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.

Geshe Sonam Rinchen

I read How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising by Geshe Sonam Rinchen. Transcribed talks are edited and translated by Ruth Sonam. This is a deep book that at times went over my head. The twelve nidanas are one conception of pratitya samutpada, conditioned existence. This is not a book for someone new to Buddhism who wants to know about karma.

Here a quotes I liked from the book:

"As intelligent people we must look for the very heart of Buddhist practice and investigate how this relates to our minds and whether it is relevant to our lives." (p.16). In fact reading the whole page and the next one are good quotes, but I don't want to quote too much.

The tradition allow for doubt, and the real test is your pragmatic application. This is one reason why Buddhism doesn't have to have schismatic debates. Nobody can say to me, "no, you will pragmatically benefit from the concept of motivation by rebirth." That sounds absurd. You could have a debate about what would be the best way to motivate Americans or women or some such group, but that would perhaps be part sociological, and I just won't be interested in that kind of marketing.

"We cannot hope to transform ourselves by constructing fantasies. Transformation must be rooted in reality and based on seeing things as they actually are." (p.42)

I can be a bit of the dreamy type, so I find this quote a wonderful antidote. This should be one of my slogans.

"Our attention should be firmly directed inwards and we should take the teachings very personally, constantly relating them to ourselves and to the search to discover the real cause of our difficulties." (p. 55-56)

This is another theme I like: You need to directly apply the teachings, more is folly. Reading a bunch of books, but not changing who you are, is not what Buddhism is about.

I think what I like about these quotes is that they get filed under right motivation, of the eightfold path.

I don't like the idea that we know anything about rebirth, and in general that is one of the most off-putting aspect of various Tibetan Buddhism--the idea that you should be motivated by rebirth. Rebirth does not motivate me. I have no real information about it. I don't dismiss it, because it is foreign or because it's not part of my experience. But I also honor my feeling that it doesn't signify anything I can make sense of. On p. 133-4, in note 46, explaining the "eight assets" the author discusses actions that result in different rebirths. I feel incredulous. I'm skeptical someone could actually know that. I do believe that people have deep spiritual experiences and that they might see things that I can't understand or imagine, but I'm going to honor my experience in this one. I would refer you to the early works of Stephen Batchelor for further development of this theme. He is famous for his break with the Tibetans over this issue.

My solution was to insert for, "and you should not do that because of rebirth," something like, "and that's why you would benefit from putting in the extra effort to work towards enlightenment," or something else I believed in.

Now is this me holding to a belief, clinging to an idea? Or is it the tradition clinging to a belief? Time will tell. Anyway, it's not a debate about truth in philosophy, I'm talking about the pragmatic application of the teachings. Rebirth just doesn't motivate.

"The purified side of the twelve links begins when we become exalted being with direct experience of reality" (p. 91). What this reality is, and if there's some special emphasis in Buddhism is another thing. We have so many defenses and our distortions of reality make a closer perception of reality difficult.

The FWBO has a strength in that it thinks also about the positive spiral, and not just the negative 12 links. While this book misses this canonical stuff, this book is excellent for going over the 12 nidanas. I must admit that I have to reread it, it's pretty complex and there were sections I didn't understand.