9. Practicing Pure Dharma

The ten innermost jewels

Because we don’t understand that renouncing this life and practicing Dharma are synonyms, we fail to see how there’s a gap between what we think of as our Dharma practice and the life we lead. No matter how advanced our practice—even if we practice dzogchen or the completion stage of Highest Yoga Tantra—normally, our mind is here while the Dharma is there. We try to follow the Mahayana teachings but we don’t become Mahayanists or gain much benefit from what we do. Everything remains the cause for us to stay in samsara, not the cause for us to be one with the Dharma. Without renouncing the eight worldly dharmas, it’s unlikely we can even close the door to rebirth in the lower realms. Therefore we must definitely equalize the eight worldly dharmas in order to practice the holy Dharma.

There’s a practice called “the ten innermost jewels,” also called the ten innermost “possessions,” or “treasures.”⁶⁷ This teaching is the Kadampa geshes’ advice on how to renounce the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. If we follow it, we will be able to practice Dharma purely and will experience real peace of mind.

The great ascetic meditators who practice pure Dharma equalize the eight worldly dharmas in this way, differentiating between neither the four desirable nor the four undesirable objects. Their attitude is so different from ours that it is very useful to understand just how they’re able to bring total stability and tranquility into their lives, even though we might be a very long way from being able to follow in their footsteps. Even an understanding of what the ten innermost jewels are can make a big difference to how we perceive what we encounter in life.

I am going to briefly describe the ten innermost jewels as taught by the great lama Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, who said that this is the very best practice for renouncing the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas.⁶⁸

The ten innermost jewels comprise the four entrustments, the three vajras and achieving the three ranks:

1. Entrust the depths of the attitude to the Dharma
2. Entrust the depths of the Dharma to the beggar
3. Entrust the depths of the beggar to death
4. Entrust the depths of death to the cave
5. The uncaptured vajra
6. The shameless vajra
7. The transcendent wisdom vajra
8. Expulsion from the rank of human beings
9. Achieving the rank of the dog
10. Achieving the rank of the divine beings

1. Entrust the depths of the attitude to the Dharma

Relying on the first of the four entrustments, or reliances, is to entrust the depths of our attitude to the Dharma. This means we rely on the Dharma, not just superficially but in our innermost mind. It is like when we go to Nepal and see all those amazing places but our real motivation is to meet up with our girlfriend or boyfriend. Even though we do a lot of other things, that is our main aim, our main consideration; that is what is innermost in our mind. That is why we came to Nepal. In the same way, no matter what we do, in our innermost mind, our main consideration should be relying on Dharma.

At this time, we have this perfect human rebirth, with its eight freedoms and ten richnesses, we have met the guru who has shown us the Dharma and who leads us on the path to enlightenment. This perfect human rebirth is highly meaningful, difficult to find again and does not last. Death is definitely going to happen and the actual time of death is uncertain. And at the time of death, nothing worldly can benefit us even one tiny bit—our own body, our material possessions, the people around us, our reputation. The only thing that can benefit us is our Dharma; there is nothing else. And not only at death time, but beyond. Therefore, the practice we do in this life is extremely important.

We should think like this: “Only Dharma benefits me at the time of death, nothing else. Therefore, I must practice Dharma. I must make a complete determination, like this. This is the only thing that never gives me any harm, never causes even the slightest suffering. This is what brings me benefit and happiness in this and all future lives. This is the only thing that benefits at death, that most critical time; everything else is without essence. Therefore, I must practice; I must practice Dharma.” Make a strong determination like this. Our main aim, our main plan, our main concern is to practice Dharma.

When a politician gives a speech, he says many things but we can easily figure out his real intention, what’s in the depths of his heart. It’s to gain power, perhaps even to control all the people on earth, to rule the world or even destroy it. That’s his main aim. Our aim, however, is to entrust ourselves to the Dharma. Thus we need to be very certain that nothing but the Dharma will benefit us in this life, at death time and in our future lives.

Therefore we must practice Dharma and only Dharma, because to work for this life alone is of no benefit at all. It is utterly meaningless, can only bring us harm and cause much worry at the time of death and we have to experience the result of this nonvirtuous action in future lives in the lower realms of the transmigratory beings. Therefore, we must practice Dharma and only Dharma.

2. Entrust the depths of the Dharma to the beggar

The second of the ten innermost jewels is to entrust the depths of the Dharma to the beggar. With the first one—entrusting our innermost mind to the Dharma—our mind completely takes refuge in the Dharma, and we no longer take refuge in our husband, wife, parents, possessions or any other worldly thing because we see that none of this can help at the time of death. But we worry that if we do entrust our innermost mind to the Dharma without taking care of material concerns, we will surely become a beggar, without the means to live, let alone practice Dharma.

This is a natural fear, because we’re turning our mind away from our beginningless habit of doing this life’s work. Without involving ourselves in getting the money for clothes, food and a comfortable environment, surely we’re impoverishing ourselves. Then, how will we ever practice Dharma? The answer is this: when we entrust the depths of the Dharma to the beggar, we simply don’t care if we become a beggar. The only important thing is to practice the holy Dharma, and we determine to do that despite the external conditions. Compared to living in luxury with a miserly, self-centered mind, being a beggar is much better, so even if it means begging, even if it means having only the most ordinary food and the poorest clothes, we will only practice Dharma. Nothing matters except Dharma, and if we have to experience hardships and austerities and wear torn, ugly rags and eat poor food, then that is perfectly all right.

When we work for only this life, no matter what good things we do, all that effort is completely wasted; there’s not one single beneficial result. On the other hand, all the hardships we experience practicing Dharma are highly meaningful; they always bring the result of happiness. The hardships themselves are purification.

In Tibet, the nights and early mornings were very, very cold but the monks would have to debate in the open air for a long time, wearing only thin robes, no matter how low the temperatures got. Thousands of monks did this. In the bitter cold, they would chant the meditations and prayers composed by the lamas who founded the monastery and then debate for hours on end until the skin on their hands and feet would crack from the freezing conditions. Conversely, sometimes there would be so many monks in the prayer hall that it became unbelievably hot and crowded, with nowhere for even their feet to relax. They’d be squeezed together like this for hours and hours, experiencing such hardship in order to practice Dharma, to study and listen to lamrim teachings explained by high lineage lamas. All this helped them purify the negative karma that they had collected in the past times to be born in the cold and hot hells.

It is similar when we have to experience hardship: heat, cold, back pain and so forth. Putting up with hardship in this way is the best way to purify our accumulated negative karma.

When it becomes difficult to keep the precept of not eating after midday, we should try to remember karma and the benefits of keeping precepts. Remember the happiness of future lives; remember the kind mother sentient beings and how we are one person but they are numberless. However much hunger and thirst we feel, however hard it is, this is real purification, purifying the negative karma created in the past to be born as a hungry ghost.

Practicing Dharma brings great peace, great happiness, great stability, great clarity and freedom from the worldly fears of separating from objects of attachment—children, other loved ones, friends and material possessions, to which we cling so much. It makes us very happy. And because we have practiced pure Dharma in this life, there’s no need to talk about the results in our future lives. We can easily find a perfect human body again and easily achieve enlightenment.

Entrusting the depths of the Dharma to the beggar doesn’t mean literally becoming a beggar—immediately throwing away all our clothes, tearing our house down and then, after burning all our money, hanging around the city or going to the mountain alone to practice Dharma with the birds, or maybe even the monkeys, if they’ll let us practice Dharma with them!

I’m sure many people have practiced this kind of Dharma. In the early days, when Lama Yeshe and I were teaching in Nepal, many of the young people were hippies. To us they seemed like primitive Tibetans: they didn’t take much care of their body, accepted whatever they got—food, clothes and so forth—and just let their hair grow as long as possible, not worrying if it got dirty. They slept in sleeping bags, sometimes in the mountains, sometimes in the forest with the monkeys, sometimes in the street. Even if it was twelve o’clock and everybody was running around, busy working, they were still sleeping. Whereas other people had definite homes, the hippies were not like that; they were happy to stay wherever they were, in a tent or a guest house.

From their external appearance they seemed very much like the ascetic meditators who followed the Kadampa geshes’ advice. Having nothing to hold on to, lacking interest in material possessions and wanting to lead a quiet life without much worry, there were definite similarities on the surface.

The big difference was in the mind. What was missing was renunciation of the eight worldly dharmas. If the hippies could have had that mind renouncing the eight worldly dharmas, renouncing the desire for this life, then they really could have become pure Dharma practitioners. The external circumstances were there but they also needed that inner transformation.

As we have seen, the actual thing to renounce is not the objects of the senses but the confused mind, the evil thought. That is the thing that interferes with our work to achieve nirvana and enlightenment. That is the creator of our problems; that is what we should renounce.

In ancient India there were many bodhisattva kings, and apart from certain times of degeneration when there were irreligious kings, most of the time since the Buddhadharma reached Tibet the kings there were embodiments of Chenrezig. They didn’t give up their possessions but they renounced the thought of the eight worldly dharmas and offered extensive benefit to sentient beings. Each one has an amazing life story, saying things that can’t be comprehended by ordinary people’s minds. Then in the present time there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Therefore, we should make the determination that, in order to control the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, we will stop the interference, the distractions that are within our mind, to continue to practice pure Dharma. These are the techniques that the Kadampa geshes advise.

3. Entrust the depths of the beggar to death

With the third of the ten innermost jewels, entrusting the depths of the beggar to death, we determine that nothing will stop us from having great meaning in this life. Even dying for the Dharma while practicing austerities is far better than experiencing all the riches in the world, collecting much negative karma and then dying.

Perhaps we have reconciled ourselves to living like a beggar, but fears arise. We see that, if we follow this path and become a beggar, our entire life will be preoccupied with staying alive and there’ll be no way to complete our life’s work. We will surely either die of starvation or exposure. This fear comes from the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. We should counter it with the determination that no matter what, this is the path we will follow. Even if we do die practicing the Dharma, still our life will have been truly worthwhile.

Everybody has to die, rich people and beggars. In the end it is the same. Rich people who work very hard all the time have to die and so do beggars who do nothing. All that incredibly hard work the rich put into acquiring their riches is done solely with the thought of the eight worldly dharmas and is therefore only ever nonvirtue, with suffering its only possible result.

It might help if we could take our material possessions with us into our future life: wherever we were reborn—the god realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm or some primitive place—maybe we could use all those possessions. But the only thing we can take with us is all the negative karma that we’ve accumulated trying to get those possessions and haven’t purified. If we die with a miserly mind, if we aren’t practicing Dharma, then that clinging mind will make it impossible for us to be born in the realms of the happy transmigrators. 
And thus we determine that we will practice Dharma no matter how difficult it is, even if we have to die as a result of the austerities we practice. At least we won’t have accumulated all that negative karma, and even if we die suddenly, it will be all right. The austerities we experience for the practice of Dharma—the heat, the freezing early mornings where we shake with cold, the pain when we meditate, the long hours of sitting—all become purification; we purify the past negative karma we’ve accumulated.

By practicing Dharma, our life has great meaning and the manner of our death is of no consequence. Therefore, we make the strong determination never to renounce the holy Dharma.

