Michele Levey on The Power of Loving Kindness

The following excerpt is adapted from Buddhism through American Women’s Eyes edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo The Power of Loving-Kindness by Michele Levey Creating a field of loving kindness is a very powerful meditation for daily life. Loving kindness and a good heart create the most powerful protection. The red cord that lamas give as a blessing during ceremonies actually stands for loving kindness. Buddha Shakyamuni was able to overcome all hindrances and temptations through the power of his loving kindness. I learned a very beneficial technique for generating loving kindness and transforming negativity from a Bengali teacher of the Burmese Theravada tradition, Dipa Ma. She is considered a saint, highly attained, and pure of mind. When someone asked her, “What are the qualities of your mind?” she answered, “My mind has three qualities: concentration, equanimity, and loving kindness. That’s it.” In this meditation, we focus awareness on the flow of the breath rising and falling in the chest. Notice any feelings of warmth, tingling, vibration, or movement at the heart and allow that region to become soft, open, and radiant. All of us can remember being in the presence of someone with strong loving kindness. Bask in that feeling of warmth, affection, and caring. To do this meditation authentically, first we need to send a lot of love to ourselves. This is very difficult for some people, but to perfect this practice, we need to care about ourselves, too. We bring to mind our own image, like looking in a mirror, and repeat the following phrases softly: May I be free from enmity: May I be free from aversion, ill will, hatred, and anger, hostility, and irritation toward myself and others. May I be free from danger: May I be free from all harms, diseases, accidents, and other dangers. May I be free from disease: May I be healthy on all levels. May I be happy: May my heart be open, truly happy, and all wishes fulfilled. May I be free from suffering: May I be free from all physical, mental, and emotional sufferings. As we breathe in, we breathe in all feelings of loving kindness, happiness, and caring, filling our whole being. Next, calling to mind an image of a teacher or friend who has been very kind, visualize someone who naturally arouses these feelings. Focus on that person as representing all our kind relatives, friends, benefactors, and helpers. Behold that person’s face as clearly and vividly as possible, generate loving kindness, and again repeat: May you be free from enmity. May you be free from danger. May you be free from disease. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. Now allow that image to dissolve back into empty space and out of that emptiness, generate an awareness of all the suffering beings in the world, a general, pervasive sense of all the many beings around the globe who are suffering mentally, physically, and emotionally. Allow the spontaneous flow of images to arise in your mind, direct the focus of your concentration on loving kindness to all types of suffering beings, and repeat: May we be free from enmity. May we be free from disease. May we be free from danger. May we be happy. May we be free from suffering. Imagine what it would be like to go beyond the words of this meditation to the feelings pointed to by the words. Imagine what it would be like to build the strength of those feelings so that they become a radiant, powerful way of being with which to move through our daily life and work. Our life can become a source of blessing to the world or it can add to the already mounting confusion and anxiety. The choice is up to us. Through “everyday Dharma” practice, we begin building the foundation of right relations. This allows our minds to be calm and free from turbulence. A calm mind, in turn, is the necessary foundation for developing concentration and clarity, which allow the emergence of wisdom and insight. Through deepening insight, our compassion also deepens and manifests as even better relations in our day-to-day life. In this way, our practice follows the cycle of the three higher trainings of ethics, concentration, and wisdom. We go full-circle in an ever-increasing upward spiral of integrating and celebrating the inextricable interweaving of our spiritual work and our daily lives. Karma Lekshe Tsomo is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, where she teaches Buddhism, World Religions, and Comparative Religious Ethics. She studied Buddhism in Dharamsala, India, for fifteen years and received a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii. She is a founder and past president of Sakyadhita: International Association of Buddhist Women, and director of Jamyang Foundation, an innovative education project for women in developing countries. More Books Related to Women in Buddhism

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Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche on Traversing the Bardo of Becoming

The following is an excerpt from Mind Beyond Death By Dzogchen Ponlop   What happens right after death? Below Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche offers a practical description of the taste of that experience. In the first stage of this bardo, when we still see ourselves as who we are right now, the appearances of the life we have just left can arise for us quite vividly. At this time, we can see and hear all the people that we have known; our family and friends, as well as our teachers and members of our spiritual community. Since we possess a mental body, whenever we think about any one of them, we are there with that person. However, while we can see them and even know to some extent what they are thinking and feeling as a result of our death, they are unaware of our presence. They do not respond to us when we call out to them. We cannot directly comfort them or be comforted by them. From the perspective of those who are left behind in the bardo of this life, it is important to understand that there is initially some possibility that the consciousness of the departed person may be drawn back into the presence of loved ones and familiar surroundings. Therefore, it is important for those of us remaining to have positive thoughts and to create a positive and stable environment, as this will assist the consciousness of that person and ease his or her passage through this bardo. If we are going through emotional turmoil, then our loved one may be distressed by our pain. If we are feeling angry or indifferent, then that may cause him or her to become angry or despairing, sensing a lack of love and support. We should also be mindful of our thoughts regarding their possessions and of our actions in regard to the belongings they have left behind. We should handle them with care and respect. If we mishandle them, then the consciousness in the bardo may suffer, just as we would if we walked into a room and saw someone take something that we liked very much and destroy it. We would not be happy. Therefore we should remember that the departed person sees and reacts in the same way that we do; we are all vulnerable to states of confusion and suffering. Because of the power of mind in the bardo, we have the possibility of helping anyone with whom we have a close connection during this stressful passage. By maintaining a clear, peaceful and positive mental state, we will help them to relax in that state as well. By relating to them with genuine love and compassion, and with the attitude of bodhichitta that wishes only for their happiness and liberation, then we will definitely help this person. That is the best practice we can do. In the same way, we can also help those with whom we have more distant connections, as well as beings who are unknown to us. These days, we are in a situation where we hear reports from the media about people throughout the world who have died due to various causes: war, famine, disease, natural disasters and tragic accidents. When we read these reports or hear about them on TV and see the graphic images of these events, if we make a little prayer and generate positive thoughts, we will be making positive connections with the beings who are undergoing the experience of death. Based on making this connection, we can actually help those beings. We can help them attain enlightenment, and they can help us attain enlightenment, which is what we call a twofold benefit; benefiting oneself and benefiting others. This is better than getting angry or simply feeling sad and depressed when we see such things happening in the world. It is preferable to becoming caught up in our beliefs about good and bad, right and wrong, and then generating thoughts of aggression and blame. Such negative thoughts do not ever help those who have died, and they are also harmful to our state of mind. Even though we may not be able to maintain completely pure thoughts from moment to moment, or throughout the period of forty-nine days, at least our first thought can be a positive one. When we can sincerely generate positive thoughts and prayers for the well being of friends and strangers alike, this is immediately beneficial and may even prove auspicious beyond our knowing for their spiritual journey as well as our own. Traditional Tibetans, when hearing of someone’s death, will immediately recite mantras, or short prayers, so to speak, which invoke blessings and connection with enlightened mind. Mantras are thus regarded as a form of mind protection. There are any number of mantras that can be recited, such as: om mani padma hum, karmapa cheno, or om vajra guru padma siddhi hum. After reciting mantras, we make aspiration prayers and generate positive thoughts. We conclude by dedicating the merit of our positive thoughts and aspirations for the ultimate liberation of those beings.

