karma – Meditative Man

First Noble Truth: We Should Know Suffering

Let’s talk about something I am sure you have heard before, the four noble truths. In one of his first teachings Buddha talked about four noble truths. Essentially, he talked about how we can understand the true nature of suffering and how to abandon its causes. So here are the four truths:

You should know suffering
You should abandon origins
You should attain cessations
You should practice the path

We are suffering due to different reasons in our daily life. We have talked about this before. How many of us can say that we are free from our delusions all day long? No anger, no attachment, no jealousy, no hatred, and so forth. Not very many. And when we are under the influence of our delusions, it disturbs our inner peace. That is suffering. There is a way to eliminate our suffering. In order to eliminate our suffering, we must first understand where it comes from. Through training our mind, we can learn how to fully eliminate all of our suffering and its causes, and discover lasting inner peace and happiness.

Following Dharma is the supreme protection from suffering. It is the actual method to solve our human problems. Let’s take our own example. Every week, we meet and meditate. In our meditation, hopefully, you find some peace. A small refuge from your daily problems. Your mind does not wander about your problems. It is just peaceful. I hope you all are finding that no matter how small period of time that may be. That shows that it is possible to get rid of our delusions. Find the inner peace and happiness. It is possible to let go of our delusions. That tells us that our delusions are not intrinsic part of our mind. They are transitory. They are like the mud that dirties the water but doesn’t affect its pure nature. We have talked about this before. Our mind is like this golden nugget and our delusions are the dirt around that nugget. Our mind is not a dirty rock. Just like we can wash away the dirt and see the purity of the golden nugget, we can remove our delusions and see the pure nature of our mind. So that gives us two insights. One we can let go of our delusions. And two, our mind is naturally peaceful. That means we are naturally a peaceful person. We can handle all of our difficulties and remove all of our delusions. And it is equally important to note that everyone has a pure potential. When they get upset at us, it is not them, it is their delusions. If we keep that in mind, we will not retaliate. We will not focus on their delusions. We can wish them the peace because we know it is possible based on our own experience.

So coming back to why do we suffer. We suffer needlessly because we identify so strongly with our delusions and we don’t realize we have this extraordinary potential for joy and freedom and we don’t cultivate it. We don’t grom because we don’t even know its there. So that is a tragedy to go through life suffering based on not knowing what we are capable of.

We have talked about this before. Where do our problems come from. They are outside of our mind. Let’s say we are going to temple to find peace. Someone takes the parking spot we have our eye on. All of a sudden we are upset. The whole point of the trip is to find peace and we are upset because of a parking spot. Let’s say our car breaks down. We say I have a problem. In reality it is the car’s problem. You do what needs to be done to get it fixed but why are we letting it disturb our inner peace. It is an outside problem, that we are making it our own problem. If we develop understanding of difference between inner and outer problems, then it helps us how we can apply these Dharma to oppose the painful feelings and suffering that surface in our mind. We can overcome our suffering just by understanding that most of our problems are outer problems and have no reason to disturb our inner peace.

So coming back to the first noble truth, we should know suffering. Especially, the suffering of future lives. Those of us who believe in life after death, we should know that what life form we take in our next life depends upon karma that ripens at the time of our death. If negative karma ripens at the time of our death, we will end up taking a lower rebirth. A lower rebirth is a birth less than a human being. That meant, we can end up in the animal realm, or the hell realm, and so forth. Now, if we think about kind of suffering that will come to us in a lower realm, it is unimaginable. An animal is always in a state of anxiety for example. There are seven kinds of sufferings. Birth, aging, sickness, and death are the four main types. Then there is suffering from separating from things we like. We experience this suffering routinely in our life. We lost money, or car had an accident and so forth. Then there is suffering from getting things we don’t like. Getting sick for example, or getting a property tax bill 25% higher than the last year! The last type of suffering is suffering from not being able to satisfy our desire. Everyone of us suffers from this last one.

I would like you to do an experiment. For the next week, spend 10 minutes every day on these last three types of suffering and see what you encounter. Suffering from separation from things we like, getting what we don’t want and not getting our desire fulfilled. You will surprised how many of your mental disturbances arise due to these three sufferings.

Root Delusions

We will continue with our series on understanding our mind. We talked about virtuous minds over the last two sessions. Today, let’s get into delusions. There are six root delusions from which all of our delusions arise. They are desirous attachment, anger, deluded pride, ignorance, deluded doubt, and deluded view. Let’s look at all of them.

Desirous attachment is a mental factor that observes a contaminated object, considers as a cause of happiness, and desires it. It is not the same as desire. It is good to have desire. For example, a desire to attain liberation, or develop compassion. A desirous attachment on other side, remembers an object, finds it attractive, exaggerates it’s good qualities, and desires it. There is a difference between desirous attachment and love. Love is unconditional, it has not strings attached. It is a completely virtuous state of mind. Desirous attachment could be for past objects, present objects, and future objects. Say you remember a fond memory with a friend. Out of desirous attachment, we long to meet with them. This often comes out from nostalgia. Example of present object are, out of attachment, wishing for the pleasures we enjoy to last forever. Example of future object are, out of attachment, wishing to meet an attractive partner, or acquire wealth.

To remove desirous attachment, we need to meditate on renunciation and emptiness. These are long term solutions. Until we achieve that, way to remove desirous attachment is to contemplate faults of an object and applying appropriate opponent powers. Why is it important to remove desirous attachment? Because desirous attachment keeps us in samsara. Because of desirous attachment, we keep creating karma that in turn keeps us in samsara.

The next delusion is anger. Anger is a mental factor that observes a contaminated object, considers it undesirable, exaggerates its bad qualities, and wishes to harm it. Anger is divided into nine parts, anger directed towards someone that harmed us in the past, someone who is harming us now, someone who may harm us in the future, someone who harmed our friends in the past, someone who is harming our friends right now, someone who may harm our friends in the future, someone who helped our enemy in the past, someone who is helping our enemy now, and someone who may help our enemy in the future. We can permanently eradicate anger by realization of emptiness. Temporarily, we can abandon anger by meditating on peace and love.

The next delusion is deluded pride. It is a mental factor that exaggerates our own good qualities and develops arrogance. It is an inflated view of ourselves that arrives as a result of our own qualities such as our knowledge, our wealth, our beauty, our strength, our education, and so forth. Simply being aware of our qualities that may be better than others is not deluded pride. It may be just recognition of truth. Deluded pride arises when our mind is “puffed up” with an exaggeration of our own importance. The way to remove deluded pride is to recognize its faults. Two faults with deluded pride are it causes us to disrespect others and it prevents us from making progress. They say an evil person can be tamed by Dharma but a proud person cannot.

The next delusion is ignorance. It is a mental factor that is confused about the nature of an object and functions to induce wrong awareness or doubt. For example, if we mistake toy snake for a real snake, we have ignorance of the nature of the toy snake. The fundamental ignorance is the ignorance of the nature of the phenomena. It is the root of all samsara problems. We can also have ignorance of karma, and ignorance of emptiness. Antidote to ignorance is wisdom. We can develop wisdom by listening to Dharma, contemplating on them, and meditating on them.

The next delusion is deluded doubt. It is a two pointedness in mind that interferes with attainment of liberation and enlightenment. Essentially, it is a mind of uncertainty that cannot decide between two alternatives. It is uncertainty about Dharma topics that causes our faith to decline and disturbs our peace of mind. If we have doubt about Dharma topics, rather than have them linger in our mind, we should work to resolve those by reading books, asking questions to qualified teachers, and discussing with fellow students.

The last delusion is deluded view. It is view that functions to obstruct attainment of liberation. There are two types of views. Correct view, and incorrect view. Deluded views by definition are incorrect views.

Hope all this makes sense and you try to eliminate delusions from your lives.

Virtuous Minds

I hope you are enjoying our series on How To Understand The Mind. We have been discussing different mental factors for the past few sessions. Today, let’s talk about virtuous state of mind. There are eleven virtuous states of mind that are naturally virtual. Just like sugar is naturally sweet, these minds are naturally virtuous. The eleven virtuous states of mind are: 1) Faith; 2) Sense of Shame; 3) Consideration for Others; 4) Non-attachment; 5) Non-hatred; 6) Non-ignorance; 7) Effort; 8) Mental Suppleness; 9) Conscientiousness; 10) Equanimity; 11) Non-harmfulness.