The advice from the Kadampa geshes is that we should not cheat ourselves by having fear and doubt about what might happen if we follow the Dharma. “If I don’t have any possessions or friends or helpers around me all the time, what will happen if I get sick, what will happen when I become old and can’t walk or move any more? Even when I die, I’ll need somebody to serve me to make sure my corpse is treated well and not left in a room somewhere, rotting, smelling and full of worms. I’ll definitely need somebody to burn my corpse or arrange it in a nice box and carve the year of my death on a piece of stone.”

When fears and doubts like this arise, we’re clinging to the pleasures of this life. The answer is to think that anyway, there’s no certainty that we’ll live long enough to get old. Death can come at any moment. Therefore we need to make this determination to practice Dharma no matter what the external circumstances are. Think, “If I die from austerities while practicing Dharma, who cares what happens to my corpse? Even if nobody looks after it and it’s left on the street or in a cave in the mountains, putrid or desiccated, it doesn’t matter. Without being attached to the pleasures of this life, this body, I am going to practice pure Dharma.”

If we die of cold while doing it, that’s fine; if we die of heat, that’s also fine. Whatever happens, we won’t renounce the Dharma. To make such a determination we really need to understand the great advantages of practicing Dharma. The more we understand, the stronger our determination will become. Then, whether starvation or exposure to cold face us, we won’t even think of renouncing the Dharma. Our determination will be that strong.

I once read a book about the experiences of a lady who died and her consciousness was able to see her body. She explained everything that happened after she died. All her relatives came to the house, crying and worrying so much. But she felt that she had not finished her work, whatever that was, and she reentered her body. She concluded from her experience that there is definitely life after death. Not only that—her experience made her realize that she had wasted her whole life by working for only this life and not making preparations for her future lives. She felt very upset about this. I found it very interesting. She was basically just talking about lamrim without knowing it. I found what she said very useful, very effective, even for my mind, which doesn’t have even the scent of Dharma. I think that there must be many people who have had similar experiences.

In fact, we don’t have to worry about dying of cold or starvation. Even if we become a beggar through renouncing the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, there’s no need to be scared because Shakyamuni Buddha himself dedicated the merits so that his followers, those who live in pure Dharma practice, will never be bereft of the means of living. In the Compassionate White Lotus Sutra he said that when he was generating bodhicitta in a previous life he prayed for the sake of sentient beings:

If the followers of my teachings, the Buddhadharma, who wear even four inches of robe don’t get food, then my having achieved buddhahood has betrayed sentient beings and may I not receive enlightenment.

He also predicted that there would be such an incredible famine on earth that people would have to sell all their jewels for food, but even at that time pure Dharma practitioners would never go hungry. Even though the rest of the people on earth had fields only the size of a fingernail in which to grow their crops, he promised that his followers who lived in renunciation and were pure Dharma practitioners would never be devoid of the means of living.

As we have seen, Geshe Kharak Gomchung said that no true meditator could ever die of hunger or cold. It hasn’t happened in the past and it won’t happen in the future, because the mind of dissatisfaction has been renounced. If we’re really pure Dharma practitioners, renunciation of this life carries the power of practice. Geshe Lama Konchog is a good example of this.⁶⁹

Actually, there is not one single story from anywhere—India, Tibet or anywhere else—about a pure Dharma practitioner dying of starvation or cold or other hardships. If you ask many of the learned geshes in the monasteries about their life, you will find amazing stories. What they went through, bearing the difficulties of cold, heat, very little food—sometimes even no solid food to eat, just tsampa mixed with tea in a bowl. Many of the monks didn’t even have butter tea. For lunch and dinner, they always ate the same thing and spent the whole time studying Buddhadharma, taking teachings, studying, thinking, debating. This is just the monks in the monastery. I’m not even talking about the great meditators in the caves.⁷⁰

Because of this, after a few years their knowledge of Dharma developed and in later life they had no difficulties obtaining what they needed to live, even for their immediate needs. Sometimes they received so much food they would get bored having such a large quantity around.

It is not like that for somebody who only practices Dharma on the surface. That person has many difficulties and there are many stories of people who have died like this.

If we practice Dharma purely we should have no fear of dying. We should think that if we die clinging to the pleasure of this life, we’re throwing ourselves into the lower realms, whereas if we practice the holy Dharma without the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, then even if we have to live in a cave in complete solitude, we’ll have happiness now, when we die and in future lives. So we should determine always to practice Dharma, even if we don’t have one single helper, even if we die alone leaving a corpse like a dead dog, full of worms.

4. Entrust the depths of death to the cave

Meditators who make the decision to entrust the depths of death to the cave practice Dharma without fear of death by living in solitary places, such as dry, barren caves—not the nice, moist ones we have in the mountains of Nepal.

There are many sorts of meditators. There’s the meditator who can generate realizations of the graduated path living in a monastery or a city rather than a cave and there’s the meditator who lives in a cave but has not renounced worldly concerns, whose body is living in an isolated place but whose mind is busy with the eight worldly dharmas. So, who is in retreat? The person in the cave with the attached mind, way up there in the Himalaya mountains, or the person whose mind is living away from the eight worldly dharmas, right in the center of New York City? Actually, the person in New York, working, communicating with others, is the one in retreat because he is retreating away from the eight worldly dharmas.

However we live, the most important thing is the mind living in solitude, the mind living in the cave of the mind, whether the body is in isolation or not. Having renounced all meaningless worldly affairs, we can complete the stages of the path and achieve the omniscient mind. In that way we can attain full enlightenment in this lifetime without having to wait for another life.

At the very end of The Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Lama Tsongkhapa said,

In this way you realize exactly
The vital points of the three principal aspects of the path.
Resort to seeking solitude, generate the power of effort,
And quickly accomplish your final goal, my child.⁷¹

The solitude he refers to is solitude of the mind rather than that of the body. Real isolation is realized when we have cut off clinging to this life. In general, we also have to be isolated from the self-cherishing thought and self-grasping, the ignorance that believes the I to be truly existent. If that’s our mindset, then no matter where we live—at the beach, in the busiest city, in the most luxurious hotel—we’re living in an isolated place. That place is our hermitage.

