Why do we always begin our Meditation for All session with meditation? Following our usual opening chants and the practice of śamatha, Acharya Lhakpa Tshering offered some reflections about the practice of meditation itself. He then continued with his commentary on the sixteenth and seventeenth verse of Ngulchu Tokmé’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, which discuss how to take ingratitude and contempt onto the path of compassion.
Helping Others through Meditation
At the beginning of our meditation session, we bring to mind the main reason for our practice: to attain genuine freedom, enlightenment, for the benefit of all others. Thinking about the current hardship of people close to us as well as the current state of affairs in the world, we connect with the feeling and wish for everyone to be free from hardship, pain, and any form of suffering.
Meditation, our resident teacher pointed out, is the tool that allows our wish to benefit others to become reality. “Without meditation, no matter how much knowledge we would gather, we will not be able to kindle the light of enlightenment.” Why is this so?
Although it may not be easy to say what change you would gain through meditation, Acharya Lhakpa shared, “I have full confidence that I am staying out of many troubles because of the practice of meditation.” We have the aspiration to attain enlightenment to free ourselves and others from suffering. To accomplish this, we need to know ourselves very well. Only this allows us to work with our own mind-stream, so we can change things for the better. By not doing so, there would be no reason to expect any good result to arise. Acharya, therefore, said:
“The practice is mainly to learn how to work with our own mind-stream. It’s not about changing others or merely teaching the Dharma. Practicing the Dharma is about improving ourselves. As we improve ourselves, we naturally become more capable of benefiting others.”
Changing our Habitual Mindset
You may wonder what engaging in the path of the Mahayana might look like. This is what is taught by Ngulchu Tokmé, in a pithy manner, in the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. The essence of the Mahayana teachings are all encapsulated in his brief instructions. The next verse shows the sixteenth practice:
“Even if someone I cared for like my child
Should act as though I were their enemy
Like a mother toward her child stricken will illness
To love them even more is the practice of a bodhisattva.”
(Quoted from A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, translated by Christopher Stagg)
This verse, like the others before, is also about working with our own habitual tendencies. Our current mindset was likened by Acharya Lhakpa to a “trading mindset” or “business mindset:” “If I do good to you, then you should do good to me.” So, if a person harms me, we tend to wish that person to be hurt and inflict harm in return.
However, if we want to attain the state of buddhahood, and benefit ourselves and others, even if someone we have treated well were to act as if we were their enemy, we should not retaliate or even think badly about such a person. In fact, if that would be our response, we would be further and further removed from our goal. Instead, what would help us, would be to look closely to what extent mental afflictions are still present in our mind-stream since they are what we need to clear away.
Extraordinary Love for Everyone
In this sixteenth verse, Ngulchu Tokmé doesn’t just say we should not react in a harmful manner in return to someone who hurts us; rather, we should “love them even more,” he writes. Why? Because this person is also moving away from liberation and the state of buddhahood through such negative actions which, in turn, are driven by the afflictive emotions.
Acharya Lhakpa commented that this does not mean we should let this person continue to harm us or anyone else. This would actually be a sign of lacking compassion since you would let such a person continue to engage in unwholesome behaviour.
The example given is that of the love of a mother for her child. While it may look harsh on the surface, a mother or any caretaker never intends to inflict any harm but always does good and acts for the benefit of their child —just like a teacher does with his student, Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche notes in his commentary to this text.
The question we should be asking ourselves when we face the kind of situation Ngulchu Tokmé writes about is what would be the right thing to do given the current circumstances? What is beneficial in this present situation? Should we allow some distance or perhaps engage in some mindful conversation?
Cutting the Chain
Part of the message of this verse is that we need to let go of the so-called three spheres: subject, object, and actions. Acharya Lhakpa compares this to a linked chain and the example of giving someone (object) a slice of pizza (action) you consider to be yours (subject). If we don’t let go of these three spheres or do not cut this chain, it will bind us more and more in the world of samsara. Furthermore, it will prevent us from practicing compassion, especially if someone we care for is harming us.
Since the practice of the Mahayana consists of gathering the accumulations of merit and wisdom, we need to engage in acts of generosity and so on (merit) without holding onto the three spheres (wisdom). Only this will lead us to enlightenment, whereas acting out of anger and any disturbing emotion will only put us at an increasingly longer distance from it.
Breaking Our Ego-Clinging
While the sixteenth verse can be described as taking ingratitude to the path, the seventeenth verse is about taking others’ contempt to the path. The first means that even if someone we care for does not show us any sign of kindness or give us something in return, we still respond with genuine love. With the second, we regard someone of equal status or lower in some way or another, who speaks to us in a harsh manner, as an actual teacher:
“Even if someone my equal or lower
Should insult me influenced by pride
To place them with respect, as if they were a guru,
to place them at the crown of my head is the practice of a bodhisattva.”
(Quoted from A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, translated by Christopher Stagg)
In his commentary, Acharya Lhakpa said that our spiritual teacher, guru, or lama, is usually pointing out our mistakes or what we are lacking. He/She/They will tell us what to study and practice to change this. In a similar way, a person who is saying something painful is also pointing out something to us. What is that? It is that pride is present in our mind-stream.
This pride or ego, and the kleśas and nonvirtuous actions that follow from it, will again remove us further and further from attaining enlightenment. Since attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings is the goal on the path of the Mahayana, we do not react or retaliate in such a situation as that is in immediate contradiction with our aspiration. Instead, we realize through such situations that mental afflictions are still very much part of our own mind-stream, and that is what we should learn to work with.
This verse, our resident teacher explained, shares the same message as all the previous verses: They all point to what is lacking in ourselves to attain enlightenment. This is a key point of Ngulchu Tokmé’s text, in the words of Acharya:
“Recognizing mental afflictions within our mind-stream and learning how to work with them and taking them onto the path is part of the practice of a bodhisattva. There’s no need to regard these afflictive emotions as something bad or negative. The question to ask ourselves is: How can we clear away these mental states, which keep us from attaining our goal, and use them in such a way that they help us reach enlightenment?”
This is a main point of all the verses that Acharya Lhakpa kindly told us to keep in mind at the conclusion of our session. Thanking everyone for joining us, we dedicated the merit together, and he expressed the wish for everyone to have a wonderful rest of the day, no matter where they are. We look forward to seeing everyone again for our next session.
Karmapa Khyenno!
