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Well, I have had a very special day today. My wife is away for the weekend, and I was in charge of everything, including keeping my three children happy!
Once we were all up I gathered them all around the breakfast table and asked them what they wanted to do today. My 13 year old boy was plugged into his iPod watching youtube videos and didn’t want to engage, so I informed him that he’d better turn it off or I would take it off him for the rest of the weekend. He grudgingly put it down and I told them that we were not staying in on a nice day like today, and again asked them where they wanted to go.
Immediately my youngest – my daughter who is 8 years old said that she wanted to go to a National Trust property quite near to us, because she has been doing work on it at school and they are going to visit it in a few weeks time. She then reeled off some amazing facts about the place, which got us interested. It fitted the bill perfectly for a nice cheap day out.
We got ready, jumped in the car, and after a quick visit to Tesco’s to grab some lunch, we headed off. My grumpy eldest slowly started to engage with his younger brother and sister, and we ended up having a brilliant time all day long. Even a real downpour of rain half way through the day only made it more fun! When we got back, I read to both my younger children and put them to bed, and then went downstairs to find eldest watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He had been watching youtube videos of film bloopers, and as we watched, he pointed out continuity errors. This made it a really special viewing, with us talking and laughing. Then, he came over and sat on my lap. It’s a long time since he’s done that. We sat there together and watched the rest of the film.
We finally said goodnight and I have just done a short meditation.
I began by focusing my mind on my breath, and then moved on to thinking about our search for happiness. We all want happiness. Days like today don’t happen very often. If I have a couple of dozen days like this in my life, I will count myself lucky. In all my lives, I have searched for happiness. But I have always died and whatever happiness I have found has slipped through my fingers. In this life too, the happiness I experience from being with my children will pass and be lost. I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to die and forget them. I want to watch over them forever, and guide them to true, lasting happiness.
To do that, I need to free myself from samsara’s grasp. I need to turn my back of samsaric pleasure and follow my Spiritual Guide’s instructions. I must free myself from samsara.
I focused on this wish to be free from samsara, and slowly began to feel a strong sense of wanting to rise above and away from this soiled existence – to experience a pure existence free from samsara’s temporary and unsatisfactory happiness. I focused on this wish to be free for a while.
I then thought about what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I thought that by attaining liberation from samsara, I will be giving myself the perfect opportunity to then cherish others purely. What a worthwhile thing to do! I then brought my mind back to the wish to be free of samsara, and focused on it for a while.
Dedication
May all living beings develop the wish to be free from samsara’s grasp, and attain liberation and enlightenment for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will cherish my family and hold them dear, and use this feeling of cherishing to remind myself that if I want to cherish them forever, I need to follow my Spiritual Guide’s instructions and attain liberation from samsara.
The purpose of this meditation is to generate a feeling of wishing to purify our negativity and to accumulate a vast amount of merit on the basis of our understanding of karma. Then we can look at what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I began with some breathing meditation and then moved on to the main topic.
I started by thinking about what karma means. All the appearances I perceive arise from my karma. The virtuous actions I have created in the past lead to pleasant appearances and experiences. Conversely, negative actions lead to unpleasant results. I thought about how all my appearances are not ‘real’ or ‘out there’, but are actually projections from my own mind. I felt like I was in a sort of virtual reality simulation, where appearances arose around me – they appeared real, but lacked any inherent existence at all.
I realised that it is pointless to get angry or try to change these appearances. Getting angry with people is like getting angry with clouds – it makes no sense. Instead of reacting to projected images, I should think about what I can do with the projector itself. My very subtle mind projects all these images, and if I can purify my karma and not perform any more impure actions, I can purify my projector. Slowly, all my appearances will become pure – a pure body, with pure enjoyments in a pure environment.
I imagined my mind becoming steadily more pure because of my purification and virtuous actions, until I felt completely pure. Once I experienced this, I focused on it as constantly as I could.
After a while, I wondered what this meant in light of the advantages of cherishing others. It was clear straight away that basis of all my virtuous actions can be the wish to cherish others. This thought will purify my negativities and keep my actions virtuous – it is my method!
With this thought, I returned to the feeling of purifying my very subtle mind of all negativities, and stayed with that delightful feeling for the rest of the meditation.
Dedication
May all living beings understand the law of karma, and through this realisation quickly become enlightened beings for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to keep my actions pure, and use the four opponent powers to purify my negative karma.
The purpose of this meditation is to generate the strong feeling of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and then to meditate on this in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I began with breathing meditation and then moved on to the main meditation.
I started by thinking about the spiritual darkness of future lives and the fact that I could die at any time. I then thought about what it means to go for refuge. I thought about the benefits of going for refuge, and how I can make my life truly meaningful if I go to the Three Jewels with all my heart.
