Understanding Sleep in the Practice of Mahayana Buddhism

For years I have been reading passages that exhort practitioners not to waste time sleeping. While this might be achievable when undertaking a long retreat, I wondered how practical this advice was in our day-to-day world.
Then I came across this passage in Nagarjuna’s “Letter to a Friend”, written to a king of the time, indicating the possibility of a slightly different interpretation of this instruction.

“O Knowledgeable One, recite all day
And in the first and last watch of the night.
Then in between these two sleep mindfully
So that your slumbers are not spent in vain.”

To me this seemed to be saying that if one goes to sleep in a dharmic frame of mind, the sleep will continue in that vein, and not be wasted.

I raised this with my Rinpoche and he confirmed that this was a reasonable interpretation for our way of life. He then went on to remind me how, during my extended, solitary retreat, after a short time I was quite often not clear whether I was asleep, dreaming or awake. This state of being is a direct result of being in isolation, when the familiar daily routines are abandoned, and the “sleeping” time becomes an integral part of the practice.

So the message I have taken from this is that it is important to create some reminder of dharmic practice immediately before dropping off to sleep. I try to spend at least 10 minutes reading from one of my favourite texts and then recite the Vajrasattva 100-syllable mantra as I am falling asleep. I can’t guarantee how effective this is, but I’ll just keep following the Mahayana principle that aspirational activity will in time transform to become an integral part of being on the path.

My favourite texts right now are Letter to a Friend, Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the text from HH the Dalai Lama’s teaching on Awakening the Mind (Based on Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhicitta) and HE Chogye Trichen’s Commentary on Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen’s Parting from the Four Attachments. Open any of these at any page, whatever you read will be totally relevant.

Thus ends this post. May whatever virtue or merit that derives from this posting be for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Yours until next time, Vajramate.

Ngondro – Purifying Karma through Practice and Vajrasattva

Within the schools of Mahayana Buddhism, there is a practice known as Ngondro, literally "proceeding ahead", a means for purifying negativity and accumulating merit. In the formal Sakya tradition it is known as The Excellent Path of Two Accumulations (Merit and Wisdom).

Across the traditions, there are common and uncommon practices, but in essence they all require accumulations of a combination of elements. These include:

• Reciting the refuge prayer 100,000 times.
  
• Creating the bodhicitta thought 100,000 times.
  
• Making the 7 and/or 37 heap mandala offering 100,000 times
  
• Reciting the 100 syllable Vajrasattva prayer 100,000 times
  
• Reciting the Guru Yoga prayer 100,000 times.
  
• While reciting the shorter prayers, one should also accumulate 100,000 prostrations.
  

There are visualisations associated with each of these elements. The Vajrasattva visualisation is usually with the consort, as shown above.


The 100 syllable Vajrasattva prayer and visualisation is the primary vehicle for cleansing the karma carried forward from all previous lifetimes.

A little bit of arithmetic highlights that these accumulations will have to take place over a number of years, preferably in a number of dedicated retreats. But the promise is the elimination of all previous negative karma, surely a worthwhile aspiration! Some traditions require that these accumulations be completed before moving on to the more intensive Vajrayana practices.

And there are short form practices that enable one to achieve a great deal, even if the time is not available to undertake the complete set of accumulations.

Personally I find the Vajrasattva prayer a source of great comfort. There are many translations or interpretations of its meaning, but in essence with the right visualisation you can very quickly get a strong sense of washing away loads and loads of negativity. It can trigger energetic flows in the body and generate a strong feeling of wellbeing.


Don't fuss the 100,000 repetitions too much. I still have a long way to go, but by not fussing it, just being aware, I feel I am receiving great blessings.

Thus ends this post. May whatever virtue or merit that derives from this posting be for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Yours until next time, Vajramate.

Of Five Skandhas, Emptiness and Prajnaparamita

At many teachings the Heart Sutra, or Prajnaparamita, is recited at the beginning. In our centre we recite it before every meditation session and at a five day teaching of the Stages of Meditation by His Holiness the Dalai Lama it was chanted at the beginning of each day, each time in a different language.

Although I joined in the recitations, it was some years before I acknowledged I had little idea of what it was about, except at a very superficial level, so I set about doing some research.