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Thubten Chodron on Working with Our Stuff

The following excerpt is from Cultivating a Compassionate Heart by Thubten Chodron The vibration of the mantra affects our body and mind. Reciting mantra has a purifying effect that we can feel physically and mentally. It doesn’t occur immediately, but gradually the energy of the mantra begins to work and calms our mind. However, a stormy period often precedes the pacification of the mind. The pure vibration of the mantra brings out our impure energy, confusion, and other traits that we would rather not look at. We would much rather present ourselves as well-balanced, competent, and confident people, even when we don’t feel that way inside. When our “garbage mind”—as Lama Yeshe used to call it—spills out, we may be alarmed and think that we’re not doing the practice correctly. In fact, we are. Only by exposing the garbage mind can we identify it and free ourselves from it. Before Mount St. Helens, a volcano in the northwest U.S., exploded in the 1980s, it looked great on the outside—it was lofty, snow covered, and magnificent. Meanwhile, below the surface magma was building up. Similarly, we look great on the outside, but inside there’s volcanic activity, rumbling, and bits of steam sneaking out: “I’m fine. My life’s together. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got to look like a good Dharma practitioner. People shouldn’t see me cry. They shouldn’t know how distracted I am during meditation. I can’t let on how incredibly confused I am.” We think we’re the only one who is confused and not wanting to lose face, we hide our turmoil and pretend to be calmly in charge of the show. But we’re in cyclic existence, so how much control do we really have? How peaceful can we be when we have a samsaric body and mind? When we meditate and recite mantra, our façade begins to crack, revealing what is really going on in our mind and heart. Attachment, hostility, jealousy, arrogance, vengeance, craving, shame, fear, guilt, and anxiety are starkly apparent. At this time, we shouldn’t wallow in these emotions or become depressed because we have them. Getting discouraged isn’t the purpose of meditation. There’s no reason for the Buddha to have spent forty-five years teaching the Dharma if his goal was for us to be depressed. We can do that all by ourselves. It’s very good when our garbage mind comes up, because then we have a chance to work with it, clear it out, and apply the antidote to counteract or transform it. Don’t think that you’re doing something wrong when negative emotions surface. Observe them arising, and then apply the thought training teachings to counteract them. The trick is not to get involved in the story behind the emotions. If we do, the emotion will feel very solid. Instead, watch the thoughts that form the story behind the emotion and ask yourself, “Are they true?” For example, let’s say I’m trying to meditate on Chenrezig and the thought, “My friend betrayed my trust” pops into my mind. If I’m not aware, before long I will be either hurt or angry, depending upon my usual pattern of reacting to such thoughts. I’ll review the details of the story I’ve thought about many times before: “My friends did xyz when I trusted them. Then they did abc.” We might then think, “I was so stupid for trusting them. It’s all my fault,” or “Who do they think they are treating me like that!” or “How could someone do this? What did I do to deserve such treatment?” And away we go. We become screenwriters for the melodrama in our mind. Who is the star of this film? Me, of course. If we are able to catch this process early on and do not get involved in it, we find it amusing. If we catch it later, after our mind has already bought into the story, we have to apply the antidote. In this case, it’s helpful to contemplate verse 6 of The Eight Verses of Thought Training. We see that we had false expectations that we communicated. Or perhaps they were communicated, but the other person is an imperfect living being, just like us, and thus wasn’t able to fulfill them. We contemplate that our karma got us into that situation: in the past we have betrayed others’ trust and now a similar experience is happening to us. In this way, feelings of hurt and anger fade away. Another way to counteract negative emotions is to practice divine identity as an antidote. If you start to get self-critical, depressed, or discouraged, remember that you’re Chenrezig. Give yourself another way to look at the situation besides the old pattern, the one that you’ve used before that doesn’t work. Instead, identify yourself as Chenrezig and ask yourself, “How would Chenrezig look at the situation?” Sometimes we’ll remember a situation that happened ten, twenty, or even thirty or more years ago. If that happens, go into that situation, except this time be Chenrezig. Be there with your family, or whoever it was, and be Chenrezig. As Chenrezig, radiate light from the HRIH at your heart. The light fills the whole room and touches all the people around you. It purifies them, relaxes their minds, and transforms them into Chenrezig. They and we are now Chenrezig, so who will be angry, upset, or disappointed in whom? Visualizing this is very effective, for it shows us an alternative way to view the situation and to act besides falling into our old, dysfunctional emotional patterns of fear, defensiveness, resentment, inferiority, helplessness, defiance, clinging, or insecurity. Each time this memory comes to mind, we become Chenrezig and imagine purifying everyone who was in that situation that happened years ago. Each time a habitual emotional pattern arises, we imagine being Chenrezig and imagine reacting the way an enlightened being would react to those circumstances. We do this again and again, each time deepening our understanding of the Dharma and healing the remnants of the past that we carry around with us in our minds. We can meditate like this while chanting the mantra. A disturbing attitude and emotion will arise in cycles. After we work on it using the Dharma, it probably won’t come up as strongly for a while. It might come up a month later, a year later, or the next time we do retreat, but that time we’ll be able to identify it more quickly and see more clearly how it is based on distorted perception. Some of these issues won’t disappear completely until we attain the path of seeing. We need to be patient and to continue to peel off the layers. Be enthusiastic about examining the state of your mind and working