Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness

by Jampa Tegchok

  Total freedom from attachment comes only with meditation on emptiness. Meditating on impermanence, the foul nature of the body, and duhkha are preliminaries that are definitely necessary for meditation on emptiness to be successful.

  171.Hunting is the terrible cause

  of a short life, fear, and suffering,

  as well as rebirth in the hells.

  Therefore, always firmly refrain from killing.

  Give Up Killing

  Since another cause for lower rebirth is killing, you should give up fishing, hunting, and any other means of trapping and killing animals, whether for food or sport. The ripening result from killing is rebirth in the lower realms. Should you finally manage to find freedom from the lower realms and be born as a human being, you will have to experience the results similar to the cause in terms of your experience: you will have a short life, will encounter terrifying situations, and will be fearful, sometimes for no reason. The result similar to the cause in terms of your habitual behavior is being attracted to killing and then actually killing others again. To avoid these dreadful consequences, make a firm decision to refrain from killing.

  Although we may not go hunting or fishing, Nagarjuna still encourages us to treat animals and our natural environment with care. Some rulers are cruel not only to citizens but also to the animals in the forests and seas, killing them and destroying their habitat. Nagarjuna speaks adamantly against such behavior. In modern times, he would encourage us to care for other species and our global environment so that all beings living on the planet would be safe.

  172.Like a snake all smeared with filth,

  poison dripping from its fangs,

  despicable indeed is the one

  on account of whom others feel terror.

  Give Up Making Others Afraid

  If we saw a poisonous snake whose body was smeared with filth and whose fangs and tongue were dripping with poison, we would become afraid and flee. This is how our prey feels when we hunt and trap them, and how other human beings feel when we intimidate, menace, or brutalize them either physically or verbally. Terrorizing others like this is a despicable act, one we should definitely give up. It is especially contemptible when someone relishes doing it.

  Some people confuse fear and respect. People acquiescing to our coercion because they’re afraid of us is not the same as their respecting us because they truly admire our good qualities and abilities. People who fear us do not support us, while those whose respect we have earned are true friends.

  173.When a great rain cloud appears,

  farmers experience much joy;

  excellent in this way is the one

  on account of whom beings feel joy.

  Make Others Happy

  When clouds appear and rain falls, farmers are extremely delighted because this is just what their crops need. Here Nagarjuna counsels the king to put effort into doing what benefits others and makes them happy. Then the people in the kingdom will remember his kindness and feel happy when they see him.

  We should not only abandon actions that cause others fear but also act in ways that bring them happiness. Of course, that doesn’t mean doing nonvirtuous actions that some confused people may feel happy about. Rather, motivated by kindness, we should focus on doing virtuous actions that bring joy to others’ hearts. Acting like this will bring us happiness too — we will have no regrets when we die and will gain self-confidence, knowing that our virtuous actions have a positive impact on the lives of others.

  174a.Therefore, refrain from what is not Dharma.

  Heedfully practice the Dharma.

  Here Nagarjuna sums up how to practice Dharma and abandon what is contrary to Dharma. He has pointed out behavior that damages ourselves and others and provided many reasons to abandon destructive actions and adopt constructive ones. He doesn’t simply tell us what to do and not do — he provides explanations for everything he says. If we think about these reasons, his advice will make sense to us and will be easy to follow.

  Nagarjuna directly addresses the king, but indirectly he speaks to all of us who are his followers. He gave so much advice to the king because in those days, there were no democratically elected governments, and kings wielded power. By positively influencing a person who has worldly power, Nagarjuna will benefit the entire society. When the king becomes disciplined, subdued, and benevolent, he will make Dharma-based laws and codes of conduct for his people. Then when the populace follows these laws, they will find happiness. The kingdom will be harmonious and the citizens will create virtuous karma.

