Meditation for All – Karmapa Center 16

Taking a Step Back – 37 Practices – Session 12

With snow falling at Karmapa Center 16, Acharya Lhakpa Tshering, guided meditation from our shrine room and we discussed the fifteenth verse from Ngulchu Tokmé’s 37 practices of a Bodhisattva. How can we take denigration or criticism to the path? Especially in this twenty-first century, our resident teacher said we need to learn to take a step back and slow down before we react.

Breathing In, Breathing Out

Before starting our usual śamatha practice, our resident teacher offered some instructions about the posture of our body (straight yet comfortable and relaxed) and the importance of generating the wish for our meditation session to become the causes & conditions for all sentient beings to attain enlightenment (bodhicitta). He highlighted how we can use our breath as a vocal object:

“Just be aware of breathing in, and breathing out. The air flowing through your nostrils. Just simply be aware of your breath. Whenever you find you are distracted, simply bring your mind back to that awareness.”

While sitting, Acharya Lhakpa said, we can repeat this again and again.

Great Aspiration Means Fewer Difficulties

Turning to Ngulchu Tokmé’s text, Acharya Lhakpa first made some general remarks about the path of the Mahayana. When a person makes a commitment to attain enlightenment for all sentient beings means that such a practitioner has a bold or great aspiration. As a consequence, any kind of difficulty will become less important. Therefore, “on the Mahayana path, no matter what difficulties you face, we take or use them as a path to attain enlightenment,” Acharya said.

Verse fifteen points to taking criticism or denigration to the path:

“Even if several people in the midst of a crowd
Should reveal my hidden faults and speak harsh words,
To hold them to be my spiritual friends
And bow to them with respect is the practice of a bodhisattva.”
(Quoted from A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, translated by Christopher Stagg)

Embracing Criticism as a Spiritual Friend

If someone criticizes you or reveals your hidden faults, Acharya Lhakpa commented, we should consider this person a spiritual friend. Even if we don’t have any hidden faults at the moment, we could think as follows: “Right now, I am not involved in any nonvirtuous actions like telling lies or killing. But I risk doing such things in the future. Therefore, this person is actually helping me to be more mindful and conscientious.”

Another way of thinking about this is to consider that the person who is criticizing me is under the influence of negative emotions. These make the person blind in the sense of not seeing reality and, thus, not having the wisdom to see clearly.

Either way, what this verse teaches here is that “instead of reacting to any kind of action right away, we should take a moment to observe and contemplate. We should give ourselves time to step back and look at the situation clearly instead of reacting immediately.”

Slowing Down

Acharya Lhakpa shared various examples from his own life to illustrate how in this twenty-first century we indulge in instant gratification and little patience. Driven by social media, instant messaging, and so forth, we react instantaneously, especially with emotions like anger.

The things we say, the emails we write, and any kind of action we engage in, our immediate emotionally-driven responses lead only to further trouble and regret. Therefore, instead of retaliating, we should not react. In fact, we should not only consider a person who denigrates us as a spiritual friend but take all such conditions onto the path.

If we are not able to do this at the beginning, Acharya Lhakpa pointed out what we could do first: “Even if you fall into that kind of situation. Once you cool down, you should reflect on the situation. How did I respond? Is my practice working? Am I able to transform negative emotions and take them onto the path?” Our resident teacher continued saying that “if we are able to control ourselves from the very beginning, this might not only help ourselves, this will also help the person who criticizes you.”

Seeing our Faults

Spiritual friends are not always nice. Nor do they always praise us. In fact, if teachers would only say good things to us, it would lead to a stronger ego and a growing sense of pride. This would kill the seeds of enlightenment, so to speak. Therefore, be it our teacher or someone else who reveals our faults or shortcomings, we should “bow to them with respect.”

This does not mean, Acharya clarified, that we need to go, find this person, and literally bow to them. We can just bow mentally with a sense of appreciation (for this) to those who have pointed out our faults.

