The Eight Verses of Mind Training – Verse 8: Ultimate Bodhichitta
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, International Women’s Partnership Centre, Chiang Mai, Thailand, January 15th 2007, Part 4.
May none of this ever be sullied
By thoughts of the eight worldly concerns.
May I see all things as illusions
And, without attachment, gain freedom from bondage.
So the last verse basically is just summing up and says, “may none of this”—meaning none of the above verses dealing with exchanging oneself for others—ever be sullied by thoughts of the eight worldly concerns.
The eight worldly concerns are: gain and loss; praise and blame; good reputation and bad reputation; and happiness and suffering. Usually we all want gain and praise and good reputation and happiness, and we’re all trying to avoid the other side of it. So the idea is that we should not be motivated in our actions of putting others before ourselves by any wish for good reputation or because we are going to benefit in any way.
So it is very obvious what this means. However, as I’ve said at the beginning, we should ascertain our strengths and weaknesses and be very honest with ourselves. What is given here is the exemplary conduct of a Bodhisattva. This is how someone who is truly selfless, genuinely caring only for others beyond themselves, this is how they would act.
So in Buddhism there are what we call the three levels of involvement. First we hear or read about the subject. We intellectually absorb it and then we think about it and question and try to understand exactly what it’s all about. And finally we put this into action—we try to become what we have intellectually understood. So this is very important. We should not think that the minute we try something then we can instantly become proficient. It needs a period of training as with any other skill.
Now these verses counter all our normal instincts of self-preservation. So firstly most important is to hear about it, so that the idea presents itself to the mind. Our present-day culture is very much concerned with self-enhancement and how to manipulate other people to our own advantage. However this training is in how to manipulate ourselves for others’ advantage!
So some of these ideas need time to percolate through our consciousness and it is not surprising if initially there is a resistance. This is a good sign because it means one has actually understood what these verses are implying. If we just think, “Oh, very nice”, and put it aside, this means we haven’t really understood what is being said here.
Of course all genuine Buddhist practice is about seeing through the delusions of the ego and of cultivating the path to wisdom and compassion. So this teaching is a direct confrontation with our self-cherishing mind from the point of view of everyday life, not just when we are sitting in meditation.
So for that reason, he is saying that we should be careful of our motivation and we should not try to practise this path of a Bodhisattva in order to gain a good reputation and so everybody will say what a lovely and compassionate person we are. Of course in that way we will feel much better about ourselves and are likely to get lots of offerings! Or else the fear that if we don’t try to act like a Bodhisattva, people will criticise us so we won’t have a good reputation and we will have a lot of problems! Either way this is an impure worldly mentality. Our motivation should be inspired purely by our deep empathy and compassion for others and wish to relieve them of their suffering.
On the other hand, may I emphasise again, the Buddha called the Dharma the path of joy and we should not use this teaching of putting others before ourselves as a way of suppressing ourselves, demeaning ourselves, feeling guilty any time we enjoy ourselves and so forth. It’s nothing to do with that at all. That’s still an ego-based approach.
What just comes into my mind is my grandmother who was one of those women who, if you took her out and offered to buy her a piece of cake or something, she would say, “Oh, no, don’t bother, I don’t need to have anything special. I am quite happy to just have that over there which doesn’t look very good. It’s all right, don’t worry about me.” Of course you gave an extra big piece of cake just to make her feel better, but that kind of false self-denigration is not what we are talking about at all.
A clear example of what we do mean is someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama who, if you see him in action, he is always there for others. One of the things which always strikes people who meet him, whoever they may be, is that at that moment they are the only person who exists for him and that he is completely on their side and it doesn’t matter who they are.
There was a lovely photo that appeared on the cover of one Dharma magazine showing on the one side a police guard standing to attention with his rifle. And His Holiness is walking past him and puts up his hand and touches the policeman as he goes by. All we see is the back of His Holiness, his hand touching the guard and this smile on the policeman’s face. And we know that had made that guy’s day: just that His Holiness acknowledged him as he went by and reached out to him.
Another of the things one remembers about His Holiness is how he is often laughing. He is always so cheerful. But if you tell him something sad he will cry, his heart is completely open. He doesn’t care about it being considered unmanly to cry. If it is something sad, he just weeps because he will be completely with you. But five minutes later, he is laughing again. He has so much joy coming out of him and this is the point. He has such joy because he is not concerned with himself. He is totally concerned with others and making others happy. So that gives him tremendous energy and delight. It doesn’t make him grumpy and bitter.
At the age of 25, His Holiness attained the Geshe Lharampa degree which is the highest degree in Tibetan scholastic circles. He is considered to be extremely intelligent and learned. He has also done a lot of advanced meditation practices, yet when we meet him he seems so simple. He is not considering, I am a great pandita master, I am a great scholar! In fact he always says, “I am just a simple monk.”
Even hard-core journalists when they go to meet him also are very affected and often come out with tears in their eyes. They don’t know why, but he has that quality to touch people. Of course, this is not just true of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but many great lamas are like this. However since he is the Dalai Lama you all know him. When we go around the world and ask the ordinary person to name a Buddhist, the only one they could think of would probably be the Dalai Lama. So it’s very fortunate for us that His Holiness is the image of a Buddhist that most people know.
His Holiness recites this very text every day and he bases his life on this.
The last two lines say:
May I see all things as illusions
And, without attachment, gain freedom from bondage.
Up to this point we have been dealing with what is called Relative Bodhichitta, and the last two lines point towards Ultimate Bodhichitta.
The reason why all the rest is called “Relative Bodhichitta” is because it is assuming a subject and an object. It is based on the concept of a self and others: one is putting others in place of oneself. But this implies a duality. All of this so far has been dealing with thinking of myself as inferior and placing others in front of myself. When people are ill-natured then taking them as our spiritual friends. This is all very good, but it is all within the realm of Relative Bodhichitta, assuming there are self-existent individuals who are interacting.
So from the point of view of ultimate truth, we contemplate what are called the three spheres or focal points. This is the understanding that the subject, the object and the action are all non-self-existent, they are all empty.
For example, if we offer someone a gift, this is good if our motivation is that we want to make her happy. So on a relative level this is meritorious and will make good karma. And maybe if we like this gift a lot and really want it for ourselves, then by giving it away it helps to reduce the ego—provided we don’t become proud because we are being so selfless!
Nonetheless we are still conceptually bound in three ways. Bound by the fact that we think we are giving something, by the fact that we have an object to give it to and by the very fact of giving it. Our belief is that all this is actually existing and happening. The view that I, as a self-identified subject, am giving to a self-identified object is actually binding us to samsara, even though the action may be creating good seeds. Nonetheless it is not going to liberate us. And only by realising, even conceptually having the idea that ultimately there is no one giving, no one to receive and no actual action that this conception, even if it is only intellectual until it becomes a genuine realisation, is beginning to cut away at those heavy causes binding us to our ordinary conceptual samsara mind.
So it’s very important to have at the back of our mind that even our good actions are non-inherently existent because otherwise even our good actions can just be another cause for us being bound to samsara.
This idea of the three spheres of purity also extends to the dedication of merits for the happiness of all beings. Especially if a donation is offered, we can say, “I offer this on behalf of so-and-so, or for the happiness of all beings”, but nonetheless we should realise that ultimately there is no one offering and nothing being offered. Just keep that in mind. Therefore it’s always said that the world and ourselves are like a dream, a rainbow, a bubble, a flash of lightning because they are transient and ungraspable. The idea is that it all looks very substantial: a rainbow looks solid but actually the rainbow is created by conditions such as particles of rain, the sun and its rays and many causes and conditions coming together so that there is an appearance of a rainbow, but when we try to find the rainbow it cannot be found. Likewise in a dream everything seems very real; if it is frightening we can wake up with our heart pounding, but it doesn’t mean that the dream has any reality outside of our mind. A bubble looks very real and solid but prick it and it’s just empty air. So this is how we should view our life. Things are not actually a dream, they are not illusion, they are not a bubble, but they are like an illusion, a dream and a bubble. Things are not the way they appear to us in our ego-based delusion.
Question: What do you mean by duality?
Here, duality means the conception of a self-existing subject and a self-existing object. Normally when we think, there is a conception of an “I” and then everyone else who is non-I. This is our ordinary relative and conditioned mind. Reality has no understanding of this sense of division between self and others. The natural primordial awareness, the clear light empty nature of the mind does not recognise duality.
So any school of Buddhism has always recognised that dukkha is caused by our clinging to an ego: that’s the root of the problem. As long as we see ourselves as something solid, self-existent and separate from the rest of creation around us then we are going to suffer, because we are endlessly not getting what we do want and getting what we don’t want. We are in conflict with all the other little globules of self-existent beings who have their own ideas about what they want. So there is always going to be disagreement due to this basic duality.
The most menial beggar on the street is the centre of his own universe and the most precious being in the world to himself. Even the dog lying there, to himself he is the most important creature and the only thing that really matters is his comfort and warding off any pain. So when the whole universe is full of beings, all of them out for themselves, no wonder there are conflicts.
Question: So when you are saying, “is like an illusion but it isn’t an illusion”, are you saying that the reality is like this primordial clear light?
The texts stress that the world is like an illusion, but they are not saying “it is actually an illusion” because there are two truths, relative and ultimate. On a relative level things appear to exist as we perceive them. It is only relatively true but it is nonetheless true on its own level. For instance an object like this table is just made up of protons and neutrons. If I were a physicist, I could tell you that actually it’s all basically just empty energy. But if I threw this table at you, it would hurt. So ultimately it’s just empty but on a relative level it would appear to be solid. Therefore on a relative level there is some truth to it but ultimately that is an illusion presented by the kind of senses that we happen to possess.
So the point is that things aren’t what they seem to be. But it is not enough to just intellectually appreciate that but actually have direct realisation. Only that can transform us.
Question: If you experience everything as illusion, how do you then identify with others’ needs?
I know what you mean but it doesn’t seem to work like that. In fact the more we realise the empty illusory nature, the more tremendous compassion arises because we realise how trapped these illusory sentient beings are in their illusory conceptions. How they suffer because they don’t see clearly. So in fact wisdom and compassion are conjoined, and that’s why they are regarded as the two wings of a bird: that they support each other. As compassion grows so wisdom and understanding develops. As wisdom sees the situation with increasing clarity, overpowering compassion arises. And yet it’s all an empty illusion.
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam