On a recent “This American Life” episode ( www.thislife.org), an Iraq veteran faces the demon of Iraqi Muslims that remains with him long after returning to the United States.

He so openly discusses his anxiety and wishes to harm even innocent Muslims that he sees on his college campus. So what does he do? He joins the Muslim Student Association and becomes one of the biggest supporters in the association. His thinking, it appears, did not seem to change overnight. It took some time for his entrenched thinking patterns to be replaced with a new view of the Muslims.

First, I would like to comment that this was an amazing story of what one person did in order to change his thinking when he realized that the old pattern was deluded. He took action to change his thinking. Mind you, it does not sound like this was easy, especially due to the high level of anxiety within him. Sam Slaven should be on national speaking circuit.

Second, the entire episode of was about the “devil” inside us, which cause us to do things (or not do things). Even if we are able to rationally consider the best action or think before we speak, we regularly follow the devil inside us.

We have a very simple explanation for this. The patterns have been learned from past actions, words, and thoughts. Every time we repeat it, we are reinforcing the negative pattern and in fact create additional seeds for it to be repeated more in the future.

In the 37-Practices of a Bodhisattva, verses 20 and 21, remind us this effect whether it is associated to aversion (anger, hatred, disgust, etc) or desire (lust, craving, greed):

Verse 20

If anger that dwells in our heart lies neglected, and, turning instead to our external foes,
we try to destroy them and even kill thousands, then thousands of others will plague us still more.
So seeing this action is not the solution, let us muster the forces of mercy and love.
Turn inwards and tame the wild flow of our mind-stream -- the Sons of the Buddhas all practice this way

Verse 21

Indulging in objects our senses run after and drinking salt water are one and the same:
the more we partake, for our own satisfaction, the more our desire and thirst for them grow.
Then, when we conceive a compulsive attraction towards whatever object our senses desire, abandon it quickly without hesitation -- the Sons of the Buddhas all practice this way.

Third, there is a very unfortunate result of conflicts such as what is now taking place in Iraq. The American soldiers, it seems, feel anger and anxiety at the site of a Muslim and likely any Iraqi. Likewise, I am sure that the Iraqis feel anger and anxiety at the sight of an American soldier and likely any Westerner. So how can you ever expect them to let go of these habitual patterns of arising emotions? Its not like we can enroll every Iraqi into the Western Students Association and its not like we can enroll every American soldier into a Muslim Student Association for each one of them to correct their wrong thinking.

I don’t have the answer for this one. I do now realize that there is no peaceful resolution to this conflict based on the views and emotions currently arising in thinking of both sides.

I sure wish that our leaders had studied Verse 20 before embarking on the act of annihilating Iraq. We are now stuck with results. Now what?

As part of the traditional methods of forbearing anger, I wanted to write down three approaches from Mahamudra Sutra. Until I fully purify negative imprints, I am certain that negative and difficult situations will arise.

It is good for me to remind myself of these methods as well as other interim steps to keep me in check. When we will know that we no longer need these techniques? When there are no longer problem situations and difficult people coming up in your life.

So here are the three methods:

1 Withstand – Remember that getting angry hurts you and can be the circumstance to result in others suffering and anger.
2 Realize It is All Empty –Realize that everything is empty of inherit existence and depend on causes and condition. Bottomline, there is actually nothing and no one independently there, its all coming from you! As I have been taught, this one is the most difficult but the most complete. It is very difficult to get angry no less remain angry at something which we realize does not truly exist.
3 Realize Everything that is happening to us is the result of our past actions.

For number 1, I am reminded of my teacher Khenpo Choga Rinpoche likening getting angry to jumping off the roof of a 2-story house. What would happen if you were to jump or fall off the rood of a 2-story house?

If you fall off such a roof, you are likely to get hurt. Right?

So likewise, when you get angry, you definitely hurt yourself. So don’t jump! Further even if someone is trying to “help” you go off the roof, you must resist! Likewise, if someone or something is trying to “help” you to get angry; resist – Just like what you would do if they were trying to help you off the roof.

For number 2, I am not sure that you can get there intellectually. The times where I have been able to see the world in this way, it was not intellectual. It was experiential.

For number 3, it is good to consider this when we have time to contemplate a situation or someone's actions against us. Even though I cannot recall what I ever did to create the circumstance for the problem to surface for me, it is often helpful to know that it is definitely me that sowed the seeds that are now sprouting – weeds and all.

Oh! One reminder that somehow seems appropriate to add here. We can change the past (or at least our view of the past which changes the past). We can change the future by our thoughts, words, and actions right now.

However, we cannot change the present! We are stuck with what is happening right now. No matter how much we might want things to be different, we cannot change the present. So deal with it as compassionately as one can. Your future depends on it! Promise!

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

If you haven’t read yet, then you can now know that our kind Chinese friends in Tibet, at the Samye Monastery have forcibly destroyed a 30-foot gold and copper statue of Guru Rinpoche.
According to the official report, the statue violated some kind of “new rule” put in place this year by the Chinese. One report says that it is about about erecting statues must have a permit. Other sources say it is about religious items put in place by people that are not registered members of the facility.
Either way, it’s just a bunch of bullshit created by the occupying forces. As I see it, this recent action is directly related to the fact that China has miscalculated the results of their own actions of opening up Tibet to all of the Chinese.
When you have an autocratic government, you face the result of rule sometimes called “The rule of unforeseen consequences.”
Like when they invaded Tibet, the Chinese indirectly spread Vajrayana Buddhism throughout the world. It is like trying to get rid of a puddle of water by throwing a huge stone in. You might get rid of some of the water in the puddle but the water splashes all over the place. Vajrayana Masters are now found throughout the world disseminating Buddhism in every continent.
Now, China has decided to turn Lhasa into China’s Disneyland. What they did not anticipate is the millions of the visitors would go back home with more than pretty pictures and souvenirs. They have become interested in the Buddha-Dharma.
“Oh shit?” the Communist party thinks. “Now what are we going to do?”
Too late guys. The cat is out. The end of the Communist party is likely within the next 20 years. Some outside force will not destroy China’s Communism. It will be destroyed from within China. And watch out when it happens!

Now lets step back to the destruction of this great statue – which incidentally was constructed with money from two very wealthy Chinese families (not Tibetan). You see the Chinese are scared about all of this!

You might think that it would be appropriate to get angry but read below first:

I think that it was Nargajuna who said that:
Even if they destroy Buddhist texts, sacred objects, or statues; these are only just representations of the Buddhism.
However, if you allow yourself to get angry or upset – namely allow any such action to destroy your peace of mind, then it is you that have destroyed to true Buddha. You have destroyed the Buddha-Dharma.

So even when someone harms such sacred items, we must pray for them. For those of us that have a Christian background, I think we have another version of this “God, forgive them for they know not what they have done. “

Sound familiar?

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

Oh by the way if you want to read about the events at Samye, here are two links:

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=46,4291,0,0,1,0

http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1144

The following has been slightly modified from a letter I wrote a friend who was having difficulty with a family member who was irritating my friend. My friend asked me for advice about how best to handle the situation. Here is what I wrote them:

I recently took a 30-hour training on the Patience chapter of “The Way of a Bodhisattva” by Shantideva (Chapter 6). Once I started studying these teachings, irritating people and situations began to DISAPPEAR! And now have almost completely disappeared. I have outlined and highlighted some of the verses which are of particular importance when faced with apparent irritating people.

I ask you to just remember this:

There is no evil as great as anger. There is no practice as beneficial as Patience (from the second verse). Every time someone becomes irritating to you or gets jealous or angry at you, see it as an opportunity to be Patience. Then quietly thank them for providing you this wonderful opportunity to be Patience. This will change your life!! Almost overnight!

This can be a radical change in your view of “irritating” people. It is best to hear oral transmissions and explanations. I suggest that you seek out such transmission from an authentic and lineage holding teracher.

If you have time read the highlighted sections and commentary below. You can absolutely work with other’s anger and jealousy if you want. You will not only benefit you but also the other person and all sentient beings.

The practice of Patience is Transformative. Beyond belief when you start doing it full time.

By the way, thank you for providing me the opportunity to really look deep into this chapter. I had to spend time looking for the right parts and then write a short explanation. I definitely benefited from the task.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
Chapter 6 Patience
Verses 98 – 107

"98. Praise and so on distract me and remove my disillusionment with the cycle of existence. They stir up jealousy toward gifted people, and anger at their success."

When we are praised, we begin to feel that this life of ours is not so bad. As a result of this, we stop working towards our own awakening. it is with our disgust with this temporary life (of samsara) that we step on the path to awaken for the benefit of all beings.

Second, when we are praised, we actually become addicted to the praise and addicted to wanting more of what others have (jealousy and envy).

"99. Therefore, are those conspiring to destroy my reputation and so forth not protecting me from falling into hell?"

It is true that we should see those that torment us as truly our protectors. They are protecting us from living our life in ways that would eventually lead us into harmful future lives such as in one of the Hell Realms.

"100. The bondage of acquisition and honor is unfitting for me who seeks liberation. How can I hate those who are freeing me from bondage?"

If you seek liberation from this samsaric existence, if you seek to truly be of the greatest assistance to all beings, then you must become a Buddha! Fully Awaken! In order to become a Buddha, you must train in loving all beings and finally see all beings as truly Buddhas. When you begin to see all as Buddhas, then you are getting close.

"101. How can I hate those who, as if due to the Buddha’s blessing, block the gate as I seek to enter suffering?

"102. It is wrong to feel anger toward someone, thinking that person impedes my merit. As there is no austerity equal to patience, shall I not abide in that?"

It is the result of practicing patience that we open up to world of awakening. If you become angry, you harm yourself, you destroy aeons of merit, you get closer to living in hell. Patience “closes” the door to hell.

"103. If on account of my own fault I do not practice patience here, then I myself have created an obstacle when grounds for merit have been presented."

If you do not practice patience, you are losing the opportunity to gain great merit. You have been presented with the great opportunity to practice patience. Do not become your own obstacle when the opportunity presents itself. If you become upset or angry, you are contributing to more unhappiness in your world. I will promise that the world will become even worse for you the more you are unhappy.

"104. If one thing does not exist without another, and does exist when the other is present, then that other thing is its cause. How can that be called a hindrance?"

This one is really difficult as it relates to the highest view of karma - cause and effect. Reflecting on this: look to the TRUE cause of your anger. Second, Look to the cause of your patience which is a great merit.

First we consider the first part. If your sister, for example, is the CAUSE of your unhappiness, then EVERYTIME you and others see her, then they MUST become angry or unhappy. If it does not happen everytime THEN THEY (your sister in this case) CANNOT be the cause of unhappiness.

So what is the cause? What is always there when you are unhappy or angry?
It is you! You are the cause of your unhappiness and anger! it is not coming from the other person. It is coming from you. If it was coming from them, then it would ALWAYS happen. And likewise, if they were gone, you would never be angry or unhappy.

The final sentence is looking back to previous verses talking about. They are giving you with the opportunity to practice Patience. You cannot ever practice patience without an irritating person in your life.

Bottomline: An irritating person is the CAUSE of your Patience. They are the cause of Patience which is the greatest Practice to awaken.

Let this one settle in. It is really hard for me to understand - no less to explain because it is so foreign for us to see an irritating person as being the cause of something good for us.

"105. For a beggar is not a hindrance to generosity at the time of alms giving; and when a person who bestows an ordination arrives, he is not called a hindrance to the ordination."

So this will help understand the previous verse. A beggar is the cause of our generosity, yes? If no one ever needed anything, we would never have an opportunity to be generous.
Giving to people who have no needs is sort of worthless.

