#5 (37 practices of Bodhisattvas)

When you keep their company, your three poisons increase,
Your activities of hearing, thinking and meditating decline,
And they make you lose your love and compassion
Give up bad friends--
      This is the practice of the Bodhisattvas.

My initial reaction to this verse is that I don't like it. I think that's the whole point of the bodhisattva is to leave the monastery and be in the world (like the Buddha) with all it's complications and negativity. You don't flee for your own spiritual development, you rush into the world.

But you can't be friends with lack of virtue. Friendship is only with a person who possesses virtue. There is no such thing as a bad friend, there is only a person who does not participate in friendship, maybe comrades in samsara.

You can monitor your feelings and be aware. There is not sin in taking care of yourself and guarding your development. You can't help people if you can't take care of yourself. Self care is very very important.

So when someone is draining your ability to hear, think and meditate, you make sure that they do not snuff out these abilities. You nurture and cherish your abilities to do these things, for everyone. If you're going to go down a dark spiral if you associate with someone, then don't associate with them. Being a bodhisattva isn't sacrificing yourself, unlike the Christian martyr. You are going for enlightenment for the sake of all beings, but destroying yourself doesn't do that. You could choose to sacrifice your body for others, but going down a negative path is not the same thing, and this life is precious.

I think of Ksitigarbha from the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra, who vows not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied.

But by no means do you need to constantly put yourself into harm's way either. It's OK to surround yourself in nourishing relationships and rarely challenge this setup. You should not pretend you are more spiritually advanced than you really are to please others.

You may have an Iago who gaslights you because he can't outright murder you, but feels he can undermine you, sabotage you under the guise of a loyal servant. Or maybe a Lady Macbeth, who encourages you to be murderously ambitious, and shames your concept of manhood to help get you there. Or maybe you listen to the flattering daughters like Lear, that support your grandiosity. Or maybe a Tybalt can draw you into a conflict to your detriment.

If you go on r/family on Reddit you will encounter people who realize their family is undermining them and perhaps are a not the all good that family is portrayed. On r/relationships on Reddit you will find that relationships change and people can realize or see someone has changed to be undermining. People change. They can be supportive and helpful for a while, and then change. Perhaps you give a friend the benefit of the doubt, or you give them a little more of a chance to be a full person with the negative and the positive that everyone has. But clinging to the idea of how someone is in the past might also be masochistic and unhelpful.

(go back to #4 here (there are actually 44 verses in the text, 2 preface, and 5 postscript))

#4

Previous practices of the Bodhisattva:

#1,  #2,  #3,  #3 . OK, so I did #3 twice. Now onto #4


Loved ones who have long kept company will part.
Wealth created with difficulty will be left behind.
Consciousness, the guest, will leave the guest-house
     of the body.
Let go of this life--
     This is the practice of the Bodhisattva


We can't fool ourselves that things are permanent. Our sun will expand and encompass the earth, so even the planet that seems so stable and forever, in the cosmic perspective, will end. Things can be ours for a long time, and change is more difficult when we lose someone who's been in our life for our whole life, like a parent, or perhaps a house you've always lived in. Humans are conservative, we don't like change. We do like change for the better, but you can't just siphon out the bad.

Even though you can't take money with you after death, it's great to have money. Looking at the larger picture realistically is important. Through penny pinching my grandfather who grew up during the depression saved a lot of money and invested it, and did well. He did a lot of amazing things with his money but of course he's gone now and can't enjoy it. But think of the Carnegie libraries they built and other social infrastructure. You can have an amazing lasting impact. Maybe it's just in children or the effect you had on other people in your life. Those traces can't go away all together.

Nobody has an original idea. There are some amazing new scientific discoveries and you know, the first 5 minute mile. The Buddha was the first to present enlightenment to everyone. Who knows if someone got there and didn't communicate it, it's hard to imagine someone wouldn't. But you go to college, watch TV, and you're filled with memes. There's one Buddhist who thinks we're Meme Machines. Shakespeare never created a plot, but he created dialogue in a plays that brought humanity to new heights. Every lama in Tibet created their own Buddhism. I could not accurately convey Sangharakshita's dharma, because I just don't know it enough. I must create my own. Even these excursions into the 37 practices is my attempt to make sense of the practices.

Letting go is not easy, to the things we like. Leaving a job you hate is a relief. Letting go refers to the internal resistance not to accept the passing of things we hold onto unrealistically. It's bound to happen, we're human. That's the human drama. Watch any TV show and it's about fighting to let go of something, in many different ways.

This mindset will be part of the ideas into which all the other practices are set.

#3

Past 37 practices of a Bodhisattva by Geshe Sonam Rinchen:
-1
-2

What follows is my commentary on the root text. Read the Geshe's commentary. I'm development my own thinking, and it's not necessarily meant to teach anyone, though if it helps, great. I am a hugely flawed human being who can demonstrate lack of integrity. Better yet is having integrity. I work to progress, am not an example of perfection.

---

3

By avoiding bad objects, disturbing emotions
      gradually decrease.
Without distraction, virtuous activities naturally
      increase.
With clarity of mind, conviction in the teaching
      arise.
Cultivation of seclusion--
     This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.