Inner Journey as Our Practice

This fifteenth verse is not very difficult to understand. Ngulchu Tokmé has explained the practice of the bodhisattva in a very simple manner. The difficult part is to internalize and take this into practice. What this means is that we should be disciplining ourselves. While telling someone what to do or not to do can sometimes be helpful, the first and foremost thing, Acharya explained, “is how to discipline yourself and take things onto the path. The practice of the Mahayana is an inner journey to improve your own practice, and working with your own mind.”

During a short question-and-answer session, Acharya stressed again how disciplining ourselves is very difficult because of our very deep habitual tendencies. These are not easily overcome. Yet, he said,

“If we work diligently, if we work mindfully, with awareness, then we might be able to overcome our habitual tendencies. Then, we may not need to accumulate wisdom and merit for three countless eons and attain enlightenment in this lifetime.”

In response to one of the questions, Acharya Lhakpa emphasized that the most important thing in practice is our intention. Even if the immediate situation might not seem to improve, we do not need to be discouraged. Instead, we should be appreciative of our intention and diligent efforts to move closer to enlightenment. “We keep the candle lit and are still going strong. That is something to appreciate.”

KC16 About to Start Groundwork

Acharya Lhakpa concluded our session with a few remarks about developments at KC16. He mentioned that we are planning to start the groundwork very soon and get things ready to build a temple and parinirvana stupa to commemorate His Holiness the 16th Gyalwang Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, and expand our activities further to study, contemplate, and put the teachings of the Mahayana, especially those of the lineage of the Karmapas, into practice.

Dedicating our merit, may this and all our practices be of benefit!

Karmapa Khyenno!

How to Alleviate Suffering? – 37 Practices – Reflection and Tonglen

How do we let the Dharma blend together with our minds and apply the teachings to our real lives? How can we go beyond the words and put them into practice? During this Sunday’s Meditation for All, we both reflected on the verses covered so far and the commentaries we heard from Acharya Lhakpa Tshering, and continued our training to become courageous bodhisattvas.

Present in This Moment

Following our opening chants, we started with the practice of śamatha, as usual. One way to think of this practice is as a method to let go of whatever happened before this moment and not anticipate what may be after.

By establishing a proper posture of body, speech, and mind, we bring our awareness to the present moment. This allows us to connect with the aspiration to seek genuine freedom, well-being, and happiness, for the benefit of every person, all sentient beings, without exception.

From within this posture and presence, we listened carefully to each verse of Ngulchu Tokmé’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva covered so far. This way, we not only became more familiar with the words but also could connect more easily with their meaning.

Reflecting on the Structure and Purpose

Based on the root text, commentaries of Acharya Lhakpa Tshering and Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen, together with teachings by His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, given in New York in 2018, we looked at the structure of the text and purpose of the various verses covered so far. A slide that was screen-shared during our practice is given below, showing the overview that was discussed.

*Partial overview of Ngulchu Tokmé’s structure of the text and purposes of the verses based on commentary up to verse 14*.

Looking Beyond the Written Page

Adding to the brief summary, a few points were highlighted and illustrated with teachings by the Karmapa. His Holiness, for example, shared that sometimes people practice for a long time without any particular signs of progress. He emphasized that the main reason for this is that “they did not allow their minds to be penetrated by or blend with the preliminary practices.” This refers to the instructions expressed by Ngulchu Tokmé in verses 1 through 7. His Holiness continued by saying:

It is easy to read through a text and get a basic understanding of it, but it is more difficult to apply these teachings to your real life, which is not as simple as reading a book. Life is not that easy because things are mixed—the good and the bad, the true and the false come along together. Since life is difficult and not clear cut like a book, we need to spend time making use of our analytical mind and our wisdom. Life is not an open book, so we need to look beyond the written page to what is happening around us.”

Becoming Courageous Bodhisattvas

Looking more closely at verses 10 through 14, which Acharya Lhakpa ended his commentary on last week, we contemplated the importance of integrating the practice of both even placement and subsequent attainment, or meditation and post-meditation. We can also think of this as practice, both “on the cushion” and “off the cushion.”

