7 mins read.

It all starts with changing our experience.

If we want to change our actions or behaviors, we need to change our intentions. If we want to change our intentions or wishes, we need to change our sense of who we are. And if we want to change our sense of self, this has to be based on changing our experience.

Carrying on from this article, Giving up self-hatred once and for all. 

We underestimate ourselves badly a lot of the time — in the case of self-dislike by experiencing and relating to an inherently limited unworthy small self. But where is that self to be found? What is it?

That self is who we are not rather than who we are. We want to get to the point that whenever it appears it actually reminds us that it is fake — it is appearing, but not really there. It is like — to use an analogy from the Buddhist scriptures — seeing two moons when we press our eyeball reminding us that there is only one moon in the sky.

Our sense of self at any given moment feels independent, existing in and of itself; but it arises 100% in dependence on what we happen to be thinking.

With self-criticism, we have a lack of patient acceptance for ourselves. We are never good enough; we always have to do more or do better. Fighting this self-image, there is no room or energy for growth. We might also have the master emotion of guilt — the feeling that we’re not worthy, competent, or good, that we are, in a sense, rotten at the core.

The opposite is the case

But the reality is in fact the OPPOSITE of what we are telling ourselves. Far from being flawed, we are a being of boundless indestructible potential, pure and good at heart, and in a position to connect to the infinite wisdom of enlightenment.

By learning to accept ourselves happily within an understanding of our enormous capacity for freedom and growth, we will begin to awaken a source of deep inspiration and wisdom from within.

It is terribly sad to go through life not knowing about what we have inside us, or who we already are and can become. As mentioned in this passage from How to Transform Your Life — which I’ll repeat because it’s so significant for our spiritual development — our pure essential nature, who we really are, is mind-blowingly good:

Buddha compared our Buddha nature to a gold nugget in dirt, for no matter how disgusting a person’s delusions may be, the real nature of their mind remains undefiled, like pure gold. In the heart of even the cruelest and most degenerate person exists the potential for limitless love, compassion, and wisdom.

Yes, this means us too. However badly we are thinking ourselves to be, we are not.

Unlike the seeds of our delusions, which can be destroyed, this potential is utterly indestructible and is the pure essential nature of every living being.

Our delusions, such as disliking ourself, are all based on faulty or distorted thinking, inappropriate attention — so once we get rid of that faulty thinking for good, the delusion goes away and can never come back. But the seeds of compassion and wisdom will be our essential nature for as long as reality remains. (For more on how that is, check out this article.)

And now is the best time to really figure this out, while we have this precious human life.

Buddha’s analogy for our current opportunity

Buddha gives the analogy of a person living in poverty, in a hovel, scrabbling around to be happy and make ends meet for himself and his family. He is working really hard but feeling really poor.

But one day he gets a visitor – a wise person comes to his door and says: “I don’t think you realize this, but below your house is a gold mine. You are in fact exceedingly rich.”

The man may be skeptical at first, but he gets curious one day and checks it out. Sure enough, he realizes that he has been living on top of a gold mine since he was born. And his and his family’s life now changes completely.

In a similar way, Buddha has turned up in our lives to tell us that we have an incredible gold mine inside us — innate goodness and purity, possessing the capacity for lasting peace and happiness. Perhaps we don’t really believe him because we have gotten so used to identifying with being a poor person, but one day we check it out anyway and discover that he is right! And our life changes beyond recognition.

As Geshe Kelsang says:

Whenever we meet other people, rather than focusing on their delusions, we should focus on the gold of their Buddha nature. This will not only enable us to regard them as special and unique, but also help to bring out their good qualities. Recognizing everyone as a future Buddha, out of love and compassion we will naturally help and encourage this potential to ripen.

This includes meeting ourselves!

We are not doomed!

In other words, you are not doomed, and nor is anyone else. It is so important that we understand this because, until we do, our wish for lasting freedom for ourselves and others will never be sustainable. We will just keep getting tired, worried, and discouraged, losing energy, burning out. We can’t sustain a wish for something we don’t actually believe in, and if we don’t wish for it we won’t have any energy, effort, or patience to achieve it.

Step 1 ~ new improved experience

Given all this, the first step is to allow our inner chatter to stop for a bit. We can simply turn inward to examine our mind, as explained here, and then use breathing meditation or clarity of mind meditation or absorption of cessation of gross conceptual thought.

As result of not focusing on our distracting thoughts, they disappear, because thoughts can only survive for as long as we are thinking them. Initially, just by allowing delusions to go away for a short while, we already feel better.

But please don’t be perfectionist – we don’t have to have a perfectly clear mind; any clearing of the clouds will do. Even a handkerchief of blue sky on an overcast day encourages us that there is plenty more where that comes from. We don’t want to over-judge our meditations, but instead be gentle and relaxed.

Concentration is not about pushing. We can simply relax into whatever peace we have, even if it is tiny. We can allow ourselves to enjoy this. Otherwise we are just buying into being useless at meditation as well – I am too useless even to learn how to be less useless!

When we first start meditating, we realize that we have an endless inane talk show going on. It takes a bit of time and practice to switch this off, so don’t have expectations, aka pre-meditated resentments! Just practice happily without grasping at results. This is how we get good at meditation. It doesn’t matter if our mind is full of busy thoughts — provided we are alert to that and letting them go we are doing really well, as explained in this article on mindfulness, alertness, and concentration.

A friend said this the other day:

I love the admonition regarding meditation: “expectations are pre-meditated resentments.” For me, one of the greatest delights of meditation is knowing that any meditation is a good meditation and that judging simply gets in the way of absorption, concentration, and realizations.

I tend to be hard on myself in everything else I do and, unconsciously until recently, use high expectations and my regular failure to meet them as certifications of my not-good-enough self. Sitting down to meditate and just exhaling “Ahh!” is my empowering opponent to and vacation from beating myself up – at least once a day.

Saying “I cannot meditate because my mind is too distracted!” is like going to the doctor with a bad stomach ache but refusing to take the medicine. The doctor says, “Take these pills, you’ll feel better!”, but we reply, “I can’t because my stomachs hurts too much.” It is precisely because our mind is so distracted that we need take the medicine of breathing meditation .

The rest of this explanation on overcoming self-hatred is on its way soon — I figured your coffee break might be up. Meantime, your comments have been very helpful up to now, so please leave more below!

Related articles

Just who do you think you are?!

Being kinder to ourselves and others

How to meditate

Guest article co-written in Arizona by one Black and one white Kadampa. 

Do you sometimes feel that the problems of our world are insurmountable? We feel confused about the way forward. What are the solutions, how can we effect change, and how can we effect it quickly? Because we need to make some changes now.

Although it can appear that the problems of our self and of our world are overwhelming, we can know from our own direct experience that things change so fast. Ven Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says:

If everyone in the world were to practice cherishing each other, all the problems of our world would be solved in just a few years.

This could happen if we all practiced love because love has such extraordinary power. Things can change dramatically in a very short amount of time. This is not a platitude; this is the truth. Why? The problems in our world have arisen because we do not practice love for one another. So, if we do the opposite, we get a new and different result and our problems will quickly disappear. We need to practice cherishing love and we need to do it now, not later.

The moment is calling us

I think that’s what this historic moment is calling us all to do. The future is now. From an ordinary point of view, if we think, “later,” what is the future? Fantasy. Some idealized vision. We need to bring the future into the present moment. That means that we can try our very best to practice love now, to practice powerful compassion now, to be wise now, to be patient now. Not later — we don’t need it later. We need it now. If we practice love, patience and wisdom right now, then we will see different results right now, and we will bring that future into the present moment.

The solution to the problems of our world is grounded in the transformation of our mind because if we change our mind, we change everything. This is Buddha’s essential teaching. If we change our mind, we change our world because what we see or experience exists in relationship to our mind.

This isn’t a statement to gaslight you and your reality, but to show that our mind has extraordinary power; so let’s harness thatcreative power our mind has to create good, to create peace, to hold onto the virtues of love, wisdom, truth, and patience, which are so necessary for us. We can take hold of the solution right now.

Change minds, change (inter)actions

When we look at what’s going on in our world, we automatically go to changing things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t change things — things need to be changed — but we sometimes neglect the understanding that if we change our mind then the quality of our actions changes. If we change what we feel and believe about others then the quality of our interactions changes. Thus, the way we go about making change is dramatically different because what we are bringing to it is not ordinary.

It is a challenge to think about changing our mind, to look within ourself and to take personal responsibility, to say “I’m going to be part of the solution and it starts within my mind.” We can rise to this challenge in a very balanced way, addressing both the outer problems and the mind.

Buddha taught that because our mind creates the world — our experience, our emotions, our actions. Our mind is so powerful and mental actions are hundreds of times more powerful than physical and verbal actions, as Genla Dekyong explained two days ago during the US Spring Festival.

In this video above, you can see the moment Venerable Geshe Kelsang says:

Love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all of our enemies.

If we have a powerful mind of love and we see love as real power, and we develop that stably within our heart, we would have no personal enemies. Yet we would have extraordinary power to do good things for others, and to move through the challenge, the hatred, the obstacles, unwaveringly. We are beings with so much power. We need to find it, claim it, take it back. And we can do so through rising to the spiritual challenge and taking these methods to heart.

