Tag: Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Death to the Concept of Death: Lama Zopa Rinpoche on Labels, Disease and Death

Posted on by David

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is a scholar and teacher in the Tibetan Gelug tradition and the spiritual director of The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.  I’ve gotten a lot out his teachings on Medicine Buddha and healing.  However, with this teacher it is sometimes necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff.  By that I mean he might suggest as a way to evoke protection from natural disasters, you should make offerings to the beings who control the weather.  That’s a bit too mystical for me.  But if you can get past that kind of stuff, he has much wisdom to share.

Here is an excerpt from Medicine Buddha Retreat in which Lama Zopa offers a grounded and insightful explanation of one of the biggest obstacles to healing, and awakening.  The prayer he mentions is the standard “Going for Refuge” with an additional verse:  “I will lead all beings into the heart of enlightenment.”

“The words you say in the bodhicitta prayer include your parents, your family and your enemy.  It includes the person you call your enemy, the person who has abused you and toward whom you have built up hatred because of your projections.  You put a negative label,” bad,” on that person and “abuse” on that person’s action.  Your mind made up the label, believed in that label… and you then allowed your mind to believe in that label.  That then made you generate hatred in your heart. I will say here… that when you analyze the situation, you find that the abuse actually came from you.  Why?  Because it came from your mind.  If your mind hadn’t labeled and you hadn’t believed in your label, you wouldn’t see yourself as having been abused…

It’s difficult to heal. Because you never change your concept, your problem never changes; your hatred never changes. The hatred is always there, because you never change your mind, your concept.

This explanation is talking about only this life, about how this problem of abuse came from your present life, from your mind making up the label “abuse” and believing in it. Here we’re not talking in terms of reincarnation and past karma.”

Labeling is a problem.  According to Lama Zopa, labeling not only gets in the way of healing, it actually helps to cause disease.  Labeling leads to bias, seizing, clinging.  For Nagarjuna, the tendency to label things (prapanca) is one of the major roots of suffering.  Yet, we live by labels.  If we did not label or name things, we could not communicate.

So we label labeling as “bad.”  But it’s not all bad, there is a positive side:

Everything is created by the mind.  Everything is labeled by the mind.  The existence of a label does not mean there is an actual reality for something labeled, because all things and labels are empty (sunya).  In Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion, Lama Zopa tells us that disease is a label.  Death is just a label too.

“Death is a concept, something that comes from our mind… death itself is not the problem; it is our concept of death that is the problem.  We have a concept of death as something that exists from its own side… that makes us frightened of death and does not allow us to relinquish our attachment to this life…  Death is merely labeled by our mind in dependence upon its base, the consciousness leaving the body.  This is all that death is.  Therefore, there is no death that exists from its own side.  There is no death in the sense of one that exists inherently.  It is a hallucination.”

Disease and death are empty.  From the view of ultimate truth, they are only thought constructions, concepts produced by the mind, created by us.  We can learn to control our thoughts.  We can transform them.  Understanding this should by empowering.  As Lama Zopa suggests, “Knowing how much freedom we have should inspire us and give us hope.”

 

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Dedicating My Death to Others

Posted on by David

Here is some advice that Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave to someone who was very sick:

“Think that I am the most fortunate one, that I have this sickness, I am the most fortunate one.  Why?  Because by having this sickness now I can practice pure Dharma.  I have been given the opportunity to practice pure Dharma.  So I can experience all sentient beings’ pain, disease, spirit harm, negative karma, and obscurations, and they can all achieve the Dharmakaya.”

Among other things, Dharmakaya represents the true nature of the Buddha, which is not separate from reality.  I look at it as our natural state of mind.  Lama Zopa is talking about attitude.  Some people believe that attitude is everything, the most important thing for business and personal success.  Attitude is important in awakening, too.  In Buddhism, we want to generate a bodhisattva attitude.  In secular terms, we would call it an altruistic attitude.

I can tell you from my own experience that seeing your ailment as an opportunity to deepen your practice is illuminating, while having the thought of using your sickness or injury for the benefit of others is liberating.

In February 2015, I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.  My oncologist said it would kill me.  Well, dying time is getting closer.  My left leg is riddled with tumors.  Some tumors elsewhere.  The doctors say that my life expectancy is now three months to a year.  A year and a half is possible.  Two years, highly doubtful.  But I have beaten the odds so far, no one expected me to last this long.

In a sense, I have already overcome death.  Because I have changed my thinking about it.  It’s been a long process that didn’t just begin with the cancer diagnoses.  Using thought transformation, I’ve changed my attitude.  It’s nothing special, anyone can do it.

Death is a natural process.  There’s no real need to be troubled by it.  However, Buddhism considers untimely death, like mine, to be unnatural.  Damn right.  It’s also unfair and unreasonable…  but I can give my untimely, unnatural death a purpose.