with it. In some sessions, the mind will be very clear, and you’ll be able to focus on clear appearance and divine identity for a long time. In other sessions, the mind will be restless, and hurt feelings, anger, or jealousy will arise. At other times, the mind will go wild with craving and desire. At these times, it’s helpful to say the mantra, do the various visualizations, and meditate on Lamrim and thought training to help pacify and let go of whatever has come up. Each session will be different as you incorporate into your meditation whatever is going on in your life and mind. When the mind is overwhelmed by afflictions, be creative and find skillful ways to use the Chenrezig meditation to work with them. Try to recognize when your mind is off track and apply Dharma antidotes right away. This helps enormously. The more we work with these emotions in our meditation, the more we will be able to let go when they arise in our daily life. In similar situations in the future, our attitude will be different because we’ve practiced developing new ones. Although this meditation stretches our ordinary image of ourselves, we may still keep bumping into it. We sit on our cushion, recite mantra, radiate light to all the sentient beings, and it’s so wonderful. We feel great. It’s so easy to love sentient beings and watch compassionate light flow to them, except for certain sentient beings, such as your boss who criticized you, the neighbor who irritates you, the drunk who swore at you, or the financial consultant who mismanaged your retirement fund. Then we get stuck. We can radiate light to all the sentient beings except to this person. In the middle of our very nice meditation we think of that person and suddenly we stop being Chenrezig. We fall back into our old image of ourselves as little ol’ me who has to defend myself against this person I can’t stand. When you bump into things like this, try to work with it. Don’t run away, ignore it, or get mad at yourself. Instead, gently investigate, “Why can I radiate light to everybody but this person? What is my button that gets pushed in regards to them?” Notice the question is not, “How can they possibly do that?” or “Why are they so neurotic?” The question is about us: “What are my buttons? Why do I get upset, feel threatened, become insecure? What inside me finds their action or words unbearable?” Exploring this, we learn about ourselves. We apply thought training and Lamrim teachings to work with these emotional hurdles. Slowly, we’ll work our way through them and will be able to extend compassion and radiate light to that person, too. Self-Righteousness and the Judgmental Mind Sometimes, just watching the news creates agitation and anger in our mind. Self-righteous feelings and judgment arise because “those idiots” are doing something we don’t like. Work with that self-righteous, judgmental mind in your meditation. Others may do negative actions, but why do we need to be contemptuously “holier than thou” in our response? Why can’t we cultivate a compassionate response to others’ negativity? After all, they’re confused about what causes happiness and what causes suffering, and they’re under the control of mental afflictions which harm them. Thinking in this way enables us to have compassion, because we see that others don’t mean to harm us when they act in certain ways. Then we can send light and purify other sentient beings of their negative karma. Someone once asked Lama Yeshe whether Mao Tse-tung was an evil being. His army killed many people and due to his actions, many people, including Lama himself, were adversely affected. Lama looked at us and said, “He meant well, dear.” We were waiting for Lama to make a strong political statement, especially since he had to flee Tibet due to Mao’s army, carrying only his tea cup with him, and enter India as a refugee. We were a group of liberal Westerners, ready to scream “injustice” on behalf of oppressed people, but Lama just said, “He meant well, dear.” Often, people act harmfully but think they’re doing something good. Their minds are overwhelmed by disturbing attitudes and karma. I’m sure we can look at our own past and see things we’ve done and say, “How could I have done that?” Looking back and understanding our own mind, we see that we were overwhelmed by afflictions and karma. We weren’t a horrible person who meant harm. We were just totally confused at that time. Understanding this, we forgive ourselves and, in doing so, become less judgmental and more forgiving of others. I’m not saying that we should just sit on our cushion and radiate love in response to oppression, poverty, and violence. We need to engage and try to solve the problems in the world, but we should do so with a positive attitude, not with a mind full of despair or anger. Before or after watching the news, do the Chenrezig meditation and send light out to purify all those sentient beings. Try to figure out which afflictions are motivating them to do what they’re doing, and imagine the light purifying specifically those disturbing attitudes and negative emotions. Think about the kind of karma those people are creating and what kind of results that karma could bring. Ask yourself, “What did they do in the past to make this behavior habitual so that they’re still doing it now?” Then, send light to them to purify the seeds of past actions that cause this habitual behavior and to cleanse the karma they’re creating now so that they don’t have to experience future suffering. Preferences and Opinions Our preferences and opinions arise while we meditate and can be great distractions. Often we don’t realize them as the attachments and views that they are. Instead we mentally dig in our heels and insist that our way is right. For example, my teacher, Zopa Rinpoche, likes to begin teaching in the evening and go into the wee hours of the morning. I, however, am a morning person and don’t like staying up late. Sometimes, I become agitated when teachings begin late and have lots of “good” reasons to support why they should begin early: “I practice during the day and am tired. If I go to bed late, I’ll sleep late, and that interferes with my morning meditation. Plus, when teachings begin in the evening, I fall asleep during them, and that’s disrespectful to my spiritual teacher and to the Buddha.” Don’t you think these are good reasons to teach early in the day, not late at night? I think they’re excellent reasons! And probably some other students in the room agree with me. But are these the absolute truths that they appear to be when my mind is agitated? No, they are simply my preferences, and the more I cling onto them the more I suffer. Having received the novice, or sramanerika, ordination in the Tibetan tradition in 1977, I went to Taiwan in 1986 to receive the full ordination for women and become a bhikshuni. During the one-month training program that surrounded the ordination ceremony, all 500 of us trainees had to file into the main hall and immediately file out of it into the teaching room each morning. To my efficient mind, this was a waste of time; I had a much better plan about how everyone could arrive in the teaching room. Did the ordaining masters care about my plan? Not at all, not to mention the fact that I couldn’t make it known to them because we spoke different languages and that it was out of place for me as a trainee to tell the masters what to do. So for a month I had to bear this inefficiency and waste of time. It was only later that I realized that my agitation was due to attachment to my own preferred way of doing things. It was me who was wasting my time by dwelling on “my way is the right way.” There are many ways to bring distractions into our meditation so that we work with issues pertinent to our lives. Sometimes we do this by thought training. For example, instead of fighting the situation, we accept that the principal cause is our previous destructive actions. This gives us courage not to follow our self-centeredness and negative emotions in the future. Sometimes we can transform that person into Chenrezig and then see how we feel about him. Try to cultivate pure appearance of him instead of seeing him as ordinary. Instead of labeling “Sam” in dependence on that person’s ordinary aggregates, label “Sam” in dependence on their Buddha-nature. Imagine Sam becomes Chenrezig, and then relate to Sam as if he were Chenrezig. When you are Chenrezig radiating healing and inspiring light to others, don’t think of sentient beings as an amorphous group. Instead think of specific people. Transform each of them individually into Chenrezig. Try to recognize that they each have Buddha-nature and develop an attitude of equanimity toward them all. Try to see that they’re all empty of inherent existence. Sam has not always been the same Sam with a cut-and-dried fixed personality. In the previous life he wasn’t Sam, and in the future life he won’t be Sam either. One day he will be a Buddha. Guilt and Shame When we meditate, things from the past come up, and we have to work with them. We may remember times when we treated others horribly—hurting their feelings, deceiving them, repaying their kindness with spite, manipulating them, cheating them. While regret for these actions is appropriate and necessary to purify these karmas, we often fall into guilt and shame instead. Guilt and shame are obstacles to overcome on the path, because they keep us trapped in our self-centered melodrama entitled “How Bad I Am.” Regret, on the other hand, realizes that we erred, leads us to purify, and motivates us to refrain from acting like that in the future. How do we counteract guilt and shame? One way is to recognize that the person who did that action no longer exists. You are different now. Is the person who did that action five years ago the same person you are now? If she were exactly the same person, you would still be doing the same action. The present “you” exists in a continuum from that person, but is not exactly the same as her. Look back at the person you were with compassion. You can understand the suffering and confusion she was experiencing that made her act in that way. A second antidote is to do the taking and giving meditation, thinking, “I will take on the suffering of everybody who did this same horrible action that I did. I will take on the pain of all the victims of these actions.” In this way develop compassion and use it to dissolve the self-centered feeling that says, “I am the worst, the most unforgivable one.” Another method is to focus on the purification visualization before doing the self-generation as Chenrezig. Imagine that light and nectar stream into you, purifying that negative karma, as well as your guilt and shame. Think that Chenrezig forgives you. A voice inside may say, “Chenrezig, what I did was so terrible, how can you forgive me!” Be careful! That comes close to criticizing a Buddha, doesn’t it? It’s like you’re saying Chenrezig does not know what he is doing when he has compassion for you. Another way is to meditate on emptiness. The object to be negated is the solid, real “I” who did such a horrible thing five years ago. Search and try to find that “I.” Determine that it either has to be in the body and mind or separate from the body and mind. Start looking: Am I my body? Am I my mind? Search everywhere for this disgusting person you think you are. Finally, the understanding will dawn that you can’t find that person because he or she doesn’t exist. No such inherently existent person is to be found anywhere. Sometimes you may feel, “I cannot find the solid ‘I,’ but there is still this feeling of ‘I.’ So the feeling must be ‘I.’” Is the feeling or the thought “me” the “I”? Is a thought a person? Is a feeling a person? If I think of a grapefruit, is my thought of a grapefruit a grapefruit? There is a thought or feeling of “I,” but that is not me; that is just a thought, a feeling. When you try to find the one that is me, it’s like trying to catch a rainbow. Dharma isn’t separate from our daily life. Bring these meditations into your life and use them to solve your problems. Above are some examples of how to do this. Be creative in your own meditations and discover other ways to soothe and dispel your disturbing emotions. Thubten Chodron: Ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 1977, Venerable Thubten Chodron is an author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey. Sravasti Abbey is the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Westerners in the US and holds gender equality, social engagement, and care for the environment amongst its core values. Ven. Chodron teaches worldwide and is known for her practical (and humorous!) explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life. She is also actively involved in prison outreach and interfaith dialogue. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and has coauthored a book—Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions—with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with whom she has studied for nearly forty years. Books by Thubten Chodron

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Giving Yourself an At-Home Retreat

by Susan Higginbotham The current economic climate has put a damper on the lives of many of us—and this includes taking vacations. For some of us, what was an annual expectation has become a drifted off dream and our concern has been more about having a job or not losing our savings. Yet despite the lack of financial flourish, we can still retreat into our practice and transform our vacation mindset into one of a deeply resonant inner journey, one where we can indeed take a break from our normal routine to jumpstart and nourish our practice. And this can be done for little or no cost…perhaps by acquiring a few items to study, or dusting off a book that you already have, waiting to be read. If you are new to Buddhism, this article may be of particular interest to you. It will not address three-year retreats or anything of a more formal nature. But the information here will give you some ideas about how to design a general retreat for yourself that offers you time—time to be with yourself and have a supportive space to explore, meditate and reflect. And in this space you can create a nourishing atmosphere to familiarize yourself with some basic Buddhist concepts. The retreat can be as long or short as you like and will be set up to meet your purposes and fit in with your lifestyle. What you do is all up to you. THE RETREAT ITSELF Since you are creating this retreat, it’s important to start out with a sense of what you would like to do. Do you want to refocus? Recharge? Connect with an inner, deeper purpose? And what activities call to you? Meditation? Reading? Listening to teachings? Writing? Whatever you’re planning to do, you’ll want to set yourself up in a way that eliminates distractions and the stimulation of outside thoughts. First, it’s important to get some things out of the way. This is not the time to think about finances, so settle whatever needs to be tended to before you begin. You’ll also want to do some preparation to clear your space and make some advance arrangements, as well as bring in some things that will be useful to you. The idea is to take your retreat without interruption—at least as much as possible. Here are some guidelines… Preparing your retreat space Do your best to de-clutter any space that you will be using. Yes, this includes your kitchen, bathroom, where you sleep, and all spaces in between. If this means that you temporarily box up papers and chatchkas, then just do it, without sorting through them (a project unto itself, and definitely not in keeping with the retreat!). And also be sure to remove items that have a negative association for you. Keep in view only what you need. Get rid of “transient objects” such as bills, paperwork, and laundry—anything that stimulates you to do or think about something waiting or needing to be done. Simply getting things out of sight will create a more calm environment. If you can, give your home a good cleaning. Not just your “retreat space,” but your whole living space. Vacuum, dust, wash floors. Let your home breathe with a feeling of clear uninterrupted flow. If your budget permits, or if you have some “non-travel funds”, you might consider hiring someone to help you with the windows and other heavy duty chores. This is not about winning an award from Good Housekeeping and making things perfect. The idea is to do the best you can to get the old stagnated dust and energy out. Even more so, this is about preparing and cleaning your space as a way to create clarity and connect with it. Look at your space and decide how you want to set it up and “live” in it. This is more than a visual concern and involves all of your senses, doing what you can to create a space that responds to your needs. You might want to use your space differently than you normally do. For example, you might choose to sit on a cushion on the floor to eat rather than at a table, or sleep on a mat, rather than your bed, etc. The thought behind this is to bring more mindfulness into these activities and to see your space in a fresh light. Decide on the length of your retreat. Avoid having a random attitude about the timeframe. This is about making a commitment to yourself. Preparing your inner space This is your vacation to explore your inner space away from your usual life. Make even more room for your journey by implementing these advance arrangements: • Just like a “real” vacation, ask the post office to put your mail on hold. This helps eliminate intrusion into your space from the outside world. You can leave a note on your doormat that says, “Please do not ring the bell. Leave any packages here.” You can also add “please only ring the bell in an emergency” so that you don’t feel you have to answer your door if the bell rings. • If you receive home delivery newspaper service, put this on hold too. • Put an auto reply on your email. The last thing you want to do is use the internet or e-mail. Think about how distracting it can be in your everyday life and how easy it is to mindlessly waste time with this. • Pay bills in advance—anticipate what might come up so that you don’t have to deal with finances and paperwork or have it weighing on you. • Eliminate or put aside any pending decisions. Notify those who might need to hear from you regarding these. Having decisions hovering in your space will weigh on you and surreptitiously leech energy. • Shop for food and household supplies ahead of time so that you have all of the provisions you will need. If you have animal companions don’t forget their food and supplies as well. • If you’re planning to use candles and incense, etc. check that you have the supply you need. • Do your laundry so that you have enough clothing and linens for your retreat period. • Let your friends and family know about your plans and request that they not disturb you unless an emergency comes up. You can always check your messages once or twice a day if there is a need for this, and of course you can make other arrangements, depending on any particular circumstances. • Do your best to eliminate or at least reduce distracting sounds. If you live in a noisy area, it would be helpful have a “background CD” on hand to help you keep your focus. There are many CD’s available that would provide a conducive aural backdrop. Some suggestions include Bell of Tibet, Golden Spa Tones and Seven Metals: Singing Bowls of Tibet. You can sample many CD’s online to find what has personal appeal to you. Whatever you choose, find something that is tonal rather than melodic. If you use a melodic CD, the melody itself might distract your attention. • Arrange for any in-home services that you might want during your retreat. …and don’t forget to • Send “wish you were here” cards to family and friends! Other Considerations For those who live alone, setting up this retreat is simply a matter of planning. For those who don’t, or who have difficulty delegating personal daily obligations, clearly more planning is needed and more alternatives need to be taken into consideration. If you live with a partner or spouse and you both want to do the retreat together, or separately together, this could be a wonderful opportunity to share your path with each other. It would be important to discuss how you want to do the retreat so that you can support each other and agree on how things are set up. If this is something that is only of interest to you, you might still be able to work out an arrangement where you stay in a private, undisturbed space of the home for set hours (possibly a guest room?). You might even ask to be supported with prepared meals or juices, etc. This would be quite a generous gift to receive! For those whose schedules are jammed and don’t feel that they can put the time aside (and this includes workaholics), you can still make a small commitment to yourself by taking a weekend afternoon, or perhaps use some saved up personal hours from your job. Choose a time when no one else from your household would be home, and then give yourself the gift of time to retreat. If you’re a caregiver, see if a friend can help you out, or even hire outside help. In the end, it always comes down to quality, not quantity. A few hours taken on a weekday afternoon to sit and breathe, meditate, read, or listen to an audio teaching can truly bring much benefit. If you have put aside some savings for vacation that you might want to use towards your retreat, you can think of these as your “stay-cation” funds for