---

Read the Geshe's commentary. He has his own take. I riff on my take to develop my thinking.

Paradox is not a problem in Buddhism. Do I contradict myself? I am large, I contain the multitudes.

You retreat from life to shore it up, if you're an introvert. Nobody is just one thing, so the extrovert goes out into the world and seeks to do good if you are a Bodhisattva. It's hard not to get caught up in the whirl of life, carried away until you are on your death bed wondering where the time went. Life is endless going forth, retreating back to lick your wounds or celebrate success, or wonder at all the neutral phenomenon. All to often it can be about collecting stuff.

Anyone who has done Metta meditation will know that it's hard to pay attention to the neutral. Attraction and aversion are so much more interesting.

Modern times present many distractions, I feel lucky I only had a black and white TV for my early years. Color TV, then Cable lead to all sorts of distractions, HBO, MTV, Cubs games. What chance to kids have nowadays. My son brought his switch to school, and someone thought he had a switchblade. In a way, you must watch out of the sharp edge of video games. They present a neater world, where you can definitely build up, succeed, win, and other things our mind likes to feel good. Another form of addiction to add to mind altering substances, shopping, sex, food, approval, relationships, chaos... Try to gain insight into patterns.

Part of clarity is not being easily distracted. Clarity is rare nowadays.

How many people do you know who have gone on a solitary retreat for a week? A month? A year?

It was after my solitary retreat that I was very social on a retreat. I obviously needed solitary time to come out of my shell. Sometimes I go on retreat and want to be alone but I'm too enticed by others to stay to myself. Others are endlessly fascinating. Watching other people's retreats is fascinating.

Why not be on retreat constantly, meditating, reflecting, communicating?

37 Practices of Bodhisattvas

The Thirty-Seven Practices of Boddhisattvas is from the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the tradition that the Dali Lama is in. I have read this book before. I want to go through the 37 practices one at a time.

The first one goes as follows:

Having gained this rare ship of freedom and fortune
Hear, think and meditate unwavering night and day
In order to free yourself and others
From the ocean of cyclic existence--
      This is the practice of the Boddhisattva

There is a traditional teaching that doesn't touch me much. I don't really know much about reincarnation, and because there is no soul, or essential self, it is all contingent, then of course what ever conditions and whatnot of someone's being is passed on. A friend said to me that he found it hard to imagine all that energy would not going into anything. They also reference the 6 realms. Now The 6 realms are an interesting idea. I've imagined prison to be a hell realm, and with the greed in America I imagine it a hungry ghosts realm. I have a friend in academia and it's not a too much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine it as a god realm. Of course animals live in the animal realm. I'm not sure if humans are much more than animals and the separation makes it easier to eat and exploit animals. But it's rare to be a human when there are so many other possibilities. There's a bit in the Buddhavacana. that suggests being human is as rare as a turtle surfacing after 100 years under water into a fixed yoke, where the turtle could be harnessed. That is rare.

But I don't think we need all these metaphors. I don't take a meditation class if my friend doesn't sign me up. It just happened that one order member from the TCB happened to be in NYC. In the USA the TBC has really taken off in Newmarket New Hampshire, Missoula Montana and San Francisco California. Not really in NYC. It just so happened that I was at a place in my life that I was receptive to the teachings, and being unemployed I spent half a year reading all about it. I went on a retreat at Aryaloka over Christmas and New Years on the Brahma Viharas. It just so happened that an order member taught that retreat. Since then he has gone off to live on the left coast and hasn't really been seen much since then. The retreat blew my mind, I felt the healthiest I've ever felt. I learned to love the puja. I don't think I've ever really been the same since. I was sustained in the TBC for many years. I feel that this is my root tradition and even if I meditate in a Zen tradition, or Tibetan tradition or the Theravadan tradition, I will always at base have a TBC orientation. I happened to find the one tradition of Buddhism that helped make sense of the whole tradition, and indeed all traditions of spirituality for me. All these confluences of events could easily have been otherwise. That I am healthy enough, that I am receptive enough, and that I have exerted myself is also quite lucky. So without the 6 realms and reincarnation it's a pretty amazing even. I'm lucky enough to have this translation and exposition of the teachings, the book came out in 1987. I happen to live in a time when many good English translations have come out. Fifty years ago, that would not have been true. In the history of the world, "America" is a new phenomenon. The USA is a new phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism around the world is a new phenomenon. When you read the early English language Buddhists, it seems kind of fast and loose. The quality of English translations and English Buddhism is vast now, and only seems to be getting bigger. I can read the Middle Length Discourses, the 100,000 Songs of Milarepa. The access to Buddhism is a very new phenomenon, not presented as Zen as the one true path or the other fledgling types of Buddhism replete with ethnic Buddhism. The west has actually culled out an essential Buddhism--even if it's just one Buddhism.

When you think about all these conditions coming together, it truly is a precious life, a rare life. Then you add on the brevity of human life, well, that's enough to put pressure on you. The average life span of white men in the USA is going down, but it's still into the 70's.

The use of the word "unwavering" points to a kind of vigilance, that I have not fully sustained. I do think infusing your entire life with a Dharmic viewpoint is beneficial.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be well.