Dedicating one’s sickness or death to the welfare of others is a bit abstract.  Yet, in the world of mind, for the person who is sick or dying, it has a healing quality.  Bodhicitta, the thought of awakening, has power.  It’s not supernatural power, but the power of attitude that comes from mind-development (bhavana), insight, and having purpose, and it is therapeutic both emotionally and psychologically.  We can start to transcend sickness and death, or any other suffering, by viewing them as empty thought constructions rising from our luminous mind.

There are times when I am depressed, and frustrated, especially in regards to the physical pain I experience, but then I think of the pain of others…

“All that mass of pain and evil karma I take into my own body . . . I take upon myself the burden of sorrow; I resolve to do so; I endure it all. I do not turn back or run away, I do not tremble . . . I am not afraid . . . nor do I despair. Assuredly, I must bear the burdens of all beings . . . for I have resolved to save them all. I must set them all free, I must save the whole world from the forest of birth, old age, disease, and rebirth, from misfortune and sin, from the round of birth and death, from the toils of illusion.”
– Vajradhvaja Sutra

The word ‘purpose’ comes from purposer, which means “to intend.”  In Tibetan Buddhism, bodhicitta is often called “altruistic intention.”  Some psychologists maintain that people with a sense of purpose tend to live longer.  I don’t think I will get a chance to test that theory.  However, the heightened sense of purpose I’ve felt has enhanced the quality of my life, and sometimes quality is more important than longevity.  Most of us have a sense of purpose already or feel that our life has meaning, but this is a different meaning, this altruistic intention has a nobler sense of purpose.

Bodhicitta is not a new concept for me.  I’ve written about it before.  My first real insight into the thought of awakening came from a Dalai Lama teaching in 1996.  Since death is such a heavy thing, I find my intention, my sense of purpose, charged with new energy.  When we realize that our ultimate purpose for everything we do is to be of benefit to others, we turn the Buddha’s First Noble Truth around and life is no longer suffering, rather it is joy, fulfillment, nirvana.  That was his intention, his purpose, for us to turn it around.

This is not a Pollyanna vision of life.  Joy is not always constant.  Fulfillment is often challenged.  And nirvana is a dynamic state of mind that must be steadily nurtured and protected.

“Our spiritual destination is personal nirvana.”
– Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen

My impending death has become a new path to get there.

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My New Tumor

Posted on by David

Two days after Senator John McCain announced he had a brain tumor, I underwent a biopsy to diagnose a new mass in my left leg and determine whether it is cancerous.

Medicine Buddha statues at Land of Medicine Buddha, Santa Cruz

It is.  It’s a big fat ugly tumor the size of a baseball.

I’m still in the dark about treatment.  My oncologist has mentioned something about an experimental drug.  Personally, I am leaning toward a drug that is non-experimental, one known to work.

When I know exactly what my options are, I will consider them with the knowledge that I am terminal.  Nothing is going to save my life.  That being the case, if my doctor’s plan is to subject me to an aggressive therapy that will make me sick and miserable, on top of the pain and misery I am already experiencing, further degrading the quality of my life, I am not sure that I am interested.  If the treatment might save my life, I would think differently.  But it’s just to keep me alive a while longer.  My feeling is that quality of life is more important than longevity.

Needless to say, I hate all this.  While it is tempting to bemoan my rotten fate, I have to look at this as an opportunity.   It’s as if the gods of destiny, fate, karma, whatever you want to call them, decided that I am just too lazy these days to practice on my own accord so they figured to give me something really serious to practice about.  They keep doing this and I wish they’d just leave me alone.

“With a good heart, compassion for others, whenever a problem arises, you experience it for others, on behalf of other sentient beings. If you experience happiness, you experience it for others. If you enjoy a luxury life, comfort, you dedicate it to others. And if you experience a problem, you experience it for others—for others to be free of problems and to have all happiness up to enlightenment, complete perfect peace and bliss. Wishing others to have all happiness, you experience problems on their behalf.”

– Lama Zopa Rinpoche, The Joy of Compassion

Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings were very instructive and encouraging to me a few years ago when I was preparing for a liver transplant.  Based on Medicine Buddha practices, some of it steeped in Buddhist mysticism, much of it practical and empowering.  He makes clear that healing begins and ends with our hearts and minds.  He maintains that there is no healing without compassion, and indeed, compassion itself is an important source of healing.

“The best healer is someone with the realization of bodhicitta, the altruistic thought to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all living beings…  Every single breath of someone with great compassion is medicine…”

What the immediate future holds I don’t know – but I have made a decision on the end.  I do not want to die in a hospital, or here at home, I want to die in a Buddhist setting, in fellowship with other Buddhists.  My thought is to conduct the end of my life as though it were a personal retreat.  I’ve been looking into Buddhist hospices.  Unfortunately, there are not many.  I’ve only found three:  Zen Hospice in San Francisco, Tara House at Land of Medicine Buddha, and Enso House in Washington state.  If you know of any or if you are a Buddhist caregiver, please contact me.