Gen Jampa Wangdu used to encourage me when I slept too much because I was so lazy. As I mentioned before, he lived in a cave beneath what was not so much a rock as a big stone. It was not luxurious like my place at Lawudo. I lived in comparative luxury, with everything there to help practice the eight worldly dharmas, to cherish them and make them more powerful, which is why it had so many decorations. His cave was a Kadampa geshe’s cave, for somebody who had renounced this life, with no decorations, just bare rock and so low you couldn’t even stand up or stretch your body. To sleep, there was no spring mattress; he simply put leaves on the floor and sat on them.

One day a Tibetan nun who lived in Nepal, whose family was very wealthy, came to visit. I think they were related; she was his aunt or something. She knew he was a great meditator and so, wanting to receive lamrim teachings from him, brought him an offering of a big round of butter, like the big cheeses they sell in Kathmandu, which is very useful for monks to make Tibetan tea with. After offering the butter she sat on the bare ground and asked him to give teachings. He said, “I don’t know any teaching, I can’t teach, I don’t know anything,” and then said, “What I do know is how to make prostrations, that’s all I know. I can teach you that. If you want teachings, go and see some other lamas. Also, I don’t need the butter, so please take it away.”

I don’t know if the nun got angry or not because he refused to teach her, but afterwards I think she had nothing to say, so she left. He didn’t care that her family was wealthy or that she was a relative.

Except for what is necessary, like robes if they’re monks, those ascetic meditators keep nothing, no possessions, decorations or anything. When they become well known and many people start coming to make offerings, they move to another place, another cave or even another country, where they’re unknown. Then the people there find out about them and start bringing offerings, so again they escape to another place, from one mountain to another. Many don’t accept offerings at all or, if they take them, get rid of them right away by offering them to the monasteries or their gurus.

The great yogi Milarepa prayed,

If I am able to die at this hermitage without my relatives knowing my happiness, without my enemies knowing my suffering, then I, the yogi, have had my wish fulfilled. If I am able to die in this hermitage without friends knowing my old age and without my sister knowing my sickness, then I, the yogi, have had my wish fulfilled. May this prayer that I have made with no one around to hear be successful for the benefit of all the sentient beings.

There are many prayers like this.

5. The uncaptured vajra

After the four entrustments, the next three in the ten innermost jewels are the three vajras. The first one is the practice of the uncaptured vajra, seeking the conviction to leave behind any discouragement. This is based on a determination that nobody can change or disturb our decision in any way. No matter who tries to persuade us to not practice pure Dharma—our parents, our dearest friends—we remain adamant. Because of the diamond-hard quality of that determination it is called “vajra,” and “uncaptured” suggests something utterly unchangeable.

A cat hunts a mouse, but no matter how good a hunter the cat is, the mouse still escapes. In the same way, we have renounced this life and the eight worldly dharmas, and no matter how much people ask us to delay our practice, to not do it now but leave it for another time, we don’t listen. Without fear that we might lose their love, we don’t change our mind but make the firm decision, “I must, I must practice, I must practice pure Dharma.”

So in that sense, like the mouse, we’re able to avoid being captured by worldly people and distracted from practicing Dharma. We’re already relying on the four entrustments—of the Dharma, the beggar, death and the cave—which are to do with our own attitude toward practicing Dharma—but there’s still a danger that our relationships with others will interfere with our Dharma practice. Perhaps we’re planning to go into retreat but our parents are unhappy and try to convince us that we’re not ready for it, that there’s no hurry. “What’s the point of torturing yourself like that, going to those isolated places? You’ll get sick in that terrible cave! You’ll die! Who will help you?”

And if that doesn’t work, “That’s not a good idea. You don’t know what you’re doing. It would be better if you stayed home and worked and made your life comfortable. Have a lot of children! Then you’ll have a nice big family, with many relatives, with many brothers and sisters. We’ll give you a property, a really nice house. We’ll give you land so that you can do anything you want. You can make lots of money and enjoy your life. You can travel anywhere you want. What’s the point of going to that primitive place where you’ll probably get TB or cancer? You might get diarrhea! It’s much better that you stay here. Then in future, when you’ve finished your work, then you can practice Dharma if you want. If that’s what you want, you can do it then. But aren’t you foolish, even thinking about leaving such a comfortable, luxurious place where there’s such a wonderful variety of food and everything is so clean, where you can get everything you want? How can you even consider going to that primitive place where there’s nothing and just stay in a hut. There’s not even a supermarket. Not even a bar!”

Anyway, I’m joking. But we can have doubts when we decide to practice Dharma. We think going to an isolated place for retreat will help, but we also see the difficulties and think we might be fooling ourselves. Those doubts make us delay our Dharma practice, and our friends and family encourage those doubts by telling us how good our worldly life could be.

So this uncaptured vajra mind is the strong determination to practice Dharma no matter what, to not let the mind come under the control of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas for even a second. If the most positive thing we can do is go to a place of solitude for retreat, then with the utmost conviction we decide to do just that. No matter how much others try to persuade us to do otherwise, we have the strength of mind to do only what is most beneficial.

You might have heard about the life of the great bodhisattva Atisha. He was born as a prince in India. His family ruled a great population and had incredible power. Their palace had twenty-five rooms with golden roofs. But all he wanted to do was leave and lead an ascetic life.

Wanting him to take over from his father and become king, his parents tried to dissuade him from this many times, extolling the joys of having the rank of a king and being married. They gathered all the beautiful girls in the country and threw him a huge party. They tried very hard but nothing could change his mind. It was really like a vajra. He told his parents, “For me, wearing expensive brocades and wearing rags are the same; eating delicious food and eating dog meat are identical; so are drinking nectar and drinking blood and pus; and there’s no difference between having a princess or a daughter of Mara.” This is the practice of the uncaptured vajra.

The great Milarepa advised his disciple Rechungpa,

Son, if you want to practice the holy Dharma and have devotion arise from the depths of your heart, do not look back on this life. Follow my truth. Relatives are Mara, who delay you, who prevent you from practicing the holy Dharma. Don’t believe what they say. Cut off attachment to them. Food and possessions are the spies of Mara. Objects of desire bind you like Mara’s noose, therefore definitely cut off attachment.

I have already talked about how relatives say nice things to us and we start to believe them and thus get trapped. But Milarepa goes on to say that food and possessions are Mara’s spies, in that the more familiar we get with them the worse it gets.

Generally with a spy, the friendlier we get with him, the more he understands us and the more he can exploit us. He pretends to be friendly, he pretends he’s not cheating us, and we start to trust him completely. He seems sincere, a really good friend. He takes us to restaurants, gives us food and drinks, flatters us and offers us any help we need. Slowly he finds out more things about us and discovers our weaknesses. He shows us a good time and sooner or later offers us drugs. Maybe we’re reluctant to try them but because we don’t want to lose his friendship we do. We trust him and at first it is OK, but after a while he gets us to take more and more and before we know it we’re hooked and completely under his control. This is what he’s wanted all along. Our “friend” has completely cheated us and we end up in prison. This is like Mara’s noose, where we get more and more entangled in attachment.

It’s the same with alcohol and tobacco. The first time we try them they seem nothing special but then the more we have them, the more familiar we get with them, the worse it gets. We find it extremely difficult to stop. Because of our attachment, these objects bind us like a noose. Entangled in objects of desire, our dissatisfied mind just gets stronger and stronger and we spend all our time trying to get more of whatever it is. Then we find we have no time to retreat or practice Dharma.

Maybe we’re not attached to another person’s body, but if we’re attached to objects we get from that person we get attached to her in another way. We start to rely on people who give us things, such as benefactors who offer us material support. Concerned about receiving things, praise and the like, our behavior deteriorates and we break the moral code we’re trying to live by, causing our mind to become scattered and making our Dharma practice even harder to do.

We find ourselves trapped by attachment to the objects that other people offer and therefore powerless not to follow them. We’re afraid to go against their wishes because we need what they give us, and so our conviction and our practice deteriorate and we end up doing nonvirtuous things, completely involved in worldly work again.

I once met a monk who planned to do a retreat on calm abiding through chu len. Although he was trying his best to live as an ascetic, his rich brother tried to convince him that he was so close to his final geshe examinations that he’d be crazy not to get his degree first and offered to be his benefactor and make offerings to the monastery on his behalf. At his brother’s insistence, the monk finally agreed and came out of retreat to take his exams. He obtained the title of geshe, became busier and busier and was never able to complete the practice of calm abiding. This is just one example of how easy it is for us to get completely trapped in the hands of other people because we haven’t achieved this practice of the uncaptured vajra.

This is the essence of Milarepa’s advice to his disciple: avoid becoming ensnared in Mara’s noose. Even with a good motivation, we’ll encounter many obstacles, others will give us many reasons why we must delay our practice, why we can’t go to a solitary place just yet to meditate.

We love our family and our friends so much, they’re there in our heart, but even if our eyes fill with tears, even if we worry about them, we should have this vajra resolve, this indestructible, unchangeable vajra thought to never be separated from the holy Dharma, to always be in a solitary place, without attachment, to practice Dharma purely. Don’t forget, as we have seen, being in a “solitary place” doesn’t necessarily mean being physically isolated. No matter how much our relatives cry or scream at us, whether they follow us begging us not to go, we should never change our mind but keep it as indestructible as a vajra. This what “uncaptured vajra” means.

6. The shameless vajra

The second vajra is living within the shameless vajra. The uncaptured vajra is the preliminary to this one. We not only have the determination to go to an isolated place and practice, despite the pleas of our family and friends, now we are actually doing it, but, having renounced this life and become a beggar, filthy and hungry, with no clothes to wear, we might worry about what others think of us.

When people see us on the street they complain about how lazy and foolish we look, criticizing us for our looks, our lifestyle, what we think. They complain about us and joke that we have four limbs or call us lazy because we wander around jobless. While everybody else has to work for a living, we just sit around, begging, lazy and crazy.

Other people, on the other hand, might think we’re an amazing yogi. We stay in a cave wearing only rags and don’t need a luxurious house, family, friends or possessions—we must have become some kind of divine god!

We need to be especially careful of people we like and respect, such as family and friends. Even with them, we should be indifferent to and “shameless” of the praise or abuse they give us. Following what they say can be a big hindrance to our Dharma practice.

The Kadampa advice is to not worry about this at all. Whether people criticize us for our filthy appearance or praise us because we look like great ascetic practitioners, whether we are a devil or a yogi in their eyes, it doesn’t make any difference to us. We know that to follow their ideas would be a shortcoming of the eight worldly dharmas, that doing so would be doing the work of this life and creating negative karma. In that way, we lose the fear of criticism.

When we are certain that the way we have chosen is good, we should not care about reputation and praise or notoriety and abuse. Knowing that concern for reputation is a major hindrance to our Dharma practice and determining to concentrate on practicing pure Dharma without considering others’ opinions, we are shameless. This is living within the shameless vajra.

7. The transcendent wisdom vajra

The next vajra is living within the transcendent wisdom vajra. This means we resolve never to break the promise we have made to practice pure Dharma by renouncing this life. Completely turning away from all that is essenceless and meaningless, we make the firm, unshakable, indestructible determination to make our life equal with the holy Dharma.

“May my life be equal to my practice, like Milarepa’s was” is recognized as a very important prayer in Tibetan Buddhism. This means that if we live ten years, we practice Dharma for ten years, not that life is longer and Dharma practice is shorter. We make the determination to practice until death.

To be able to do that, we need unchangeable, unshakable resolve. We cannot practice properly if we’re easily overcome by delusions and therefore, despite our efforts, our life becomes unequal, with less time for Dharma and more time for meaningless activities that only seem important. That is why it is most essential that we make the strong determination never to break our promise to completely renounce the meaningless work of this life and have the unchangeable determination to make our life equal with the practice of the holy Dharma.

8. Expulsion from the rank of human beings

Of the last three aspects of the ten innermost jewels, the first is expulsion from the rank of human beings. When we renounce this life, we no longer fit into the ways of worldly people. Nothing of the perfections of this life interests us. Whereas everybody else, from pauper to millionaire, works solely for the perfections of this life, our thinking is the complete opposite of this. Everything we think or do is only for the happiness beyond this life and to obtain happiness for other sentient beings. In that way we are completely out of tune with the rest of the world—we are outcasts—and others simply can’t understand how we think or what we do. That is what being “expelled from the rank of human beings” means. If our actions of body, speech and mind were in accord with those of worldly people, then whatever we did wouldn’t be holy Dharma.

According to society, the criterion for being crazy is being out of line with how normal people think, so from that point of view we’re completely crazy. But we see how normal people destroy their chance at true happiness by chasing worldly perfections, so to us they’re crazy. They all try so hard to acquire as many possessions and have as good a reputation as possible; they all love to be praised and hate to be criticized. Their lives are devoted to such pursuits.

We, as Dharma practitioners who have renounced this life, no longer seek the happiness of this life, so we’re indifferent to the four desirable and four undesirable objects. Therefore our attitude is the complete opposite to that of the rest of the world.

Many Western Dharma students returning to the West after a one-month course at Kopan find it rather difficult to practice. At first they try as best they can, confronting the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, but soon their energy wanes and their old habits return. They start back at their old jobs but feel they don’t have any connection to the people around them. They feel that the world they inhabit is completely different from the world everybody else inhabits because their attitude is so different. This is what is meant by being expelled from the ranks of the human beings. It really means being out of step with worldly beings who are concerned only for this life.

9. Achieving the rank of the dog

After achieving expulsion from the ranks of the human beings, the next achievement is reaching the rank of the dog. Everybody complains about the dog; he has such a bad reputation. They say he is harmful but for him this is not like criticism. He has no concept of reputation, and whether his owners scold or praise him, he’s still faithful to them and still tries to protect them from intruders. They keep him out in the cold, don’t give him any shelter from the weather, feed him poor quality food, but whatever happens, no matter how many difficulties he has to suffer, he bears it, obediently staying with his family.

Of course, this is a Tibetan dog we’re talking about. In the West, dogs tend to have nice homes and good food and their owners might even give them warm clothes when they’re cold. Westerners have a lot of concern for their animals and that’s extremely good. However, for Tibetan dogs, whatever limited or poor quality food they’re given, they just stay there and accept it. They bear whatever difficulties there are.

This is the same as the Dharma practitioner (although of course, dogs work only for the happiness of this life and so everything they do is meaningless.) If we want to practice Dharma but have a weak mind, we will always have difficulty. We might think that we need money, a comfortable room and all our meals prepared for us before we can start to meditate. Or we might start but soon run out of money and have to live on apples and sandwiches. Or perhaps our place is very uncomfortable and run down, full of spider webs, without heating and with only the cold floor to sleep on. At that stage, we totally forget about Dharma. We completely give up. But if we were to wait until everything were comfortable and easy and our situation were stable, we might never begin to practice Dharma.

If we can’t stand hunger, thirst, cold, heat, discomfort, lack of sleep and so forth, then even if we try to practice Dharma, these concerns will always get in the way and we’ll encounter many hindrances. As long as comfort is a consideration we’ll find it difficult to do any Dharma practice and impossible to realize the steps of the path to enlightenment.

We need to understand the infinite advantages of experiencing hardships while practicing Dharma, that all this becomes great purification. We should remember that Shakyamuni Buddha and the great yogis like Milarepa spent years living in austerity and achieved enlightenment through enduring great hardship. They didn’t live comfortably with delicious food and the best clothes. If we have less, we should remember this—it is very beneficial for our mind when we have difficulty practicing Dharma.

Renouncing concern for food, clothing, shelter, reputation and so forth, we experience the happiness of practicing Dharma. Whatever food or clothing we get, we just accept; whatever difficulties arise—hunger, thirst, heat, cold—we bear them all in order to practice Dharma.

Geshe Chengawa gave some advice on the four opposite attitudes, something that is relevant to reaching the rank of a dog. He said that worldly people cherish the Buddha more than sentient beings, happiness more than suffering, people who help them more than people who harm them and themselves more than others. For a Dharma practitioner who wishes to achieve enlightenment, it is the complete reverse. A Dharma practitioner should cherish sentient beings more than the Buddha,⁷² suffering more than happiness, people who harm more than people who help and others more than themselves. The main point of this is that we should cherish suffering more than happiness.

This is what “reaching the rank of the dog” means. However difficult a dog’s life is—even if some days he doesn’t get any food—he still hangs around, wanting to protect the family. Similarly, whatever hardship arises, we must continue to practice Dharma, without changing our mind.

10. Achieving the rank of the divine beings

The last of the ten innermost jewels is achieving the rank of the divine beings. It means basically that through all the previous practices we have reached the goal and completed our practice. We have achieved the state of buddhahood, the highest state amongst all beings. In Hindu culture, worldly gods such as Brahma and Indra are considered higher than any human and, therefore, higher than the arhats, but in fact the worldly gods aren’t free from samsara whereas the arhats are, so in reality arhats are higher than worldly gods. A buddha is higher still.

I have explained the ten innermost jewels because if we wish to practice pure Dharma and renounce the thought of eight worldly dharmas, we need the Kadampa geshes’ advice very, very much. As a foundation, this is extremely important. Even if we can’t practice like this, it is very useful to understand it, especially when we get confused or are too lazy to practice Dharma.

The whole point of the Kadampa geshes’ advice on the ten innermost jewels is to equalize the eight worldly dharmas, the four desirable objects and the four undesirable ones. This is the basic method we need to stop the difficulties of our life and cut our confusion. A Dharma practitioner wishing to realize the graduated path to enlightenment values this teaching in the way that a worldly person values money.

This practice is more than a verbal or physical one; it is mind practice. The whole thing is determination. The essence is to bring our mind to the point where we can make a firm decision to practice Dharma purely. This practice of the ten innermost jewels is especially needed if we’ve taken vows. Whether they’re the vows of the fully ordained monk or nun, the thirty-six novice vows, the bodhisattva vows or the tantric vows, we need practices such as the ten innermost jewels that keep our renunciation of the eight worldly dharmas firm.

Pure Dharma not mouth Dharma

When great bodhisattvas give instructions they’re not just saying the words. It’s not like a parrot or a tape recorder. A parrot can repeat what it hears but has no understanding of the meaning, so it’s just talking nonsense; a tape recorder has no consciousness, so it doesn’t understand either. When, on the other hand, great bodhisattvas give instructions, their words are not dry and empty; they come from their full understanding of the nature of samsaric suffering. They talk from experience. They have discovered the profit, the infinite benefit, of renouncing this life and, living in the practice, they instruct their followers accordingly.

If we don’t know how to practice, we might think that we’re renouncing this life but our actions won’t be Dharma and we’ll get into trouble, like those Western students who threw away all their possessions and went to India to be like Milarepa but didn’t throw away their mind clinging to this life. We need some understanding.

Maybe you think I’m making Dharma complicated and difficult, that I should explain things to make your life easy and comfortable. Maybe you think I explain things like the eight worldly dharmas to scare you. However, this is the actual meaning of the Dharma and without going through it there’s simply no way to practice Dharma.

No matter how much we say we’re practicing Dharma, if we practice without understanding, there’s no way for our actions to become pure Dharma. No matter what advanced practices we do, no matter how much we meditate or talk about Dharma, no matter how famous we might be at yoga or meditation, no matter how much power we have, without understanding renunciation and living in the practice, there’s no way for anything we do to become pure Dharma.

Therefore it’s necessary that the Dharma that we’re trying to practice doesn’t become just mouth Dharma but pure Dharma, even if we meditate only once a day. If we want to create virtuous actions, to create the cause of liberation, to make every action pure, it’s necessary to remember what Dharma means by remembering the border between Dharma and non-Dharma. Then, even if we do only one small action a day, it can become pure Dharma. If we do that action free of the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas, we’ve planted the real seed of liberation, the actual seed that can bring enlightenment; if we don’t, we’re in danger of planting the wrong seed.

We need to be very careful in what we do. We need to make sure that whatever we do is not simply mouth Dharma. Pure Dharma is extremely profound. Its meaning is like a deep well—extremely difficult to see its depths and even more difficult to realize. The Dharma that is done with the thought renouncing this life is more profound than profound. It is such a special method; it is the method to release us from suffering and lead us to true happiness.

Renouncing pleasure brings the best pleasure

Renouncing attachment to worldly pleasure brings the best pleasure. Renouncing attachment to receiving material things is the best receiving and brings the best continual receiving of material things; renouncing attachment to praise is the best praise and brings the greatest praise; renouncing attachment to reputation is the best reputation and brings the greatest reputation.

All the great yogis of the past, such as Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, renounced all four desirable objects, but that does not mean that the Buddha never enjoyed pleasure, never had a good reputation or was never praised. He had infinite pleasure, infinite happiness all the time, unceasingly; it never stopped. If we could compare the combined pleasure of all the worldly samsaric beings that have ever existed and the Buddha’s pleasure, there’d be no comparison. Theirs would be so limited. And, not seeking praise, the Buddha received the best praise because of his qualities; he had praise in the past, has praise in the present and will continue to have praise in the future. For enlightened beings, there’s no sound that’s not the sweetest, no taste that’s not the best. Our clothes might feel rough or smooth on our bodies but for enlightened beings there’s no such thing as rough feeling or bad smell. The Buddha and all other enlightened beings continually enjoy the most sublime, unceasing happiness. For them, everything is infinite bliss, everything is in the nature of infinite happiness. All this comes from the practice of renunciation. Remember what Shakyamuni Buddha said:

If you wish all happiness, renounce all attachment. If you renounce all attachment, you will achieve the supreme happiness.

This quote is short but it’s extremely profound. It sums up all the teachings on the eight worldly dharmas: by renouncing, we receive. If we avoid all samsaric desires, we’ll achieve the most supreme happiness. As long as we follow samsaric desire we can never find satisfaction.

The reason we have never been truly satisfied so far is because we haven’t tried to avoid samsaric desires. To do that we need wisdom. When we achieve satisfaction with wisdom we are far happier than anyone who tries to attain satisfaction by fulfilling samsaric desires. We can never find satisfaction while we’re under the control of craving and attachment. That’s the way it works.

As we have seen, there might be some pleasure in scratching an itch but it’s far better not to have the itch in the first place. The pleasure is just a temporary relief of suffering. If we’re attached to the pleasure derived from scratching, doing it once is never enough. We need to do it three or more times, the pleasure diminishes the more we do it, and sooner or later we create a wound. Instead of more and more pleasure, which is what we’re hoping for, it turns to suffering. It can’t last; it must change into suffering. That is the nature of samsaric pleasure.