purchasing dharma items and other small household comforts, like new towels or sheets. Even if you have a small budget, simply allowing yourself to buy some incense, a cushion or other items that would spruce up your practice area would be a small useful luxury that would be a great non-travel souvenir to keep using after your retreat. You might also want to consider arranging for a massage or other kind of healing modality treatment at home. Some things to keep on hand • Pen and pad or notebook for thoughts, ideas and study. • Incense—helps create the atmosphere and keep your focus. You can use whatever incense you like. If you’re interested in Tibetan incense and are new to this, you might find it to be a thicker, more complex scent than what you’re used to. You can get an incense sampler kit to try some kinds out. Additionally, Tibetan incense is often blessed and many varieties have healing properties and can be used for stress, etc. • Candles/tea lights and matches. • Books. This “supply” can be the defining focus of your retreat. More about this below. • Audio/Video Teachings. Ditto. Retreat activities and suggestions: Meditate. No matter where you are in your practice, meditation is likely to be an important part of your retreat. In fact, it can be the focus of your retreat. If you’re just learning about Buddhist meditation you might want to read a book about this as part of your main activity, or perhaps use a recorded guided meditation. Thubten Chodron’s Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path would be a good consideration for this. And for basic meditation instruction there is How to Meditate with Pema Chödrön. Gen Lamrimpa’s Calming the Mind takes you through the steps of shamata meditation. And of course, you can choose your breath as a subject of meditation. Read. If you’re new to Buddhism you might want to read several books with different perspectives. One book might take you through the general ideas from a Western point of view. Another might have a more factual tone, so that you have an easy reference point. And yet another might be more discursive with a more traditional Tibetan feel. As we are prone to resonate more deeply with particular teachers, taking this kind of approach can round out our foundational understanding. Possible combinations of three such books would be Buddhism for Beginners, An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism or A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, and the Dalai Lama’s Kindness, Clarity and Insight or The Buddhist Path. Buddhism through American Women’s Eyes would also be a wonderful introductory book as it presents varied points of view on how Buddhist principles are applied in daily life and personal situations. Heartfelt Advice is a small book with short sections where you can stop, meditate and digest the information. For those who have been on the path for a longer time, there might be some topical issues you would like to explore, or perhaps you’ve been planning to put aside time to pore into a classic teaching. And for those who have come upon the frustrations that inevitably arise, The Power and the Pain and The Wisdom of Imperfection would be very pertinent choices. Audio/Video Teachings. There are so many to choose from and so many wonderful teachings! This too could be the center of your retreat. Imagine having the luxury to listen to one teaching over and over again in your retreat setting. You might already have something on hand that you’d like to use. If not, you can get an idea of the variety available on the Shambhala website. Self-work through Buddhist teachings. Two possible ideas are working with anger and working with unwanted behavior. Related books include Healing Anger, where the Dalai Lama clearly and warmly walks us through Chapter Six of Santideva’s timeless Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life; Thubten Chodron’s Working with Anger; and Enough!: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from Addictive Patterns. Enough! is a small but broad-based step-by-step guide that can be used to help transform compulsive habits. It also contains detailed meditation instructions, including how to meditate if you have pain, can’t sit on the floor, etc. You might have a particular prayer, or verse from a prayer, that you would like to focus on throughout the day. For example, in Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Perfections: I must remember that death is quick to strike, For spirit quivers in flesh like a bubble in water, And after death one’s good and evil deeds Trail after one like the shadow trails the body. Reflection on the Buddhist concepts of interconnectedness and impermanence, etc. can be brought into all of your activities. Keep a sense of simplicity and mindfulness, letting everything that you do reflect the spirit of the retreat. When you cook think about the food, where it came from, and all that had to come into play for you to have this so readily available. Bring a sense of true appreciation to your meals and feel the nourishment of the food as you slowly chew it. Eat simple foods like grains, beans and fresh vegetables. (Organic brown rice would be an excellent choice as it is particularly known for its centering properties.) When you bathe you can think about purification practice, and as with your food, think about the comfort and true luxury that it is to have this clean water. Do your daily chores in the sacred context of your practice. For example, a task like cleaning out the cat litter box can be viewed as raking a Zen garden! Continue your normal exercise and health routine as much as possible. And if you can, without disturbing the quiet tone of your retreat, take contemplative early morning or evening walks. If you can do this in nature, all the better. Avoid expectations of accomplishing anything. Do your best to remain present with what you are doing—and be open to discovery! Seeing long-term Your retreat is about connecting with yourself and your practice. Buddhist wisdom has been around for more than two and a half millennia and the concepts can take many reads and perspectives to sink in. This material has been taught and re-taught, carefully handed down through different lineages, passed from one master to another, presented and re-presented and so on. And there are so many teachings and ideas to become familiar with—each with its own benefits. As you read and come upon questions, accept that it does take time to get familiar with the concepts. Keep a log of your questions and note what you’d like to go back and review. Permit yourself to stop, re-read and ponder. You don’t have to read a whole book, or even a whole chapter. Round robin between different topical books. The goal isn’t to finish a book, but rather to develop your understanding at your own pace. Allow yourself to go slowly and digest the teachings and experiences that arise. The Tibetans always say “kali, kali” which literally means “slowly, slowly”. As hurried and anxious as we might feel to begin and/or move forward with our practice, it takes time to understand dharma deeply. His Holiness the Dalai Lama advises us to take what makes sense and not go with things on faith. He tells us that we have to think through the teachings for ourselves. Buddhism is a new language, a new way of thinking, and it takes time to get familiar with. There is no race here. The idea is to be able to integrate the practices into our lives—slowly—so that the principles of Buddhism can be used in our daily lives, offering us a practical vision. Mini-retreats will make your progress easier and enhance your practice focus. Please don’t judge yourself and expect specific kinds of progress. Thoughts about being a good enough Buddhist and such will only get in your way. Just take in what you can—and keep going! At the end of your retreat ask yourself: “What have I learned that I can bring back, even on a small scale, into my daily life?” Instead of jumping back into life as usual the day after, allow some time to slowly ease out of the retreat, being present with some of the changes you’ve made. Obviously, an article such as this can only give some suggestions that I and others have found useful. This kind of retreat is not about strictly following instructions. Rather, it is about creating a sacred space and practices that YOU are choosing to implement. Eliminate as many distractions as you can, keep things simple simple simple, step inside your retreat and see what you discover!