  PRACTICE THE CAUSES OF THE THIRTY-TWO SIGNS OF A BUDDHA

  Since this is an interwoven explanation, Nagarjuna now returns to the topic of the causes and effects of highest good. Specifically, he describes the causes of the thirty-two signs of a special human being that appear on a buddha’s body.26 The principal causes of these signs are the general causes for full awakening — the collections of merit and wisdom, and the integration of the method and wisdom aspects of the path. In addition, each of the thirty-two signs has its own specific cause, which is an activity we can practice now.

  174b.If you and the world

  wish to attain unexcelled awakening,

  175.its roots are bodhichitta

  that is as firm as the king of mountains,

  compassion that is as vast as space,

  and wisdom that relies not on duality.

  The Three Principal Causes of Awakening

  Here, you refers to the king and the world refers to all the sentient beings wandering in cyclic existence. To attain the peerless awakening of a buddha, everyone must cultivate the three principal causes: (1) conventional bodhichitta, the primary mind with two aspirations — to work for the benefit of all sentient beings and to attain full awakening in order to do so most effectively, (2) compassion — the cause of bodhichitta — that extends impartially to each and every sentient being as far as the limits of space, and (3) wisdom that relies not on duality — wisdom not entangled with the two extremes of absolutism and nihilism.

  In the homage in his Supplement, Chandrakirti mentions these “three factors indicated on this occasion” — bodhichitta, compassion, and wisdom free from the two extremes — and then extensively explains them. He draws on the Precious Garland as the source for the homage, which is quoted frequently in Tibetan Buddhist literature.

  Generating bodhichitta depends on first generating great compassion, the wish for all sentient beings to be free from all duhkha and its causes. Generating compassion, in turn, depends on two factors: meditating on sentient beings’ duhkha such that you feel it is unbearable, and cultivating affectionate love for sentient beings, primarily by remembering their kindness to you in the past, present, and future. There are two principal ways to generate compassion and bodhichitta: the seven-point cause-and-effect instruction and equalizing and exchanging self with others. We won’t go into these now — you can learn them from the lamrim teachings.27 Generating the wisdom free from the two extremes depends on meditating on emptiness as explained in the first chapter of Precious Garland as well as in other Madhyamaka texts. Together, these three are said to be the cause for a bodhisattva.

  You may wonder, “How can bodhichitta be a cause of a bodhisattva, since someone becomes a bodhisattva and enters the universal vehicle path of accumulation at the same time she generates uncontrived bodhichitta in her mindstream?”

  Here we must differentiate “bodhichitta like sugarcane bark” and actual bodhichitta. The two have a similar referent — full awakening. They also have a similar aspect — the aspiration to attain full awakening. Both of them want to benefit all sentient beings. They differ in that bodhichitta like sugarcane bark is contrived; it doesn’t arise spontaneously in your mind. You must cultivate it with effort by reviewing the steps of either of the two methods for generating bodhichitta. On the other hand, actual bodhichitta is uncontrived and effortless. It is a natural response to seeing or thinking about a sentient being. Bodhichitta
like sugarcane bark is like chewing a piece of sugarcane bark. It is sweet, but its sweetness is nothing compared to biting into the actual sugarcane. Similarly, contrived bodhichitta is wonderful, but it can’t be compared to the magnificence of actual bodhichitta.

  Before generating actual bodhichitta, the contrived bodhichitta in your mindstream is bodhichitta like sugarcane bark. You already have great compassion and are just about to generate uncontrived bodhichitta. This bodhichitta like sugarcane bark is the cause of a bodhisattva.

  In the Supplement, Chandrakirti says that hearers and solitary realizers are born or produced from the buddhas, meaning that they arise from the speech of the buddhas. By the Buddha coming into this world and turning the wheel of Dharma of the four truths of the aryas and dependent origination, those wishing to attain hearers’ awakening listen to the teachings and those wishing to attain solitary realizers’ awakening practice the teachings. They thereby enter their respective vehicles according to their aspiration. By practicing the methods the Buddha teaches to those disciples, they will complete their paths and attain arhatship.

  Buddhas, in turn, arise from bodhisattvas, because before attaining full awakening they were bodhisattvas who practiced the universal vehicle. They entered that path by completing the three principal causes: bodhichitta, great compassion, and wisdom free from the two extremes. We could also say that a buddha arises in dependence on the bodhisattvas who care for and teach her the Dharma while she is still on the path.

  Without a doubt the wisdom free of the two extremes is an essential cause for full awakening, because it is the agent that actually uproots the afflictions, their seeds, and their imprints so that they can never return again. You may wonder, “Why is that wisdom said to be a cause of a bodhisattva when hearers and solitary realizers also cultivate and gain that same wisdom? Furthermore, has a new bodhisattva necessarily realized emptiness?”

  Not all new bodhisattvas have realized emptiness. There are two kinds of bodhisattvas — sharp faculty bodhisattvas and modest faculty bodhisattvas. Modest faculty bodhisattvas are followers by faith — they practice what the Buddha taught principally due to faith in him. These individuals first generate bodhichitta and afterward generate the wisdom realizing emptiness. Since they gain the wisdom realizing emptiness after having become bodhisattvas, wisdom is not a cause for modest faculty bodhisattvas.

  In contrast, sharp faculty bodhisattvas first generate the wisdom realizing emptiness and afterward generate bodhichitta. So the “three factors explained on this occasion” are the causes of only sharp faculty bodhisattvas.

  Someone may then ask, “How can new bodhisattvas have wisdom that does not rely on duality if ‘nonduality’ means the lack of appearance of subject and object in aryas’ meditative equipoise on emptiness?” Here duality doesn’t refer to the appearance of subject and object — rather “the two” that it is free from are absolutism and nihilism. Thus the wisdom that is a cause for sharp faculty bodhisattvas is an inferential realization of emptiness that is free from the two extremes. Sharp faculty bodhisattvas attain this before entering the bodhisattva path.

  These bodhisattvas are called “sharp faculty” because before making the commitment to attain full awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings, they want to make sure that it is possible to do so. To gain certainty about this entails understanding that it is possible to eliminate all defilements, their seeds, and their imprints from the mindstream forever. This, in turn, depends on understanding that the conceived object of true-grasping does not exist at all. The wisdom that realizes its nonexistence can eliminate true-grasping. When the trunk of true-grasping is uprooted, all the afflictions, which are its branches, also die, and rebirth in cyclic existence ends. This wisdom also has the power to eliminate the cognitive obscurations that prevent full awakening. Thus by gaining a conceptual or inferential realization of emptiness by generating nondual wisdom, that person gains confidence that attaining full awakening is possible. He or she then cultivates bodhichitta and enters the universal vehicle path of accumulation.

  Some hearers and solitary realizers have sharp faculties and some have modest faculties. They cultivate the same wisdom as bodhisattvas; however, because they aspire for hearers’ or solitary realizers’ awakening and do not generate bodhichitta, they enter their own vehicles when they have a stable determination to be free from cyclic existence and a firm determination to attain arhatship.

  All the causes for full awakening can be subsumed into method and wisdom and also into the collections of merit and wisdom. Great compassion and bodhichitta are included in method and through practicing the first three perfections — generosity, ethical conduct, fortitude — with that motivation, bodhisattvas build up their collection of merit. Wisdom free of the two extremes and the aryas’ meditative equipoise on emptiness build up their collection of wisdom.

  Alternatively, we can describe the path to full awakening in terms of the practice of the two truths, conventional and ultimate. In that case, compassion and conventional bodhichitta are included in the practice of conventional truth. The wisdom realizing emptiness and ultimate bodhichitta are included in the practice of ultimate truth.

  Someone asks, “Why are there three causes of bodhisattvas, when one of them — great compassion — is a cause of bodhichitta, which, in turn, is a cause for a bodhisattva?” We could say there are only two causes of a bodhisattva, but great compassion is so important that it is mentioned separately. Compassion is important in the beginning of our practice, because with it we enter the bodhisattva path. In the middle, it stimulates us to engage in the bodhisattva deeds and fulfill the collection of merit. And in the end, when we have become a buddha, great compassion makes us effortlessly turn the wheel of Dharma by teaching the Dharma to sentient beings according to their dispositions and interests. Thus at all stages of our practice, meditating on great compassion is crucial. Even if we have developed bodhichitta, if we don’t continue to meditate on compassion, there is danger of losing our bodhichitta on the initial level of the bodhisattva path and falling to the extreme of personal peace.

  To summarize, if you and other beings wandering in cyclic existence want to attain the state of peerless awakening, then as ordinary beings you must emphasize these three practices, enter the bodhisattva path, and continue to practice them well until you have completed the collections of merit and wisdom and become a fully awakened buddha.

  176.Great King, listen now to the way

  that your body will be adorned

  with the thirty-two distinct signs

  that indicate a great being.

  Asking the King to Listen

  Nagarjuna tells the king, “Respected king, if you wish to attain a body that is adorned with the thirty-two signs and the eighty marks of a great being, pay attention to what follows, for I will explain their causes.”

  Bodhichitta is the uncontrived wish to attain peerless awakening — the state of a buddha — in order to benefit all beings. In this context, buddha refers to the four buddha bodies — the two truth bodies and the two form bodies. The two truth bodies are the nature truth body and the wisdom truth body. The two form bodies — the enjoyment body and the emanation body — are adorned with thirty-two signs and eighty marks indicative of a great person. Bodhisattvas at the last moment of the bodhisattva path will attain buddhahood in the next moment, at which time they will simultaneously attain the four buddha bodies.

  Sentient beings cannot see the truth bodies, as they are formless. Only aryas can see an enjoyment body in a pure land. Ordinary beings with great merit are able to see the signs and marks of a supreme emanation body; many people who lived at the time of the Buddha saw his supreme emanation body with its signs and marks.

  A bodhisattva on the tenth ground has a mental body — a body in the nature of mind — that is adorned with the thirty-two signs, although they are not exactly the same as those of a buddha. When this bodhisattva becomes a buddha, his or her mental body becomes the enj
oyment body of the new buddha, and from it manifest many emanation bodies that appear throughout the universe to work for the welfare of sentient beings and lead them on the path to buddhahood. His mind becomes the wisdom truth body — the omniscient mind of a buddha. The emptiness of that mind and the true cessation of that buddha are the nature truth body. The naturally abiding buddha nature — the tathagata essence (tathagatagarbha) of that sentient being — becomes the nature body of that buddha when all stains have been abandoned.

  To attain these four bodies we must cultivate their cause — the unified practice of the two collections — also called the unified practice of method and wisdom. Bodhichitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness need to be conjoined in the sense that they mutually support each other. Neither the truth bodies nor the form bodies can be attained if either collection is missing, even though the collection of wisdom is the principal cause for the truth bodies and the collection of merit is the chief cause for the form bodies.

  The thirty-two signs may not mean much to us initially, but the more we understand the qualities of a buddha and the causes required to become one, the more we will appreciate the significance of these thirty-two physical signs. Unique to a fully awakened buddha, these signs arise on a buddha’s body as the result of that bodhisattva having practiced virtue for a myriad of eons. While universal monarchs who rule the world, solitary realizer arhats, and high-level bodhisattvas have these signs as well, they are incomparable to those of the buddhas. In fact, due to the difference in the quality of merit created and the time over which the merit was created, the thirty-two signs on each of these beings also varies.

  The Ornament for Clear Realization (Abhisamayalamkara) by Maitreya also speaks of the causes of the thirty-two signs, and in some instances their causes differ from the ones described in Precious Garland. There is no contradiction, because each of the thirty-two signs requires numberless causes. There are so many causes for each sign that we cannot actually point out one and say, “This, and only this, is the cause of this sign.” So despite the seeming difference in the two texts, the main point is still the same — these signs illustrate in a visible manner the inner qualities of buddhas and indicate the great collections of causal merit they accumulated from doing limitless virtuous deeds for eons.