(5) We will certainly be happy and satisfied if we practice like this, and we will make others happy too. Earnestly practicing the Dharma ourselves increases the happiness of those around us, and living with happy people increases our own happiness.
Just as those who suffer from hunger and thirst are delighted when you give them food, people are happy when you take care of your kingdom and subjects with a loving, beneficial mind in accordance with the Dharma. On the other hand, acting harmfully, harboring resentment and ill will, seeking revenge, or punishing those who disagree with you prevent you from sleeping well at night. Even your dreams will be tormented, and you will awake in a bad mood. When you refrain from harming others and instead lovingly care for them, you will not suffer from fear of revenge or rebellion. Doing all actions with a happy mind will bring contentment in your heart now; your sleep will be peaceful, and you will awake refreshed. If you don’t believe this, try it out for yourself.
While we do not have kingdoms to govern, each of us lives in an interdependent world where our actions affect others. If we cultivate genuine care and concern for others — no matter if they are our friends and relatives or strangers on the other side of the planet or even in another universe — we will naturally avoid harming them and will instead benefit them. This will result in both present and future happiness for others and ourselves.
281.Earnestly serve your parents,
and respect the principals of your lineage;
use your resources well, have fortitude, and be generous;
speak gently without divisiveness,
282.and practice the discipline of truth.
By doing these in this one life, you will become
king of the celestial beings, and be a godly king even now.
Therefore, devote yourself always to this kind of Dharma.
The Arising of Twenty-Five Special Qualities
Since all misery in the world comes from not having practiced the Dharma, now that we have a fortunate birth, the mental capacity, and the interest to learn the Buddha’s teachings, we should enthusiastically do so. True appreciation of the Dharma depends on understanding that all of our experiences are due to our physical, verbal, and mental karma. For that reason, it’s important to be able to discern virtue from nonvirtue. In this section, Nagarjuna describes twenty-five virtuous actions and their specific results in order to encourage us to fulfill the collections of merit and wisdom and thus attain buddhahood.
In speaking of the following sets of causes and their results, sometimes the cause is the principal cause of that specific result; for example, ethical conduct is the principal cause of higher rebirth. Other times, the cause is a cooperative condition for that result, not its principal cause. Love is the cooperative condition that assists our being able to accomplish our aims. Understanding this properly will prevent us from having unrealistic expectations regarding the results of our actions.
(1) The first practice to adopt is the eightfold discipline.
•Earnestly serve your parents — provide the food or other necessities your parents need when they are old. Help them with tasks such as cooking and washing clothes, take care of them when they are sick, comfort them when they are in pain. Speak kindly to them, and try to make them happy if they are troubled. In general, children should behave respectfully to their parents and make prayers for them to have long healthy lives and to create a great deal of merit. If you are not able to directly help your Dharma teachers, parents, the ill, and so forth, it is important at least to have a kind attitude toward them.
•Respect the principals of your lineage. This refers to offering service and respect above all to your principal guru as well as all your spiritual mentors and superiors in general. According to the Dharma, those who are younger should esteem and serve their elders. In particular, the Vinaya specifies that monastics must respect and offer service to those who are their seniors and more knowledgeable.
•Use your resources well by avoiding wrong livelihood and engaging in a wholesome livelihood. Do not use things obtained from wrong livelihood.
•Cultivate fortitude so you can remain even-tempered in all situations.
•Be generous to help others and create merit.
•Speak gently and avoid speaking harshly to others; rather, speak kindly.
•Avoid divisiveness. Do not make comments that divide people, telling one person what another person said about him, thus creating disharmony or aggravating disharmony that is already present.
•Practice the discipline of truth. Once again, Nagarjuna reminds us of the importance of speaking truthfully and acting with integrity.
Nagarjuna recommends we follow this eightfold discipline every day for the rest of our lives. As a result, we will become king of the celestial beings — that is, we will have a good rebirth as a human being or celestial being and on that basis will be able to continue to progress spiritually.
283.Giving the food of three hundred stew-pots
every day, three times a day,
cannot compare to even part of the merit
of just a short moment of love.
284.Even if not liberated, you will attain
these eight excellent qualities from practicing love:
celestial and human beings will love you,
and they will also protect you;
285.you will have peace of mind and much happiness
and not be harmed by either poison or weapons;
you will effortlessly attain your aims
and be reborn in the realm of Brahma.
(2) Nagarjuna has frequently encouraged us to be generous. Those who have wealth should use it to accumulate merit, but there is no problem if you are not wealthy. The main point is to cultivate bodhichitta and give with that motivation. We should also practice the three other types of generosity: the generosity of fearlessness that gives protection to those in danger, the generosity of love that comforts and encourages others, and the generosity of Dharma that leads them out of cyclic existence.
