HH The Dalai Lama on Shantideva's Bodhisattva's Way of Life

I was among 5,000 fortunate beings who attended 5 x 2hour sessions by His Holiness on this wonderful text, written in the 8th century. The translation He used was by Stephen Batchelor, and varies in some respects to the translation I include in my list of books.

As always with His Holiness, He started off with a gentle hour or so talking generalities, then He turned to the text - and jumped straight to Chapter 9 - Perfection of Wisdom.  This is perhaps the most difficult part of the text, as deals in depth with Emptiness and the philosophical arguments to support the concepts. He stayed on this for the best part of two sessions.  He covered in some detail the conventional appearance of the five skandhas or aggregates, the understanding of which is so important.

There was one moment when, in a combination of His words and gestures, I knew "I've got IT!" - and then, in that same instant, IT was gone!  Maybe that is Emptiness?

Once again I experienced the joyfulness of just hearing His Holiness reading and commenting on the text in Tibetan.  Without understanding a word, I had the feeling I was receiving His teaching, and the teachings of all the masters who were His teachers, in a truly authentic transmission. Conceptual, cognitive understanding was unnecessary.  Just receiving the transmission was joyful, enlightening and beneficial to all sentient beings.

I urge all people who have the opportunity to attend any session by His Holiness to make every endeavour to attend.  Forget about motivation, understanding and learning, just be there.  You will find yourself becoming content with just where you are at the time and you will find yourself smiling a lot, not just at His frequent outbursts of humour.  It's just good to be with Him - and with any of the other authentic teachers that we are so blessed to have visit us so frequently.

Yours in Dharma,  Vajramate.

When Being Buddhist Gets too Hard

I have been away from engagement with my community for a year now.  I have barely seen my Rinpoche, even though he is less than 20km away, partly because of his illness with dengue fever.  Our community is not functioning well.  We catch up with other from time to time and every so often we meet for a practice, but somehow everything seems withdrawn.

Maybe this has been my year to churn over what this is all about.  I still practice in one way or another at least 5 days a week, and do some reading most nights. I am writing this tonight mainly to put something up and recommence  and reinforce my contemplation.

Next weekend I will be blessed by being able to spend 3 days with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Melbourne, where he is doing a teaching on Shantideva's Bodhisattva's Way of Life.  The book I most turn to for daily reading is a translation of Shantideva's teaching, as listed in my reading list.  So this teaching will have great relevance for me.  Another blessing is that the three monks from Kyegu are still here and will be at the teachings.  I include the photo of them at the last teaching by His Holiness in Sydney as a source of inspiration and gratitude for their presence.

I will publish this now, so I have some action on this blog.  I will be back within 2 weeks with a few words around the teachings, maybe even with a little wisdom to pass on. 

Thank you for being with me as I move through this illusion of Buddhism being Too Hard.

Yours in Dharma,  Vajramate

A Tribute to the Wisdom Beings

Some time ago I became friends with a man who was part of my early introduction to Buddhism and was one of the major influences that lead me to undertake my retreat in Tibet in 2007.  Recently, after the Kyegu earthquake, he accompanied our Rinpoche, the spiritual director of the Kyegu monastery, on a 4 day trip, of which just one day was spent in the ruins of the town and monastery providing some solace to the shattered inhabitants.  The emotional impact on my friend was enormous.

During this time, his mother had a massive stroke, leaving her incapable of moving, feeding herself or talking.  I will pass you across to him----

"Totally dependent and in high care in hospital. I said to Tony last Friday that i was going to call on many pushy Wisdom Beings to give her body a reminder of what she used to know. These Wisdom Beings showed up later that day as poor Mum had an epileptic seizure while a doctor was visiting her. A few days later she is walking and talking. Apparently it rewired many lost functions. So thank you all for helping her along."

So how to explain this?  Why even bother to try?  It is surely enough to know that there are mysteries beyond our ken, and beyond that of so many more learned people.  Just the possibility of Wisdom Beings, who care about all sentient beings, can serve as an inspiration to us to also care about all others and find the happiness that comes with loving kindness and compassion.

Yours in Dharma and wonder,

Vajramate

The Gift of a Dying Person

This Sunday was my 71st birthday and I spent an enjoyable lunch and afternoon with my wife, daughter and son-in-law.  A few hours later my daughter left a message to say my aunt, her great-aunt, had died at the age of 99 after a serious fall when she had fractured her skull and broken her neck.  Over the last few days she had stopped communicating and drifted into death.  I had not seen her for about 15 years, as she lives on the other side of the continent and we were never very close.  But she was my daughter's favourite and she used to visit my aunt every year or so.

My aunt was the last survivor of 4 sisters and one brother, killed at El Alamein in WWII.  Although the 2nd eldest, she was the rock of the family and I felt she was particularly hard on my mother, the youngest, and even harder on me when I was a teenager.  As I got older, I saw it differently and developed a grudging admiration for her being such a tough, outspoken, self sufficient old bird.  After all, it took a broken neck before she would finally give in to Death!

So on Sunday night I went into Powa and Bardo prayers.  I now realise what a beautiful gift my Aunt has given me as she died.  In the reading I did on Bardo Prayers I slowly became aware that we all have the opportunity to contact those who have been before, no matter how long ago.

Completing this blog 3 months later:  This realisation is enough on its own to be sufficient for this blog.  It is inherent in the Buddhist teachings that we are all connected eternally in our various manifiestations through samsara.  So at any time, through meditiation and contemplation, we can still relate to those who've been before - and - why not - to those yet to come?

May whatever merit there in in these ramblings be for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Yours in Dharma,

Vajramate.

Kyegu Monastery in Ruins after Chinese Earthquake

The monastery where I did my retreat (and at the head of this blog) was at the epicentre of the earthquake this week.  8 monks have died and over 1,500 of the local population of about 80,000.

Please go to http://www.kbi.com.au/ to see the photos being taken by the monks.  Be prepared to be shocked - they present the reality in all its rawness and compassion.  At the present moment our Rinpoche, the Spiritual Director of the monastery, is coordinating the monks in their search and rescue, cremation and setting up of 4 kitchens.  He is in touch by email and mobile.
The three monks pictured above live here in Sydney, together with Rinpoche, and all have family in the town. My wife and I have visited those families and had meals with them, so this tragedy is particularly harrowing for us.

   Please pray for all the people of the area.

Om mani pema hum.

Vajramate.

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.

Dalai Lama’s Teaching on Nagarjuna’s Exposition of Bodhicitta

Nagarjuna. The crown of snakes symbolises the incredible capacity of his mind.

Here is the update I promised on the two days of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's teachings on Awakening the Mind in Sydney, to an audience of 5,000.

Once again, I am totally amazed at the physical impact he has on people, even in such a large gathering. All of the people in my group experienced short bursts of intensely deep sleep when he was talking in Tibetan. We believe he was doing a transmission as he was talking. We would then wake up when his interpreter took over. He would talk in bursts of 10 to 15 minutes at a time – amazing. The teachings were 4 sessions of 2 hours each over the 2 days.

The stage setting was enhanced by the presence of the Jade Buddha, which was consecrated by HH the Dalai Lama at this event. The Buddha is carved from a single rock, weighing 18 tonnes and found in Canada. In its finished form it is 2.7 metres tall and weighs 4 tonnes. This Buddha will eventually be housed at the Great Stupa for Universal Compassion, Bendigo, Australia, a project of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Details are at http://www.jadebuddha.org.au/

The text His Holiness used was the 112 verses of Nagarjuna's Bodhicittavivarana, available at http://www.bodhicitta.net/ . Look for Bodhichitta Teachings, then Nagarjuna Bodhicittavivarana.

This text is quite intense. One of my friends, Lama Tsekyab, who is a learned monk and Puja Master, said at the end of Day 1 "Peter, this was a very hard day!" Lama Phuntsok told me he had studied Nagarjuna for 4 years, and he found the day was hard work. Loppon Ngawang, a highly trained teacher, also said the teaching was not easy. All we could do was be there, hear and feel the transmission and rejoice at being blessed to spend time with His Holiness. I will now try to distil the message we got and pass on the advice His Holiness gave us. In the photo, left to right, are Lama Tsekyab, Loppon Ngawang and Lama Phuntsok. All three of them now have long term visas in Australia, while they have family at Jyekundo, the Kyegu Monastery town in what was Eastern Tibet, where they were all born.

The main message that came through was that to achieve an Awakened Mind (Bodhicitta) it is necessary to achieve an understanding of Emptiness as defined in Mahayana Buddhism. Without moving towards an understanding of Emptiness, our Mind will always be suffering from the afflictions of ignorance, attachment and aversion. In this state, while we may be able to aspire to compassion and altruism, we will always become diverted from effectively achieving it. But the Buddhist teaching is that only through achieving loving kindness and compassion that we can attain happiness. Personally, I like to think of happiness as being in a state of contentment with whatever circumstances I may find myself in at any time.

As Westerners, indeed for all humans, our early life training conditions us to continually strive for and defend our own unique Selfhood. But Emptiness is only achieved through realisation of the non-existence of a Self i.e. selflessness. Achieving this realisation is necessary to achieve happiness. Understanding (Inter)Dependent Origination (or Arising) and the Five Skandhas/Aggregates is an essential part of the journey. So how to get there?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama was very explicit about the study program to undertake.

The Bodhicittavivarana text was the basis for the two days of teaching. The prime text is Arya Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, also referred to as the Madhyamika – The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. I have a translation and commentary by Jay L Garfield, published by Oxford University Press. It contains both the 27 Chapters of text and then 27 Chapters of commentary, with embedded text. Garfield is a Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College and Director of an Indian Philosophy Program with Tibetan Universities in Exile (Remembering Nagarjuna was an Indian philosopher from about the second century). For those of a philosophical study background, Garfield's commentary quite often analyses Nagarjuna by reference to Western philosophy, enhancing our understanding.

His Holiness nominated 4 Chapters in particular to study, in this order:

Ch 26 – Examination of the 12 Links
    (of (Inter)Dependent Arising, the basis of the argument for Emptiness)
Ch 18 – Examination of Self and Entities
Ch 24 – Examination of the Four Noble Truths
Ch 22 – Examination of the Tathagata

Describing himself as a "lazy scholar", His Holiness said he did not undertake serious study of Nagarjuna until his late teens. Then he used Candrakirti's 7^th century commentary Prasannapada (Clear Words), which he recommends as essential and the best commentary on the Middle Way. He referred to Chapter 9 as being of immense help to him personally. The only translation I have been able to find is "Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: Essential Chapters from the Prasannapada", available as used on Amazon at about $85. The reviews are quite good.

To round out the study program, His Holiness recommended Gyel-tsap's commentary on Aryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas. The translation I use is by Ruth Sonam, with the Aryadeva commentary and a chapter by chapter commentary on the commentary by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, entitled Yogic Deeds of Bodhisattvas and published by Snow Lion. Aryadeva was a 2^nd century disciple of Nagarjuna and Gyel-tsap was the successor to Tsong-kha-pa, the founder of the Gelugpa lineage, in the early 15^th century.
If this seems a bit too daunting as a study program right now, I suggest you consider "the Heart of Buddha's Teachings" by Thich Nhat Hahn as a lesser treatise on philosophy.

At the end of the teaching, the Dalai Lama empowered us with the Bodhicitta Prayer, to be used as a daily motivator. It is only three verses and only needs to be read three times.  It is also available at http://www.bodhicitta.net/ . Look for Bodhichitta Teachings, then Bodhicitta Prayer.

To wrap up, again a most beautiful experience with His Holiness, and hopefully it will bring immense benefit to world peace.

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.