The teachings are complex and not within the charter of this blog. A good starting point to explore the actual teachings is the Dalai Lama's Essence of the Heart Sutra published by Wisdom Publications.

I will just try to convey the essence of what it was that I gathered that help make the recitation of the Heart Sutra much more meaningful to me.

To put it in perspective the Heart Sutra, in just one and a half A4 pages, encompasses all the teachings of the Buddha. So it is incredibly intense and dense.

The essence is contained in these words:

"The five skandhas (or aggregates) are empty of intrinsic existence. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness. Likewise, feelings, perceptions, mental formations (or volition) and consciousness are all empty."

At his point I was lost. This is what I have come to understand to some extent.

The five skandhas or aggregates are form, feeling, perception, mental formation/volition and consciousness. Mental formation is the aspect that comes from past lives and volition comes from our actions in this life. It is the combination of these skandhas that defines the illusory "Self" that we erroneously identify as who we are. "Self" is just a convenient term to describe a collection of two or more of these five factors. The Heart Sutra teaching is that the true or ultimate state is non-self or emptiness or shunyata. As each of the aggregates is in constant change, they are impermanent. So therefore is our traditional concept of Self.

At this point I came to understand the importance of realising that the Self we perceive and cling to is nothing more than an illusion, which the Mind needs to comprehend and transform to achieve reality, emptiness and purity.

It was when I came to Peter Della Santina's Tree of Enlightenment discourse that I became aware of the importance of understanding these skandhas.

In our impure condition of Mind, the skandhas are associated respectively with the five afflictions; ignorance, pride, attachment, envy and aversion. These in turn have these associations; ignorance- the realm of animals; pride – the realm of gods; attachment – the realm of hungry ghosts; envy – the realm of demigods; and aversion – the realm of hell beings. Note that these afflictions result in rebirth in the corresponding realms.

In the Perfection of Wisdom literature and Vajrayana teachings, as the Bodhisattva progresses towards Buddhahood the five skandhas are purified and transformed to appear in the form of the five celestial Buddhas. In Vajrayana physiology each Buddha is associated with a chakra. These are: form –Vairochana on the crown; feeling –Ratnasambhava at the navel; perception –Amitabha at the throat; volition –Amoghasiddhi at the genitals; and consciousness –Akshobhya at the heart.

Each of the Buddhas represents the transformation from the impure skandha to a specific knowledge; respectively reality, equality, discrimination, accomplishment and transcendental knowledge.

In this post I have set out to show the significance of understanding the skandhas or aggregates and the transformations that occur in our Mind as we progress towards Buddhahood. For me this understanding has enabled me to better grasp the various teachings as I receive them. It has also highlighted to me the need to better understand the roles of the five Buddha families in the scheme of practices.

The Tree of Enlightenment can be downloaded from http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dsantina/tree/

Be aware it is a very scholarly discourse.

Thus ends this post. May whatever virtue or merit that derives from this posting be for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Yours until next time, Vajramate.

Bringing our Life into Meditation

Greetings again.
I have just listened to a podcast on a site called
http://personallifemedia.com/podcast/236-buddhist-geeks

Go to episode 134 - The Erotic Embrace of Life and Meditation by Vidyuddeva to get the podcast.
Vidyuddeva makes the point that in meditation we tend to believe we need to shut out our life in order to have a "successful" meditation.
His view is that we are doing the meditation in the stream of our life, so we cannot exclude it. He also makes the point that if we don't allow our life to be present in our meditation, how can we then transcend the other way and bring meditation into our day to day life?
The list of Geeks is impressive including a number of Rinpoches and members of Integral Institute from Ken Wilber onwards.
I recommend this as a valuable source of discussions on Buddhism in the western world.
Yours in Dharma, Vajramate.

The Buddhist Eightfold Path can end Suffering

At the weekend a young person, new to Buddhism, asked why Buddhists considered life was meant to be suffering. This was after hearing our Rinpoche talk of the Four Noble Truths.

This is a common question in the western world and stems from the distinctions Buddhism makes between the conventional reality, within which we live, and the ultimate reality of Emptiness (Which I am still promising to talk about later).

The confusion comes from the first two of the four Noble Truths as stated by Shakyamuni Buddha.

• Life means suffering
  
• Suffering has causes (Attachment and Aversion)
  

As the Four Noble Truths tend to be one of the first concepts that a newcomer will hear, it catapults the person straight into fundamental Buddhist philosophy with very little preparation.

To the unprepared western mind, the immediate implication is that to be a Buddhist, you will need to suffer and that is an inevitability of life – not a very attractive proposition!

To calm that runaway mind, I would like to make this suggestion:

What is being said is that, whether we know it or not, we are all experiencing suffering.

The first level is that of physical suffering from injury and illness, treatable by the medical profession.

The second level of suffering is in the Mind. In Buddhist philosophy that is treatable by becoming aware of how our rampaging Mind creates suffering. Through understanding we can dispel the ignorance that exists. This is when the promise of the next two Noble Truths cuts in:

• Cessation of suffering is attainable
  
• There is a Noble Eightfold Path to achieve the cessation of suffering
  

So for the newcomer the acceptance to embrace is that there is a way to overcome the suffering we experience. That way is through developing a clear understanding of how our Mind creates that suffering, why it does so and how to stop what is currently a never ending cycle, lifetime after lifetime. The path to that understanding is the Noble Eightfold Path.

Part of the development of that understanding is consideration of what is happiness, the opposite of suffering and our ultimate goal. It may come as a surprise, but the happiness we tend to recognise in our day to day lives is really a potential cause of suffering. How can that be? Just think how quickly happiness fades and even at times when we are experiencing happiness, we are fearful of seeing it dissipate – that is, we are suffering in the impermanency.

So in the Buddhist philosophy, happiness has a different meaning. It can be considered to be contentment with what we have, pleasurable or not.

I hope this encourages you to explore the deeper meaning of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. I would recommend you go to the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other revered teachers of the four main traditions of Mahayana Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master, is also a good source of teachings for westerners, even though he is not of the Mahayana tradition. I found his "Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" particularly easy to read in my early days. While there are a multitude of entries on the web, they do not necessarily have the authenticity of the teachings as handed down through the recognised lineages. That is why I endeavour not to "teach", but rather to explore what is confusing and give guidance on where to go.

Thus ends this post. May whatever virtue or merit that derives from this posting be for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Yours until next time, Vajramate.

The Three Afflictions: Ignorance, Attachment, Aversion

One of the hardest question I get asked is "What is Buddhism about?" My own journey has been through personal development, some philosophy, psychotherapy and then into Buddhism. For me right now Buddhism is about finding a better way to live my life and come to grips with what doesn't work for me, at the same time finding ways I can be of service to other sentient beings. While we westerners might see it as taming the ego, Buddhists see it as a more active process called Mind Training.

Buddhist philosophy deals with the suffering created through our grasping at the concept of a separate and unique Self and the release from suffering in the ultimate reality of Non-Self. But that, like Emptiness, is a topic for further down the path.

The initial teachings deal with a whole bunch of issues we experience as human beings, many of which we are totally unaware or which totally consume us. The labels are familiar – anger, greed, craving, fear, avoidance, procrastination – on and on it goes.

If we choose to go down the Mahayana path, what we are choosing is to rediscover within ourselves a nature of loving kindness and compassion towards all sentient beings. It is through this we move towards the path of the bodhisattvas, working for the benefit of all sentient beings, and ultimately realising our own inherent Buddha nature.

In my initial years I was confused by the terminology. Were my problems the result of afflictions, poisons, obstructions or illusions? How many were there – 3? 5? 7? 84,000? How could I overcome them if I didn't know and understand what they were and how they applied to me? Then I came across teachings that talked about the 3, 5, 7, 10 or 84,000 antidotes to the afflictions. More confusion!

It came as a great relief to me one day to realise that I really only had to deal with three labels. Ignorance, Attachment and Aversion.

Ignorance can be summarised as "We don't know what we don't know!" The teachings are all aimed at gradually expanding our understanding of what is suffering, how we create our suffering and the paths available to us to address these conditions and move towards happiness. The fundamental Mahayana objective is the establishment of loving kindness and compassion as the basis of how we live our daily lives for the benefit of others. Dispelling ignorance is achieved by leading us to understand the afflictions or poisons of attachment and aversion.

I started to better understand attachment when I came to realise that there are many different ways we can experience it. Common labels are greed, craving, desire, selfishness. We may be attached to a desire for a variety of material things – cars, houses, objects. Then there are attachments to relationships or a desire to be admired or loved. Or we may become attached to an idea – "my religion is the only true religion" or "my race is the only worthy race". The suffering we experience manifests in many ways. When we don't have something, we suffer until we get it – and when we have it, we suffer in case we lose it. Resistance to change is a symptom of attachment. You can even have an attachment to having no attachments in that you may feel pride in your achievement and become attached to that pride.

By the way, there is a reason why you wouldn't get a Buddhist to vacuum your carpets – they don't vacuum in the corners because they have no attachments!

Likewise for aversion. Aversion manifests itself as anger, revulsion, hatred, dislike, fear and even indifference. Resistance to change is again a major indication that aversion may be playing a role in your life.

So – how can we apply the understanding that our suffering is generally about attachment or aversion? It is thought that in the process of getting through our busy days, 95% of the time we are in a neutral state, neither experiencing attachment or aversion. Seems to be somewhat a waste of time- or even a lifetime?

The first step is being open to awareness. If you are experiencing disturbing feelings, work out whether it is a form of attachment or aversion. If this is not clear, then sit with it, meditate on it, until it becomes clearer.

Once identified, you can then contemplate or meditate on what you have been taught on how to deal with it. For example, an antidote for greed is generosity. When you become aware that your current disquiet has an undercurrent of greed, contemplate or commit to an act of generosity. It may be a prayer for the happiness of all beings, a simple act of kindness or the giving of an offering of flowers or incense or a material gift. As you do this, observe what it is about that transformation from greed to generosity that makes you happier or eases the intensity of your suffering.

Repeated awareness of the nature of how you experience attachment and aversion and how you can transform those experiences to experiences of loving kindness and compassion will accumulate as training of the mind.

To use an expression I have heard, it is about habituation. We make a habit of practicing awareness and a habit of applying the antidote. Over time we habituate the practice of loving kindness and compassion. The afflictions of attachment and aversion are slowly shaken loose and we become more content in our circumstances as they are. The happiness we thus experience is real and lasting.

Keeping it simple should make it easier to focus on the awareness and practice, and not get caught up in trying to understand everything from the start.

Introduction to the Blog

Welcome all viewers with an interest in Buddhism.

This Blog is the start of building a resource that will make it easier for you to get to understand Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist teachings and the activities that take place around those teachings.
In my six or so years of gradually easing into becoming a Buddhist and extending my practices from there, I experienced many confusing and almost incomprehensible concepts and teachings. Within our small group in Sydney, Australia I have found myself spending more and more time answering the questions of people new to Buddhism. I have also seen many who attended teachings a few times and then gave up because they couldn't follow what was happening.
I have had the benefit of having a Tibetan Rinpoche resident with our group in Sydney. He is my spiritual guide (or Guru). Much of what I have learnt has been from him and his teachers, all from the Sakya tradition.
It is my intention to post a short article at least once a fortnight. Initially those articles will be sequenced in a structure similar to the general approach to teaching Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.
These articles will not be about the teachings themselves - there are thousands of sources available to explore those and I will be referencing some of those.
To give a flavour of what is to come, in this post I have mentioned Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. What are they and what is the difference? They are both traditional aspects of Buddhism as taught by Buddha Shakyamuni 2,500 years ago, and represent what is known as the Middle Way. Both are based on the premise that all practice should be for the benefit of every sentient being ahead of our individual desires. Sentient beings are every life form that has a brain, including animals, fish and insects. The two approaches utilise meditation as the vehicle to contemplate the teachings. The main difference between them is that Vajrayana Buddhism uses esoteric or tantric practices as part of its practices, with emphasis on visualisations and mantras. This is considered to offer a faster path to enlightenment.

So next time, I guess I had better explain what is meant by "Teachings" and "Practices". It may sound simple, but I have been surprised at how many times I have been asked what these terms encompass.

Thank you for joining me in this adventure. I am learning and your responses and questions will help greatly to guide me as to where I take this.

I am facilitating ads on this blog in order to support my ability to spread the Dharma and assist people to assess what Buddhism has to offer them and how they might approach their exploration of it. I dedicate this post for the benefit of all sentient beings.