You won’t even see the body of the sun, radiant with light.63
Again, Maitreya-natha says:
If you meditate on virtuous qualities such as trust,
The Fully Enlightened One will appear in your mind
With noble signs and excellent marks. . . .
Beings will witness
The display of various miracles—
The great deeds and splendors [of the Buddha].
Having seen such display, enthusiasts
Will designate him as the very Buddha.64
John Blofeld, a British writer on Asian religion, gives a modern account of the power of such trust.65 A Taiwan-ese official confessed to Blofeld that he was once driven to act on an impulse to kill his abusive stepmother. But when she saw him approach, she prayed aloud to Kuan Yin, the Buddha of Loving Kindness in female form. The man, his hands raised to attack, found himself suddenly paralyzed. He couldn’t even blink. After the incident, the man realized that his stepmother had been saved by her absolute conviction in Kuan Yin, who had the power to protect all beings, no matter how malicious. He also realized that, although he had had no faith in Kuan Yin at the time, she had saved him from the sin of murder. He became her devotee. The stepmother, for her part, stopped being cruel from that point on and became a much kinder person.
So it is clear that we need to grow in trust and devotion. The Outer Buddha Stage builds that foundation. The remaining three Buddha Stages increasingly deepen devotion and trust until we awaken to our fullest human potential—realizing the absolute nature.
The benefits we receive from the Four Stages of meditation are commensurate with our level of trust and devotion. Having no devotion or trust doesn’t mean that the Buddha’s blessings are not with us. It just means that we are not receptive to him and have a hard time acknowledging and receiving his blessings. The Buddha said:
In the minds of people who have no trust
Virtuous Dharma will not take place—
Like green shoots from burnt seeds.66
We are propelled on the path by the fervor of our devotion. It causes our mind to blossom boundlessly and our body to fill with blissful heat. We feel compelled to devote every aspect of our mind to the Buddha. Our longing to commune with him pushes us to awaken to the unity of our mind with his, and to realize the true nature of our own mind and the ultimate pure nature of all, which is enlightenment. The more we see his enlightened qualities, the stronger our devotion and trust, and the more quickly we arrive at our ultimate goal, enlightenment.
4
THE ESSENCE OF LOVING-KINDNESS
LOVING-KINDNESS IS THE ESSENCE and nature of the whole world and of every being. To see and experience this is to realize who we are. We can all observe that, if someone is in a quiet, undisturbed place—for example, in nature— he or she will become more peaceful. The more peaceful that person becomes, the more joyful, wise, and helpful they will be to others. That is a clue that our human nature in its normal, undisturbed state is not violent or harmful, but loving.
If we could reach and express our own loving nature, we wouldn’t merely be enjoying a wonderful state. We would be opening our heart and body, and the hearts and bodies of every receptive being, with the energy of the joy of loving-kindness. All of our expressions would become a source of illumination of peace and joy to the world.
In the same way that olive oil is the essence of the olive fruit, loving-kindness is the heart of human purity. So to awaken our own loving-kindness and offer such a great feast to all is the true potential and meaning of every being.
However, although a loving heart is our birthright, it won’t necessarily shine forth suddenly unless we make an effort. It unfortunately becomes a stranger when we become submerged in our daily struggles and emotions. So we need to work hard to uncover it through meditation and mental and physical dedication.
It is one of the many paradoxes of spiritual life that generating loving-kindness toward others is one of the fastest ways to make ourselves happy. The Buddha said:
If you meditate on loving-kindness
And love all kin and friends
And all the forces of the elements,
Your happiness will greatly increase.67
With loving-kindness, we become joyful and make many merits—the positive effects of the practice of virtuous thoughts and deeds, which become the seeds of future happiness. The Buddha said:
If you meditate on compassion and loving-kindness
Toward relatives, friends, and spirit beings,
The experience of joy greatly increases in you.
If you don’t harbor any hatred for any being,
But only [have] loving-kindness, then your deeds become virtuous.
If you have compassion in your mind toward all beings
You will generate great merits as the Noble Ones did.68
But meditating on loving-kindness does so much more. It leads us to the highest states of realization, for loving-kindness is at the heart of high meditations such as “emptiness,” which is the unbounded, nondual, and fully awakened state of openness. The more we train ourselves to wish joy for others, the more we loosen the tightening rope of our mind’s grasping at “self” and selfish attitudes. As that happens, our negative emotions, like attachment and hatred, will subside. And the walls that we habitually erect between self and other, between “us” and “them,” between this and that, will erode, bringing us closer and closer to the true nature that we all share.
The true realization of emptiness entails realizing emptiness with the essence of compassion and loving-kindness. The Third Dodrupchen explains:
Compassion with the essence of emptiness means compassion that is free from concepts.69
Aspiration and Practice: The Two Levels of Generating Loving-Kindness
Bodhichitta is the heart of both the path and goal of Mahayana Buddhism. Loving-kindness—wishing joy and enlightenment for all—is an integral part of that bodhichitta. There are two stages of bodhichitta: absolute bodhichitta, which is beyond concepts, and relative bodhichitta, where we still have concepts. In order to realize absolute bodhichitta, we need to practice relative bodhichitta.
There are two levels of relative bodhichitta: aspirational and engaged. Aspirational bodhichitta is about cultivating the wish, the deep desire, that all beings be happy and enlightened. Engaged bodhichitta is about putting that aspiration into practice by serving others practically, physically, verbally, and spiritually. This can include giving alms, making offerings, and teaching Dharma as well as engaging in meditations and prayers on loving-kindness, devotion, and wisdom for the sake of others. Shantideva writes:
Bodhichitta can be condensed into two:
The “aspirational” aspect of bodhichitta and
The “engaged” aspect of bodhichitta.
The difference is like that between wishing to travel and actually traveling.70
Shantideva beautifully explains the merits of these two aspects of bodhichitta:
The bodhichitta of aspiration
Produces great fruits while living in the world,
But not as much as engaged bodhichitta does,
Which produces merits unceasingly. When you have developed
[Engaged] bodhichitta
For liberating infinite beings
In your mind irreversibly,
From then on, even if you are sleeping or careless,
The stream of merits progresses ceaselessly
To the extent of space. . . .
If even the mere thought of benefiting a person
Is superior to making offerings to the Buddha,
Then there can be no question about
Striving to benefit all beings without remainder. . . .
While other virtuous deeds are like plantain trees—
Which perish after bearing fruit—
Bodhichitta always
Expands after bearing fruits. . . .
If they develop bodhichitta,
From
that moment, the very beings fettered in samsara
Will become known as the children of the Buddha.71
Suggesting how important it is to develop bodhichitta, Patrul Rinpoche makes earnest aspirations for it:
If you have bodhichitta, that is all you need for attaining Buddhahood.
If you don’t have it, you can’t attain enlightenment.
May I develop the unmistaken seed of attaining Buddhahood—
Pure bodhichitta.
May bodhichitta progress higher and higher.
May I never forget bodhichitta in my successive lives.
May I train in the activities of the bodhisattvas
By meditating on bodhichitta again and again.72
Infinite Beings Have Been Our Mothers in Our Past Lives
In the beginning, it can sometimes be hard to open our warm hearts even to some of our loved ones, let alone strangers. But if we don’t have that warmheartedness, we won’t be able to really help them or even have a genuine smile on our face. The important thing, according to the teachings, is to remember that those we meet are not, in fact, strangers. Our encounters with “unknown” people are not coincidental. They are all the very closely connected loved ones of our past.
Buddhism teaches that every single being in the universe, down to the tiniest insect, was our loving mother in our past lives. The number of these mother-beings is without measure. The Buddha said:
As limitless as the extent of space, So are beings limitless.73
When these so-called strangers were our mother, they gave birth to us and cared for us as their beloved child with unconditional love, making great sacrifices for us, as a mother bird does with her little ones, watching over, feeding, and protecting them even at the cost of her own life. Each being has loved us this way. So we owe them a huge debt of gratitude, and must meditate on feeling and recognizing every being as our present loving mother.
Every mother-being wants to be happy, just as a thirst-tormented person wants water. Most beings, however, have no idea how to secure happiness. Confused, they grasp at anything that they think will be rewarding. But they go about it in the wrong way—through grasping, attachment, obsession, or aggression. At best, they are chasing rainbows. At worst, they end up hurting themselves, like someone who tries to lick honey off the sharp edge of a knife.
Since, fortunately, we are on the right path in this life and understand the true causes of happiness, we owe it to all our dear mother-beings to joyfully take responsibility for bringing them everlasting happiness and Buddhahood without leaving anyone behind. As Pandita Padma Wangchen74 says:
Then we must practice what causes benefits and happiness [for all].75
We must be ready to forge ahead on their behalf and bear any hardship or lack of gratitude that we may encounter.
If we could extend loving-kindness to all infinite mother-beings in the universe, we would have inconceivably vast loving-kindness and create immeasurable merits. The Buddha said:
The realm of beings is boundless. It is inexhaustible. So, too, the loving-kindness meditation of the bodhisattvas is boundless. It is inexhaustible. Since beings are as limitless as space, therefore the loving-kindness of those superior beings [bodhisattvas] is inexhaustible.76
Wishing for Beings’ Happiness Alone versus Wishing for Both Their Happiness and Their Enlightenment
There is a difference between wishing our mother-beings happiness alone, and wishing them both happiness and full enlightenment. The former is called a “virtuous attitude.”77 Training in it will bring us happiness and rebirth in celestial realms. By itself, however, that won’t lead to the attainment of liberation or Buddhahood. The reason is that it lacks thoughts of renunciation, the development of bodhichitta, the realization of the view of emptiness, and realization of the absence of “self.”
By contrast, wishing others both happiness and full enlightenment is called a “boundless attitude.”78 This is loving-kindness, one of “four boundless attitudes” that Mahayana Buddhism urges us to train in. The other three are compassion (the wish that no one should suffer or be separated from joy); sympathetic joy (rejoicing in the happiness of others); and equanimity (wishing well toward all beings equally). Training in loving-kindness as a boundless attitude leads to the development of bodhichitta, which in turn leads to Buddhahood.
As Patrul Rinpoche writes:
The four boundless attitudes are the unmistaken causes of developing bodhichitta.79
Importantly, if we develop boundless loving-kindness, then the other three boundless attitudes will easily germinate in our mind.
Explaining the distinction between “living a pious life” (developing the four virtuous attitudes) and nurturing boundless attitudes, Longchen Rabjam writes:
If they [the trainings] are not integrated with the path of liberation from samsara,
Then they are called the four ways of “living a pious life” that cause [rebirth in] samsara.
If they are integrated with the path of peace [enlightenment],
Then they are called “the four boundless [attitudes]” that will take one beyond the ocean of samsara.80
This distinction between wishing only happiness and wishing both happiness and enlightenment is made in the sutras as well. One sutra says:
The four aspirations, such as loving-kindness, that are not integrated with bodhichitta cause only worldly happiness. They are called the “four ways of living a pious life” [four virtuous attitudes]. The four aspirations that are integrated with bodhichitta cause nirvana. They are called the “four boundless attitudes.”81
So whatever Dharma practice we do, we should do with the four boundless attitudes—with the aspiration for all beings to attain happiness and enlightenment.
We can never be too advanced to practice the four boundless attitudes. As beginners, we practice them in order to learn how to generate them. As more advanced students, we practice them in order to strengthen them. We should study important works on them, such as Tsemezhi Gyacher Drelwa (The Explanation of the Four Boundless Attitudes) by Buddhagupta.82
All this might sound complex, but according to great meditation Masters, the four boundless attitudes can be condensed into simply having good thoughts and a good attitude.83
So, thinking about our infinite mother-beings who are deprived of happiness and enlightenment, we should wish: “May all mother-beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness for the time being, and may they all ultimately attain full enlightenment, the supreme happiness. I will dedicate my life to bringing them happiness and enlightenment.” Or we could wish: “May I attain enlightenment so that I can bring happiness and enlightenment to all mother-beings through my enlightened power.” We could also say this popular Tibetan Buddhist prayer, which captures the aspirations of the four boundless attitudes:
May all beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness.
May they be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May they never be separated from the supreme happiness that is free from suffering.
May they remain in the mind of boundless equanimity free from both attachment to kin and hatred of foes.84
After generating such aspirations, we must put that wish into practice by pursuing spiritual trainings and serving others’ needs with complete commitment. This training embodies the development of both loving-kindness and bodhichitta. Maitreya-natha says:
Bodhichitta is the development of the wish to attain full enlightenment
For the benefit of others.85
The Third Dodrupchen writes:
The meaning of developing bodhichitta in one’s mind is developing the uncontrived wish to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.86
There are successively higher stages of loving-kindness attainments that can be reached. Beginners can attain levels of loving-kindness consistent with the path of accumulation and the path of application (the first two of the “five paths”). This involves developing loving-kindness by se
eing every being as our mother.
More advanced meditators can reach levels of loving-kindness that accord with the first through seventh stages of the tenfold bodhisattva path. This entails developing loving-kindness with reference to the nature of phenomena,87 by wishing that all beings who haven’t yet realized the nature of phenomena, realize it.
Even more advanced students can attain levels of loving-kindness consistent with the three pure stages—that is, the eighth, ninth, and tenth stages of the Tenfold Bodhisattva Stages. The practice here is in loving-kindness free from concepts. This is the ultimate (or absolute) bodhichitta88 free from elaborations.89 It is the training in the spontaneously accomplished loving-kindness free from thoughts.
The Heart of Unconditional Love Page 5