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Stories of Niguma

Sarah Harding writes in the Introduction to Niguma, Lady of Illusion: “As much as I have searched for this dakini named Niguma and hoped to find her as an actual person and the subject of her own story, it may have been in vain. Her own story, if it ever existed, is not to be found apart from the few details that I have explored here. Before providing the translation of her biography, therefore, let us see what a few of those masters have said of their encounters with Niguma.”   Here is one of the stories… Khyungpo Naljor’s Niguma After studying with many gurus in Nepal and India, the Tibetan yogi Khyungpo Naljor resolved to find someone who had met the Buddha face-to-face. He was directed to Niguma, who was reported to have received teachings from the great Vajradhara. Inquiring as to where she was at present, he was told that if one had pure perception, one could see her face anywhere, but those with impure perception might search up and down without ever finding her. That was because she dwelt on the pure grounds and had transformed to a rainbow body. “Pure grounds” are certainly a matter of perception, rather than location. Nevertheless, they said, she occasionally shows up in the forest of a great charnel ground, Sosadvipa, to preside over the feast circles of dakinis. Inspired, Khyungpo travels there immediately, while paying homage to the Buddha. He sees a dark dakini hovering in the sky, bedecked in bones and holding a trident and skull-cup, dancing about and displaying various forms, appearing sometimes as one and sometimes many. Convinced it is she, Khyungpo requests teachings, but the dakini is uncooperative. “I am a flesh-eating dakini,” she says. “When my retinue arrives, you’ll be devoured. Get out now.” Flesh-eating dakinis may have been the original dakinis of Indian lore, those scary females that populated the charnel grounds and other places where god-fearing people dared not tread. They constellate some of our greatest fears and are never far behind the more beneficent figures that entice and instruct the Tibetan adepts. Here, the gimmick of terrorizing the aspirant as a test of determination is of course a common element in hero stories. At the same time, it is not entirely a ruse. The chimerical dakini, or the energy she represents, could turn dangerous at any time and devour rather than nurture the practitioner. Khyungpo, undeterred, again requests instruction in secret mantra. “To request secret mantra mahayana requires gold. If there’s gold, I’ll do it,” the dakini retorts. Khyungpo offers her the nearly impossible amount of five hundred gold srang, but she just throws it about the forest. At this point Khyungpo starts to wonder if she really is a flesh-eating dakini since she does not want the gold. It is difficult not to speculate about the implication here: that a genuine dakini would be greedy for gold, but apparently a flesh-eating dakini is satisfied with—well, flesh. The dakini then glares into space to invoke her vast dakini entourage, who begin constructing, in space, all the requisites for an empowerment, such as palace, sand mandala, and feast provisions. She then bestows the empowerments for the practices of illusory body and dream, tells Khyungpo to get up, and then transports him miraculously about twenty-five miles. There, in the sky above a golden mountain like the great mount Avrha, the dakinis perform the feast ceremony and dance about. The golden mountain has four rivers of gold pouring from the four sides, and Khyungpo asks if it can really be somewhere in India or if it is the dakini’s magical projection. To this she replies with perhaps the most famous verse associated with Niguma, reiterated in various ways in the Path of Illusion: This variety of desirous and hateful thoughts that strands us in the ocean of cyclic existence once realized to be without intrinsic nature, makes everything a golden land, child. If you meditate on the illusion-like nature of illusion-like phenomena, actual illusion-like buddhahood will occur through the power of devotion. Niguma then commands Khyungpo to recognize his dreams by means of her blessing, which he does indeed do. He continues to have the very dreamy experience of traveling to the land of gods and demigods, being swallowed whole by a gigantic demigod, and receiving the entire instruction on the six dharmas from Niguma. She even mentions, in his dream, that no one but he has ever received the complete teaching in one nap in all of India. What is never clarified is the starting point of the dream experience: whether it was from the time of being transported to the Golden Mountain or from his first encounter with the dakini. He recognizes the dream only after she blesses him to so do. In any case, he now wakes up and “really” (dngos su) receives the guidance on the six dharmas again three times, along with a number of other instructions. Related Articles: To the Women of Tibet: A poem by Jhampa Khacho Mandarava Reader's Guide For more information: Sarah Harding has been a Buddhist practitioner since 1974 and has been teaching and translating since completing a three-year retreat in 1980 under the guidance of Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche. Her publications include Creation and Completion, The Life and Revelations of Pema Lingpa, Treasury of Knowledge: Esoteric Instructions, and Niguma, Lady of Illusion. She is an associate professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she has been teaching since 1992, and has been a fellow of the Tsadra Foundation since 2000. Related Books (Includes an important vision of Niguma)

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John Myrdhin Reynolds on What You See Is What You Are

The following article is adapted from  Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness Translated with commentary by John Myrdhin Reynolds Whether we see the world as chaos or as a divine mandala depends on the states of our minds, says John Myrdhin Reynolds in this adaptation from Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness. All of us here in this lifetime are experiencing human karmic vision because we all possess in common the cause for such a vision. Therefore, we share this common vision. But this is not so with beings in other destinies of rebirth whose vision possesses different causes. For example, when we humans look at a river in summer, it appears to us to consist of cool and refreshing water. But to a Deva, who possesses a different kind of vision, the river seems to consist of fragrant sweet-tasting divine nectar. On the other hand, to a Preta or hungry ghost it seems to be a sluggish stream of foul-smelling excrement, and to a denizen in hell it seems to be a river of molten lava. In this way, external appearances are perceived by living beings in such a way as is determined by internal karmic causes. The same river is perceived quite differently by beings in different dimensions of existence. But when our mind is transformed, all external appearances are transformed. If these two, Samsãra and Nirvana, arise to us as reflections of our mind, then when our mind is transformed, when impure karmic vision is transformed into pure vision, the one will seem to change into the other. Instead of the usual chaotic mess which is the world around us, we perceive everything as the pure mandala of the Buddha. This is the principle of tantra: transformation. This, of course, indicates something much more radical and profound than a superficial visualization of a wish-fulfillment fantasy: it is a radical transformation at the very root of the mind. But here in this context, the meaning is a bit different. In the Tantras a great deal of diligence and effort in meditation is required, a great deal of practice in clear visualization. But in Dzogchen, there is nothing to be transformed, nothing to be visualized such as beautiful mandalas and magnificent deities, nothing at all to be constructed by the mind, because all appearances are already spontaneously self-perfected from the very beginning. All this is very easy to say. But external appearances seem to us to be very much real, very solid and substantial. It seems that there must be something actually out there and not just empty space, incredibly cluttered up with phantom projections of the mind. Why do appearances seem to be so solid and real? We must understand that it is the mind that grasps at appearances, at their reality and their substantiality. But these seemingly solid appearances are empty, being only space; they are nothing in themselves, save in the context of their relations to everything else. As distinct concrete isolated entities with their own individual reality they are nothing. And in terms of this, there is no error in them; rather the error lies in our grasping at them as real. It is this grasping that leads to attachments and aversions; this is the problem and not the things in themselves. But if we can come to understand that no matter how long we search, no matter how far we wander in this quest, we will not find anyone there who is doing the grasping, then we will discover liberation in that very fact. Whatever arises and whatever is liberated are only appearances of mind (sems kyi snangba). John Myrdhin Reynolds (Vajranatha) is a writer teacher translator and scholar/practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. He was trained and ordained as a Tantric Yogin or Ngagpa in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Related Books on Liberation in the Tibetan Buddhist Bardo Teachings

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Thubten Chodron on Prayers Being Answered

There are many kinds of prayers. Some are designed to direct and inspire our minds toward a certain quality or aim, thus creating the causes for us to attain this. Other prayers are for specific people or situations, for example praying for a person’s illness to be cured. For any prayer to be fulfilled, the prayer alone isn’t sufficient: the appropriate causes must also be created. It’s not just a matter of saying, “Please, Buddha, make this and that happen. I’ll relax and have tea while you do the work!” For example, if we pray to be more loving and compassionate and yet make no effort to control our anger, we aren’t creating the cause for that prayer to be fulfilled. The transformation of our minds comes from our own effort, but we can pray for the Buddhas’ inspiration to do so. Receiving the blessings of the Buddhas doesn’t mean that something tangible comes from the Buddha and goes into us. It means that our minds are transformed through the combined effort of the teachings and the guidance of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and our own practice. “Requesting the Buddhas’ blessings” has the connotation of requesting to be inspired by them, so that our minds and actions are transformed and become more beneficial. Adapted from Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron

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Existential Dilemmas

The following excerpt is from Vinegar into Honey by Ron Leifer In this excerpt from Vinegar into Honey, Buddhist teacher and psychiatrist Ron Leifer, M.D. talks about re-framing psychological problems in terms of Buddhism. If we drop the medical model, we see that people come to therapy with problems that can best be understood as existential dilemmas. They don’t bring us diseases, they bring us life problems. They may have been influenced by psychiatric ideology and media publicity and wonder out loud about their psychiatric diagnosis and their brain chemistry. But in the end, they don’t really care about diagnosis except, possibly, for insurance reimbursement. They want to feel better and to enjoy life. The word “patient” comes from the Greek pathos, which means “suffering.” The words pathology, pity, patience, and patient are derivatives and connote the concept of suffering at their core. Whether we call them patients or clients, those who come to us for help are sufferers. Everyone suffers, including therapists. We are all “patients” who suffer from the trials of life and death and seek relief. My approach to psychotherapy evolved when I rejected the medical model as the most effective paradigm for understanding human psychic suffering, and turned my attention to the vast and startlingly precise exegesis on human psychology in the Buddhist wisdom tradition. The Seven Steps outlined in Vinegar into Honey are a synthesis of Western psychology and Buddhist psychology. A basic Buddhist teaching is “the four thoughts that turn the mind inward.” In ordinary language, these thoughts teach that happiness is not to be found in the external world, nor is unhappiness. Happiness and unhappiness are properties of mind. We naturally want to be happy forever, but our experience is marked by suffering, impermanence, and the lack of enduring substance in anything. We want to hold on to the people and situations we love, but everything changes. Everything appears and disappears. Our body is precious to us but is destined to die. In this predicament, what we do is important. How we manage and conduct ourselves makes a difference to our happiness and the happiness of others. The same insight is expressed in the Hindu concept of kundalini tantra. In this tradition, the life force is metaphorically depicted as a serpent seated at the base of the spinal cord. The subtle body, i.e., the mind, has seven ascending nodes, or chakras, representing stages in the evolution of consciousness. The three lower chakras, below the diaphragm, are the seat of the base, animal functions of the body—the desires for food, sex, and power. To transform the suffering caused by the energy of the lower chakras, kundalini practice raises this energy to the higher centers—the compassionate heart, intelligent speech, wisdom, and joy. The raising of the kundalini energy is a metaphor for the deliberate transformation of self from the base to the subtle, from suffering to happiness. The kundalini is a metaphor but one that, unlike the determinism of the medical model, guides the conscious efforts of the sufferer to evolve a “higher” state of consciousness. Ron Leifer, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than forty-five years' experience in the practice of private psychotherapy. He trained in psychiatry under Thomas Szasz and became a Buddhist practitioner in 1980 when he became a student of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. He founded the Ithaca Dharma Society and teaches meditation. He is the author of In the Name of Mental Health and The Happiness Project and more than fifty articles in professional journals on psychiatry and the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy. He lives in Ithaca, New York. More Like Vinegar into Honey

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