During this week’s Meditation for All, we were joined by Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen. A dear friend of our resident teacher, Acharya Lhakpa Tshering, Lama Tenpa was a member of the first class of Rumtek Monastery’s Shri Nalanda Institute in Sikkim, India, as was our advisor, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Chancellor of Nalandabodhi and a great teacher and meditation guide, Acharya Lama Tenpa kindly accepted Acharya Lhakpa’s request to teach us about the eleventh verse of The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.
Being Lucky: Paying Homage to His Holiness the 16th Karmapa
Following our opening chants and śamatha practice, with an emphasis on our physical posture and giving rise to bodhicitta, Acharya Lama Tenpa began by paying homage to the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje.
Wishing everyone tashi delek, he expressed how honored and happy he was to lead the session, not just because of this particular session and topic but also because it was another way of recollecting the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa. In fact, he said, he felt very fortunate and blessed to have met His Holiness. Likewise, Lama Tenpa shared how everyone present was lucky for having a connection with KC16 and, therefore, also with the Sixteenth Karmapa.
Turning to our topic and the eleventh verse of Tokmé Zangpo’s text, The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, Acharya Lama Tenpa stressed how his guru, Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, always told his students to recite and practice this text. Furthermore, Khenpo Rinpoche told him to teach this text again and again since it is a very important and powerful practice.
The Importance and Benefits of Bodhicitta
The first thing to note, Acharya Lama Tenpa said, is the importance of bodhicitta or the heart of enlightenment, not only for our spiritual path but also for our daily lives. “In order to have a healthy spiritual path, you need bodhicitta,” he said. “In order to have a good life, you need bodhicitta. In order to have a good community, you need bodhicitta. So, bodhicitta is very, very important.”
For this reason, the Buddha taught bodhicitta to be like water or breath, and the great Indian master Śāntideva opens his important text, The Way of the Bodhisattva, with a long chapter about the benefits of bodhicitta. “What we need,” Lama Tenpa said, “is only bodhicitta. Both in our spiritual life and our mundane life. We need bodhicitta.”
How to Cultivate Bodhicitta? Three Main Methods
Knowing the importance of bodhicitta, the next question to ask is: How do we cultivate or generate the heart of awakening? While there are many ways, Lama Tenpa taught there are three main methods:
- Tracking down the cause: What is the cause of bodhicitta? Contemplating this, we will find that compassion is the near cause and stands in a chain of causality that goes back to love and connection.
- Equalizing self and other: Just as we want to be happy and free of suffering, all beings want to be happy and free of suffering. We are equal in this regard.
- Exchanging self and other: We give our own happiness and well-being to others, and take from them their pain, suffering, and confusion.
Lama Tenpa pointed out that the third method, exchanging self and other, is taught by Tokmé Zangpo in the eleventh verse that reads:
All suffering, without exception, arises from the desire for one’s own happiness.
Perfect buddhas are born from benefiting others.
Therefore, to perfectly exchange one’s own happiness
For others’ suffering is the practice of a bodhisattva. (11)
(Quoted from A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, translated by Christopher Stagg)
Mistaken About the Cause: Wanting Happiness, Receiving Suffering
The “perfect buddhas,” Acharya Lama Tenpa taught, can be understood to mean “happiness.” Regardless of who you ask and no matter their background, he said, this is something everyone agrees about: We all want happiness. For how long? We might not say this out loud, but deep down, we want to be happy all the time. However, what do we get? Confusion, pain, and suffering. The question we need to ask: Why?
To contemplate this, Lama Tenpa shared an example. Imagine you want to lose weight but also keep eating chocolate all the time. You go to a specialist for help, who points to books and provides various exercises; you receive many methods. However, you don’t give up eating chocolate. You may be surprised, but since you are not giving up the cause, the chocolate, you will not lose weight.
Similarly, our guest teacher pointed out, we want to be perfect buddhas, but we experience suffering. This is because we are mistaken about the cause of happiness. Given our ego-clinging, view of self, or self-centered way of thinking–the cause of suffering–we do not get happiness but experience saṃsāra instead.
Changing the Habit of Thinking
In this verse, Tokmé Zangpo says that the “desire for one’s own happiness” is the root of all problems. The result of this self-centered way of thinking, the preoccupation with “me,” “my,” and “mine,” is suffering. We consider our own happiness to be the most important, but it is this very desire for our own happiness that leads to the opposite, suffering.
Once we recognize this, Acharya Lama Tenpa commented, we need to change. Reminding us of the example of wishing to lose weight, what we really need to do (in that case) is change our diet and stop eating chocolate all the time. Similarly, if we want to change the quality of our lives, we need to change our habits of thought. Instead of our usual self-centered way of thinking, we need to expand our mind and benefit others. This is the mindset of a bodhisattva.
Exchange Self and Other
While there are many ways of changing our habitual self-fixation, the eleventh verse offers us one particular method: exchanging self and others. What this means, Acharya Lama Tenpa commented, is that we give away our happiness and well-being to others. In return, we take their suffering and pain.
Lama Tenpa illustrated this practice by drawing a distinction between the type of mind of ordinary beings compared to that of a bodhisattva. The former continuously thinks, “I want this and that, give me such and such.” This, he taught, is just another function of self-centered thinking and a very narrow, limited mind. The type of mind of a bodhisattva stands in contrast to this, thinking: “I am here to give, to offer, to share.”
Expanding our minds in this way is what is called cultivating bodhicitta. This, Lama Tenpa concluded, is what the text teaches us: “Perfect buddhas are born from benefiting others.” This is the heart of giving, offering, and caring. Rather than thinking, “I want happiness,” we start to think, “I want you to be happy.” This is the practice of a bodhisattva.