Let’s start with faith. Faith is a mental factor that exists to eliminate non-faith. So, in order to understand faith, let’s understand non-faith. There are three types of non-faith. Non-faith of disbelief, non-faith of non-admiration, and non-faith of not-wishing. Non-faith of disbelief if not believing any correct object in which it is necessary to believe to make spiritual progress. What does that mean? Let’s say you want to meditate. If you do not believe that it will help you calm your mind or give you mental peace however short, it will never work. Because without belief we will not put an effort and without effort nothing ever works as we all know. Non-faith of non-admiration causes us to see faults in spiritual teachers or gurus. A few years ago, I made a practice of not criticizing any spiritual teachers whether I follow them or not. Because even if I do not follow that person, they are guiding other people through their spiritual journey and who am I to criticize that? Non-faith of not-wishing is a mind that does not desire to make spiritual progress. Of all the non-faith, this in my opinion is the worst because it prevents you from practicing spirituality. Faith overcomes all these non-faiths.

You will realize that the function of faith is to induce virtuous aspirations. Without faith in a particular practice, we will not wish to engage in it. And as we discussed last week, without wish, we will not put any effort into it. And without effort, we are not going to be able to achieve any results. Faith is not just necessary for our spiritual practice; it is also necessary for our daily life. Let me give you an example. A friend of mine is suffering some physical pain. He went to several doctors and has been suffering from this condition for more than year. I asked him why he did not get surgery yet and he said I just don’t trust my doctor. You see, without faith in his doctor, he will not commit to surgery and without that he will not get better. Faith removes hesitation. It is also a source of attainment of happiness. How you ask? Well, faith is the source of all virtuous karma and virtuous karma are the source of our happiness. Faith also helps us eliminate pride, which is the source of many of our problems. It is faith which ultimately leads us to liberation and enlightenment.

There are three types of faith. Believing faith; Admiring faith; and Wishing faith. Believing faith is belief in any object that is conducive to our spiritual progress. Admiring faith arises when we contemplate good qualities of virtuous objects or holy beings. Wishing faith is a wish to follow spiritual path based on recognition of its good qualities.

The next virtuous state of mind is Sense of Shame. It prevents us from committing negative or inappropriate actions because it is not suitable for us. For example, if a mosquito is bothering us, instead of killing it if we think that killing this mosquito is not right, that motivation is sense of shame. Sense of shame serves as foundation for moral discipline. Sense of shame prevents us from committing negative karma by appealing to our conscience. One thing to point out is that sense of shame prevents us from negative karma mostly for consideration for ourselves.

The next virtuous state of mind is Consideration for Others. This state of mind helps us avoid inappropriate actions out of consideration for others. Some examples may be avoid saying something unpleasant because it will upset someone else. Or not going fishing because it hurts fish. We have so many desires and some of them will harm others so before we do something, we should think about if it will harm other living beings. Together with Sense of Shame, Consideration of Others acts as foundation for our moral discipline. Without these two states of mind, our daily behavior will be negative.

The next virtuous state of mind is non-attachment. It is the direct opponent of attachment. As we have discussed in the past, attachment is one of the three poisons that keep us in samsara. We cannot attain liberation while staying attached to samsara. If we have attachment, we are controlled by our circumstances. Think about it. If a pleasurable object shows up, we automatically develop attachment. Avoiding all pleasurable objects is not the answer. Otherwise, we will avoid, food we like, clothes we wear, friends we hang out with and so on. That is not the idea. Idea is to develop a mind of non-attachment by recognizing the faults of attachment.

The next virtuous state of mind is non-hatred. Non-hatred is a direct opponent of hatred. Hatred is same as anger in this scenario. The great Indian yogi Shantideva said that there is no evil greater than anger. It has the power to destroy all the merits we have accumulated in the past. Unless we practice non-hatred, we will not be able to deal with anger, and unless we pacify our anger, we will not find inner peace. When we are angry, we cannot enjoy life. Depending on level of our anger, sometimes, it manifests in physical symptoms. Anger even disturbs our sleep. Unless we have Dharma exposure, we will blame our enemies for all our problems instead of our own delusions and past karma. That will lead to thought of harming them and it will create more negative karma. If we see our hatred coming up, we should try to practice non-hatred by thinking it is not appropriate for me to hate this person as it will only create more negative karma and will harm me in future. This way of thinking will stop the hatred train in its tracks before it takes off. Non-hatred overcomes irritation and frustration and allows us to respond to a situation in calm and positive manner. When we practice non-hatred, we have no enemies.