What does world peace mean?

Buddha Shakyamuni dedicated all his activities to the benefit of all living beings. Similarly, the teachings of this tradition, called the New Kadampa Tradition, are dedicated to world peace. That is the vision of our world now. It’s not the vision of our world sometime later. We have built these temples, established these Centers for this world now as well as for the future, but also for our future, now.

Another way of looking at world peace is that we’re working on developing communities and societies that are founded in truth as opposed to deception; founded in love as opposed to self-interest; founded in wisdom as opposed to ignorance. This is world peace. Buddhists need to think about this. We talk about what’s called, “the Pure Land” as if it’s some future fantasy; but the Pure Land can be now, and if our compassion is strong, powerful, passionate, then we will bring that into reality very soon.

What is the Mahayana?

The nature of Buddha’s teachings is compassion — and also wisdom that overcomes ignorance. The teachings of modern Kadampa Buddhism are part of what is called, “the Mahayana.” “Maha” is a Sanskrit word that means “great” and “yana” means “vehicle” — “Great Vehicle.” It refers to the huge scope of our motivation that we can develop through practicing these teachings. This means that we can develop great compassion, which is universal compassion. This means that we don’t leave anybody out. These teachings, this Great Vehicle, is a vehicle that takes everyone out of the ocean of suffering.

The Mahayana asks us to develop this great compassion. It is a big goal, but a goal worth pursuing; and it is something that we can all accomplish. Why can we accomplish this pure, altruistic mind of the Great Vehicle, of great love, empathy, and eventually great compassion? Because it is our nature. Our nature as sentient beings is essentially good. We essentially have a heart of gold. Right now it is a gold nugget in dirt, but who we really are, what the nature of our mind really is, is love. Truth. Kindness. Compassion. Since these qualities are all part of our pure nature, we can accomplish this great scope of our vision and intention. We can access these qualities in meditation and, if we can enjoy the peace within and be it, then we will gain real confidence in who we actually are.

Our Buddha nature

If we can do this, we can develop confidence and even faith in who others really are too. I believe this is the starting point for this journey to ending all suffering for all beings. It starts in recognizing what we call our Buddha nature, our compassionate seed of enlightenment. Bringing about the end of our own personal and collective suffering necessitates this faith in ourself personally, and in all of us collectively. This is logical.

What’s the danger of not really relating to our Buddha nature as the essential quality of ourself and others? When we see others and ourself thinking, saying, and doing harmful things, then we will become discouraged. Angry. Ashamed. If we don’t relate to our essence and have faith in that as who we really are, then we get sucked into the drama and negativity because we’ve just lost sight of our own and others’ pure nature and potential.

We’ve lost our faith in each other, in our common humanity and so then we just descend into fighting, arguments, and destruction. 
We need to work on developing faith in our common goodness. We know how powerful beliefs are. They guide all of our actions. Everything that we do and say comes from our beliefs, so what we believe about ourself and others is the foundation of how we live. Therefore, what we believe, what we have faith in, is power. It’s real power.

There’s nothing wrong with sentient beings

Therefore, how do we develop faith or confidence in our nature being essentially good? In How to Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang says:

Although sentient beings’ minds are filled with delusions, sentient beings themselves are not faulty. We say that sea water is salty but in fact it is the salt in the water that makes it salty.

This is exactly like our mind. Our mind is like pure, clear water. It just has salt in it. On the one hand, we think that the water is contaminated. On the other hand, we think, “But we can make it good.” And essentially it is good because the contamination, the salt, is temporary.

Similarly, all the faults we see in people are actually the faults of their delusions, not of the people themselves. The fault is the salt, not the water, so people are like pure water, pure in essence. They are good, but what makes them salty? Delusions. We are not our delusions — but we are often controlled by them.

Delusions are part of the characteristics of a person’s mind, not of the person. Since we can never find faults in sentient beings themselves, we can say in this respect sentient beings are like Buddhas.

Since enlightened beings are people who have purified their minds, they have only love and wisdom, constantly and spontaneously. That’s a simple way of understanding what is  an enlightened being. Therefore, they benefit everybody with no concern for themselves and they’re always peaceful and happy. They’re free.

We are like enlightened beings already because our essential nature is like pure, clear water. Our essential nature is love and wisdom. It’s just that we’ve got the salt of delusions that we need to remove. You and I and every sentient being has Buddha nature, we’re almost enlightened already. We’re so close.

What do we relate to? Unfortunately, the salt. “There’s a whole glass of water here, but all I see is salt.” We forget that actually it’s pure water, just clouded over. We’re just mistaking who we are. We have mistaken appearance and beliefs. We’re not seeing the truth and it’s this mistaken perception of ourself and others — which is a projection of the mind — that traps us into believing something that’s not true. Therefore, we get angry and we harm each other. However, our root mind is completely pure.

Another example is that it is like blue sky, and our delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise. We know there are storms in the sky. There are dark clouds and all of a sudden it looks ominous. However, so quickly the weather changes, and then there’s blue sky for days and days.

The mind itself is pure like sky. And the delusions – our ignorance, anger, hatred, shame – these are just dark clouds. Not only are they not the sky, but they do not destroy the sky. They’re temporary, only moving through.

Therefore, living beings have no faults. If we can apply this correct belief to ourself, have faith in ourself, and really understand this logical way of thinking, we will have faith in other people too. How could it be that we ourselves are essentially pure while a whole lot of other people are not?! I don’t think that logic works. Every living being’s mind is equally pure.

Start from your blissful clear light mind

We have deep within us what’s called our root mind, our consciousness at our heart. It’s the root because it’s the source from which all our other minds develop. This heart-based mind has a beautiful name, “clear light.” Within Buddha’s teachings, we are taught that the deepest level of our mind, its nature, is always bliss, always peace.

When we do even a little breathing meditation, we experience a new level of peace. And the more that we meditate, the more peace we find. If the nature of our mind were not peaceful, then what we’d actually find would be just more and more layers of junk. We’d just go deeper and deeper into confusion and negativity. However, this is not the case.

We call this mind at our heart, “continuously residing.” Its nature is indestructible bliss. So this is the starting point – Buddha nature. The whole Buddhist path is a path of discovering and revealing this nature. If we hold onto the belief in our own and others’ pure nature without a doubt, and we engage in actions with this in mind, we will always be moving in the right direction. And, as Geshe Kelsang says, if every living being cherishes one another, believes in each other in this way, and pursues the common goal of real happiness and liberation from suffering, then the problems of our world will be solved in a few years. Truth.

Over to you. Please leave your comments for the guest authors in the box below!

I was wondering recently if Dharma is what comes out when our Buddha nature is manifest. For example, when someone speaks directly from the heart and to the heart about love, compassion, equality, helping others, our mutual dependence and responsibility, and so on, or about our courage and ability to withstand discouragement and defeat, to me that sounds like Dharma.

On one level, Dharma or Buddhism is just profound common sense, and as such can be practiced by anyone at all who wants to practice it. Parts of it are already being practiced by people all over the world from different backgrounds, faiths, and traditions.

With respect to Kadampa Buddhism (Kadam Dharma), Venerable Geshe Kelsang says in Modern Buddhism:

Even without studying or listening to Dharma, some people often come to similar conclusions as those explained in Kadam Dharma teachings through looking at newspapers or television and understanding the world situation. This is because Kadam Dharma accords with people’s daily experience; it cannot be separated from daily life.

Take last Wednesday, January 20^th, for example, the day of the inauguration. This was a hopeful and inspiring day for a lot of people, and a lot of amazing things were said, including that poem by Amanda Gorman. For example:

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

On one level that may seem obvious, that we are interdependent and so our collective well-being is completely undermined by grasping at our differences; yet still this sentiment has not been heard much of late in mainstream public discourse.

That poem was not about politics, was it? It was about all of us. I don’t use this blog to talk about politics because, regardless of our political persuasion, Buddhism works. It is open to everybody. Buddhists genuinely believe that every single living being has the exact same potential for compassion, wisdom, happiness, enlightenment. Therefore, Buddhism is open to everybody; and when we say “Everyone is welcome” — which we do on the doors and publicity of every Kadampa Center in the world — we really mean it.

Buddhism, or Dharma, is Buddha’s teachings and the experiences we get from practicing those teachings. It enables us to realize our truest potential or Buddha nature; and when someone talks from the heart about love and so on, it is as though that truest potential is shining through.

Where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

And for Gorman, the light of her Buddha nature was shining through, which is why I think so many people were moved by her and why she has gone viral! (Along with Bernie Sanders memes, lol. Which, talking about our innate kindness, he capitalized on to make money for charity.) Gorman spoke from the heart and to the heart; and to me it sounded like Dharma words. This is true when anyone talks about the beautiful qualities of the human spirit.

Dharma provides the methods for bringing out and developing our Buddha nature – the good heart that every single person possesses, like a golden nugget, deep inside. When we learn Buddhism we are learning how to develop and increase all our innate qualities of tolerance, non-hatred, equanimity, and so on. We have a meditation, for example, called “equalizing self and others”, which, if everyone did it, would mean no more prejudice, racism, or bigotry – those faulty unpeaceful mental attitudes, or so-called delusions, would have to go away.  