When jaundiced, we might see white snow mountains as yellow and even believe that they’re yellow, but when we recover we see that, in fact, they were white all along. In the same way, when attached, we believe that we can be happy by obtaining objects of desire. We really believe that. But noble beings who have transcended that wrong view and renounced attachment to samsaric pleasure understand that samsaric pleasure is in the nature of suffering.

We need to think on examples like this and many more, and we need to be very wary whenever we meet an object of desire. If we can see that samsaric pleasure is in the nature of suffering, our Dharma wisdom will continue to grow and whatever actions we do will be the cause of future happiness.

We can’t discover this through words alone; we have to experience it in our practice. Don’t think I want you to deny yourself any happiness or that what I’m talking about is impossible. Even people who have studied this in the past still need to go over it again and again because it takes time to really understand.

We have to be very patient with ourselves. If we can learn the fundamental points by heart, we have a tool to check whatever comes up in our mind and our practice becomes much more effective. We have to go over the main points of our practice repeatedly, using them constantly like background to whatever we do.

Of course, if we can completely counter the thought of the eight worldly dharmas at all times, that is without question the perfect method for happiness in not only this life but in all future lives as well. But it doesn’t happen immediately, like a snap of the fingers. It takes time for our mind to turn around. We have to train, but as we do it gets easier and easier.

The more we integrate lamrim subjects such as the eight worldly dharmas into our daily life, the more we can see how true they are; our understanding of their meaning gets deeper and deeper. At the very beginning, I’m sure it probably seems like a kind of fantasy nonsense, like baby talk. When we first come across this subject we can’t figure it out; it doesn’t make much sense at all. But the nature of wisdom is such that if we constantly keep at it, we will definitely make progress and our wisdom will grow. This is the nature of mind.

We can practice like Atisha’s disciple, the Kadampa yogi Geshe Ben Gungyal, did. He kept a collection of black and white stones. Whenever the thought of the eight worldly dharmas arose he’d put down a black stone and whenever he had a virtuous thought he’d put down a white one. He’d do this throughout the entire day and last thing at night would check to see how many stones of either color there were. At the beginning there were no white stones at all, only black ones. Gradually, however, there were a few white stones and then a few more. Eventually, after a long time, he found nothing but white stones. So it’s all a matter of training; we can’t expect it to happen quickly. It all depends on continual energy, determination and practice.

Even though at present we can’t live our whole life in the Dharma, completely renouncing the thought of the eight worldly dharmas like those ascetic meditators did, it is extremely important to be mindful and try our best to make each action virtuous.

Otherwise we might mistakenly believe that our seemingly religious actions are Dharma, which is very dangerous. We have such a short life that if we can’t create virtue even when doing good actions, it’s very upsetting. It’s like owning a shop and thinking we’re making a lot of money, but when, at the end of the day, we look closely at what we’ve taken we find that all the notes we’ve been given are counterfeit. Everything we thought was real is not and we have totally wasted all our time and energy. But even if we were a millionaire and discovered that all our money was counterfeit and utterly worthless, that would be nothing compared to working for the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, thinking that we’re working for happiness whereas in actuality all we’re working for is rebirth in the lower realms. Mountains of counterfeit money can’t cause us to be reborn in the lower realms, can’t disturb the happiness of future lives, but nonvirtuous actions done out of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas can. Therefore it’s extremely important that we make even the smallest virtuous action as perfect as possible.

The most powerful remedy is meditation on impermanence and death. Remembering how the time of death is indefinite, reflect how following the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas causes us to do nonvirtuous actions that lead us to rebirth in the lower realms and makes us suffer, even in this life.

By remembering this and generating a positive motivation, our mind won’t become one with the thought of the eight worldly dharmas—and the best positive motivation we can generate is bodhicitta. Whenever we do something for another being, no matter how small that action is, we should do it with bodhicitta, thinking we are doing it in order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Even if it’s just giving a tiny scrap of food to a dog, the benefits of doing that with bodhicitta on the basis of renouncing the thought of the eight worldly dharmas are infinite, uncountable, unimaginable.

Knowing the distinction between Dharma and non-Dharma gives us the choice. Once we have that wisdom, we can make all our actions Dharma whenever we want.

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Notes

⁶⁷ See the appendix of this book for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s practice on these. [Return to text]

⁶⁸ There is also an explanation of the ten innermost jewels in the Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development, pp. 42–45; in Liberation in our Hands, Part 2, p. 106, n. 29, and p. 108, where they are called the “ten jewels of ultimate commitment”; in The Principal Teachings of Buddhism, pp. 66–69; and in The Life of Shabkar, pp. 309–10, where they are called the “ten cardinal treasures of the past saints.” [Return to text]

⁶⁹ See Geshe Lama Konchog’s story, p. 148. See also Cave in the Snow about the hardships faced by Ven. Tenzin Palmo, a Western meditator who lived in a cave in the Himalayas for twelve years. [Return to text]

⁷⁰ See Geshe Rabten’s autobiography, The Life of a Tibetan Monk. [Return to text]

⁷¹ Translated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche as found on the LYWA website “Three Principal Aspects of the Path.” See also FPMT Essential Prayer Book (which can be found in the FPMT Catalogue), Lama Yeshe’s Essence of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Virtue and Reality and Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s The Three Principal Aspects of the Path. [Return to text]

⁷² Cherishing sentient beings more than the Buddha is part of the bodhisattva’s training. The Buddha should be revered because he gave us the tools to attain enlightenment but it is only through working for other sentient beings that we gain every realization. Therefore it is a mistake to cherish the Buddha but ignore others. [Return to text]