OK, so we will continue this discussion next week with the remaining virtuous states of mind.

Power of Wisdom

Before the break, we talked about how compassion and wisdom are the two pillars of Buddha’s sutra teachings. So today, let’s discuss wisdom. If you think about a relationship, that’s it, isn’t it? If you can remove disharmony using wisdom, your relationships are perfect.

One of the verses goes when I associate with others, I will consider myself lower and hold everyone supreme. So the best way to do this is to familiarize ourselves with Cherishing all living beings by putting our determination to cherish them into practice.

So, through thinking about the kindness of others, the benefits of cherishing others what happens is we make a determination I want to cherish others, I want to love others. We have talked about this before, that what we end up doing every day depends upon what we wish for. It all starts with intention. If we develop that wish to love everyone then we will slowly start practicing that and grow our love for other living beings. It just will happen naturally.

It is perfectly possible to do this because we have the seed of universal love. We have Buddha Nature, which means we’ve always had the potential to grow our love, expand our love, and deepen our love, to every single person.

The main reason why we do not cherish all living beings as explained in the book Mirror of Dharma, is we’re so preoccupied with ourselves. This leaves very little room in our minds to appreciate others. So therefore if we wish to cherish others sincerely, we have to reduce our obsessive self concern.

Sad to break it to you but our self-cherishing, obsessive self concern is the source of all disharmony.

Everywhere we look, our mind is polluted by this surface of self-concern. It just alters everything we see. You know, we can’t actually see what’s going on because we’re so obsessed with ourselves. And that’s just reflected in our minds. So why is it? Why is it that we regard ourselves as so precious, but not others? I am just one person others are countless. Why are we so obsessed about it? Me? Me, me?

One major reason is we’re so familiar with thinking about ourselves, it’s a familiarity of habit.

And the Geshe-la says, Why because we’re so familiar with self-cherishing we’re very familiar with an attitude that puts ourselves first. We have been doing it since beginningless time in our lives, which is why we’re still circling in suffering. Since the beginningless time we have grasped at a truly existent I this is the root of it. So a truly existent I is an I that exists from its own side. But basically, we have two ego minds that are the very kind of root of all our problems. And one is called self-grasping, meaning we’re grasping at a self that exists from its own side.

We think there’s a real me or real I and we think everyone else is not me or either other or self or there are also other or them or you know, him or her or something like that. We have done this experiment before. Show of hand where is the me in this room? Everyone of us think we are that me and everyone else is something other than me right? Now if the I was inherently existent, it would be same for all of us. But it’s not.

So it’s only our ignorance that thinks I’m really me, and everyone else is really other. Because I have this sense of real me, I then think that this me is more important than all the other me’s. So I’m more important than you just as simple as that.

We spend so much time contemplating our real or imagined good qualities that we become oblivious to our faults. So, in reality, our mind is full of gross delusions, but we ignore them and may even fool ourselves into thinking that we do not have such repulsive minds, like pretending there’s no dirt in our house after sweeping it, under the rug. So when we think about our own faults and delusions, the reason we do this is with the view of getting rid of them right not to feel bad about ourselves. Because these faults and delusions, as most of you know, are not intrinsic to our mind, these delusions are like salt, for example, salt, in salty water, they’re not the actual nature of the water, we can get rid of them. We don’t want to identify with our faults and limitations. We do have to realize our faults and limitation but not identify with them if that makes sense.

But Geshe Geshe-la says it is often so painful to admit that we have faults that we make all types of excuses rather than alter our results view of ourself, and one of the most common ways of not facing up to our own faults is to blame others. For instance, we have a difficult relationship with someone. We naturally include that it’s entirely their fault. That’s true, isn’t it? They should really change, you know. And then we’ll be so happy. Anyway, good luck with that. Because you know, it’s hard to change even one person, it’s impossible to change anyone other than ourselves, to be honest, and it’s definitely hard to change everybody.