As it says in Modern Buddhism:

The great Master Dromtonpa said, “Kadam Dharma is like a mala made of gold.” Just as everyone, even those who do not use a mala (or prayer beads) would be happy to accept a gift of a gold mala because it is made of gold, in a similar way everyone, even non-Buddhists, can receive benefit from Kadam Dharma. This is because there is no difference between Kadam Dharma and people’s everyday experiences….

… Everyone needs it to make their lives happy and meaningful, to temporarily solve their human problems, and to enable them ultimately to find pure and everlasting happiness through controlling their anger, attachment, jealousy, and especially ignorance.

In my job I meet people from all walks of life and political persuasions, and I love them all equally, why not, we’re all the same. With Dharma we can break down the divides, empathize, and bring out the best in each other because the best in all of us is the same. Democrat or Republican, no one has a monopoly on compassion. Or common sense, for that matter, or love. As this is the truth, we can work to become more unified by emphasizing these qualities.

Living beings are terribly misguided and confused a lot of the time — what we call in Buddhism “deluded”. When we speak or act out of anger, hatred, fear, or self-grasping ignorance, that’s coming not from our true nature but from our delusions, which are the real, albeit adventitious, common enemies of us all. Living beings are not our enemies, as Buddha kept pointing out. But we don’t have to stay deluded. And on a day like January 20^th when everyone was making an effort, their better natures were shining through, showing that delusions are not an intrinsic part of our minds.

So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

A quick look at today’s headlines shows that at least some of our collective absurdities have already crept back! Nonetheless, these are not permanent, nor whom we really are. The United States has some cool ideals as a country, equality, freedom, and justice for all – on one level I reckon all Americans love these ideals and the whole country was supposed to be founded on them. Of course it wasn’t and isn’t, and there has always been a struggle between these ideals and the reality; but nonetheless is there not a significant part of us that would like us all to live up to this? So these glimpses are important:

For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.

The hill we climb

“End of an error”, one wit put it the other day. But it is not an error to pin on others, just an error that we individually and collectively can rectify by trying to put behind us the things that have gone wrong — the division, the violence – to herald a new world of tolerance and kindness.

Buddha showed how we could be like this all the time, choosing to actualize this incredible potential for equality and freedom in our minds and in our society. It is what Buddhism is all about. By following Buddha’s advice, we do get kinder, wiser, and closer to other people, and we do let go of our intolerance, faulty discriminations, bigotry, and the rest of it.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare.

If we could only spend more than one day feeling hopeful and connected, if we can make an effort to keep this mutual respect and unity going day after day after day, to actively choose this way of thinking, one day we’ll find that we’ve climbed that hill once and for all. And what a view!

Over to you, please put a comment in the box below.

Related articles

Some articles about Buddhism in society 

Living beings have no faults

How to get rid of problems according to Buddha 

8 mins read.

A question … when you’re not identifying with your Buddha nature, what are you identifying with?

Over the decades I’ve observed a couple of elements that seem to make all the difference in terms of whether or not people get deep experience and realizations of meditation. One is simply consistency, continuing to show up for our practice through thick and thin – as Buddha said, keeping a kettle on the stove over even a very low heat will cause the water to boil. The other is practicing confidently in the context of our potential.

(Talking of decades – there was a mega storm at Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre a month ago, which felled over 30 huge and ancient trees in the course of one unexpected night. I was thinking how death is like that, how it is starting to fell the first generation of Venerable Geshe Kelsang’s students who are all getting up there in age. How absurdly short this life is, yet how important. I’m hoping and praying that an even greater number of saplings and young trees are growing into their power.)

So, the second element … by far the most helpful thing we can do when we sit down to meditate is to stop believing and holding onto our limitations by identifying instead with our limitless potential for spiritual progress. The alternative is to try and meditate while identifying with the self we normally see, which gets us precisely nowhere because that self doesn’t exist.

For example, instead of identifying with the limited useless person who probably needs to meditate but can’t, we can base our sense of self on our boundless potential for joy and liberation, with being someone who really can meditate.

Chatting about this over a cup of coffee in Harlem last week, I asked a friend to give me three good reasons why she likes identifying with her Buddha nature. Here is her reply:

1. Identifying with what we already identify with, which is a crappy, limited, depressed self who thinks they are not good enough and can’t meditate for the life of them, is clearly useless.
2. We need to be aspirational. When I was at acting school, a brilliant instructor told us that when we’re acting Shakespeare we never bring Shakespeare down to our level but bring ourself up to his. When aspiring to be a Buddha, we don’t bring Buddha down to our level but bring ourself up to his. We need to let the language of Buddha nature become our new language.
3. Grasping at our limited self is so flipping boring, not just for ourself but for everyone else we inflict it on. And then we create a boring world where we could be having such adventures. After all, to quote you back at yourself, our very subtle mind or actual Buddha nature is not even human.

Everyone needs this

She added that people in general need to identify with their Buddha nature, ie, not just during meditation and not just Buddhists, but all of us all the time.

“I was watching my brother Adrian depressed in a room with the curtains drawn, no food in the fridge, watching TV, his life passing him by moment by moment. He slept for so much at one point, two weeks, that he didn’t even know Brexit had happened. His reality is identifying with all this past hurt. And I was thinking, because I know him, “Hold up, that isn’t you. That isn’t you. You’re sitting on the sofa watching the TV and/or sleeping all day while meantime there is boundless potential within you. Start identifying with that. All the trauma of our childhood and you think ‘I will watch the telly because my mind can then shift from my pain to Netflix. It is respite.’ But all it is is a pause button.”

People are far greater than they realize. For the Buddhas, we are all Adrian. Enlightened beings just want us to realize who we really are and what we are capable of. As this friend put it:

“One day he was up off that sofa and awake, and it felt so good to see him engaged with the world, including his daughter, his joy, his interests, and the people who love him. Buddha is called “Awakened One” because he has woken from the sleep of self-grasping ignorance and now wants all of us to wake up and connect with our enlightened world, joy, and other living beings.”

So it’s important to nurture our spiritual and general well-being by centering in our pure potential every morning and as often as we can throughout the day. Otherwise it is very hard to change.

Self-sabotage

I was talking to an incredibly talented page-turner of a writer the other day, asking how her new novel was coming along. She confessed to any amount of self-doubt leading to writer’s block and long delays. If it wasn’t for the book advance, she might have given up by now. I wondered, “How, as a best-selling novelist, do you entertain self-doubt about your writing, and where does that leave the rest of us?!” She replied that of course she knows it makes no sense, but that there is always someone who is a better writer.

I have thought about that a lot because self-doubt and self-sabotage seem to be a modern plague, contributing to a lot of mental illness and societal dystopia.

Miss USA jumped off a building while I was in NYC. It was so sad. Very obviously beautiful, intelligent, and talented, she reportedly still never felt good enough and, at the tender age of 30, was dreading getting older. I wish she could have found Buddha’s teachings on her pure indestructible limitless ageless potential.

And if we are not identifying with our Buddha nature, this self-sabotage and self-destruction applies just as much to making progress in Dharma. Another friend was explaining what an incredibly good experience she was having on retreat. But then she got scared and wanted to run away because things were starting to shift too much. She didn’t want to look in the mirror of Dharma any more because she felt too unworthy to change. And that was insightful of her because I think it is true that looking in the mirror of Dharma can feel uncomfortable unless we are identifying with our limitless potential and know that the blemishes we see are not actually us.  As Geshe Kelsang says:

Whilst acknowledging that we have delusions we should not identify with them, thinking ‘I am a selfish, worthless person. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness 

The dictionary definition of worthless is, “have no good qualities, deserving contempt”. Or we could say, unworthy, not good enough, no spiritual potential. Relating to this self is the reason we feel stuck and also the basis for self-dislike or self-contempt.

I know way too many people who have been practicing Dharma for years and know it works, and yet still can’t or won’t allow themselves to get anywhere. They are stuck. Yet we have an ever so bright and interesting future if we can just feel it. Thinking of the famous gold nugget example:

Buddha compared our Buddha nature to a gold nugget in dirt, for no matter how disgusting a person’s delusions may be, the real nature of their mind remains undefiled, like pure gold. In the heart of even the cruelest and most degenerate person exists the potential for limitless love, compassion and wisdom. Unlike the seeds of our deluisons, which can be destroyed, this potential is utterly indestructible, and is the pure, essential nature of every living being. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

How are we supposed to get rid of the dirt if we feel we ARE the dirt?! On the other hand, if we are the gold nugget, are we not happy and even relieved to look in the mirror to see where the dirt is so that we can brush it away? At all times, we need to get used to remembering and believing:

… our faults are really the faults of our delusions and not our self. This prevents us from identifying with our faults thus feeling guilty and inadequate, and it helps us to view our delusions in a realistic and practical way. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

Identifying with our boundless potential, we step into our Buddha nature instead of constantly holding out and holding back (and feeling bad). We step into our greatness.

Slow down, wisen up

Here’s one simple way to do this. Basically, through allowing the mind to slow down and settle through some breathing meditation, it naturally becomes more peaceful, at which point we shift our focus from the breath to the experience of peace itself. We just gently abide with that good feeling in our heart center — not thinking about it but simply abiding with it. Then we recognize that this peace is arising spontaneously from just letting go of following our ordinary thoughts. We can think:

“I am connected to my own natural source of peace and happiness. And because awareness has no boundary or limit – there is infinite formless space within us — this indicates my potential for even greater peace and happiness. In fact, this is my potential for the permanent happiness of enlightenment. This is my Buddha nature. I can understand that this is who I am at heart. I am a peaceful person with limitless potential.”

The longer we spend getting used to this idea, the quicker we can change our sense of who we are. And on this basis we can continue to improve our sense of self by developing and identifying with the experiences of love, compassion, faith, pure view, and so on that we develop through meditation, all the way up to enlightenment.

Part 2 of this topic is here.  I would love to hear from you on all this!

More articles on the subject

Living beings have no faults

The meditation game changer

How to overcome toxic self-criticism 

Toward an empowered sense of self

 6.5 mins read.  

In this last article, Identifying with our Buddha nature, I suggested why it’s a good idea to identify with our Buddha nature from the very outset of our meditation practice and just in general.

Where, some people want to know, does Geshe Kelsang say you’re supposed to identify with your Buddha nature every time you meditate? Where is it explicitly explained?

The most famous place is probably the gold nugget bit quoted in that last article. As Venerable Geshe-la says in The New Eight Steps to Happiness:  

Whenever we meet other people, rather than focusing on their delusions we should focus on the gold of their Buddha nature. … Recognizing everyone as a future Buddha, out of love and compassion we shall naturally help and encourage this potential to ripen.

This has to apply to us as well, given that we’re a person. “Whenever we meet” ourself we also need to focus on the gold of our Buddha nature, and in that way bring out all our good qualities.

An experiential approach to Buddhism

I’m gonna share something from a wise friend who has gotten a long way in his meditation practice and used it to overcome a lot of problems. (He also wrote this very popular article, The meditation game-changer.)

The essence of the experiential approach to the path is captured in the following:

Whilst acknowledging that we have delusions we should not identify with them, thinking ‘I am a selfish, worthless person’ or ‘I am an angry person’. Instead we should identify with our pure potential and develop the wisdom and courage to overcome our delusions. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

What is our “pure potential”? Our potential for the permanent peace of liberation and enlightenment – which is the limitless potential for peace, love, compassion, kindness, and happiness. Our essential nature, our Buddha nature, is pure gold. Indestructible and eternal, it is the ground in which we need to root our sense of self in order to flourish.

The only way to attain the permanent peace of liberation is to cultivate and increase our present peaceful minds. ~ How to Understand the Mind 

Therefore, any present peaceful mind (no matter how small) is our pure potential. If we are not cultivating these experientially, we are not yet on the path. Practically speaking:

We should try gradually to increase the frequency of our peaceful minds until they remain with us all day long. ~ How to Understand the Mind

To do this, and to stay on the path, we need to ground our practice in meditation experience and live from that experience. As Venerable Geshe-la says: 

Unless we make some time every day to meditate we shall find it very difficult to maintain peaceful and positive minds in our daily life and our spiritual practice as a whole will suffer. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

 How do we do this?

… we should identify with our pure potential and develop the wisdom and courage to overcome our delusions. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

Centered in the peaceful good heart of our Buddha nature, “our pure potential,” every time a limiting belief or delusion arises we have the “wisdom” of experience to understand that this is not who I am essentially, it is just how I’m feeling at the moment, so I can let this go. This is how we stop identifying with our delusions thinking “I am a selfish worthless person”. Then, “courage” is the natural expression of the confidence that knows through experience that I am not my delusions, so I don’t have to be afraid of them and can let them go. This courage and confidence are expressed in Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life as:

I shall overcome all delusions and none shall overcome me.

We can only make this confident or courageous statement when our experience is of deeply identifying with the peaceful good heart of our Buddha nature. Also:

The Bodhisattva vow, for example, in which the Bodhisattva promises to overcome all faults and limitations, attain all good qualities, and work until all living beings are liberated from the sufferings of samsara, is an expression of tremendous self-confidence, far beyond that of any self-centered being. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

This indicates the natural and “tremendous self-confidence” of someone who has moved beyond identifying with the “faults and limitations” of a “self-centered being’” to identifying with their pure potential, confident in their ability to “attain all good qualities”.

Limitless

All possible samsaric achievements come with some kind of boundary or glass ceiling, so I think we need to have at least a little faith and feeling for what enlightenment is in order to understand what limitless potential looks like. That understanding grows over time, but it can be helpful to imagine it right from the outset.

I think it goes both ways – believing, admiring, and wishing faith in Buddhas necessitates faith in our own potential for enlightenment. For how can we wish for something that we cannot attain? 

Genuine experience is required

Identifying with our Buddha nature means that we are in fact happy with ourself! The sackcloth and ashes approach is not Buddhist. We don’t do guilt. 

If we are not happy with ourself, or foolishly neglect our own well-being, we shall have neither the confidence nor the energy to effect such a radical spiritual transformation. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

But, as explained more here, to change our self-identity we have to base it on some genuine good experience, not on dry intellectual understanding that doesn’t touch our hearts. The simplest way into this experience, especially as we are starting out, is to start by feeling some peace inside — allowing our delusions to subside into the peace of our own mind by simply focusing on our breath. If we do that, this happens:

When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subsides and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and contentment naturally arises from within. ~ The New Meditation Handbook 

Notice that word “naturally”. Our mind is by nature peaceful, we don’t have to add anything to make it peaceful. And when our mind is peaceful, we are happy.

An incredibly important insight by Buddha is that if it wasn’t for our delusions, we’d be peaceful all the time!!! I don’t know about you, but this knowledge changed my life. Without it, the future would seem unbearably bleak.

So we can allow this peace to fill our mind and then recognize two things.

1. Firstly, this peace is our actual nature, and that it is therefore only our delusions that are obstructing and disrupting it. As Geshe Kelsang says:

If we did not have delusions we would experience only peace and contentment. ~ How to Understand the Mind

And in Eight Steps:

Our mind is like a cloudy sky, in essence clear and pure but overcast by the clouds of delusions.

And:

 … as soon as anger, jealousy or desirous attachment arise they destroy our peace of mind like a sudden storm destroying the tranquility of an ocean.

2. The second thing we can recognize is that, however slight or relative it is, this peace is the tip of the iceburg, indicating our capacity for lasting peace if we purify and master our minds.

Just as mud can always be removed to reveal pure, clear water, so delusions can be removed to reveal the natural purity and clarity of our mind. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

Pride with respect to our potential

And then we can think,

“This is me. I am a peaceful person with limitless potential.”

It’s true. We are. Another scriptural reference to identifying with our Buddha nature is Shantideva’s teaching on “pride with respect to our potential”, where we think:

I can and will attain Buddhahood. ~ How to Understand the Mind

And what does a peaceful person with limitless potential feel about life? What do they want to do all day long? What DO they do all day long?! Especially compared with an unhappy and discouraged person who believes they can’t do anything and that the future is hopeless?

There is one more article about this on its way. Meantime, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, and I’m sure the other readers would too

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9.5 mins read.

Do you agree that identifying with our limitless Buddha nature is the start of identifying ourself correctly?

As Venerable Geshe Kelsang explains in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra, it is because we have been identifying ourselves incorrectly for so long that we keep experiencing delusions and hallucinatory suffering. 

Since beginningless time our way of identifying our self has been mistaken. We believe that our self that we normally see is our self. This belief is ignorance because our self that we normally see does not exist.

How can a non-existent self be our self?! Yet here we are relating to it day and night, life after life, serving and protecting it, experiencing delusions, creating contaminated karma, and experiencing hallucinatory suffering. Is it any wonder we can’t stay happy or solve our actual problems? We all sense something is wrong, and this is it.

I am on the plane to Houston, sitting next to a young man talking to an older man about his new-found love of hunting. He is boasting about the size of the deer he just shot (I don’t even want to look at that picture); and they agree, “It’ll be even bigger next year!” They are describing their tactics. “If you do the sit right, pretend to be one of them, don’t spook them, you can catch them.” I want to spook them … run away you poor harmless deer!!! Run away from these well-fed humans who want to shoot you dead. These gentlemanly fellows offered to put up my case and are nothing but friendly, but due to their self-cherishing they think their happiness matters more than those deer they have murdered. “Most satisfying thing after I killed it was … “ – I didn’t quite catch what he just said after that. But, “Yeah, you walk a bit taller.” And “We are spoiled in Iowa”, describing all the opportunities to hunt.

And, get this, the older man, who has been talking about the fun of hunting quail, just said he was a veterinarian!!! I don’t even get this. Isn’t there a contradiction in there somewhere? I might pluck up the courage to ask him during this three-hour flight. (Maybe toward the end though, lol. Which is now further away as we have been delayed almost an hour already due to tardy lavatory maintenance. That’s a first. Hope it doesn’t mean I miss my connecting flight to London for the second day running. Samsara is always coming up with new ways to torture us. Still, no one is trying to hunt me down at the moment = bonus.) Meanwhile, this conversation shows no sign of slowing down. Young man: “I want to kill a turkey this year, that’s my next goal.” Older man, encouragingly: “You will.”

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh …

Do I tell them that killing is a cause of rebirth in hell? Probably not.*

How I do it

Okay, with renewed renunciation and compassion, I’m going to try to ignore their conversation now and get on with explaining my favorite way of identifying with my Buddha nature. 

Following on from these last two articles:

Identifying with our Buddha nature

Buddha nature: manifesting our limitless potential

What I like to do is not go for my Buddha nature as a “thing” as it were, however positive, but by letting it emerge from the truth of emptiness.

In other words, the first thing I do whenever I sit down to meditate is to dissolve myself and my world into emptiness by remembering the dreamlike nature of things and/or using the quick fix meditation I explain here. 

The self that we normally see appears relatively small, constrained, limited, and fragile. However, believing it exists is a mistake because this self that I am relating to doesn’t actually exist and therefore cannot be found – I am not my body, not my mind, and not other than my body and mind. 

(Tip: sometimes it is helpful to start by dissolving away our body and mind first, and asking, “Where is my self?” It’s gone. Then we go looking for it in the body, the mind, or the collection. Can’t find it in there anywhere either. We are left beholding the absence of the self we normally see, which is its non-existence.) We come to understand:

The I that we grasp at so strongly, cherish so dearly, and devote our whole life to serving and protecting is merely a fabrication of our ignorance. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

By getting this fabricated self out of the way, a lot of space opens up; and I can now meditate freely and happily without holding myself back. (At some point, I also invite Buddha to enter into my heart so that I can meditate with blessings.)

Once we have seen that the self we normally see doesn’t exist, we are left with the absence of that self, which is its true or ultimate nature, emptiness. That may leave us with a question:

We may wonder, “If my self that I normally see does not exist, then who is meditating? Who will get up from meditation, speak to others, and reply when my name is called? ~ Modern Buddhism

If one minute we are beholding a mere absence of the self we normally see, and then the next minute a self appears again, what is that appearance exactly? It can’t be a real self because we just saw that a real self doesn’t exist. So it must be mere appearance – merely or simply projected by the mind with no existence at all from its own side. Like a dream. And completely empty.

As long as we are satisfied with the mere imputation of our “self,” there is no problem. We can think, “I exist,” “I am going to town,” and so on.

Therefore, a fully correct identification of our self is as mere appearance not other than the emptiness of all phenomena, as Geshe Kelsang explains so profoundly in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra. 

I think we can also identify ourself correctly as mere name not other than the emptiness of all phenomena. Self is not findable within its name — yet take the name away and it disappears. We can never find a real self lurking behind the name and/or waiting or worthy to be called “self”. “Self” is named or labelled by thought in dependence upon its basis of imputation (whatever that basis of imputation may be, and it is changing all the time).

If we correctly identify ourself in this way as mere name, we are free and able to impute or label our self on any valid basis of imputation. We could stop imputing ourself on delusions and pain, for a start.

Authentic self-confidence

Practically speaking, once the self that I normally see — that real, boring, limited, deluded self – has disappeared into emptiness, I am free to impute myself on the basis of something inspiring and beneficial. It seems to me that it is not just once we get to Tantra that we change our basis of imputation — “Oh, now I’m supposed to be a Buddha suddenly, how does that work?!” We can get used to changing our basis of imputation with correct imagination or correct imputation from the very outset of our Dharma practice.

Starting with even a slight experience of inner peace that arises, say, from some breathing meditation, we can recognize this as our Buddha nature and on that basis correctly think: “I am a peaceful person with boundless potential.” This is what Shantideva calls “pride with respect to our potential.” This really gets us going, as explained in this article.

Then, as we experience any kinds of virtuous or peaceful minds, we can impute ourselves on those as well. For example, based on developing some loving kindness, instead of imputing ourself on our delusion and thinking, “I am a grumpy person who has by some miracle managed to feel kind,” we can think, “I am a kind-hearted person who sometimes suffers from the delusion of grumpiness, which is not me.”

We can use this correct identification of our self as mere name or mere appearance not other than emptiness to gain first-hand genuine experience of the virtuous minds that are the entire stages of the path to enlightenment of Sutra and Tantra. Such as:

On the basis of even some slight experience understanding the importance of future lives, we can validly impute our self: “‘I am someone who is concerned with future lives.” Then what do we think about and do all day long?!

On the basis of even some slight experience of renunciation, we can correctly think about ourselves: “I am a being bound for liberation.” Remember that all day and we’ll have incredible self-confidence, including the ability to transform that day’s difficulties. Shantideva calls this “pride in thinking we can destroy our delusions”.

On the basis of developing bodhichitta for even a few moments, we can re-identify ourselves: “I am a Bodhisattva!” Don’t forget this, and we’ll spend our whole life concerned for others and doing the wonderful things to help them that a Bodhisattva does. Shantideva calls this “pride in our actions”.

Bring Tantra into this and it gets even more cosmic – based on our imagined experience of bliss and emptiness, reality, we can think, “I am a Buddha.” Then what does our life look like?! This is so-called “divine pride”.

(You can read about these four types of non-deluded pride in Meaningful to Behold and How to Understand the Mind.)

Postscript: I just texted a friend about my neighboring hunters, and he replied that perhaps they are Avalokiteshvara and Savaripa having a chat. He sent me the story from The Masters of Mahamudra (an excellent book). Savaripa is a proud hunter, and Compassion Buddha Avalokiteshvara develops a strong with to help him:

“Savaripa’s karma was cursed. The hunter’s survival depends on taking life, and killing animals and eating their flesh results in a rebirth such as that of a hunter; he kills to survive and survives to kill.”

“Seeing his plight” Avalalokiteshvara manifests as a hunter. He handily out-hunts Savaripa by shooting 500 emanated deer with one arrow, which highly impresses Savaripa (rather like these two men are trying to impress each other) and means he now has his attention. You can read the rest of your story yourself … spoiler alert, it averts disaster for Savaripa and leads him to enlightenment. If I was a Buddha, instead of just judging them with dismay, I could help these two hunters in a similar way.

And … since I wrote that, I had a long and very amicable conversation with both of them, sweet men with lots of Buddha nature, where I did ask some perhaps awkward questions but with a disarming amount of friendliness. Such as, how can you reconcile being a vet and experiencing that sorrow to see animals suffering, trying your hardest to make them feel better, with going out of your way to kill them yourself? (Andy the vet: that’s a good question.) Had anyone ever bought in a deer to be healed? (Yes, one with a broken leg. He liked healing the deer. Animals are all the same, he said. Soooo, why harm a deer and not a dog?) And even though it might be “the culture” around these parts, did God not also give us an intellect so we could think things through and not just follow the herd? (He agreed.) And even though animals do live in fear all the time and are being hunted by other animals, per the young man (Ryan’s) argument, cannot we as human beings, unlike poor animals, choose to be compassionate instead? Also, the camaraderie that is so enjoyable, does someone have to suffer so that others can have fun? How does the deer feel about that camraderie if you put yourself in the deer’s shoes? (Andy said that was a very interesting contemplation.) And, for Ryan, it is all very well to agree that hunting is a necessary evil, but there is a big difference between feeling sadness when we kill, even if we intend to eat the whole animal, and feeling pride and joy. That led us into a conversation about Native Americans, and he actually said he’d think about it. We left on the best of terms and Andy wanted to know my mom’s name (Sally) so he could pray for her.

Over to you. I’d love to hear from you! And I’m sure the other readers would too.

Related articles

Quick fix meditation on emptiness 

Changing our basis of imputation

Four types of non-deluded pride 

Taking things less personally

The seventh way to foster resilience is to find a way to laugh at our own adversity. To see the absurdity and true nature of samsara and to take it less seriously or feel less threatened by it. “Samsara makes me laugh,” as Shariputra says.

Carrying on from this article, Not an ordinary death.

7. Use humor

““Humor can be very helpful during times of serious stress”, Charney said, pointing to research he and Southwick did with Vietnam prisoners of war.”

I’ve spent a lot of time this past year or so with my parents, meeting numerous nurses, doctors, carers, and hospital workers in London. I have been somewhat blown away by their courage and kindness in the face of long exhausting workdays, too few resources, and often not a whole lot of gratitude. As well, I have loved the way Brits have a knack for joking around with each other even in, or especially in, the darkest of moments – the ambulance drivers, for example, making me laugh with their gallow humor. It’s a main way to stay light and find human connection during long hours of carting around the sick and the dying. These were the same ambulance drivers who took all the time in the world to help my mother when she started to feel anxious: “Just breathe, sweetheart”, one said as he held her hands and guided her in an impromptu breathing meditation, “Breathe in. Now, breathe out.”

As the original article says:

“Another proven technique for managing emotion is to use humor. Look for the levity and encourage others around you to do the same. Humor prompts us to step back from a situation and reset our emotional buttons, which also serves to broaden our perspective.”

The other day at the airport I called the person who kindly lends me a car (and who never gets irked about anything) to break the news that my “Find my” app had beeped me that the car was no longer in the garage, ergo it was stolen. He actually chuckled. Hours later, when I realized it was just a glitch in the technology, I called him again. Upon asking him why he had not been more concerned, he replied simply:

I am not going to worry about a car.

I liked that so much that I have been trying to say it myself now when things go wrong. “I am not going to worry about a delayed flight/cross boss/money problem/sore leg/etc etc etc.” What a great freedom, I thought, to be this light-hearted, not taking an outer problem too seriously even as we work to solve it. This is something we can all get better at. For example, letting go of my uptight self-cherishing and relaxing into cherishing others always seems to work in restoring my equilibrium – every time, everywhere.

Feeling less judged

Along with humor in grim situations, perhaps, is simply the ability to be honest about what we are experiencing. Have you ever noticed that when you open up to someone about something, it turns out they’ve been in the same situation or know other friends who have? There are no original problems in samsara. We are not alone.

A lot of people have been struggling to stay afloat these past few years. Therapists report that anxiety, financial stress, substance use, job worries, and other issues have surfaced during the upheaval of the past few years. Racial justice issues are ongoing. Political upheavals and climate disasters are affecting and worrying people everywhere. Many therapists say they are counseling health care workers who are utterly overwhelmed and, worryingly, leaving in droves.

I see this sign on my bike to work, “Therapy now free for all youth in Colorado.” This is because so many of them need help. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this generation because I keep hearing about or seeing their problems. I know Dharma can help, so how can we reach them with it? How can we be role models for younger people we know, providing hope so that, amongst other things, they don’t feel that all adults are dysfunctional, the planet is going to hell, and there is no point in growing up? I would genuinely love to hear your ideas.

Samsara was not exactly working out before, but the pandemic — and all the crises since the worst of the pandemic — have functioned like a magnifying glass for vulnerabilities. People of all ages who used to be relatively carefree have told me that they’ve been experiencing unusual levels of anxiety, for example. This is borne out by the number of people seeking therapy in general:

‘There is so much grief and loss,” said Anne Compagna-Doll, a clinical psychologist in Burbank, Calif. “One of my clients, who is usually patient, is experiencing road rage. Another client, who is a mom of two teens, is fearful and doesn’t want them to leave the house. My highly work-motivated client is considering leaving her career. There is an overwhelming sense of malaise and fatigue.”’

One of my theories is that we are all part of this world together, sharing collective karma — so it is not just the karma of physical sickness but also mental anxiety that has been ripening on us all. In which case, developing anxiety is nothing to feel embarrassed about — “But I’m supposed to be a chilled Buddhist!” as someone said to me the other day — because it is simply our collective karma ripening. Accepting that, we can deal with it.

One silver lining of these troublesome times is that there is less of a stigma around admitting to mental health issues because they are now so common — we are more likely to get nods of understanding. People can be more open about saying “I’m feeling scared. I’m feeling anxious. I cannot cope.” Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka helped break the mold when they spoke openly about their own mental health struggles in the sports world, for example. The list of celebrities opening up about their mental health issues grows by the day — Ryan Reynolds has spoken about his anxiety, Jonah Hill announced he would no longer do press tours because of panic attacks, and everyone from Selena Gomez to Jay-Z has extolled the virtues of mental health care. People are less timid about coming to meditation classes to find solutions. Prince Harry said that The New Eight Steps to Happiness is his favorite self-help book.

How to be genuinely optimistic

People are acknowledging that mental health is vitally important, just as important as physical health. And it just so happens that our delusions or uncontrolled thoughts make all of us mentally unhealthy to a greater or lesser degree. Buddhism helps us to understand and accept this about ourselves in the context of our limitless capacity for wellness – and through this we can become resilient and we can truly heal. We are not broken – it is our delusions that are the problem. If we don’t recognize them, how can we get past the delusions to identify with our indestructible Buddha nature, which is completely whole and healthy all the time?

We need always to start by connecting to our inner peace, our potential, at whatever level we feel it. Please don’t be a perfectionist because that’s just another method we’ve developed for knocking ourselves down – it’s like, “I can’t even get to a peaceful mind!” Maybe, but you can get to a slightly less agitated mind, and that’s good enough for recognizing, “This is my Buddha nature.” Of course we have to start somewhere, and once we have, we focus on feeling happy about this little bit of inner peace, however slight or relative, and start constructing the mental sanity of compassion and wisdom upon that authentic foundation.

If on the basis of a slight experience of any good quality we can recognize, “I have this potential for huge and increasing love, compassion, joy, wisdom, positive virtuous qualities, and so on”, this means that our relationship to ourself is fundamentally optimistic. This is why I believe we need Buddha’s teachings out there. Some people are saying things like, “Yeah, let’s be positive and optimistic!”, but they’re not actually explaining why and how we can be positive and optimistic. And in fact this can come across as a bit trite: “Think positive!” while meantime there’s a plague and a war etc going on.

Whereas, to paraphrase Buddha, his point is, “Yes, of course there’s a plague, of course there’s a war, because we’re deluded, we’re all out of control and insanely projecting things that are not there, so what do you expect? But if you dive below the surface, you’re completely pure. You’re completely sane. You’re completely well.”

More about resilience and mental health coming up soon. Meantime, would love to hear your comments below.

 A house mate was telling me today how concerned he is about his younger brother, aged 22 – why? Because he is suffering from anxiety, along with a surprising number of his friends. A couple of weeks ago a mother told me that her child is also suffering from chronic anxiety, aged 15, as are many of his schoolmates, even in their affluent area. And yesterday another mother shared that her young daughter was already experiencing anxiety and, again, she is not alone, her friends are too: “What is going on? They are only 8!” (This child at least is now benefiting from meditation classes.)

There are many theories why the younger generations are struggling – this is the generation who have never known life before social media, who have just lived through a worldwide pandemic, who have the fear of nuclear catastrophe back on the horizon, who are bearing the brunt of economic uncertainty, and so on. An old Buddhist friend wrote today on Facebook that he was recently asked by two young people what Buddhism can teach us about coping with Climate Grief, feelings that they strongly suffer from. He said it felt a big honor to be asked – but daunting – and continued:

“Climate anxiety is widespread: a recent survey across 10 countries found that 60% of young people are “very worried” or “extremely worried” about climate change. And I definitely feel it myself. For sure Dharma helps me, but I don’t fully know how to deal with my own grief and anxiety. For me, there’s something about what we’re facing — the mass extinctions, destruction of habitats across huge areas, the scale of the resultant suffering and death, that somehow feels different, and harder to deal with, than the “everyday” suffering that we all face.”

I wrote a very long article about a Buddhist response to climate change, Climate change and Buddhism, if you have a spare 20 minutes or so! (Would also love your contributions because that article is by no means exhaustive or conclusive.) Buddhism does give us a deeper picture and a perspective that helps us get beyond anxiety and even become part of the solution.

But, as with all anxiety and grief, we need to start by connecting to our mental peace or we won’t stand a chance.

Real relief starts here

We need to develop the skill to create space inside us, space we can rely on, even at short notice, which is sometimes all we have in our busy overwhelmed daily lives. This is why we need meditation – it gives us the ability to tune more and more quickly into the natural, peaceful heart that we all have when we just let go of following the blah blah blah in the mind. This peace arises naturally simply because we stop thinking about all the other stuff – let go and there it is – and, if we focus on this peace, it grows. In other words, this peace is natural to us. And if our mind is peaceful, we are happy and able to cope, even as things are going wrong outside.

We can think, “I have a natural source of peace and happiness in my heart; and the potential within that is literally limitless.” If we feel rejoice or happy about that, we are creating an unbelievably positive basis with which to greet the world, as opposed to “Hello, I am overwhelmed by everything that’s going on at the moment. I am an overwhelmed person; good morning overwhelmed person.” Without changing our sense of who we are on the basis of even a little peace and stability in our minds, we cannot help but grasp at this limited and suffering sense of self, this person who’s like, “I can’t take too much more.”

 Quick meditation

Here’s a quick 5-minute meditation to help us do this. (If you want a longer version, click here: Drop into your heart and breathe.)

 Begin by sitting comfortably with a straight back and so on. Allow the heaviness and tension to fall away from your body, and imagine your body just melts into light, becomes hollow and weightless.

Drop from your head to your heart, starting to feel some of the space and peace you have inside you. Feel happy to be here, doing this. Buddha likened our awareness to a boundless crystal clear ocean. Our turbulent wavelike distractions gently subside into this peaceful ocean — just imagine.

To get a little bit more absorbed, focus for a couple of minutes on your breath, slowing down and calming your mind. Focus simply on the sensation of your breath as it enters and leaves through your nose. Feel your mind and your breath getting closer and closer together, becoming as if one.

As a result you feel a little more centered in your heart. You can imagine that everything outside of your body in all directions infinitely has melted away into this pure clear awareness in your heart. Everything up to this moment in time has also dissolved away — the past has disappeared like waking from a dream because it is no more real nor substantial than that. Everything after this moment has also disappeared – it is not even there to begin with.

In this way you feel centered in your heart in the present moment enjoying the peaceful clarity of your mind. Focus on any peace that has arisen, however slight, thinking: “This is my own natural inner peace. And within this peace is the potential for endless bliss and lasting freedom from worry and suffering. This is my Buddha nature.” Rejoice or feel happy about this, and think: “This is me. I am a peaceful person with limitless potential.”

You can also feel that this peace is already connected to or merged with the universal love, compassion, and wisdom of those who have already actualized their spiritual potential and are awakened from all suffering and limitations.

