Attachment to the happiness of this life is the cause of all our problems. It is the cause of every individual person’s problems, every family’s problems, every country’s problems; it’s the cause of all the global problems. The basic problems facing young people, teenagers, middle-aged people, elderly people—every problem we can think of—can be traced to this root, attachment to the happiness of this life. If we could read our own life story and remember all the pain we have gone through so many times in this life alone, it would be like a commentary on the shortcomings of desire, our attachment to sense pleasure.
The basic message of Buddhism is renunciation of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, the mind grasping at the four desirable objects and rejecting the four undesirable objects. The thought of the eight worldly dharmas is a mind solely concerned with the happiness of this life, and any action done with this motivation, even if it is meditating or praying, becomes nonvirtue, the cause of suffering. This is the very first thing we need to understand when we study Dharma, the very first thing we need to wake up to. Even in Tibetan monasteries, where monks and nuns gain so much Dharma knowledge through debating and memorizing thousands of root texts and commentaries on very profound subjects, they can still fail to discover this fundamental and crucial point.
Knowing what is Dharma and what is not Dharma—knowing the difference between holy Dharma and worldly action—is the most important understanding for us to have at the beginning of our spiritual journey, otherwise we can live in ignorance and cheat ourselves for our entire life.
I used to spend a lot of time teaching on the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas during many of the early Kopan courses.2 I’d spend weeks talking about it, finishing off with the hells, like ice cream with a cherry on top—the eight worldly dharmas were the ice cream and the hells were the cherry on top! Talking about the eight worldly dharmas used to be my main hobby in those early courses. I think I was a little bit selfish spending so much time on a subject in which I was so interested.
Now, of course, it’s not like before. I’ve totally degenerated. Compared to how I was back then I’ve become absolutely lazy, but at that time I was able to do many things. One thing I did for a while was go to Lawudo to supervise the building of the Lawudo Retreat Center.
The person who lived there previously, the “Lawudo Lama,”3 must have had a lot of energy—he received the initiations of many practices and teachings on the methods to achieve deities. He was a ngagpa, not a monk, and Tibetan, not Sherpa like me and the people of the area. He lived above Namche Bazaar in the cave behind Khumjung, on the other side of the mountain from the cave where a footprint of Padmasambhava—the great being who helped bring Buddhism to Tibet—and the syllable AH spontaneously appeared.
Before I left for Tibet,4 the Lawudo Lama’s son told me he would return all the Nyingma texts that had belonged to the Lawudo Lama, so when I arrived at Lawudo from Kathmandu in 1969 they were there in the cave. Most of the scriptures had been written by hand with much effort because in the past it was very difficult to get printed texts in that area. During a later visit I found a very special text called Opening the Door of Dharma: The Initial Stage of Training the Mind in the Graduated Path to Enlightenment.5 A text on the fundamental practice of all four Tibetan traditions, it was composed by Lodrö Gyaltsen, a disciple of both Lama Tsongkhapa and Khedrub Rinpoche, one of Lama Tsongkhapa’s two spiritual sons.
Opening the Door of Dharma is a collection of the Kadampa geshes’ life stories and advice on how to practice Dharma based on their experiences and describes the initial stages of thought transformation, or mind training. Its main focus is on the distinction between worldly and spiritual activities and it shows clearly what should be practiced and what should be abandoned. The main emphasis is cutting off the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. I hadn’t seen this text before that visit to Lawudo.
Not following desire is practicing Dharma; following desire is not practicing Dharma. It is as simple as that. Because the mind is a dependent arising, which means that it exists in dependence upon causes and conditions, our mind can be transformed in any way we choose; it’s possible to gain realizations but that had not been my experience at all.
Up at Lawudo I was supposed to be watching the workers, checking whether they were cutting the stones to build the temple or just wasting time chatting. But since I couldn’t read texts and supervise the workers at the same time, I finished up spending most of my time in the cave reading and they went mostly unsupervised. The only time I would see them was when I went for pipi, and most of the time they’d just be standing around chatting. But what could I say? I found it difficult to scold them. Somebody else might have been able to do that but to me, scolding seemed very strange.
Paying their wages also felt very strange because I was more accustomed to receiving money as offerings, not handing it out. I paid the workers every day at sunset, knowing that some of them had done very little or no work that day. I was the secretary, the bookkeeper—everything. I kept the money in a little plastic suitcase and it would go down, down, down, and when it had almost run out somebody would show up with more money and it would go up again. I did that job for a short while.