In the meantime, may you be happy and at ease, and free from suffering.

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Protection against Ghosts and Demons

Posted on by David

I meant to post this around Halloween . . .

The quote is from Dr. Terry Clifford’s Tibetan Buddhist Medicine and Psychiatry, a book that many think is one of the best on the subject of Tibetan Medicine:

Compassion is also understood to be a supreme medicine and protection against ghosts and demons. For according to Dharma psychology, when we try to reject something, we actually become more vulnerable to it. We come to realize this through the practice of meditation and watching the mind. We let unconscious material surface without rejecting or identifying with it. And thus it begins to lose its power over us.”

gb-1Clifford says that to the Tibetans, demons are symbolic.  They can represent negative emotions, mental afflictions.

I’ve wrestled with a few demons. Haven’t you? Ghosts, though, not so much.

When Clifford writes about trying to reject something, this can be the reverse side to attachment. In Buddhism, we normally use the word aversion in the context of anger and hatred, but aversion can also mean “rejection,” a strong dislike, a prejudice against someone or something – as detrimental to our well-being as seizing and clinging.

How does this attitude link to compassion? The Diamond Sutra tells us to cultivate a “non-discriminating mind.” The Buddha says that compassion requires one to free the mind of concepts, give to others with no thought of self or gain, cease making distinctions between beings who are worthy or unworthy, and ultimately, to consider that “when vast and immeasurable numbers of beings have been liberated, actually there is not any being liberated.”

Why is this? The Buddha in the Diamond Sutra tell us it is because “no compassionate person who is truly compassionate holds to the idea of a self, a being, or a separate individual.”

That explanation is teaching compassion from the ultimate truth. From the relative view, because there are others, there can be compassion. And compassion is good medicine, an antidote to self-cherishing, negative emotions and mental afflictions.

Keep in mind this from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, found in Ultimate Healing:

A loving, compassionate person heals others simply by existing. Wherever they are, compassionate people are healing, because they do everything they can to help others with their body, speech and mind. Merely being near a compassionate person heals us because it brings us peace and happiness.”

– – – – – – – – – –

Photo from The Ghost Breakers (1940): Bob Hope & Paulette Goddard

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Problems and Benefits

Posted on by David

That ‘Old Philosopher’ and poet of Ancient China, Lao Tzu said, “The acceptable and the unacceptable are both acceptable.”

This means to take life as it is. Sounds simple. Well, it is easy to accept the acceptable, but to accept what is unacceptable seems counter-intuitive to normal way of thinking. What is unacceptable is undesirable, unsatisfactory, intolerable, unreasonable – why would we want to embrace that?

If we look at it from a psychological point of view, it is important to be in touch with our negativity. We cannot overcome anger, sadness or other bad feelings unless we deal with them. Buddhism teaches that suffering comes from our thoughts and feelings, so it seems rather obvious that denial is not a strategy we want to employ. We can expand this to cover just about everything else in life.

Early Buddhists developed a meditation practice designed to help us accept the unacceptable. It is called Kammatthana, a Pali word that means “basis of meditation” or “place of work”. These are meditation subjects suited to individual temperaments and inclinations.

Buddhaghosa, in his epic meditation text Visuddhi-magga (“Path of Purification”) listed 40 kammatthanas, and they range from subjects such as the non-existence of a permanent self and the idea of friendliness to some really unacceptable ones like the impurity and wretchedness of life and a the idea of a corpse in a state of decomposition.

Buddhaghosa wrote, “When the mind is familiar with the perception of foulness, then even divine objects do not tempt a person to greed.”

I have never meditated on the idea of a rotting corpse, and I don’t I ever shall. But I do get the intention behind it.

The first step in accepting the unacceptable is recognizing that to divide things into acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad, and so on, is dualistic thinking. That is not as simple as it sounds, either.  It is difficult to undo thought patterns that are nearly habitual. A way to break down this wall of duality that might be more helpful than corpse contemplation might be to just do away with the idea of unacceptable, tear down the concept of foulness.

To give you an example, one of the most unacceptable things in life is illness. Definitely one of the worst problems we can have. In his book, Ultimate Healing, Lama Zopa Rinpoche advises us that “To transform our problems into happiness, we have to learn to see them as pleasant.”

He goes on to say that to see problems as problems, illness as illness, unacceptable as unacceptable has many disadvantages and that we can turn it around if we meditate on the benefits of problems, which is probably a more difficult notion to hold in the mind than the idea of a corpse.

I don’t think I need to discuss the various ways in which embracing the unacceptable is beneficial. If you open your mind, they will come to you. When it comes to thoughts and emotions, we must be willing to experience even our negative thoughts and emotions fully. We can’t allow ourselves to reject them as invalid. Everything is valid. Whatever arises in our life is acceptable. Take life as it is.

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