the physical sense is very difficult. “Wherever we go,” he said, “there is a connection with the world through the internet, our phone, and so on. To find real solitary places, like in the old days, is very difficult.” So, how to find this real solitary place? By pausing, by allowing a gap, which provides the opportunity to make a choice to free ourselves from the distractions of the afflictive emotions.
In short, bodhisattvas strive or endeavour to liberate themselves and others from samara. To be able to do that, what is their practice? To keep to solitary places. What is the real solitary place? To turn away from the samsaric distractions of our mental afflictions. Leaving behind samsaric distractions, together with abandoning our homeland of self-clinging, Acharya concludes, is the practice of a bodhisattva.