A fabulously wealthy person may give an abundance of food to hundreds of impoverished people many times a day. While she creates great merit through this generosity, this cannot compare to the merit generated from meditating on love for just a moment. Giving food, wonderful though it is, is limited because the amount of food and the number of beings receiving it are finite. But when we meditate on love, our mind expands to encompass all sentient beings, so the merit is immeasurable. Meditating on love not only leads to awakening, but eight benefits accrue in this life:
•Celestial and human beings will like you, and you will have good relationships with others.
•Non-humans will not harm you and will protect you.
•You will have happiness and peace of mind, free of inner turmoil.
•Your health will improve, and you will experience more physical pleasure.
•You will not be harmed by poisons.
•You will not be harmed by weapons.
•You will be able to accomplish your aims without great effort.
•In future lives you will take rebirth in the world of Brahma. The word Brahma doesn’t always refer to the god Brahma. Here it refers to birth as a human or celestial being and experiencing the pleasures of that realm. One prayer says, “Please grant me the state of Brahma,” meaning liberation.
286.If you lead others to develop bodhichitta
and then make it firm,
you will always have bodhichitta,
as stable as the king of mountains itself.
(3) Another practice that generates incredible merit is bodhichitta, the aspiration to attain peerless awakening in order to benefit all sentient beings. Generating bodhichitta in our own mindstream, encouraging others to generate it, helping to prevent it from degenerating in the minds of others, and helping to stabilize and increase it in their mindstreams — all these activities create vast merit. Even if we haven’t realized bodhichitta, encouraging others to generate it and te
aching them methods to do so — either the seven-point cause-and-effect instruction or the method of equalizing and exchanging self and others — will before long create a unique cause for you to gain bodhichitta that is as firm as Mount Everest.
287.Through faith you do not take rebirths that lack freedom.
Through ethical conduct, you have fortunate rebirths.
Through developing [your understanding] of emptiness,
you attain non-attachment to all things.
(4) Through generating faith in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and in the law of karma and its effects, you will not take rebirth in the eight unfree states described in the meditation on precious human life. Based on reasons, thinking “The Buddha’s teachings on the four truths of aryas are true” or “the teaching on karma and its effect is true” also constitute faith. Of the three kinds of faith — lucid faith, aspiring faith, and the faith of convinced belief — these thoughts are the latter.
(5) The principal result of practicing the ethical conduct of abandoning the ten paths of nonvirtue is a fortunate rebirth as a human being or god. This is the essential practice to prevent rebirth in the lower realms.
(6) Through thinking about, realizing, and familiarizing yourself with emptiness, you will gradually be free of the discordant factors — the phenomena of the afflictive side, such as true duhkha and the true origins of duhkha. These will gradually be subdued until they totally vanish. Meditation on emptiness harms true-grasping. By destroying this noxious root, the flowers, branches, and fruit — the other afflictions — cannot survive.
288.By not being deceptive, you become mindful.
Through reflection, you attain intelligence.
Through reverence, you will realize the meaning [of the Dharma].
Through preserving the Dharma, you will become wise.
(7) The Sanskrit word smriti is translated as both “mindfulness” and “memory.” Mindfulness is not simply observing what is happening, and memory isn’t just recalling facts. This quality entails keeping precepts and virtue in mind, having stable focus on the object of meditation, and understanding things intelligently. Abandoning deceit in this life is a cause for having firm mindfulness/memory in future lives. Your mind will be clear and intelligent, and you will be able to understand teachings without great difficulty.
(8) Through reflection that analyzes the meaning of the Dharma, your wisdom will increase and you will gain new intelligence.
(9) Reverence for your Dharma teachers — expressed by serving them, appreciating them, speaking pleasantly to them, honoring them, having confidence in them, and aspiring to practice all that they teach — will help you to become an excellent Dharma teacher in the future. Listen with great respect, examine what you hear by using reasoning and through your own experience. In this way, you will realize the meaning of the Dharma.
(10) Preserving the Dharma begins with listening to many teachings. This gives you a lot to contemplate, and contemplation that correctly understands the meaning of what you have learned leads to meditation in which you will experience the Dharma yourself. In this way, you will be able to preserve the transmitted Dharma through hearing, reading, and studying, and you will preserve the realized Dharma through meditative experience.
289.Through eliminating obscurations
in listening to and imparting the Dharma,
you will gain the companionship of buddhas
and quickly fulfill your desires.
(11) One obscuration in listening to and teaching the Dharma is stinginess, which in this context means keeping your knowledge to yourself and not wanting to share it with others. Such behavior stems from a bad motivation. For example, one person is jealous of another’s Dharma knowledge and so doesn’t want to share her knowledge by answering questions; or a teacher is afraid that a student may come to understand the Dharma better than he does and will become a more well-known teacher, so he doesn’t impart what he knows.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should teach new people everything you know about sutra and tantra, because that is neither appropriate nor beneficial. But when the students are intelligent and able to understand a topic, then no matter how deep you go, don’t hold back but teach everything they need.
It is essential to listen to and teach the Dharma with a good motivation. As a result of doing this, you will meet with excellent spiritual mentors and good Dharma companions in future lives. The importance of having such people in our lives is reflected in the fact that we often dedicate our merit to never meet with bad companions on the path but only with excellent teachers and earnest Dharma friends who support us on the path and whom we support in return.
290.Through non-attachment, you accomplish your aims.
Through lack of greed, your possessions increase.
Through lack of arrogance, you will become prominent.
Through fortitude for the Dharma, you attain the dharani [of not forgetting].
(12) Subduing attachment occurs gradually and is crucial in order to accomplish our Dharma wishes. A person of initial capacity reduces very gross attachment by contemplating that death is definite, that the time of death is unknown, and that at the time of death our body, possessions, friends, relatives, and reputation are left behind. The Dharma is our only friend, and our merit is the sustenance we take with us to the next life.
The middle capacity person lessens attachment to cyclic existence in general by reflecting on its disadvantages — its pleasures are impermanent and unsatisfactory in nature, and we lack true security and are subject to birth, aging, sickness, and death. Thinking like this does not immediately make us completely free of all attachment and desire for the pleasures of cyclic existence, but it definitely lessens it. In particular, we see that wherever we are born in cyclic existence there is no lasting happiness.
For the person of great capacity, “non-attachment” and “cutting attachment” mean freedom from the self-centered thought and practicing compassion for others. This freedom comes from meditation on the disadvantages of self-centeredness, the benefits of cherishing others, the kindness of others, love, and compassion. As we gradually diminish attachment, our respect for and commitment to the Dharma increases, as do our bodhichitta and wisdom.
(13) Through not being greedy or miserly your wealth increases. This doesn’t mean that mere non-miserliness is the cause of an increase of wealth. Rather, practicing generosity without miserliness will bring wealth.
(14) Through abandoning gross arrogance and conceit, others will treat you with respect. Arrogance, haughtiness, pride, and conceit share the common characteristic of self-inflation. Such an attitude makes it difficult for your knowledge and good qualities to increase because you think you are already wonderful and thus have nothing to learn from others. Arrogance also repels people, as they don’t like being around someone who considers herself superior. By abandoning gross arrogance and conceit and being humble, you will transform your mind. As a result your behavior will change for the better, and people will notice and seek you out due to your wisdom.
(15) Fortitude for the Dharma means having tolerance or forbearance with the Dharma of emptiness. When people with small minds hear that everything is empty of true existence, they are not able to bear it; they think it means everything is completely nonexistent. Being able to bear the meaning of emptiness means understanding that while phenomena are not truly existent, neither are they nonexistent. Emptiness is not nihilistic. Someone who can bear emptiness knows that the emptiness of true existence can be realized and that within being empty, actions and agents exist, and cause and effect function. This person can bear the presentation of the two truths. A result of having fortitude regarding emptiness is the retention of Dharma.
291.Through giving the five essences
and fearlessness to those in danger,
you will become impervious to all demons
and the best of powerful beings.
(16) The five essences are molasses, the essenc
e of sugarcane; butter, the essence of milk; honey, the essence of flowers (since bees make it through imbibing the nectar from flowers); salt, the essence of water; and sesame, the essence of grains. By giving these five essences and helping beings in danger, you will be free of fear, and spirits and bad friends will not be able to harm you. In addition, based on amassing merit and wisdom with a good motivation, giving the five essences and protecting those in danger will contribute to becoming powerful.
292.Through giving garlands of lamps to reliquaries,
lights for those [hindered by] the dark,
and oil for all these lamps,
you will attain the divine eye.
(17) Verses 292–97 speak of causes for the six superknowledges (Skt. abhijna). While some hearers and solitary realizers cultivate these, not all do. Bodhisattvas use the superknowledges to identify sentient beings with whom they have a karmic connection and to know others’ dispositions and how best to guide them on the path. The principal cause for gaining the first five superknowledges is single-pointed concentration of the first dhyana, the first meditative stabilization of the material realm. Making the following offerings is a cooperative condition.
Reliquaries include statues, texts, and paintings of buddhas and meditation deities. Make offerings to any or all of them with a sincere mind. Offering lights — electric lights, butter lamps, oil lamps, and so on, arranged like garlands or in any pleasing configuration — is also a cooperative condition for increased wisdom.
If you offer to reliquaries as well as install street lights in dark places where many people come and go, you will be born in an “enlightened eon” — a time when a wheel-turning buddha has appeared — as opposed to a dark eon that lacks Dharma teachings. It also results in attaining the divine eye — clairvoyance that enables one to see subtle and gross forms at a distance of up to a hundred paktse, or approximately eight hundred kilometers. Bodhisattvas can see beings in distant places and know whose mind is ripe to hear the Dharma and what teaching is appropriate for them at that time.
Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness Page 29