The Heart of Unconditional Love
Page 4
From the mala of syllables, a nectar of wisdom and love cascades.34
The lights also emanate from the Buddha’s Pure Land, which is inseparable from his wisdom. Chechog Dondrub Tsal35 explains about the Pure Land:
It is the wisdom-mind of the Buddha
Appearing as the mandala.36
Wisdom-Light
The Pure Land is made of wisdom-light. As Karma Lingpa37 describes: “The palace [of the Buddha Pure Land] is made of five wisdom-lights.”38
In common Buddhist teachings (the Sutra tradition), the Buddha’s blessing lights are like external agents that purify and elevate us, eventually leading us to Buddhahood. In esoteric Buddhist teachings (Tantra), the lights don’t operate as external agents. Rather, by receiving blessing lights, we unite with them, perfecting ourselves as the very body of the Buddha’s wisdom, love, and power. We should choose whichever practice best suits our abilities and training. The Buddha said:
The Buddha fills as many worlds as the number of grains of sand of the Ganges River with lights that come from his body.
Whoever is touched by these lights is assured to attain Full Enlightenment.39
Shantarakshita40 says that the Buddha’s lights heal us and lead us to liberation:
The Supreme Physician [Buddha] heals the sickness of beings.
His complexion is as bright as lapis.
The lights of his body liberate beings.
O King of Healers—to you I pay homage.41
Conveying the tantric understanding of how the blessing lights operate, Pema Ledreltsal writes:
The pure perception of wisdom is seeing things as they dwell in their true nature—suchness.
They are the objects of wisdom.
[All] existents arise as the play of Buddha bodies and wisdom.42
When we receive blessing lights, we experience that every particle of our body and every aspect of our mind is filled with joyful or blissful heat, which is the light of loving-kindness. If we enjoy and remain in that experience, all our unvirtuous thoughts and pain will gradually ease and completely dissolve. Before long, an experience of a new, uncommon blissful heat of loving-kindness will take birth in us and start to grow. “Wisdom-light” is also known as “the natural light of wisdom” and “the radiance of wisdom.”43 It has an absolute and a relative meaning:
Absolute meaning: In its true nature, our mind remains fully open as all-knowing wisdom. Objects remain as wisdom’s radiance itself. In this unity—of our mind and the world (objects)—all remain as openness and ever-radiant. This unity is “wisdom-light.” It is how Buddha and the Buddha Pure Land, Buddha and Buddha blessings, are present in absolute union. This unity transcends all dimension and color. The Trashi Dzeden tantra says:
The awareness [wisdom] is present with great clarity like the five [colored] lights. However, [as it is emptiness,] there are no colors to be distinguished.44
Relative meaning: For most of us, this absolute view is hard to realize. It is easier to approach it through meditations on relative meaning—pure perception. So we must see and feel the Buddha with all-knowing wisdom, the world as his Pure Land, and his blessings as the pure light and nectar emanating from his wisdom.
Ordinarily, our mind is the subject, the grasper; and the gross phenomena that we perceive are the objects. As our mind sees and feels mental objects, dualistic concepts arise, followed by craving and clinging, clashes and conflicts, actions and reactions, resulting in endless cycles of birth and rebirth in suffering.
If, instead, we meditate on pure perception—seeing the Buddha and his Pure Land of light and unconditional love—we will refine our rigid mental concepts into softer, brighter, and more loving and open qualities. One day, we will see and enjoy the world as a pure land of light and love. Eventually, these pure-perception meditations will lead us to perfect the absolute “wisdom-light.”
3
DEVOTION AND TRUST
The Keys to Loving-Kindness
THE TWO KEYS TO DEVELOPING loving-kindness in this book are devotion toward and trust in the Buddha of Loving-Kindness. Devotion in general refers to liking, wanting, yearning, and being inspired by and dedicated to the object of our devotion. In fact, devotion lies at the root of many things we accomplish, because we need to be dedicated in order to succeed. That’s why the root of all virtue is said to be devotion in virtue and the sources of virtue. Shantideva writes:
The Buddha said:
The root of all virtuous deeds
Is devotion.45
In the context of our meditation, devotion is the energy of opening our heart with the joy of being in the Buddha’s presence and wanting or yearning to be in his aura of loving-kindness.
Devotion generally embodies trust and, at the same time, is the means to generate and perfect trust.46 To trust something is to fully know and believe it on the basis of our understanding and experience.
There are different degrees of trust: (1) clear, joyous, or inspirational trust; (2) yearning trust; (3) confident trust; and (4) irreversible trust.47 Jigme Lingpa48 describes these different levels of trust:
If, as soon as you see a teacher or read the scriptures,
The hairs of your body stand straight like trees.
That is joyous clarity, the first trust.
There are also yearning, confident, and irreversible trusts.
However, when you are going for refuge,
You must have trust that is irreversible—that is, even at the cost of your life.49
How to Develop Devotion and Trust
Like any other skill, devotion and trust require commitment and effort to develop. We should start by cultivating devotion. If we have strong devotion in the Buddha, that devotion will eventually turn into perfect trust.
How can we develop devotion? The usual way, according to tradition, is to contemplate the frightening miseries of mundane life versus the joy of liberation. Shantideva writes:
Devotion develops by thinking about the fear of suffering
And the benefits of [liberation].50
However, in the meditations that we are learning here, devotion begins with inspiration. This is a more effortless way, because when we are inspired by something, we like it. Then we want it and yearn for it. And then we get excited by and committed to it.
We then use the four tools (described in chapter 2) to think about, see, and feel the Buddha’s awe-inspiring qualities—his omniscient wisdom, his boundless power, and especially his unconditional love for us and for all beings. We need to feel his presence from the depth of our heart. We should communicate with him. We can pray to him like a thirsty child calling for her mother from the depth of her heart; and we can pray to him with the boundless joy of celebration for being in his loving presence—both of which we do in the Outer Buddha Stage. Then, after a while, whenever we remember him, we will feel his qualities more vividly and our heart will be filled with joy and longing for him and his qualities.
How can we develop trust? Trust grows as we experience the benefits of meditation and find the Buddha inside and outside of us. Guru Rinpoche said:
Trust will develop when you see the benefits.51
So we need to continue to spend “quality time” with the Buddha, dwelling in his extraordinary qualities and receiving and experiencing his blessings again and again. Je Tsongkhapa writes:
If, through various methods, you remember the merits of the Buddha, trust will be developed in many ways. If you remember his merits again and again, the energy of your trust will become stronger and more durable.52
Jigme Lingpa mentions remembering the Three Jewels—the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—as one of the four ways to develop trust:
There are four causes of developing trust—
Relying on a holy person(s),
Associating with holy friends,
Remembering the Three Jewels, and
Contemplating the faults and meaninglessness of samsara.53
The well-known Buddhist scholar D. T.
Suzuki explains the effects of saying prayers from the heart, in his discussion of the Pure Land tradition as it is practiced in East Asia. He writes that “love and compassion are experienced when namu-amida-butsu is pronounced with singleness of heart.”54 (This is the prayer to the Buddha of Infinite Light in Japanese.)
Eventually, by the power of repeatedly praying to the Buddha with one-pointed devotion and trust, our mind will fill with total confidence and trust whenever we remember him and his loving-kindness. Our heart fills with limitless joy and bliss, and our body fills with the healing warmth of blissful heat. This experience opens our heart and karmic doors as wide as the limitless sky when the clouds disperse. The experience further strengthens and amplifies our trust and confidence in the Buddha and his unconditional love from the depth and wholeness of our mind. These experiences stimulate energy waves of ever-greater joy that infuse every aspect of our mind, and waves of blissfulness that infuse every corner of every particle of our body. The powerful energy of this kind of devotion causes every particle of our body and every thought to become boundlessly open and totally free, like the immensely open clear sky.
A classic example of great devotion is the encounter between Tagtu Ngu, the bodhisattva known as “Ever Weeping,” and the great Master Chöphag, the Noble One. Shakyamuni Buddha retells what Tagtu Ngu said about Chöphag.55
As soon as I saw the Noble One teaching Dharma, I felt that same intense bliss that a monk experiences when he enters into the first stage of meditative absorption.56
Devotion and trust are self-reinforcing. As they fill our minds, we become increasingly aware of the flood of Buddha blessings and loving-kindness permeating our mind and body, and transforming everything into a universe of devotion, wishing happiness and enlightenment for all. It is just as when we open the doors and windows to our room, and the sunlight floods in. This makes it easy for us to develop even stronger trust and many other virtues. Longchen Rabjam57 writes:
The nature of trust is like a fertile land.
It is the ground of Dharma, the cause of virtues flourishing.58
How to Deal with Doubt and Uncertainty
Sometimes we may face doubt, or feel uncertain and hesitant. This confusion is rooted in our dualistic grasping at “self” and grasping at unwholesome things. The Buddha’s real form cannot be perceived by dualistic eyes or touched by physical senses. We have to find a way to ease our doubts and hesitations and find reasons to trust, believe in, and appreciate the Buddha.
If we are not sure that the Buddha can really help us, we should remember that many followers have enjoyed his blessings and presence and had their needs fulfilled by his enlightened actions. We also need to contemplate his qualities. He has all the qualities that we can rely on, appreciate, love, and know will benefit us. So there is no reason to entertain doubts about his trustworthiness and power to help us.
If we have doubts about the Buddha’s very existence, we should first remember that whatever our mind sees and thinks, that is our reality. If we see someone as a person of peace and joy, we will receive benefits accordingly. So even if there were no Buddha, we would still benefit from believing in him. And if there is a Buddha, we certainly benefit. So we should try to appreciate and contemplate him in order to benefit ourselves, as millions of other people do and have done.
Third, we must remember that the Buddha is equated with the “absolute truth”—the true nature and universal goodness. Even if we do not believe in the Buddha according to the way he is traditionally depicted, we can probably believe in universal goodness and unconditional love. If so, we should see, feel, and experience these qualities until we have a spiritual experience of becoming intimate with them. Then we should dwell in that experience. That’s how to establish trust. We can understand the Buddha as being that universal pure nature and those pure qualities. So in the end, it is up to us to acquire trust and obtain benefits.
As our trust and devotion grow, they dissolve all the doubts and questions of our wavering, flickering, wary minds without a trace. It will feel like such a relief, such freedom.
While every being has Buddha mind, for beginners like me it is essential to have a blessed presence with enlightened qualities like the Buddha of Loving-Kindness as the object of devotion and trust, rather than an ordinary person with mundane qualities. Because our minds do not yet have the irreversible force of pure perception, we could easily become attracted to and grasp at the mundane qualities of ordinary people or objects. This would lead to a host of negative emotions such as attachment, hatred, disappointment, confusion, and hurt. We’d end up angry and sad, and would fail to fulfill our goals.
On the other hand, relying on a Buddha and his qualities will never be a cause for disappointment or sadness. The Buddha will never abandon us and will never change. All we need to do is turn our mind to him, and there he is. When our hearts open to the Buddha with trust and devotion, his presence and blessings will be in and with us wherever we are, whatever we are doing—like space, which never leaves us. He will always be there, returning our loving gaze with unconditional love, the ever-present source of peace and joy. Just knowing that we are in his presence will fill us with joy and loving-kindness.
The very instant our mind fills with the feeling of the Buddha’s love, it transforms into a mind of love, peace, and joy. Then how could we possibly feel unhappy or doubtful? All we need to do is remember to look at him and enjoy his qualities with an open mind, without grasping at him or being attached to him. Then his presence will lead us from happiness to happiness.
The Results of Devotion and Trust
Having devotion and trust produces enormous virtue, peace, and joy within us. It also sparks the wish to serve infinite beings with immense dynamism, to ease their suffering and help them attain enlightenment. Just as the warmth of the sunlight causes infinite flowers on the earth to blossom simultaneously, so does the heat of devotion to the Buddha of Loving-Kindness cause us to instantly and spontaneously generate a strong, heartfelt thought of wishing joy for all.
If we keep remembering the Buddha and his loving-kindness with devotion and trust, we will be guided by him all the time and will develop bodhichitta. The Buddha said:
Whoever has trust in the Buddha and in the Buddha’s teachings
Has trust in the deeds of the offspring of the Buddha
And has trust in the supreme bodhichitta.
They will develop the Mind of the Great Beings [bodhichitta].59
Having devotion and trust in the Buddha and his loving-kindness results in attaining incomparable peace. The Buddha said:
Monks who maintain loving-kindness and
Have trust in the teachings of the Buddha Will attain a state of peace
That is inconceivable.60
Devotion and trust in the Buddha will lead to liberation. The Buddha said:
While walking, sitting, standing, or sleeping,
Whoever remembers the moon-like Buddha,
The Buddha will be present in front of that person.
The Buddha will cause him or her to attain nirvana.61
The power of trust and devotion will ultimately awaken in us enlightened mind, unconditional love, and the realization of suchness, the absolute nature of our mind. The Buddha said:
Having fully developed everlasting trust, a clear mind, and devotion
In all the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Noble Ones,
He who makes offerings to the teacher with respect
Will develop the enlightened mind.
Whoever has trust in the Buddha and the Buddha’s teaching, and
Whoever has trust in the activities of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas,
Will enjoy confidence in unexcelled enlightenment.
The mind of great beings will take birth in them. . . .
Trust causes your mind to be fully inspired by the Dharma.
Trust elevates your wisdom and qualities.
Trust shows you Buddhahood and facilitates your attaining
it. . . .
Those who have vast trust
Will always be blessed by the Buddha.
In those who are blessed by the Buddha,
Bodhichitta will take birth. . . .
Whoever enjoys unshakable remembrance of the Buddha
Will always see inconceivable numbers of Buddhas.62
Maitreya-natha also says:
The spontaneously present ultimate truth
Can be realized through trust alone.
If you don’t have the eyes [of trust],