So we naturally conclude it’s their fault, we’re unable to accept that it is at least partly our fault when we have difficult relationships. So instead of taking responsibility for our actions, or making effort to change our views or our behavior, get rid of our faults. We argue with them insists as they who must change an exaggerated sense of our own importance thus leads to a critical attitude towards other people makes it almost impossible to avoid conflict. And I think we’re seeing that in the world today, too. So the fact that we’re oblivious to our faults does not prevent other people from noticing them and pointing them out. But when they do we feel that they’re being unfair. So unfair.

This is self cherishing. That arises from self grasping ignorance. Our inherently existing self. This is the source of all our disharmony. If we learn to remove that, our relationships become easier. Life becomes frictionless. It just flows all of a sudden.

Karma & Dharma

We have been talking about Karma for more than a month now. One thing that keeps coming up is what happens if you do something as part of your job. Does it have a negative effect associated with it? In general, the answer is yes with a few caveats.

Let’s talk about the exceptions first. If there is an imminent danger to living beings and doing harm to one person protects many lives, then there is no negative effect of Karma. There are examples of these in spiritual texts. One example is of Buddha. In his previous life, Buddha was traveling on a boat full of merchants. Through his clairvoyance, he saw that one of the passengers was about to kill the rest of the merchants. To save all of those lives and to save that one passenger from getting negative karma for killing all of those people, Buddha killed the one passenger.

In today’s world, it would be equivalent to knowing an imminent terror threat and neutralizing the terrorists before they could attack. But barring an imminent threat to many lives, there is no justification for negative actions that I could find in the textbooks.

Now it is debatable whether simply working somewhere generates negative action or not. For example, let’s say someone works as a bookkeeper at a slaughterhouse. I am not sure that they generate negative action of killing just by working at the slaughterhouse. Because for negative actions to occur four conditions have to be present as we discussed last week.

So let’s talk about another exception which is what if something is part of your job. The so-called “dharma” we keep talking about. In ancient times, a soldier on a battlefield who followed certain rules and only fought with someone of their equivalency was an exception. This soldier was not affected by his actions. However, in today’s world, modern warfare is such that there are hardly any rules. Everyone is killing everyone else without discrimination and that is certainly not considered an exception. Also, if someone is following an order but knows that the order is morally wrong, then we have a duty not to follow that order otherwise negative actions are attached. Also, continuing killing after someone is no longer a threat has negative actions attached to it. Another thing I want to point out is that a soldier has a duty to avoid collateral damage. If trying to kill one bad person ends up killing 10 innocent people, then there is a negative action attached to it. Again, I refer back to the four conditions we discussed last week.

Now let’s come back to real life. For those of us who are not soldiers, if our job makes us compromise our moral standards, in my opinion, if possible, we should find another job. Let’s take the example of the bookkeeper in a slaughterhouse. Even if they are not collecting any negative karma, the fact that it is against their moral standards would keep bothering them. It would become stressful at times. And it makes sense in that case to go find a different place to work. If for nothing else then for our own sanity.

Buddha said that ” … a lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.”

So those five professions one should avoid for sure. Beyond that, a lot of this comes down to our own moral compass and what we are comfortable with. For example, as a rule, I have stayed away from investing in properties where tenants sell alcohol or marijuana. This is a personal rule with the logic being that if I don’t want to consume something then I should avoid making money out of the consumption of those substances.

While doing research on this topic, I came across Laxmi Tantra (one of the five panch tantras). According to Laxmi Tantra, one should avoid making a livelihood through

1. Living off other people (begging for example)

2. Loan sharking

3. Bribery

4. Living by a profession or industry which directly or indirectly causes suffering to other beings such as the meat and leather industries, munitions industries, or brewing and selling of alcohol or drugs.

5. Superintending mines and factories is also forbidden because it can lead to corruption, harshness, and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. It also leads to the depredation of the environment through deforestation and pollution which are considered sinful activities by the Shastras.

The seven legitimate ways for a spiritual aspirant to make a living are:

1. daya — inheritance

2. labha — profit from honest commerce and trade.

3. kraya — purchase of land and assets for the purpose of speculation.

4. jaya — winning prizes or money in a competition

5. prayoga — through the application of learning and skills to benefit others – through counseling, advising, teaching, etc.

6. karma yoga — through a profession or a vocational job serving others.

7. satpratigraha — the lawful acceptance of gifts — that is, unsolicited donations.

So I hope this clears up a lot of confusion around the issue and hopefully, I have not made the matter worse!