Likewise, a master who give vows to someone, is not looked upon as a hinderance to ordination. These are two examples of other situations where the person who is the cause of a good action are more easily seen as the cause.

It is very difficult to seek irritating people as a benefit to us. It can help to see that they are no different from a ordination master (who gives you initiations) or from a beggar (for generosity).

As a Bodhisattva, we are always looking for opportunities to practice: Whether it be generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation or wisdom. they all provide the soil for our awakening and the fertilizer for our merit.

"106. Beggars are easy to meet in the world, but harm doers are difficult to find, for when I do no wrong no one will wrong me."

Continuing the example, Shantideva notes that beggars are plentiful. However, those that are irritating become rare. Become rare? Yes! As the teachings on this chapter point out, as you become more patient with those around us, as you reduce finding situations which cause you to suffer and become angry back, YOU will find that irritating people will disappear from your life.

It will become increasingly more difficult to find irritating people and situations.
Can this really happen? I am here to tell you that it truly works.

"107. Therefore, since my adversary assists me in my Bodhisattva way of life, I should long for him/her like a treasure discovered in the house and acquired without effort."

This is the most radical part of this section of verses! Why? Because if you really can see that an irritating person is the CAUSE of your patience, you will find that those people are to be worshipped.

My daughter is working this summer at a local and wonderful bakery here in Salt Lake. I went over there tonight to see her and have something to eat (by the way – the food at the Avenues Bakery is great!).

So anyway, I walk in and come across a fellow Buddhist practicitioner who had previously asked me for a suggested a basic daily practice. Since we had not ever gotten together for me to provide her with a practice, we decided that now was a great time put it together. The great part, for me, is that I did not have advance warning to think about the perfect daily basic practice. I pulled it together right from the heart!

So I just started to write out a daily practice. Maybe it is my deluded thinking - which is very likely if you know me – However, I am still really happy with what I wrote down while my soup awaited me.

It might be worthless but I decided to put it down here for my own future benefit. I am getting older and at some point, I am likely to loose my memory. So as long as the blog remains on the web, I can look it up and remind myself of what I need to do. Assuming that I can find it on the web.

So here it is:

1) Get on your Seat – find a time every day to sit down – same time every day is the best and it’s a great way to get some discipline. Set a place in to sit everyday. Start with maybe just 15 minutes – you can extend this as time goes by but the most important thing is to do it every single day. Got it? Don’t do 2 hours one day and then nothing for the next week. Such inconsistency will accomplish nothing.

2) Settle your Body, quite your words, and relax your thinking (your mind, if you prefer) – After sitting down, it is time to rest into your time to practice. I lik to start with my feet and move up my body. Go from your feet to your ankles to calves, to your knees. Eventually you get to your head where I work on each sensual intake separately. My mouth, my nose, my face, my ears, my eyes, the forehead, my crown chakra. If I am lucky, I come out of this practice calm and ready to go into deeper practice.

3) Purify your channels – I did not put this one down tonight because sitting in the restaurant was not the best place to teach someone how to do the 9-Wind Cleansing. But if you know what this is, do it at this time. It is the process to cleanse out negative energies of hatred/anger/aversion (the first three), the negative energies of desire/greed/attachment (the second three), and the negative energies of ignorance/delusion/wrong thinking (the final three). They are stored in your left channel, right channel, and central channel respectively (reverse the first two for women – it’s a mirror image).

4) Shamata – Meditate using your breath as the focus of your thinking. I like Khenpo Choga Rinpoche’s suggestion to do three (3) sets of seven for a total of 21. This is to train our mind in one-pointed focus and attention. Many texts or teachers say that if your mind wanders, you are suppose to start over. However, I feel that if we were really honest with this “rule,” we would never get through all 21 breaths. So don’t be too hard on your self. Just do the best that you can. With time, it seems that there is improvement. Maybe I will be able to get all 21 done without distraction before I die. By the way, the reason we work on this is because it helps with all of the rest of the practice. The better we have trained our mind to focus, the greater the power and force our practice will have
.
5) Take Refuge in your Teachers/Guides – Whoever you regard as your teacher or teachers, place them in front of you. Visualization seem strange but it is amazingly powerful. I think that you should put whomever you regard as your teacher/guide/advisor. In fact, I load up every single teacher that I have or have had in front in front of me. There is no reason to leave any of them out. Jesus, Ghandhi, Buddha, our living teachers, our grand parents, put them all there. If they can help me, I don’t want to leave them out. For a Buddhist, we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, The teachers are the Buddha. They are the messengers of the path to awakening (the Dharma). There are others that are traveling the same path (the Sangha).

6) Offering to your Teacher - Visualize wonderful and magnificant things of beauty and offer these to your teachers. We do this to practice the generosity of giving all to them. We are training to realize that there is nothing in this world as sacred and great as the teachings to reach full awakening. Everything we have, everything that we would like to have, see, or hold can never compare with the sacredness and importance of the teachings. We therefore, offer all that we can imagine to our teachers.

7) Purify your Mind/thinking. Recall a situation over the last say 24 hours that you regret which might be an action, something that you said, or simply something that you thought – This is the purification practice but taken to a very personal level. Rather than dealing with it on a conceptual level we are bringing it right down to the real thing: Something that you really did, said, or thought.
a. Confess it in front of your teachers and guides including deities if you practice with such practices.
b. Regret it.
c. Promise not to do this again for a set period of time. If you can only commit for a few hours, then do this. If you are prepared to do forever, that is even better but mean it!
d. Commit to do something, anything, that you feel is appropriate to make amends – Its your confession, create your own amends. Maybe it is simply to give a homeless person 50 cents. Maybe you should let someone cut in front of you on the freeway and you are happy to let them in. You have to decide what you should do. (By the way, after you have completed the task let go go of your regret! You are done with it. Let it be over!)

8) Rejoice in your good deeds. Recall a good action, words, or thought over the last 24 hours – take your pick and hopefully you can find something.
a. Rejoice in whatever you have recalled
b. Dedicate the merit of this to all sentient beings, don’t keep it for only yourself.

9) Consider those that are suffering. Think of someone you know who is suffering right now or a group of people that are suffering – this is the arousal of the mind of Bodhicitta if you want the formal term for this part of the practice.
a. Wish that they be free from suffering (this is compassion)
b. Wish that they be happy (this is love/loving-kindness)
c. Wish that they never be separated from the unchangeable and indestructible happiness/bliss (this is Joy)
d. Wish that that they remain forever in equanimity beyond hope and fear (this is equanimity).

10) Ask your teachers to remain with you for the day – This is where you can place your teachers in your heart (heart chakra). They can stay and guide you throughout the day. Anytime you need their assistance, they are there to help.

11) Spreading the light of love and compassion - Once your teachers have been safely place in you heart chakra, we can then visualize waves of light coming from our heart chakra. The rainbow of lights are in the colors of blue, green, red, yellow, and white (representing the 5 Buddha families, their attributes, and wisdoms), the rays of light pass through the world spreading love, compassion, and enlightened prayers to all beings. With some practice, such visualizations become more and more a reality that you are truly sending waves out to the entire world and all beings.

12) Rejoice in whatever merit you have accumulated through today’s practice – You can increase this bundle by rejoicing all the merit created by all sentient beings and accumulated by all enlightened beings in the past, present, and future. Load up the pile of merit.

13) Give the Merit away for the swift awakening (aka the Enlightenment) of all sentient beings – If you keep all this merit for yourself, you will lose it in a single moment of anger, greed, pride, envy, or ignorance. So give it away and then it will never be lost. This is for certain.

14) Close your practice and Smile – Keep your piece of your mind. When you mess up: reflect on the error, regret, forgive yourself, and get back to being that wonderful and amazing person that you are.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff