Approaching the Buddhist Path Read online

  Over the ensuing years, I met with His Holiness several times to address these topics and to show him the work I had done so far on the manuscript. In our time together, he taught specific subjects upon my request, offered deeper explanations of others, and answered the many questions that I had accumulated. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy these sessions and usually invited other geshes and his brother to come. I would ask a question, and they discussed the answer animatedly in Tibetan, with His Holiness asking the geshes what they thought, bringing up points they had not considered. After some time, the translator gave me the conclusion of the discussion.

  As I continued to add more material from many of His Holiness’s oral teachings and from our interviews, the manuscript became larger and larger. I came to see that the purpose of this series was to fill the gap between the short lamrim texts with teachings lamas gave in the West and the long philosophical treatises translated into English by scholars. Western practitioners needed a concise presentation in their own language of the major topics in the philosophical texts that could also be the basis for an analytical meditation on the lamrim.

  In 2003, I began to read the manuscript aloud for His Holiness so he could check it. We soon realized that this would be a lengthy process that his schedule did not permit. In 2004, he asked his translator Geshe Dorje Damdul to go through the manuscript with me. Geshela and I worked methodically until 2010 doing this.

  His Holiness also clarified that this series was not meant solely for Westerners, but for all those who have interest in Buddhism — particularly the Nālandā tradition — and are keen to study and practice but need a new approach to it. Here he included Tibetans born in the Tibetan diaspora who have a modern education, as well as Asians from Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and so forth who are attending his teachings in Dharamsala, India, with increasing frequency and interest.

  This series chiefly contains the teachings of the Nālandā tradition, the classical Indian Buddhist tradition stemming from the great monastic universities such as Nālandā, Odantapurī, and Vikramaśīla. This is the Buddhist tradition the Tibetans and to some extent East Asians inherited from classical India. However, His Holiness clearly stated that this series must be unique — it must not be limited to the Nālandā tradition but must also include information about and teachings from other Buddhist traditions. It was time, he said, that followers of Tibetan Buddhism learned more about diverse Buddhist traditions and their teachings. As he began to speak more and more in public talks about being a twenty-­first-­century Buddhist, I came to understand his wish to dispel wrong conceptions and stereotypes that practitioners of various Buddhist traditions had about one another and bring them closer together. For this purpose, he asked me to visit other Asian countries to learn about how they practiced the Dharma. I stayed in a monastery in Thailand and also visited Taiwan to learn from scholars and practitioners there. I continued intra-­Buddhist dialogues with Buddhist monastics in the West at our annual Western Buddhist Monastic Gatherings and became familiar with the teachings of their Asian teachers. These were very rich experiences.

  In the 2011 series of interviews, His Holiness clarified that to fulfill the above purpose, he wanted a book explaining the similarities and differences between the Pāli and Sanskrit traditions. While most books that introduce the many forms of Buddhism deal with more superficial topics such as altar layout, forms of worship, and so forth, this book was to deal with doctrine. He wanted people to think deeply about the Buddha’s teachings and his skill in addressing the various dispositions and interests of his disciples. By this time the manuscript was too large to be a single volume. To fulfill His Holiness’s wish, I extracted and abbreviated portions of it to form Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions, published by Wisdom Publications in 2014.

  The present series, which will be published in several volumes, explains the path to buddhahood as set forth in the Nālandā tradition as practiced in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In some sections, it brings in teachings from other Buddhist traditions to enrich our understanding and give us a broader view of a topic. The series also incorporates several other purposes: it links study to daily life and formal meditation practice; it serves as a bridge for both new and seasoned practitioners from the short lamrim texts to the lengthy philosophical treatises; and it exposes the reader to the tenets and practices of other Buddhist traditions. Because some of the topics have already been explained in Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions, we will sometimes refer you to that book.

  Overview of the Entire Series

  We begin by laying the groundwork for the Buddha’s teachings. The need for pre-­lamrim material is evinced in a comment His Holiness made when we began working on the series: “The lamrim assumes that someone is already a practitioner with full faith in the Buddha. The main audience for the lamrim texts in all the Tibetan traditions is someone who already has some knowledge of rebirth and karma, the Three Jewels, reliable cognizers and their objects (Buddhist epistemology), and so on. We need to add introductory material to this series so the students are properly prepared.” Also covered here are the meaning of faith, balancing faith and wisdom, seeking out a qualified spiritual mentor, relying on that person properly, and developing the qualities of a receptive student. These will help you to approach the Dharma as a twenty-­first-­century Buddhist.

  Then we set the foundation for learning and meditating by explaining how to structure a meditation session on the lamrim. After again reflecting on the possibility that the continuity of our mindstream does not end at death but will take another body in another life, we look at the precious opportunity our present human life offers us and how to set our priorities. This leads us to reflect on the eight worldly concerns — ways in which we get distracted from making our lives meaningful — and karma (volitional actions) and their effects, for the first step to having a meaningful life is to abandon harming others. In this way, we will know the causes for happiness and the causes of suffering so we can go about creating the former and abandoning the latter. The topic of karma is vast and of great interest to many people, so that is covered in depth.

  We then proceed to explore the four truths of the āryas, those beings who directly realize the ultimate mode of existence. These four form the basic framework of the Buddha’s teachings. The first two truths — true duḥkha and true origins — lay out our present unsatisfactory situation in cyclic existence and its causes, the afflictions that torment our minds and lie behind our suffering. We look at the twelve links of dependent origination — the process by which afflictions and polluted karma propel our rebirth in cyclic existence and the way we can free ourselves from it. This section delves into the psychology behind wrong views and disturbing emotions.

  At this point we realize that we need the guidance of the Three Jewels — the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha — who will teach us and show us the path to liberation through the example of their lives. Learning about the potential of our mind, the possibility to attain liberation, and our buddha nature increases our confidence that we can succeed in freeing ourselves from saṃsāra and attain nirvāṇa, a state of genuine peace. This is explained in the latter two of the four truths — true cessation and true paths — the state of liberation and the method leading to it. Included in true paths are the three higher trainings, the four establishments of mindfulness, and the thirty-­seven aids to awakening — topics that are oriented toward practice in both daily life and meditation sessions. Through these we will calm our daily behavior, deepen our concentration, and gain wisdom, thus beginning to actualize our great potential.

  But freeing ourselves alone is limited, considering that others suffer just as we do and they have been amazingly kind to us. To free ourselves from the prison of self-­centeredness, we learn how to cultivate immeasurable love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, as well as bodhicitta — the intention to attain full awakening in order to most effectively benefit all sentient beings. Then we learn how to train in the perfections (pāramit
ās) — ­practices that enable us to bring our bodhicitta motivation to fruition by practicing ­generosity, ethical conduct, fortitude, joyous effort, meditative stability, and wisdom. Imagine the kind of person you will become when all those wonderful qualities have become second nature to you.

  Having generated the altruistic intention to attain full awakening, we now want to cultivate the wisdom realizing the nature of reality, the only counterforce that will completely and irreversibly eradicate all the afflictions and their latencies from our mindstreams. Here we learn the tenets of the various Buddhist philosophical systems, which have diverse views about the ultimate truth. Our job is to sort through them with the aid of the past great sages and discern the most accurate view, that of the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka tenet system.

  This leads us to discuss the two truths — veil and ultimate. Veil truths are objects that appear true to a mind affected by ignorance, and ultimate truth is their actual mode of existence, their emptiness. After further reflection, we come to see the uniqueness of the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka view of emptiness as well as how to unite the concentrated mind of serenity (śamatha) and the analytic mind of insight (vipaśyanā) to realize the ultimate nature. Here we will also touch on the view of selflessness as understood in the Pāli and Chinese Traditions.

  The Buddha also set out the paths and stages that practitioners traverse to attain their particular goals — liberation from saṃsāra or the full awakening of buddhahood. Learning these gives us a roadmap to follow on our spiritual journey and we come to understand the various qualities and realizations that are gradually developed on the path. They also enable us to check our meditative experiences with the generally accepted sequence of development.

  We then learn about the pure land practice found in both the Tibetan and Chinese traditions, and this leads us to a discussion of Vajrayāna, which is a branch of the general Mahāyāna. The work concludes with an epilogue from His Holiness containing personal advice for his students.

  This work is designed not simply to give you information about Buddhism, but to enrich your Dharma practice. To this end, most chapters contain summaries of the main points so that you can easily remember and reflect on them. Please take advantage of these to deepen your practice by contemplating what you read. The work would have become too long had reflections been inserted for every section, so where they are missing, please review what you read and write out the main points for contemplation. This will help you to apply what you learn to your own experience and integrate the Dharma into your life.

  The volumes of this work will be published one at a time. This way you can spend some time learning, contemplating, and meditating on the material in one volume, which will prepare you for the material in the following volume. The stages of the path are presented in a particular order in this series of volumes for the purpose of allowing you to grow into the more advanced and complex stages. Nevertheless, each volume stands alone as an explanation of its unique topic.

  When giving public teachings to audiences of people with very different backgrounds and degrees of understanding, His Holiness doesn’t shy away from introducing profound topics. Although he doesn’t give a full explanation, he brings in advanced concepts and vocabulary in a concise manner. He doesn’t expect everyone to understand these topics but is planting seeds for newer students to one day learn and understand the more complex teachings. He often will weave back and forth between general topics that most people can easily understand and difficult topics that only the learned will comprehend. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t understand everything all at once. The concepts and terms introduced in earlier volumes will be fleshed out in later ones.

  This series is written in a similar style, although I tried to edit the material so that the reader is led from easier topics to more difficult ones. If you do not completely understand a topic the first or even second time, don’t worry; the series is meant to be a resource for you on the path, a text to which you will repeatedly refer to deepen your understanding of the Dharma. Each time you read it, you will understand more due to the merit and wisdom you accumulated in the intervening time.

  By learning the entire path from beginning to end, you will come to see the relationships between the various topics, which will enrich your practice. Although the stages are presented in a linear fashion, the knowledge and experience obtained from later stages will inform your meditation on earlier stages. As you continue to delve into the Buddha’s teachings, you will find new ways to relate different points to each other in a creative and thought-­provoking way. One of His Holiness’s unique qualities as a teacher is his ability to draw threads from seemingly different topics together to make a tapestry that continually draws us into more profound understandings.

  Overview of Volume I

  This first volume and part of the second cover topics that form the basic approach of the Nālandā tradition. In the curriculum at a Tibetan monastery, many of these are embedded in larger texts and others are learned in public teachings. Here we extracted the most important points and incorporated them in one volume, so that people who did not grow up in a Buddhist culture or in a monastery will have the background that supports the study of the stages of the path.

  Chapter 1 explores the role of Buddhism in the world: the purpose of our lives, the middle way between theistic religions and scientific reductionism, Buddhism’s relationship with the other great world religions, and the meaning of being a spiritual practitioner in the modern world.

  Chapter 2 delves into the Buddhist view of life: the explanation of the mind and its relationship to body, rebirth, and the self. The four truths of the āryas lay out the essential framework of the path, and to understand these more deeply, we investigate dependent arising and emptiness and the possibility of ending duḥkha — our unsatisfactory situation in cyclic existence.

  Chapter 3 explores our minds and emotions, and furnishes some practical strategies for calming our minds as well as for developing a confident and optimistic attitude for approaching life and spiritual practice.

  Chapter 4 is a brief survey of the historical development of the Buddhadharma: the early Buddhist schools in the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, and Central Asia; the Buddhist canons; and the philosophical tenet systems that began to form in India. More detailed information has been included in footnotes for those readers who are interested.

  This leads to an examination in chapter 5 of the three turnings of the Dharma wheel — one schema for organizing the Buddha’s teachings — as well as the authenticity of the Mahāyāna scriptures. This chapter concludes with an introduction to Tibetan Buddhism as the continuation of the Nālandā tradition in India.

  Chapter 6 investigates the teachings, first by discerning reliable teachings and differentiating them from exaggerated statements given to encourage a particular type of disciple, and then by ensuring we understand the correct point of the teachings we study.

  Chapter 7 discusses cultivating a proper motivation for spiritual practice, since this is crucial to prevent fooling ourselves, getting sidetracked, or becoming hypocritical. This chapter brings us back to our inner heart and encourages us to cultivate the sincere wish to free both ourselves and others from cyclic existence and to attain full awakening. His Holiness also illustrates a practical way to cultivate and maintain a compassionate motivation.

  Chapter 8 deals with how to progress along the path to full awakening as an initial, intermediate, and advanced level practitioner. This provides the framework for knowing where each topic the Buddha taught fits into the entire path, so we can practice the path in a step-­by-­step manner without undue confusion.

  Chapter 9 speaks of the mental tools we will need to progress along the path, such as faith and wisdom. Here we’ll understand the role of prayers and rituals as well as memorization and debate in cultivating the three wisdoms: the wisdom arising from learning, reflecting on the teachings, and meditating on them.

  Chapter 10 anticipates so
me common challenges that practitioners could encounter and offers ways to overcome them.

  In chapter 11, His Holiness shares some of his personal reflections and experiences practicing the path, so we can see how a genuine practitioner uses the Dharma in daily life.

  Chapter 12 shifts our focus from personal practice to using Buddhist principles to guide our work in and for the world. The Buddha taught the Dharma not only for spiritual transcendence, but also as a method to create a healthier and more just society. Here we apply Buddhist ideas and practices to politics, business, consumerism, the media, the arts, science, gender equality, and respect for other religions as well as for other Buddhist traditions.

  Please Note

  While this series is coauthored, the vast majority is in His Holiness’s voice. I wrote the chapter on Buddhist history, all parts pertaining to the Pāli tradition, and some paragraphs here and there.

  Pāli and Sanskrit terms are usually given in parentheses only for the first usage of a word. Unless otherwise noted with “P” or “T,” indicating Pāli or Tibetan respectively, the italicized terms are Sanskrit. In most cases, Dharma terms and scriptural titles are in English, but when Sanskrit or Pāli terms are well known, those are used, for example Prajñāpāramitā for Perfection of Wisdom, and jhāna or dhyāna, the Pāli and Sanskrit names respectively for meditative stabilization. Sanskrit or Pāli spellings are used in sections concerning their respective traditions and in quotations from each tradition’s scriptures. For ease of reading, most honorifics have been omitted, although that does not diminish the great respect we have for these most excellent sages. Because it is awkward to gloss every new term when it first appears, a glossary is included at the end of the book. Unless otherwise noted, the personal pronoun “I” refers to His Holiness.