I thought about these things for a while and slowly I felt a real movement in my heart – moving towards Buddha. I felt like I was being enfolded in his love and protection, and I focused on this feeling for a long while. It felt very comforting and safe (compared to the previous two meditations).
After a while I wanted to see what this means in light of the advantages of self-cherishing.
It seemed to me that going for refuge was the principal way of making my life meaningful and being of benefit to others. Although there are countless other living beings, my cherishing of them begins with my going for refuge to the Three perfect Jewels. With this in mind, I returned to my feeling of being enfolded and protected by Buddha himself, and how this is the starting point for my universal cherishing.
Dedication
May all living beings find their refuge in the Three Jewels, and quickly attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to remain mindful of my refuge, and go for refuge throughout the day and night.
The purpose of this meditation is to generate a sincere dread of samsaric rebirth, and then to meditate on this dread in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I began with breathing meditation, and then, when my mind was calm and peaceful, I moved on to the main meditation topic.
I began by remembering my meditation from yesterday and the feeling of walking towards death. I imagined that I had not attained enlightenment by the time of my death, and wondered what would happen once I had died. I looked beyond death and I saw a darkness – a spiritual darkness. I felt genuine fear because I recognised that I may lose my spiritual path in my next life. I have so much negative karma that it may be hundreds of lifetimes before I even see an image of Buddha again. I focused on this fear of losing my path after death and I realised that my main problem is not this life, but what will happen in all my future lives.
I focused on this fear and felt a wish to ask for help or more time – but at the time of my death, there will be no point in appealing to the lord of death for these things. I need to make sure I attain enlightenment in this life, as soon as possible.
With this in mind, I focused on the fear of samsaric rebirth for a long while.
After that, I decided to investigate what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others. I began by considering that all the happiness in the world comes from cherishing others. Bodhichitta comes from cherishing others, and we need Bodhichitta to enter the Mahayana path and become a Buddha ourselves. Samsaric rebirth without the path of virtue will mean that I will forget about the advantages of cherishing others, and forget about my quest for enlightenment. It seemed that the stakes were even higher now than before.
With this thought, I returned to my dreadful fear of samsaric rebirth, and focused on it for the rest of the meditation.
Dedication
May all living beings find the opportunity to practice virtue and make their lives meaningful.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to remain mindful of the dangers of lower rebirth, and use the fear as my motivation to cherish others.
Quiet Room Update
I have now found the person responsible for the Quiet Room. They looked confused what I asked them about the room. It is supposed to have a low table in it and a couple of chairs. She seemed to think that the principle attribute it should have would be enough room on the floor for Muslims to prostrate. Well, the room certainly manages to maximise that aspect, considering that it is completely empty at the moment! She thought that the room was well used and that there were several people who used it regularly. I think I will try to find them, and see what they think should be in there. The irony of this quiet room is that it is right next to the Gym, where music blasts out high volume and can clearly be heard in the room! I don’t mind noises like this when I am meditating, but I can imagine it wouldn’t make the room very appealing to others…
The purpose of this meditation is to generate the determination to not waste this life on meaningless activities by remembering our mortality, and then to consider what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I began by engaging in breathing meditation. I gradually caught hold of my mind and gained more control over it until it was calm and still.
I then moved on the meditation itself. I began by reminding myself that I will definitely die. My death is just as inevitable as my next breath.
I don’t know when my death will come, and when it does, I will have to leave everything behind. My family, my friends, my projects and my possessions – they will all be left behind. I thought of a blog post I recently read from Kadampa Working Dad where he said that we should have a mind that recognises that it is leaving. Such a mind will not get caught up in attachment to meaningless things.
I wondered what I SHOULD be doing with my time, if not trying to collect possessions. The answer came that I should be using my interactions with others to gain merit and purify negativity.
I imagined walking towards death at a steady pace. He was standing some way off in front of me. As I walked, I was casting seeds to my left and right. These were karmic seeds of virtue I was planting in my mind. Black smoke was also drifting off my body and rising in the air behind me, slowly disappearing into the distance. This was my non-virtue. I decided that as I lived my life, I should practice only virtue, and purify my negative karma.
I settled on the image of walking towards death without fear or hesitation, secure in the knowledge that when death comes, I will be a pure being. I focused on this aspiration and let my attention sink into it.
From there, I wondered what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
All the happiness in the world comes from cherishing others, so by remembering that I will die I will be encouraging myself to practice purely and to purify my negativity – and a very effective way of doing this is to cherish others sincerely.
I imagined cherishing others on my journey to death, and making every day count. I stayed with this wish for the rest of the meditation.
Dedication
May all living beings remember death and use this realisation to find the path to true lasting peace and happiness.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will remember death and try to avoid non-virtuous actions of body, speech or mind. I don’t have time for them.
Note
The place I work at has a ‘Quiet Room’ for prayer etc. I found it today and did my meditation there. However, the room is a bit of a let-down. It was just a completely empty room – not even a chair! I’ll have to do something about that!
The purpose of this meditation is to meditate on the preciousness of our human life, and then to meditate on this in light of the advantages of cherishing others.
I began with breathing meditation and it was one of those times when I settled immediately into a very nice, deep and stable concentration on space-like emptiness. I was lovely and I wanted to stay there for the whole session, but I had to move on after a while.
I then thought about how precious my human life is. I have all the conditions I need to learn and practise Dharma, and access to pure teachers who can guide me along the path. I see and talk to so many clever and talented people, but very few of them understand how to be happy in their lives. Only Dharma identifies our problems as coming from our delusions, and only Dharma provides the methods for overcoming our delusions.
I felt that my life was really like the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’. I also remembered the analogy of the blind turtle surfacing with its head passing into a golden yoke floating on the ocean’s surface.
I felt like I had risen from dark depths, and my face had broken the surface of the water – I could see the bright blue sky and water droplets were sparkling in the sunlight as I took in lungfuls of fresh clean air. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in years and years. I felt like I had a fantastic opportunity to use my life. I am alive!
I focused on this feeling for a while.
I then thought about what this means in light of the advantages of cherishing others. It is said that all the happiness in the world comes from wishing others to be happy.
It was immediately clear to me that my precious human life is what gives me the opportunity to cherish others. I imagined my whole life being used to cherish others. It felt like light rays were streaming out of my body towards all other living beings, filling the whole of the universe with cherishing light. It was wonderful, and I remained in that feeling for the rest of the meditation.
Dedication
May all living beings recognise the value of their precious human life, and use this opportunity to cherish others and become enlightened beings for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to always bear in mind that I have a precious human life with all the attributes necessary to learn, contemplate and meditate on Dharma. How lucky are we that understand this!
The purpose of this meditation is to develop the feeling of relying completely upon a qualified spiritual guide, and then to meditate on this feeling in the light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing.
I began the meditation with focusing on dissolving my Guru into my heart and mixing my mind with his. On the basis of this, I developed a very good strong feeling of being one with my Spiritual Guide.
Following this I moved on to the main meditation. I began this stage by thinking about how I need to rely upon my Spiritual Guide throughout my life and in all my activities. My reliance upon him is the root of my spiritual activities and runs through all my actions. He shows me the path to follow, and tells me which actions to engage in and which actions to avoid.
I imagined the light of his wisdom entering into my life, filling my actions with virtue. I imagined my life being dark, and gradually different parts of it becoming filled with light, until the darkness was dispelled and my whole life was filled with his light. I focused on this life filled with light, caused by my reliance and his virtuous actions and intentions. I kept my mind on this and it filled me with a lovely calm, peaceful feeling – my mind mixed with my Guides wisdom and blessings.
After a while of really enjoying this feeling and being inspired by it, I moved on to the next stage.
I thought about what reliance means in light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing. Self-cherishing is the feeling that my happiness and my freedom is the most important thing in the world. My Spiritual Guide shows me how foolish and harmful this attitude really is. He reveals the methods for me to see for myself the disadvantages of self-cherishing. He also teaches me the ways to overcome and finally abandon self-cherishing altogether. With this recognition, I felt the light of my Spiritual Guide’s wisdom dispel the darkness of my mind and heal my mental continuum. I focused on this feeling for the rest of the meditation – which was wonderful.
Dedication
May all living beings find the opportunity to receive perfect spiritual instructions from a qualified Spiritual Guide, and put these instructions into practice for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to keep this feeling of my Spiritual Guide’s wisdom filling my life and guiding all my actions.
At the end of the meditation I made a special determination to try and keep this
The purpose of this meditation is to mix our mind with the ultimate nature of phenomena, and then to meditate on what this means in light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing.
I began with breathing meditation and towards the end when my mind was quite settled, I imagined my mind like a crumpled and folded piece of paper. It slowly unfolded until it was open and cupped, like a wide bowl, and then it opened further until it was completely smooth and flat. This evoked a very calm and expansive feeling of emptiness which I stayed with and enjoyed for a while.
I then thought about the topic of this meditation – the emptiness of phenomena.
When I was in London this week, I took several trips on the Underground train system. At one of the stations we stopped at, I noticed a rather large eye peering in through the window at me. It was part of a face on an advert on the wall outside the train. The eye was from an impressionist painting – a Renoir or similar. As people got off and on the train, I looked at the eye, and noticed how it was made up of different patches of colour and dashes of paint. The dark oval of the pupil. The rough oval of the iris. The touch of white suggesting the reflection of light on the eyeball. The graceful sweeps of black creating the eye itself within the face. Although at first glance the eye clearly appeared as an eye, as I gazed at it, the eye slowly faded and all I could see were the different elements.
I thought about how impressionist paintings are a particularly good example of how elements can be brought together to create the impression of another, single entity.
As I sat on my cushion, I thought about how all phenomena are perceived in the same way. When we look at an object, we see one part of the object at a time – we never see the whole object at once with our eyes. We look over the object, taking in one aspect after another until we can generate a mental construct of the whole object. We then take this mental object to be the ‘real’ object and generate feelings towards it.
We ‘see’ these objects and mistake them for being single, inherently existent objects because of our ignorance. Though this bad mental habit, we ‘see’ the object over and above the parts we actually see with our eyes.
But when we look again, with wisdom, we clearly see that the object we perceive does not exist in the way it appears – when we search for it, it fades and cannot be found.
I thought about this carefully, and it seemed to me that the objects I relate to ‘came into’ my mind through my eyes and I understood that all these things are simply generic images in my mind. As they were part of my mind, it simply did not make any sense to feel anger or attachment to them. At this point, I felt a real sense of freedom and liberation. I felt that everything was peaceful and tranquil – balanced and harmonious. I felt completely free, and I focused on this feeling for a long while. It was lovely.
I then thought about what this means in light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing.
Self-cherishing depends on self-grasping, and the wisdom realising emptiness destroys self-grasping by revealing the ultimate nature of objects. I felt that the cause of all my problems and suffering was fading and disappearing completely. Once again, I felt free and liberated – a beautiful balanced, peaceful and open feeling. How wonderful.
Dedication
May all living beings develop the wisdom realising emptiness, and pass through the door to liberation and enlightenment for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to sustain this realisation that the appearances I perceive are patterns arising from my karma, creating generic images in my mind. I will try to remember that although they have a very convincing conventional nature, in reality they are empty of inherent existence. I will try to sustain the balanced and free feeling in the midst of samsara’s illusions.
The purpose of this meditation is to increase our capacity to meditate deeply on lamrim topics, and then to contemplate what this means in light of the disadvantages of self cherishing.
I began with some breathing meditation, and then moved on to focus on my mind itself, trying to keep everything very still and very stable. I imagined my root guru’s mind, and how completely stable and concentrated it is. I imagined it had the quality of an immovable mountain, completely stable and controlled.
I imagined my mind mixing with his mind, and I felt a complete solidity and stability fill my mind. Following this, I sort of passed through to the other side, and experienced a very light and empty feeling which was, again, stable and solid, but also space-like and endless. I focused on this for a while before moving on.
I then thought about what this means in the light of the disadvantages of self cherishing. The mind of self-cherishing can be overcome by meditation on Lamrim, but only if our experience of Lamrim is profound. To achieve this we need to perfect our concentration, and apply this to Lamrim. With the wish to overcome my own self-cherishing, I returned to my concentration on my mind, and remained on this for the rest of my time.
Dedication
May all living beings gain control over their minds, and through this control, attain the enlightened state of a Buddha.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to keep a focused mind, never far away from the Lamrim minds.
The purpose of this meditation is to try on what it feels like to actually be a Buddha and then to generate the wish to attain this state in this life. Finally we meditate on this in light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing.
I began with some breathing meditation, breathing out my distracting thoughts and breathing in pure inspiring light. When my mind was quite calm, I moved onto the next stage.
I mentally reviewed where I had ‘come from’ in my meditations. I thought about how my kind mothers have so much suffering, and I ‘took’ their suffering from them. I then thought about how they cannot find happiness, and I gave them pure happiness. I mounted these on the breath for a while, and focused on taking and giving.
I have been to London today, and London is a great place to practice taking and giving. It is packed with people, all looking miserable! Roads, tubes, train stations: they are all filled with people to focus on and practise with. I visualised the people I had been practising on today, and practised taking and giving once more in meditation.
After this, I told myself that in order to actually do this for others, I need to become an enlightened being myself. I told myself that now is the time to become an enlightened being, while I have the opportunity. I wondered what it would be like to be a Buddha. I thought that I would abide in the perfection of wisdom, perceiving everything as empty and permeated with complete bliss. I focused on this for a while, and then developed the following thought: ‘I must use my opportunity NOW to become a Buddha’. I kept repeating these words, and I generated a very strong wish that this happen. I focused on this wish for a while.
I then thought about what this means in the light of the disadvantages of self-cherishing. This wish opposes self-cherishing, which is the view that my own happiness and freedom are more important than anyone else’s. The wish to become a Buddha in order to free all living beings from their suffering, and to devote our whole life to their benefit until the last sentient being is released from suffering directly opposes self-cherishing. There is no room for self-cherishing in our mind if we have Bodhichitta! With this in mind, I returned to my meditation on the wish to become a Buddha for the benefit of all.
Dedication
May all living beings find the opportunity to practise the path that leads to liberation and enlightenment, for the benefit of all.
Practice in the Meditation Break
I will try to keep a mind of Bodhichitta throughout the day and night.
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