The Heart of Unconditional Love

by Tulku Thondup

  Because of the power and effects of these life-long positive thoughts and deeds, when the hour of their death arrived, most of these laypeople hardly felt sadness, pain or fear. While dying, many expressed joy at leaving for their long-awaited next destination, for which they had long prepared. They would start to describe their beautiful visions of Buddhas or Buddha pure lands and the soothing sounds of prayers.

  According to the Buddhist teachings, when devout and meritorious meditators die, they behold clouds of enlightened ones such as the Buddha of Loving-Kindness in the sky before them, in the midst of lights of love with music and prayers. They move swiftly and peacefully through the bardo, the intermediate or transitional period between death and rebirth.158 They take rebirth in a Buddha Pure Land of everlasting peace, joy, and wisdom.

  In today’s world, it is becoming harder and harder to find people like this anywhere, inside or outside of Tibet. But when I was growing up, seeing people who led such meaningful lives opened my eyes to the world of true authentic teachings and meditators. These simple people became a great source of inner joy and true understanding for me. Whenever I think about them, I get lost in great wonder.

  In case anyone is wondering, the dying visions of these laypeople were not hallucinations or delusions. They were the result of these people’s transforming their mental habitual tendencies by pacifying conflicting and confused thoughts, healing bruised emotions, and cooling the flames of sensations. The kind of world or phenomena that people encounter after death is a manifestation of the qualities of their mind, of the habitual reflections they built over lifetimes. By the time death arrived, these laypeople were blossoming with the joyful energy of devotion and trust in the Buddha.

  If our mind is full of devotion, trust, and loving-kindness, then what we will see and feel at death will be a world of ultimate joy and love. This transformation can take place in anyone, if they developed a mind of true trust and devotion to the Buddha of Loving-Kindness and if they prayed with the skillful means of devotion from the core of the heart.

  Some people might question whether these laypeople’s experiences were unreal or the result of self-brainwashing. My reply is that, if so, their minds were washed—not by the customary torrent of greed, hatred, and jealousy—but by the blessing stream of loving-kindness, peace, and joy. I would choose the latter over the former any day.

  I would like to add that I have also seen strongly religious devotees, lay and ordained, of non-Buddhist religious traditions. They lived a simple life, content with little; developed enduring faith in the Blessed Ones, the objects of their beliefs; and had strong loving-kindness and compassion for others. Many amazing individuals spend their lives and resources to protect and educate others and serve their essential needs. They pursue no or very few personal mundane gains for themselves. They have often been inspired to their spiritual vocation by some extraordinary teaching or individual who is devoted to loving-kindness, compassion, and trust, just as the Buddha and Buddhist teachings inspire Buddhists.

  Training in the Sixth Perfection

  Once you gain accomplishments in the first three Buddha Stages, you can more confidently accomplish the meditation on wisdom, the Sixth Perfection, which is the essence of the fourth Buddha Stage. Accomplished meditators realize the profound wisdom of the two truths—relative truth through the first five perfections and absolute truth through the sixth perfection. Nagarjuna writes:

  The teachings that are taught by the Buddhas

  Are fully based on the two truths:

  The relative truth of the mundane world

  And the absolute truth of the holy Dharma.

  Those who do not know perfectly

  The divisions of the two truths

  Will not know the profound truth

  Of the teachings of the Buddha.

  Without relying on conventional truth,

  The absolute meaning cannot be taught.

  Without realizing the meaning of absolute truth,

  Nirvana will not be attained.159

  Accomplished meditators train in the views and meditations taught in the high teachings of Mahayana, such as Madhyamaka, Tantra, Mahamudra, and Dzogpa Chenpo. They thereby realize the union of boundless loving-kindness and profound emptiness wisdom—that is, the selflessness or non-existence of what are known as the “three aspects”: subject, agent, and action. That is loving-kindness free from concepts.

  As the ultimate result, these practitioners will attain supreme Buddhahood with the fourfold enlightened bodies and fivefold wisdoms that go beyond the extremes of falling into the suffering of samsara or the mere peace of nirvana. They will enjoy the power of spontaneously fulfilling the needs of infinite beings, whoever may be open to it, while remaining in the absolute nature.

  However, most of us, like me, are still beginners even though we have been meditating for a while. The problem is that we haven’t fully and openly dedicated our mind to it or sincerely and fully blended with our meditation experiences. So until we make real progress in the meditations that we are doing, we must focus on common, elementary meditation trainings—generating positive thoughts and feelings, as in the Outer Buddha Stage. Though dualistic and emotional, these foundational trainings on positive concepts are suitable for us and will help us establish a base of heartfelt spiritual energy. Once these elementary meditation experiences become clearer, deeper, and more stable, we may move to higher stages with ease.

  There are many whose minds are still ordinary in that they can hold rigid dualistic concepts and emotions like hatred and greed. Yet some of these practitioners claim to be adepts of wisdom free from concepts, as taught in the highest teachings in Tantra, Mahamudra, and Dzogpa Chenpo. However, being intellectually proficient in the texts of the highest teachings without any real realization does not make one an adept or qualify one to instruct others in those fields.

  Meditators of Neutral States

  In the West, there are many who approach Buddhism primarily intellectually. In the East, many approach it primarily as a tradition—part of their cultural heritage. Yes, Buddhism contains immensely profound and complex intellectual information. Yes, it is an important cultural tradition in many Eastern civilizations. However, Buddhism’s true gift is that it teaches us to learn and experience the true characteristics and the nature of our mind and the world, as they are. Through meditations like those on loving-kindness, compassion, devotion, and wisdom, Buddhism trains us to improve our mind in how we think, communicate, and act with others and the external world. If our mind becomes wholesome, then our vocal and physical activities will become sources of peace and benefit for ourselves and others. This life will be happier, as will the next. Ultimately, through proper meditation, we will be liberated from the suffering of samsara.

  No matter how much we study the texts, we need to be mindful of our karma in order to progress. We must stay away from unvirtuous acts and thoughts. But we shouldn’t fritter away our lives by engaging only in neutral karmas. Instead, we should exert ourselves in virtuous karmas such as prayer and service.

  Some meditators choose to remain in the absence of awareness. In my experience, these are usually well-educated, high-status achievers. They are often so busy burning both ends of the candle in order to advance their worldly position that they even dream about earning at night. So, understandably, they feel a tremendous sense of relief when someone instructs them, “Just rest in the absence of thoughts.” At last, they can quiet down and let go of their busyness! And since the instruction to do so is given to them by someone whom they consider to be an authority on meditation, they don’t have to feel guilty about slowing down. They are told that doing this is good for their health and mental state. So for these fatigued individuals, having permission to rest without thoughts is new and exciting, something they have rarely tasted.

  In reality, however, this meditation experience is a neutral state. Most of these people are simply taking a break while still in the middle of mundane traffic,
still in the hub of ordinary karmic and mental habitual settings—without having purified, refined, or transcended their mental and emotional afflictions. So when they come out of that break, that trance, they find themselves back at square one, with the same old mundane dilemmas and habits awaiting them. It is like waking up from a wonderful dream only to find oneself back in reality.

  Nevertheless, remaining in neutral thoughts and activities is better than spending one’s life in evil thoughts and deeds, which will cause grave pain. However, spending one’s life in a neutral state is a big waste of the great potential of our most precious human life.

  According to Buddhist teachings, the karmic result of remaining in a neutral state, the mere absence of thoughts, is rebirth in the animal, form or formless realms. We go to the animal realm if our mental habit was ignorance and stupidity. This realm is marked by violence and fear.

  We take rebirth in the formless realms if our habitual thought patterns were marked by ideas like “Space is infinite,” “Consciousness is infinite,” “There is nothing,” or “There is no perception and no absence of perception.” Each of these four thought patterns leads to rebirth in a different subdivision of the formless realms, depending on which subdivision best reflects our habits. For instance, having a habit of thinking “Space is infinite” lands us in the subdivision called “infinite space.”160 In the formless realm, we don’t have gross bodies or forms. We don’t have gross thoughts or emotions. This is due to the past experience of remaining in the absence of thoughts and absence of awareness.

  Absorption in the formless realm can last for eons. Eventually, however, it ends. And when it does, we continue from where we left off—returning to our old thoughts and emotions, and experiencing the results of our other positive or negative past karmas. So taking rebirth in the formless realms is a break, a limbo, but with no merits. It is a diversion from the path of liberation, as there is no awakening of the wisdom of intrinsic awareness or discriminative wisdom. That is why Longchen Rabjam laments for those meditators who value remaining in the absence of thoughts:

  Alas! These animal-like meditators,

  By stopping the perceptions, they remain without any thought.

  Calling this the absolute nature, they become proud.

  If they gain experience in such a state, they will take rebirth in the animal realm.

  Even if they don’t gain much experience in it, they will take rebirth in the form or formless realms.

  They will have no opportunity to get liberation from samsara.161

  As long as we make no effort to transform the mind, we cannot escape the ordinary state of grasping tightly at mental objects—dualistically, emotionally, and sensorily. A merely neutral state in which concepts are temporarily suspended won’t help us progress. As soon as we go back to having concepts again, we will return to the ordinary state of grasping we had before. It is like waking up from the escapism of deep sleep, only to find that the same mundane problems await us. Kamalashila162 writes:

  The assertion “not thinking anything” is a denial of wisdom, the very characteristic of pure discernment. Since the root of pure wisdom is pure discernment, if you reject discernment you are abandoning the wisdom that transcends samsara, as you have cut it from the root.163

  Kamalashila emphasizes the need for discernment in order to realize wisdom—and cut through self-delusion:

  You must understand the holy Dharma teachings about freedom from recollections and freedom from thoughts in the mind. However, these must be preceded by pure discernment because [only] pure discernment frees you from recollections and thoughts; nothing else does.164

  Meditators under Self-Delusion

  Then there are other meditators who believe or act as though they have attained high goals, but whose meditations haven’t really penetrated their minds. Yukhog Chatralwa, a great meditation Master whom I knew in my youth, quoted the following:

  Yidzhin Dzodgrel Padma Karpo says, “These days, [there are those whose mundane] mind and mental events remain untouched no matter what. They have not yet purified their feelings of happiness and unhappiness or the waves of their breathing. Yet they claim to remain in the state of Buddha realization. I promise you—since they haven’t even accomplished any worldly absorption—there is no way they could have transcended the mundane world.”165

  The right way to avoid the risk of falling into a neutral state or self-delusion is to earnestly follow the step-by-step sequence of practices on generating virtuous deeds through the Outer, Inner, and Universal Buddha Stages and awakening of wisdom through the Ultimate Buddha Stage.

  12

  DEDICATIONS AND ASPIRATIONS

  DEDICATION AND ASPIRATION are among the greatest skillful means to multiply the power of meditations. As soon as you complete the Four Buddha Stages, you should lovingly and joyfully dedicate, or give away, your merits to all mother-beings for their happiness now and for their ultimate enlightenment. Dedicate all the merits that you just accumulated in your practice, that you accumulated in the past, and that you will accumulate.

  If dedicating your merits is like giving away seeds to others, then making aspirations is like causing the seeds to ripen in a particular way. You should make aspirations, thinking and saying:

  By the power of the virtuous deeds that we have dedicated as the cause of happiness and enlightenment for all, may all beings’ positive wishes, whatever they are, be fulfilled and may all attain enlightenment, as the result.

  Dedication and aspiration are not ancillary to practice. They are an integral part of the main body of training.

  Dedicating merits and making aspirations have many benefits, according to Buddhism. First, they almost miraculously increase the power of the merits of the virtuous deeds that we dedicated. The more we dedicate and make aspirations with loving-kindness in our heart, the better we serve those whom we are trying to reach with our dedication. The more we benefit others, the more we ourselves benefit.

  Second, dedicating and making aspirations protect the merits from being destroyed by any subsequent unvirtuous deeds or thoughts that we may engage in.

  In fact, dedicating and making aspirations are such an important part of practice that we don’t necessarily need to wait until the end of our meditation session. We can dedicate and aspire every now and then, during the meditation; and we must at least briefly dedicate and aspire whenever we take a short break.

  No matter how brief our thought of loving-kindness— even if we utter only a single mantra with devotion—we should dedicate it as the cause of boundless benefits for infinite mother-beings and rejoice over it. If we could feel joy that we meditated and dedicated it for a golden aspiration, such as serving boundless mother-beings, that will greatly increase the power and quantity of our merits, just as pouring oil on a fire magnifies the blaze. Even if our virtuous deed seems small, if we repeatedly rejoice inwardly over it for days or weeks on end, the merits of this deed will continue to grow like the Mississippi River in the summer, and may even become inexhaustible.

  13

  BENEFITS OF LOVING-KINDNESS MEDITATION

  IT’S HARD TO FATHOM THE BENEFITS for ourselves and others of doing loving-kindness meditations. First, the merits produced by meditating on loving-kindness are virtually inconceivable. They are greater than many other, even highly meritorious trainings. Consider what some of the greatest Masters and scriptures, of Tantra and Sutra, have said about the merits produced by loving-kindness training, starting with the Buddha himself, who said:

  The [merits of] making all kinds of offerings

  To the sublime beings [Buddhas]

  In the millions and billions of pure lands

  Cannot compare with [the merits of]

  One thought of loving-kindness.166

  The Buddha also said:

  O Child of Good Family! The merits of generating loving-kindness for the time it takes to snap one’s fingers in this world is much greater than [the merits] of observing ascetic disciplin
e for hundreds of thousands of years in [the Buddha Pure Land known as] “Adorned by a Thousand Worlds.”167

  When the thought of loving-kindness is multiplied so that it extends to boundless beings, the merits produced are inexhaustible. The Lodrö Mizepe Tenpa sutra records the following dialogue between Shariputra, one of the Buddha’s chief disciples, and another disciple, Lodrö Mizepa:

  [Lodrö Mizepa:] O Shariputra, beings are limitless and the loving-kindness of the bodhisattvas pervades all. O Ascetic Shariputra, do you think the immeasurable meritorious roots that the bodhisattvas created can be exhausted?

  Answer: O Son of Good Family, they cannot be exhausted. Whoever thinks that the merits of loving-kindness can be exhausted must obviously believe that space is finite!168

  Further, if we practice loving-kindness—or any meditation, for that matter—while we are facing difficulties or undergoing hardships, then that will make our merits all the greater.

  Second, loving-kindness purifies our negative emotions. The Buddha said: