wisdom

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.

Guiding Mental Factors

We have been talking about our mind for the last few sessions. We looked at three types of minds and then we dived into mental factors that identify the object. Today, let’s continue down this rabbit hole if you will and discuss mental factors that guide us to an object.

There are five mental factors in this category, aspiration, firm apprehension, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Let’s look at each one.

Aspiration is a mental factor that takes an interest in an object. We are all here for meditation tonight. If you did not have an aspiration to calm your mind or make progress on your spiritual journey, you would not be here. The main function of aspiration is to induce effort. Think about it. If we don’t have a wish to meditate, we would not put an effort to be here. You could have a million excuses, its Diwali time, or it’s dinner time, or whatever. But you have a wish to meditate and that is why you made an effort to be here.

There are four types of aspirations. Wishing to meet an object, wishing not to be separated from an object, wishing to obtain an object and wishing to be released from an object. Let’s take an example. Your kids are coming home for holidays. You wish to meet them. That is wishing to meet an object. You don’t want them to leave. That is wishing not to be separated from an object. You want to get a promotion, or make a lot of money, that is wishing to obtain an object. You want to remove your self-cherishing mind that is wishing to be released from an object. Depending upon our motivation each one of them could be virtuous, non-virtuous, or neutral. Wishing to steal would be an example of non-virtuous aspiration as opposed to wishing to meditate would be a virtuous aspiration.

Next let’s look at firm apprehension. It is a mental factor that allows our primary mind to apprehend the object firmly. It is also a foundation for mindfulness and concentration. You see, unless we understand an object clearly, we will not be able to keep our mind on it for long. Take this topic for example. These teachings come from a book called “How To Understand The Mind.” When I first read this book, I would put it down after a couple of pages. It was too complex. Then, I started to break it down in relatable examples and that helped me continue to read the book in a way that I could explain it to someone else. Without firm apprehension, our mind is like a leaf floating in the air. It has no direction and it cannot stay at one place for long.

Next mental factor is mindfulness. It is a mental factor that allows us not to forget an object that is realized by our primary mind. Mindfulness can only focus on an object once it is realized. If an object is not present, you cannot have mindfulness about that object. Mindfulness maintains continuum of the object by not forgetting. What does that mean? When we do our empty sky meditation for example. Once we realize that our mind has this empty sky like nature and we keep our focus on the clarity of our mind, mindfulness helps us keep it there. We will continue to observe the clarity of our mind without distractions. If our primary mind lacks mindfulness, it will forget the object. The function of mindfulness is to prevent distractions. The more stable our mindfulness, fewer distracting thoughts we will have. We need to make continuous efforts to improve our mindfulness.

The next mental factor is concentration. Concentration helps us keep our primary mind on the object single-pointedly. It can develop only when an object is held firmly by mindfulness. There are three types of concentration. When we are meditating, we have virtuous concentration. When we are driving, we have neutral concentration. And when we are thinking about our enemies, we have non-virtuous concentration. Concentration is very important for our spiritual progress. Listening to teachings, reciting mantras, contemplating teachings, meditating, all are only effective when we have a mind that is concentrating. Buddha said that prayers, mantras, spiritual readings are of no use if the mind is distracted elsewhere. The main function of virtuous concentration is to make our mind peaceful. When our mind is free from distractions, it becomes calm and peaceful. When our mind is peaceful and happy, craving for external pleasure declines and we become content. Pure concentration also helps our body and mind become comfortable.

The next mental factor is wisdom. It is a virtuous, intelligent mind that makes primary mind realize meaningful object. What are these meaningful objects you may ask? They are also known as universal truths. Some of the meaningful objects are cycle of life and birth, existence of past and future lives, laws of karma, and emptiness. There is a monumental difference between intelligence and wisdom that I want to bring out here. An intelligent person is not necessarily a wise person. Let’s take an example. Scientists who develop weapons of war are intelligent but I am sure we can question their wisdom in doing so. Or wolves on wall street who pray on investors are certainly intelligent but you would not call them wise. Function of wisdom is to eliminate doubts and misunderstandings and to dispel ignorance. If we understand the benefits of wisdom, we will strive to achieve it. Opponent of wisdom is ignorance. Nothing harms us more than ignorance. Ignorance makes us create negative karma. Wisdom can arise from listening or reading spiritual teachings; it can arise from contemplating on those teachings; and it can arise from meditating on those teachings.

As you can see our mind is a fascinating subject and hopefully, we are peeling the layers to understand how it functions.

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.

As you may recall, we were discussing the six perfections before the holiday break. Today we will wrap up our discussion on the six perfections. The last perfection we are looking at is wisdom also known as judgment. It is our ability to discern what is real and what is not.

Wisdom is not same as the day to day intelligence. It is possible to have great intelligence but lack wisdom. What do I mean by that? Let’s look at some of the biggest weapons of war for example. People who develop these are for sure intelligent people but one could question their wisdom in developing those. I am sure you have heard about the biggest fraudsters in the world like the Madoff and the SBFs of the world. They sure are intelligent people but they certainly lack wisdom and as a result are challenged in discerning what is right and what is wrong.

There are three fundamental aspects of discernment: we must accept conventional reality; accept ultimate reality; recognize non-duality. Let’s look at this one at a time.

Conventional reality is a day-to-day reality. It is completely an internal mental representation. Meaning it is all playing out in our minds. For example, when we see something, actually our eyes see the image and that image is then inverted in the retina and then our mind interprets the image. This is true for all of our senses. Our mind interprets our sensations of touch, smell, etc. Human senses are limited. The human eye is capable of seeing only 1% of the light spectrum. So what we see is limited. Similarly, we cannot hear all the frequencies of sound. In addition, we are bound by emotional distortion that limits our ability to perceive. For example, when we are afraid, we see things that are not there and when we are distracted we don’t see things that are there. That is why eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.

Conventional reality depends upon cultural agreements if you will. We all agree on a set of rules that allows us to accept certain things as long as perception meets the function.

Part of conventional reality is to recognize that every cause produces similar effects in nature. The second assumption is that all effects have multiple causes and conditions. It is never a one-to-one relationship. There are multiple causes and conditions that have to come into place to manifest a particular effect. For example, when you buy a seed it does not create a plant. You need to plant it, put fertilizer in the soil, it needs rain or watering, sunlight, and so on. All of these causes and conditions must come into play for the seed to become a plant.

Ultimate reality is just like it says, the real truth. We don’t have direct access to ultimate reality but there are principles that we can understand. 1. There are no inherent characteristics. For example, being beautiful to one person would be different to someone else. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What one person finds attractive another person finds repulsive. It is always subjective. So the characteristics do not exist from its own side. All characteristics are imputed. Long, short, far, near, strong, weak, good, bad, large, small, all of these are subjective and are imputed. We should also however apply a functionality test on it. For example, killing is bad or good are both imputed but functionally, killing is bad because it is bad for the one who gets killed. 2. Interdependence of all beings and equality of all beings is a fact. Interdependence is the basis of all science. Without pollination, for example, there is no agriculture. So interdependence is a fact. Equality is a fact because each being feels they are important. So this makes us all equal. We all want to be happy. There is no question about it.

Non-duality means that ultimate reality is the basis of conventional reality – meaning they are not separate from each other. These are not separate concepts. We must have a basis for everything. Without basis, we cannot even have distortion. All beings share the same essence. Science tells us this. We all have at our core the same basic atomic structure. In the spiritual realm, we say all beings have the same soul or a very subtle mind.

Once we have these three basic components in mind, it becomes easy to discern. We accept what needs to be accepted, assume what needs to be assumed, and respect what needs to be respected. The combination of this wisdom is what gives us true perception. As we discussed in the past, the function of our mind is to perceive. Once we understand these basic principles, our perception becomes clear. Our judgment becomes clear and our decisions are better.

It is good to promote discernment in today’s world because people are susceptible to believing anything and everything without reason. One can choose to believe what one wants as long as one understands that it is just a belief and not based on truth.

Inherent Existence

We talked about how Buddha gave two types of teachings. Compassion and Wisdom. For the past 22 episodes, we have been discussing compassion teachings or some version of it. Although we still have 5 or 6 sessions to go for compassion teachings, I thought I would introduce part of wisdom teachings today. We will talk about what is known as inherent existence. It is a deep topic so we may take a couple of sessions discussing this. So what is inherent existence? If you think about most of us take the existence of all phenomena as inherent. What does that mean? Well, let’s talk about any object. A car, or a house, or clothes, or a computer, and so on. We think it exists and does not think twice about it. As a matter of fact, we think exists inherently and cling to it. This grasping or clinging is what brings the most suffering in our lives.

I know this sounds crazy. So let’s break it down. Any existence is either inherent or it is not. What is inherent existence? A phenomenon that exits from its own side is considered an inherent existence. In reality, there is no such thing. No phenomena exist from its own side. For anything to exist from its own side, either it is the same as its part or collection of its part. There is no other possibility. Let’s take an example. Here is a flower. I think we all agree that it is a flower. If you don’t agree, please raise your hand in your participants’ window – I want to make sure this is an interactive experiment. As long as we all agree it is a flower, we will continue. Now, Is this a flower (removed one petal and only showed one petal)? How about this (showed another petal)? How about now (one more petal)? How about this (showing stem)? So we all agree that none of the parts of the flower are flowers themselves. Let’s look at the collection of the parts. All of these parts if I gave you, you would not call it a flower. So there is no inherently existing flower. Well, then what is this thing we called flower. It is nothing but imputation. It is a flower because we called it a flower. It has no inherent existence. Another way to look at this is that it is a dependent existence. Let’s say a blind person walks in the room – don’t worry this is not a joke! There is a flower on the table. For the blind person, the flower does not exist because it is not in their experience.

Let’s look at this pen. Can you point to the pen? Where is the pen? Is it on your screen? Is it in my hand? You see this pen because your eye senses look at a picture of the pen, your brain interprets that as a pen. In other words, the pen is in your mind. Without your brain interpreting this object like a pen, the pen does not exist for you. In other words, it is a dependent existence.

So there are people who believe everything exists inherently meaning from their own side. As we just discussed that is just not the case. There are people who believe nothing exists at all. That is surely not the case since we are experiencing these phenomena. There is a middle way. That says that all phenomena are imputed or dependent on existence. Nothing exists inherently and all existence is imputed.

Let’s look at another example, we all have a car parked in the garage. Let’s find if the car exists inherently. For a car to exist inherently, it can either be found in its parts or it is a collection of its part. So let’s begin with its tires. If someone gave us four tires, we will certainly not call it a car. How about if someone gave us a bunch of bucket seats? Well, that is not a car. How about a door, or an engine, or brake pads? None of these parts is a car. If you take all the parts of the car put them on the ground, we won’t call it a car. So there is no inherently existing car. It is a car because we all decided to call it a car. In other words, it is an imputed existence.

Again, this is a deep subject. I would like to pick this up next week on the same topic. So we can investigate a little more to make sure that we are all on the same page as to inherent existence.