As Acharya Lhakpa also has shared at various times, His Holiness teaches how the words in these verses are easy to understand but harder to put into practice. These verses also show that if we want to pursue the bodhisattva path effectively, we should be free of our attachment to the eight worldly dharmas and not focus on experiences of pleasure and pain. In that sense, the bodhisattva training can be considered difficult:

“It requires a great deal of courage and confidence, which do not arise out of nothing but come with gradual training. It is not the case that just because we adopt the Mahayana dharma, we suddenly become courageous bodhisattvas. We have to put ourselves through a process of rigorous training and study.”

Practicing Tonglen to Train Our Minds

A practice that is pointed to by Ngulchu Tokmé, and also discussed by Acharya Lhakpa and Acharya Lama Tenpa, is that of tonglen (“giving and taking”). Towards the end of our session, we engaged in this practice as a way to train in bodhicitta.

In brief, if we see and feel that all beings are worthy of affection as they, too seek happiness and not wish to suffer, we can cultivate the genuine heart of willing to sacrifice our own happiness to alleviate the suffering of all others.

Supported by visualizations and using the movement of our breath, we can deeply connect with the wish to cherish others both on and off the cushion. This includes those close to us as well as those we feel have wronged us, or those we consider to be the source of the undesirable circumstances we have experienced or face currently.

Cherishing Others, Taking Suffering

In this way, we take whatever we do and whatever situation we find ourselves in onto the path, and deeply train our minds. We can check our practice of tonglen by asking ourselves questions like: Do I feel I reduced my attachment to the eight worldly dharma? Am I more able to take on the faults and suffering of others? To what extent do I cherish others more than myself? No matter how small a step, we should look for signs of progress on our path to ensure we train correctly.

To conclude our session, and whenever we practice tonglen, we can express the aspiration: “May I cherish others more than myself; may I take their suffering upon myself.”

Following the dedication of the merit from our practice and the wish that everyone enjoy a wonderful week ahead, everyone was warmly invited to join again next Sunday to listen to Acharya Lhakpa’s commentary on the next verses and continue our training to become courageous bodhisattvas.

Karmapa Khyenno!

Meditation for All: The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva

Please join KC16 on Sundays for a new Meditation for All series on The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva.

Beginning November 17, our resident teacher, Acharya Lhakpa Tshering, will start teaching on The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva during our Sunday Meditation for All program.

A life worth exploring

This text is written by the great master Ngülchu Thogme Zangpo and, as Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche writes in A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva (a commentary by Dzatrul Ngawang Tenzin Norbu, translated by Christopher Stagg):

The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva presents an alternative way of thinking, of relating to the outer and inner worlds of everyday living. It is a refreshing, revolutionary, and radical approach to a life that is worth exploring.
— Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, foreword

book cover for A Guide to the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva

Practices for everyday life

As usual, everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. Acharya Lhakpa will start each session with a guided meditation, and then offer commentary on this precious text and how to put the teachings into practice in our daily lives.

Please join us onsite at KC16 or online!

Traveling the path of compassion

For online access, please register here for the Zoom link. From November 17 onwards, our sessions will begin at 10:30 am and finish around 11:30 am Central Standard Time (Chicago, US). Can’t join us live or would like to review a session? Please know that we’ll share recordings that you can view or review for 21 days on a dedicated resource page.

We are looking forward to practicing and traveling the path of compassion together under the guidance of Acharya Lhakpa-la and the blessings of the lineage of the Karmapas.

Karmapa Khyenno!

Registration

Making an offering or donation is optional and is not required to register for our Meditation for All: 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. You can join for free by selecting a ‘free ticket’. If you would like, you can make a donation to support our Stūpa Project or make a teaching offering for Acharya Lhakpa, KC16’s resident teacher, of any amount. After selecting a ‘free ticket’ or making an offering below, the Zoom link and other practical information will be delivered in a confirmation email.

Reading 37 Practices in Tibetan: KC16’s Tibetan Language Class

While Acharya Lhakpa starts teaching on The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva during our Sunday Meditation for All, we will also start studying this precious text, written by the great master Ngülchu Thogme Zangpo, in KC16’s Tibetan Language Class, in the original Tibetan. We will study literary Tibetan, grammar, and also the art of translating during this online class.

Learn more and register here