Anyway, later, reading Opening the Door of Dharma caused me to look back on my life. I was born in 1945 in Thangme, a village near Lawudo. When my father was alive my family might have had a bit of wealth but he died while I was in my mother’s womb, so all I can remember is how terribly poor our family was. There was only my mother and my bigger sister to look after my brother, my other sister and me. It was very cold in the winter and I remember how the whole family would be wrapped in my father’s old coat, as we did not have any blankets. My mother had debts and was hassled by tax collectors, so she made potato alcohol to sell.
When I was very small I had a natural interest in becoming a monk. I would sit on a rock pretending to be a lama. Because I was virtually alone I was often rather bored, but I had one mute friend who was my everyday playmate. He was very good hearted and would pretend to be my disciple, taking initiations, doing pujas, sitting on the ground, serving food by mixing earth and stones with water. Maybe we were serving food to the thousands of Sera Je monks, a preparation for what came later.6 It’s possibly that children’s games have some meaning, that the games they play reflect their interests and are somehow a preparation for the later life.
When I was four or five my uncle used to take me up to Thangme monastery, not far from my home, where I played and attended some of the prayers and initiations, although most of the time I just slept. This was still before I became a monk. I remember sitting in somebody’s lap watching the lama’s holy face, not understanding a word. He had a long white beard, like the long-life man in long-life pujas, and a very kind and loving nature. Sitting there dozing in a lap, I had a very good, deep feeling.
Because I was naughty I had two alphabet teachers, who were also my gurus, Ngawang Lekshe and Ngawang Gendun. Ngawang Lekshe had a beard. He used to carve really beautiful OM MANI PADME HUM mantras7 on rocks by the side of the road for people to circumambulate, taking months to carve just one mantra on one rock.
He tried to teach me the alphabet, but when he’d go inside to make food the thought of escaping would come to me and I’d run home, I think because there I could play and there was nothing special I was expected to do. After two or three days my mother would send me back up to the monastery, carried up on somebody’s shoulders.
Because I kept running away, my uncle sent me to Rolwaling, very close to the snow mountains and a very dangerous three-day journey. The area is very beautiful and is regarded as one of the hidden places of Padmasambhava as it contains many of his caves and his throne as well.
I stayed there for seven years, returning home only once. I took the eight Mahayana precepts every morning, memorized Padmasambhava prayers and read long scriptures such as the Diamond Cutter Sutra all day long. I read that one many times. Besides mealtimes, I would distract myself whenever I could. When I went out for pipi or kaka, I would play a little bit and discovering the meaning of dharma stay out as long as possible. When my teachers would go out to cut trees for firewood in the forest, I would collect twigs, take them back to the monastery, line them up as if they were my lamas and play music to them with two round things representing cymbals. I wasn’t actually reciting prayers from memory, just imitating the chanting.
When I had to read all the volumes of the Prajnaparamita and other texts people asked me to read for pujas, such as the Kangyur, I was also very naughty. The many big texts belonged to the monastery, but because I was often left alone I would sometimes draw black circles on them with charcoal. I can’t remember whether my teacher beat me for that or not.
When I was about ten years old I went to Tibet, to Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s monastery in Phagri,8 where I was ordained. In the mornings I memorized texts or the prayers that had to be recited at the monastery; in the afternoons I went to puja in the monastery or did pujas at the houses of benefactors. There were two volumes of texts to be memorized; I memorized one but not the other. Nevertheless, I did well in my memorization examination.
By the time I did my exam, Tibet had already been overtaken by the Communist Chinese. Lhasa had already been taken and they were coming to our area, so it was decided we should escape. Many of the monks were very frightened by the danger ahead but I was very happy. I couldn’t see any reason to be afraid. We escaped in the middle of the night. There was a little bit of snow and a lot of mud, which sometimes sucked our legs down. It felt like there were nomads and Chinese spies everywhere, dogs barked as we passed by, but nobody in our party spoke. Perhaps they were all meditating. The next day we crossed the Bhutanese border and the following day the thirty or forty of us arrived in India.
I was in Buxa Duar9 for eight years, and during all that time I didn’t really study Dharma. I wasted a lot of time painting and learning English in my own way, like memorizing the words of Tibetan texts. Once I tried to memorize a whole dictionary; I started but couldn’t finish.
I spent most of the time playing or washing in the river. At night the monks washed under a tap, but during the day we went to the river, mainly because it was unbelievably hot. All the monks put their red and yellow robes on the bushes and swam in just their shorts. When you looked down on the river from the mountain above, the robes on the bushes looked like flowers. During those years I took teachings, memorized texts and did some debating, but it was like a child playing. Later, just as my debating skills were starting to develop, I became sick with TB and was sent to a school in Darjeeling, where I stayed for a long time for my health and learned a lot of different subjects.