In this brief meditation, we’ve started to change our sense of self through understanding how our mind is naturally peaceful and how everything depends upon our mind, so that it is possible for me to find an authentic stress relief and happiness that cannot be destroyed. And then I can really help others do the same.

The importance of Dharma Centers

Our mind is powerful, for good or for evil. Therapists all over America and indeed the world are worried about mental health right now.

“As Americans head into a third year of pandemic living, therapists around the country are finding themselves on the front lines of a mental health crisis. Social workers, psychologists and counselors from every state say they can’t keep up with an unrelenting demand for their services, and many must turn away patients — including children — who are desperate for support.”

Unsurprisingly, requests for antidepressants or anti-anxiety prescription drugs have risen exponentially. Medication can be useful, sometimes essential. However, meditation is also extraordinarily helpful for mental health, whether we are on medication or not.

Venerable Geshe Kelsang has said that a Kadampa Center is a hospital for the mind. People of all ages can learn to apply the medicine of Dharma to their own actual problems with the help of a skillful meditation teacher and supportive community.

Heal thyself

“Nine out of 10 therapists say the number of clients seeking care is on the rise, and most are experiencing a significant surge in calls for appointments, longer waiting lists and difficulty meeting patient demand.” Nearly one in three clinicians have 3-month waiting lists.

“I hate it that I have to turn so many people away.”

Reading this, I was thinking that this is all the more reason for people to discover their local Buddhist meditation Center. No waiting there! Anyone can walk in whenever the doors are open. Plus of course Buddhist meditation is immensely therapeutic and curative. And although financial and insurance issues are among the biggest obstacles to patients finding therapy, everyday classes at a not for profit local center are usually kept inexpensive, cheaper than a couple of coffees or a movie or an exercise class; and at the Kadampa Centers I am most familiar with, at least, no one is turned away for financial reasons. Once you know how to meditate you’ll be able to do it whenever you like, for free. It doesn’t require special clothing or equipment. You can do it on your bed or at the back of a bus or on a park bench. Heal thyself! Anywhere.

Plus, Buddhist meditation can be practiced at so many different levels – it provides stress relief, yes, but also an entire path to permanent freedom and everlasting bliss. Even if people initially show up for therapeutic reasons, they often find there far more benefit than they expected. If they keep showing up, sooner or later they’ll quite possibly end up discovering the entire path to enlightenment.

Can we believe in ourselves?

We need self-acceptance and self-improvement that is based not on the limited self we normally see, which doesn’t even exist and so cannot improve, but on a realistic understanding of who or what the self actually is, who we actually are. Which is someone with limitless potential.

Something happened yesterday that filled me with hope. I had been talking about bodhichitta, the supreme good heart, only a couple of times to a group of around 30 people new to Buddhism – explaining and meditating on our Buddha nature, and compassion, and how each one of us had it in us to become Bodhisattvas and, in time, fully enlightened Buddhas. On impulse I did a poll, “Who here actually believes that?!” All but two put up their hands.

I am hoping that this small bit of market research points to the fact that, deep down, everyone is aware that they are not inherently stuck. That if people hear about and apply the methods that enlightened beings have given us, they will believe in and realize their limitless potential. As Gen-la Dekyong often says: “Everyone needs Dharma.”

Do my job

Venerable Geshe-la said that once he was gone, we would do his job. What is that job? To work toward becoming enlightened and to get the Dharma out there. But not evangelically! Skillfully, according to the moral discipline of benefiting others, which meets and respects people where they are and gives them help according to their needs and wishes.

Quick note on live-streaming

During the pandemic, all Kadampa Centers went online. They are now back in person only, with exceptions for the study programs. Live streaming has for sure made things easier in terms of increasing access to meditation classes and is invaluable for those who are living with disability or far away, for example. However, even therapists are discovering that doing everything online is not the same:

“While telemedicine can be effective and therapeutic, I think something is missed when not meeting in person.”

And:

“An in-person office can help you slow down and provide a comfort that sometimes your home environment can’t.”

I was also thinking the other day that even if we have access to fewer live streaming opportunities, we still have total access to the 23 brilliant books by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, the entire A-Z of Buddha’s teachings and meditations. I know reading is a bit of a lost art these days, but there is nothing to stop us taking it up again! It is through reading Geshe-la’s books that I learned most of my Dharma.

Thank you for reading Your comments are most welcome.

Buddhist meditation is said to be the path that leads from joy to joy, culminating in the spontaneous great joy of Tantric completion stage and full enlightenment. Sometimes we might think we have to postpone our joy to some point in the future, like when we are a proper decent meditator, and that it’s okay to be miserable practicing Buddhism in the meantime because, after all, we are creating the causes for future happiness. But there is something not quite right about this way of thinking, which is one reason we have this Kadampa motto:

Always rely upon a happy mind alone.

Being a miserable meditator is a bit of a contradiction in terms, as I talk about here. Long before we are able to enjoy the bliss of completion stage, we need the practical ability to make ourselves happier, because happiness IS the path.

Given this, I quote a lot on this blog about how foundational it is for our Buddhist practice to identify from the outset with our Buddha nature, which is our own natural peace, purity, and good heart. And I have been thinking a lot recently about the other side of that coin – which is that living beings have no faults, that living beings are not their delusions.

The foundation of Dharma practice

Dharma 101: There is no happiness (or suffering) to be found outside the mind – it doesn’t matter how long or hard we search. When our mind is peaceful, we are peaceful and happy – when it is not, we are not. Our entire liberation and enlightenment have to be established within our own mind – they cannot exist anywhere else. So we may as well get started while we have this rare opportunity to work with our minds.

I think the essence of Buddhism, or Dharma practice, is to stop equating people with their delusions and believing they are therefore intrinsically awful! Including ourselves. Every day, we need to stop blaming ourselves and others for our delusions. It is not working. Blaming the delusions themselves, training ourselves to see the person beyond the delusions, by contrast, gives us daily hope and confidence in the spiritual path.

One question I find very interesting to consider:

If people are not their delusions, who are they?!

And we can get specific — for example if someone who is messing with our plans is not their delusions, who are they?! It’s deep. And there is not just one answer. But it’s well worth thinking about because it brings into question the whole paradigm of samsaric thinking, which is: we have been holding everyone to be inherently deluded for as long as we can remember, and far longer too.

Before we met Dharma, we probably didn’t even know what a delusion was. We assumed that feeling grumpy and anxious and the rest of it was just part and parcel of who we all were and there was nothing much to be done about it. We have been identifying with our delusions — thinking “I am angry/disturbed/scared”, and so on — since beginningless time, which is of course a very long time.

Without our delusions, we hardly know who we are, right? And now Buddha is coming along and saying, “You know what? You are not your delusions. No one is their delusions.” This is very profound and very radical. And on one level the whole of Dharma – all the teachings or meditations we learn that are leading us to greater and greater freedom and happiness – are based on this fundamental understanding that we are not our delusions, that nobody is their delusions. If we were, there’d be no point practicing Dharma. If we were intrinsically deluded – if that’s who we were, deluded people – how could there exist a path to liberation or enlightenment? If we are intrinsically deluded, then we can’t get rid of those delusions. If they are actually us, then that’s it, we are stuck with them. And so is everyone else.

But of course, we’re not our delusions. Our delusions are not us. Which means that Dharma is going to work for you.

Just as mud can always be removed to reveal pure, clear water, so delusions can be removed to reveal the natural purity and clarity of our mind. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

The need for renunciation

 As it says in the Lojong teachings, living beings have no faults. We have to mentally separate living beings from their faults. When we talk about faults here, we don’t mean things like whether or not people wear unstylish clothes or drive badly or talk too much. We are not trying to separate people from their driving ability, much as this might annoy us.

The list of annoyances does not end in samsara. We therefore need the wish to abandon samsara itself, the wish called “renunciation”. The only way out of samsara for us is renunciation. And the basis for seeing past others’ delusions so we can view them as precious is also renunciation.

So where does samsara come from? The true origins of samsara are deluded minds. We are therefore mentally separating living beings from their true origins, their delusions. These are what are giving rise to all those unwanted true sufferings. Renunciation understands that everyone is currently a victim of their delusions, including us. Any person who is identifying with a delusion is an unwell person. It is not fair to consider them and the illness as the same. We are sad at delusions, not angry.

Generally, when we’re annoyed with someone we cannot accept the principal thing that is making them suffer – we are actually blaming people for the root of their pain! We need a clear target — not living beings, their delusions. These are their enemy too, even if they don’t know it. In the bubble of meditation it may not be so hard to remember this and feel kindly toward others – but the moment we feel attacked, that’s another story! How do we get past this? With more renunciation.

This is because we don’t really think that delusions ARE the problem. We don’t really see them as the true origins of every single one of our sufferings. We feel that our problems are still others’ fault — “YOU let yourself get angry etc. Yeah, sure, poor you, you suffer from anger, but YOU did it and now I have to put up with it!” We are not really thinking that they are the victim of their anger — we are thinking we are their victim.

Anger is always certain of itself. We could write a book full of chapters on our partner’s faults, for example; and we will be 100 percent right. That’s anger. We cannot exaggerate loving other people — but delusions are always based on exaggeration. The more we regard others as precious, the happier we’ll become, and the more we’ll realize it’s true – it becomes a virtuous cycle. But annoyance is always based on a lie.

If you’re a living being you deserve to be happy. You are suffering from delusions and you have a method to end these and end your suffering, like anyone else. If we don’t know that in our self, how can we identify that in others when they’re shouting at us on the street? How can we float off like a Buddha?!

“Is it still you inside?”

I just saw a clip from the hit sci-fi series The Last of Us, where people are taken over by fungus – once bitten by an infected person, it takes over their brains and bodies, turning them into violent monsters with scary tendrils sprouting from their mouth and eventually their whole body. In the incredibly poignant moment of this clip, (spoiler alert), the little boy Sam asks the main character, Ellie:

If you turn into a monster, is it still you inside?

At which point he pulls up his trouser leg and shows her a bloody bite mark.

Our delusions are like that fungus. Just as Ellie was heartbroken for Sam, so we should be heartbroken for everyone who succumbs to our common enemy.

Apparently there is a so-called “zombie-ant fungus” (aka cordyceps) that takes over poor ants and manipulates their brain behavior, making them act in violent and anti-social ways such that they are ousted from their anthills, before eating them painfully from the inside out. How can we blame the ant for that?

There is also mad-cow disease – again, if someone succumbs to that or any dementia, we surely feel sad for them, we don’t blame them? Even microplastics can alter behavior, apparently, but why would we blame ourselves for the faults of the plastic now invading our bodies?

These forms of mind-control are all disturbing and terrifying – but surely none more so than our delusions? These other invaders are relatively short-lived before we succumb and die. Our delusions however, as Shantideva says, have been with us since beginningless time.

No other type of enemy
Can remain for as long a time
As can the enduring foes of my delusions,
For they have no beginning and no apparent end.

Everything that human beings do requires effort to keep it up — it decays or collapses all on its own. Everything except delusions.

Being mind-controlled by the fungus of our delusions reminds me of the creeping vine in Prayers of Request to the Mahamudra Lineage Gurus (in Clear Light of Bliss and other books):

I request you please to grant me your blessings
So that I may cut the creeping vine of self-grasping within my mental continuum,
Train in love, compassion and bodhichitta,
And swiftly accomplish the Mahamudra of the Path of Union.

To take this analogy a step further, if we are going to help others we first have to make sure that we are immune from this creeping vine ourselves by taking the medicine of Dharma. Then, out of compassion, we can spread our immunity to others.

Thank you for reading. Please share any practical tips

I’ve been watching a couple of gentle dramas unfold on the other side of this lake.

First up, a group of schoolchildren skipping along laughing – such potential, and with their whole future ahead of them. What will this strange world look like for them? Will they be able to keep up this enthusiasm? Will these small human beings meet the path to enlightenment and realize their actual spiritual potential?

Next was a group of mentally disabled adults, whose Buddha nature was shining through their innocent faces — as it was in their supervisor trying so hard to get them excited by the large Coi swimming in front of them. Failing that, she pointed out the frog making such a loud noise! I, at least, found that interesting and smiled at her – tiny frog, very loud noise! And some of her charges seemed vaguely interested too; but the confusion on their faces was unmistakable.

One of the men asked for the restroom and she replied, “Sorry, buddy, you’re going to have to wait.” Well into his thirties, he had no capacity to go find the restroom on his own. They were all following her around like ducklings, so childlike, and I was rooting for them – rooting for their confusion to lift so that their real nature could shine forth.

Even those who are deeply confused are not their confusion. Living beings are not their confusion or any other delusion. Like I said in this related article, How can I blame you?, without this recognition Dharma doesn’t seem to make much sense and, besides, where is the hope for any of us?

“Is it still you inside?”

 Whilst we have the chance with this precious human life, moreorless able-bodied, if we make some effort to remember we’re not our delusions, we’ll be able to keep practicing Buddha’s teachings every day pretty happily all the way to enlightenment.

No matter how monstrous our delusions, they can never damage or destroy our pure nature. As Venerable Geshe-la says in one of his most oft-quoted passages:

Buddha compared our Buddha nature to a gold nugget in dirt, for no matter how disgusting a person’s delusions may be, the real nature of their mind remains undefiled, like pure gold. ~  The New Eight Steps to Happiness

Have you ever had a sudden feeling of fullness and open-heartedness that wasn’t there the previous moment? When the endless talk show in our mind disappears, along with all those heavy inner critics; and we feel a sense of inner happiness as if our heart has expanded and brightened? In those luminous glimpses of our Buddha nature, there is far less duality between us and the world about us — we might sense that life is dream-like, not really outside of our awareness. Everything seems okay after all. There is nothing to be mad or sad about. We feel connected to everyone.

This all feels so much more like the “real” us. And we’re, like, “I’m just going to stay like this forever! What was I so worried about?!” But of course, mere moments later …

This is why we need to get used to deliberately identifying with our Buddha nature, not our delusions, so that these meaningful moments are not just random and short lived but become our everyday experience and sense of self. The alternative — to forget our Buddha nature and identify with our delusions – means that joy is once again elusive. It also means that the way to increase that joy — practicing Dharma — will seem foreign to us, like, “That’s not who I am. That’s not what I do.”

This correct identification also paves the way to identify ourselves correctly as a Buddha, someone who has fully realized their deepest potential, as practiced in Tantra.

How to purify our delusions

We have to know about our delusions, of course, in order to purify them:

Buddha said that those who understand their own faults are wise, whereas those who are unaware of their own faults yet look for faults in others are fools. ~ The New Eight Steps to Happiness

There’s also a saying in the mind-training teachings, “Always purify your greatest delusion first”; and that’s going to be difficult if we don’t know what it is. We use Dharma as a mirror in which we can see our own faults. As Geshe Kelsang says:

We do not need to blame ourself for the many delusions we have inherited from our previous life, but, if we wish for our future self to enjoy peace and happiness, it is our responsibility to remove these delusions from our mind.

Because who else is going to remove them?! But always in this context:

No matter how many delusions we may have or how strong they are, they are not an essential part of our mind. They are defilements that temporarily pollute our mind but do not sully its pure essential nature.

Intellectually, all this may be quite clear to us, but (as you’ve probably noticed) we can discourage ourselves pretty easily in these degenerate times. We can quickly get sucked right back in there and forget. So my advice is, every day, to spend a few minutes contemplating how you are not your delusions, not least your self-sabotaging discouragement and sense of not being enough. We can do things like set alarms on our phone, if it’s helpful, to remind ourselves to take a quick peek inside our mind every few hours — let it settle into its own natural non-deluded peace and remember who we really are.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this ability to make ourselves feel better is something we have to get good at — our whole Dharma practice hinges on it. If we do get this right, in my experience at least, our life becomes a lot of fun, a journey that leads from joy to joy.

What does it mean to love ourselves?

In fact, when in daily life we notice that we’re becoming agitated, if we have started to internalize this new sense of self we will naturally think:

Okay, some unhappy thought is arising right now, making me feel bad — but let me just distance myself from it for a moment to remember something important: This agitation is NOT ME. It’s a wave on the ocean. It’s a cloud in the sky. Therefore, I don’t need to freak out at this point.

We’re not setting ourselves up in inner combat against our negative thoughts — we are simply no longer obliged to take them so seriously. To get rid of them we first need patiently to acknowledge they are there – and in fact become less scared of them. This is because we come to see that these currently unwelcome thoughts that we try to push down or push away — such as hatred, rage, despair, fear, addictive need, prejudice, guilt, anxiety, self-righteousness, and self-loathing, etc etc – have no real power to harm us in the context of our Buddha nature. (More about that in this article, Dealing with our demons.)

In fact, the delusions themselves can be weirdly helpful. The other night driving along the highway  I experienced a disconcerting vibration – through a lack of attention or vision I had accidentally drifted onto the rumblestrip. And this in itself reminded me to steer straight back onto the road. Likewise, we can reconstrue our delusions to be useful rather than soul-destroying because their rumbling is reminding us of who our real enemies are — what it is that has actually caused all the hurt we have ever felt. They themselves are encouraging us to get back on the joyful path:

Thank you for appearing and reminding me of your existence. Now I can feel you, you are reminding me to give up on you, stop believing you, and get happy again.

Despite the fact that I have the potential to be happy and deserve to be happy, just like everyone else, these inner enemies are hurting me and so they have to go. This way, day by day, as delusions pop up, we have a resilience and self-confidence that comes from knowing who we really are and where we are going. We can think, per Shantideva:

I will destroy my delusions; they will not destroy me.

We are no longer overwhelmed by these enemies in our midst — however many are popping up, it doesn’t matter, because they’re not us. However strong they are, they’re still not us. With this renunciation, we can follow Venerable Geshe-la’s advice to “be utterly ruthless with our delusions but kind and patient with ourselves.” This really is self-care. This IS love and compassion for ourselves.

A quote you may have heard:

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This guy also describes it nicely:

@iamrichroll

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Rainn Wilson returns to the #richroll podcast. #spiritual #rainnwilson #soulpancake #manifestation

♬ original sound – Rich Roll – Rich Roll

Hope this is all helpful and please feel free to share it with anyone else, Buddhist or otherwise, who might find it so. And I would love your comments!