Reviewing my whole life like this in the light of reading Opening the Door of Dharma, I could not find one single thing that had become Dharma.
In Tibet, my teacher had given me a commentary on the Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. He put it on the table and I read few pages, but of course there was no way I could understand it at the time as I had never read a complete lamrim text or ever received teachings on one.
Now, all those years later in Lawudo reading Opening the Door of Dharma, I could see very clearly that in all my years as a monk I had never had any real understanding of what Dharma was. More than that, I could see that there was nothing I’d done before that wasn’t a worldly dharma. It was a huge shock.
Just reading that text made an enormous difference. The next time I did a retreat there was a big difference in my mind. I felt much quieter, much calmer, more peaceful and had no expectations—just by understanding what Dharma was. In that way my retreat became a perfect retreat. Because I understood from this text how to practice Dharma, even the very first day of retreat was unbelievably peaceful and joyful. Because of a slight weakening of the eight worldly dharmas, there were fewer obstacles in my mind, like having fewer rocks blocking a road, which meant less interference to my practice. This is what makes a retreat successful. I hadn’t studied the commentaries of the tantric practice I was doing, but somehow, because there were fewer problems in my mind, I was able to receive the blessings of the deity.
Now my mind has completely degenerated, but at that time, having thought a little about the meaning of Opening the Door of Dharma, I felt really uncomfortable when people came to make offerings. In Solu Khumbu the Sherpas would often bring offerings to the cave, filling the brass containers they usually use for eating or drinking chang10 with corn (or whatever else they had). That text really made me afraid of receiving offerings!
In retreat after reading Opening the Door of Dharma I saw that, like molding dough in our hands, we can definitely turn our mind whichever way we want; we can train it to turn this way or that. By habituating our mind to the Dharma we can definitely gain realizations. Even the immediate small change of mind that happened during my retreat was logical proof that it’s possible to achieve enlightenment.
As Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, holder of the entire holy Buddhadharma, said, the Kangyur, the teachings of the Buddha, and the Tengyur, the commentaries by the Indian pandits, are solely to subdue the mind. The evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas, the desire clinging to this life, is what interferes with our practice of listening to teachings, reflecting on their meaning and meditating on the path they reveal. This evil thought is what makes our Dharma practice so ineffectual. The purpose of Opening the Door of Dharma and other texts like it is to completely reverse that way of thinking. These texts are therefore considered thought transformation, or mind training, texts.
In fact, the whole lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, is thought transformation. Its main purpose is to subdue the mind. This is why, when other teachings have little effect, hearing or reading the lamrim can subdue our mind.
What prevents us from generating the graduated path to enlightenment in our mind? What keeps us from having realizations? From morning to night, what stops our actions from becoming holy Dharma? It’s the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, the desire that clings to the happiness of this life alone. This is what stops us from achieving lamrim realizations, from the fundamental realizations of guru devotion and the perfect human rebirth11 up to enlightenment.
We need to train our mind by reflecting on the shortcomings of worldly concern and the infinite benefits of renouncing it. In particular, we need to train our mind by meditating on impermanence and death. If we do this initial thought training we’ll open the door of Dharma. Then, without difficulty, we’ll be able to practice Dharma and succeed at whatever we wish, whether it’s a retreat or any other Dharma practice. All our actions will become Dharma.
Notes
2 The annual fall meditation courses held at the main monastery of the FPMT, Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, now usually taught by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and a Western teacher. The first one was in 1971. [Return to text]
3 Lama Zopa Rinpoche is recognized as the reincarnation of the Lawudo Lama. See The Lawudo Lama. [Return to text]
4 In 1957. Chapters 18 and 19 of The Lawudo Lama detail Rinpoche’s journey and time in Tibet. [Return to text]
5 This text is the basis of the book The Door to Satisfaction. In the prologue, Rinpoche says he discovered it during his 1974 visit to Lawudo. The Lawudo Lama (p. 237) has Rinpoche discovering Opening the Door of Dharma during his second visit in 1970. [Return to text]
6 One of Rinpoche’s many current projects is offering three vegetarian meals a day to the 2,600 monks of Sera Je Monastery in south India. In the past twenty years over fifteen million meals have been served. [Return to text]
7 The mantra of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. [Return to text]
8 See The Lawudo Lama, p. 168 ff. for the detailed story. [Return to text]
9 The refugee camp in West Bengal where many Tibetan monks and nuns stayed when they fled Tibet after the Chinese takeover of 1959. [Return to text]
10 Tibetan beer. [Return to text]
11 The first two lamrim topics and therefore the first ones we need to realize. [Return to text]
