Advice on Abandoning the Eight Worldly Concerns

MAITREYA THE FUTURE BUDDHA 

Advice on Abandoning the Eight Worldly Concerns
OCTOBER 19 2013 

by Nyala Pema Dündul

A ho! Listen well, all you fortunate, supreme disciples of
excellent karma! 

Gain and loss, happiness and unhappiness,

Fame and insignificance, praise and blame—
These are what we call “the eight worldly concerns.”

Those who cling to the duality of good and bad, and
pleasure and frustration,
Can not even be called practitioners of non-dual self-liberation!

They are bound by the chains of attachment to the
eight worldly concerns.

Whatever happens, whether it appears good or bad,
pleasurable or painful,
Recognize it to be just like the ten similes of illusion!

And, in a state of perfection, transcending the ordinary mind,
and beyond words, thought and description,
Rest in the expanse of the view, beyond the limitations of
hope and fear!

This advice on abandoning the eight worldly concerns,
Was put together by the old beggar called Padma,
For a group of students who had requested it repeatedly.

Through this, may my followers, yogis intent upon enlightenment,
Be free from even so much as a single thought
That is deceived by the mara of the eight worldly concerns!

Translated by Gyurme Avertin and Adam Pearcey, Rigpa Translations, 2013

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I, Kyungpo Naljor,

Feel deep and intense fear

Toward life’s unbearable sufferings

Such an endless wheel of life

Entails immeasurable suffering in life and death

And inconceivable anguish in the miserable realms

I’m not afraid of death

I’m afraid of rebirth !

Khyungpo Naljor (990-1139) Tibet

****************************************************

His Guru Preceptor: Indian Female Buddha NIGUMA

"When the ocean of samsara is turned over, when all attachment and ego-clinging are totally uprooted, then every place and every thing is covered with gold, forming a golden field of non-attachment. The actual nature of samsara, this phenomenal world, is like a play of dreams and illusion. When you have realized experientially that the play of the phenomenal world is nothing but a dream, or is like the illusion created by some magician, then you have gone beyond the ocean of samsara."

THE WHEEL OF SHARP WEAPONS

YAMANTAKA YAB YUM

  

YAMANTAKA is the wrathful aspect of Manjusri, the emanation of the wisdom of the BUDDHAS. 

YAMANTAKA wrath is directed against selfishness, self-cherishing attitudes, ego grasping and the grasping for true independent existence. 

These ignorant attitudes rob us of our chance to gain Enlightenment, and thus YAMANTAKA wrath is opposed to the Great Lord of Death.

THE WHEEL OF SHARP WEAPONS (Originally published on Axis of Logic on 4/11/04)
 

By Zdzislaw Zmijewski
Sep 1, 2004, 11:59
Editor's Note: We post this reprint of Zdzislaw Zmijewski's The Wheel of Sharp Weapons because of it's penetrating and clarifying relevance to the rapidly developing events we are facing around the world. - Les Blough, Editor

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FEBRUARY 26 2012

This article is re-posted after 8 years with only minor grammatical edits. 

2012 sadly confirms that the noted events below in the dated era of 2004, are now more entrenched and dangerous and Humanity stands on the edge of disaster.

This crisis can not be avoided now...and it will explode with full ferocity and soon.

The eternal battle rages and the choices are clear.

***********************************************************************

Perhaps we can assimilate and distill some meaning that could be relevant in understanding the course of events today, by adapting imagery and symbolism from Dharmarakshita’s
The Wheel of Sharp Weapons. 

This is not a polemic against any group or policy. This will not flesh out details of the problems that beset us. It is merely an attempt by one to find out why the cries of children and supplications of the powerless must be so futile. 

Why those that have so much must take it all? Why the yawning abyss yearns to kill all life and love?

If perchance we can find out why – just maybe "the wounded gloom complaining against the light" may yet smile.

In the fearsome jungles of Indonesia 1000 years ago, there lived the sage and adept Dharmaraksita. He was one, to whom disciples flocked from the far regions of Asia. 

Why? He taught a way of mind training that worked to dispel suffering and confusion. This way of mind training still flourishes today. 

His most illustrious student was Atisha from India. Atisha took on the lonely mission late in his life, to revitalize Tibetan spiritual culture, which at that time was seriously disintegrating and corrupted. 

His mission was supremely fruitful and a determinative cause for Tibet’s great resurgence until the destruction by China in 1959.

He wrote of Dharmarakshita: "By showing me these supreme nectar-like teachings, he has granted me sovereignty over the mind."

"These teachings" he is referring to is The Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This text is dramatic, poetic and powerful and quite unlike any other mind training text ever composed.

There is transparency through time and space, which offers no resistance or obstructions to universality & truth. If The Wheel of Sharp Weapons was genuinely valid for as great a being as Atisha – then it should be for us as well.

The obscurations getting in the way arise from our own aversions to clear pondering.

Let us first sip a few drops of this nectar. Below are three of the 120 stanzas:

(12)
When hunger or violent thirst overwhelms us,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have kept what we had without sharing;
We have plundered, stolen, and lured people on.
Hereafter let us relieve them from hunger and thirst.

(25)
When those who are close turn against us as enemies,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have held grudges inside us with anger,
With thoughts of sly methods to cause others pain;
Hereafter let us try to have less affectation,
Not pretend to be kind while we harbor base aims.

(39)
When attachment and anger disturb and upset us
No matter how much we may try to suppress them,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have held on to the improper outlook:
Stubbornly cherishing only ourselves,
Hereafter let us uproot self-interest completely.

In the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, there is cognition of the principle of action and reaction or cause and effect. Action cannot happen in a vacuum or in some willy-nilly reality debased of any common sense, cyclic rhythms or scientific basis. 

In the Eastern traditions, they know it as karma. Western cultures have appropriated the word/concept of karma in the last century. No need to elaborate. Anyone reading this page knows what karma means. 

The master of Galilee has succinctly asserted, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." He pronounced a simple precept with very extraordinary repercussions! 

The Golden Rule exhorted in virtually all the timeless ethical teachings that have sustained viable world cultures, derives its power from the same cognition. 

Dharmarakshita is on firm ground. The principle, some would say law, is a cornerstone of the mind training he offers. 

Another principle reality, inextricably related to the above, is interdependent origination. Many Eastern esoteric philosophic treatises dating back more than 2500 years ago, investigate interdependent origination with deep and subtle analysis. 

We are not interested in that discourse here. However, interdependent origination exerts profoundly resonant meaning for the discussion at hand and the existential foundation that supports The Wheel of Sharp Weapons. 

A simple examination of an ordinary event can illustrate it best. 

Let us observe the Jones family going to Disney World in Florida. They are entering the gate and papa Jones is paying the tab while their children smile with bated breath. 

Let us freeze-frame that for a moment to observe the law of interdependent origination in action. The parents decided to go to Disney World for the day, enthused by the hankerings of their children. 

Is this the primal cause and condition of the event – the originating factor? Some would say – it is. They wanted to go and they went. 

How did Disney World appear in the first place? That is another primal cause and condition. Walt Disney had many dreams – but it took the labors and talents of tens of thousands of individuals to get it through all the phases of planning and construction, not mention the thousands of employees that keep it running every day.

The land upon which Disney World exists is stable thanks to the infinite equilibrium of the sun, earth, atmosphere and oceans just to mention four of inconceivable zillions of geophysical realities. 

We must consider the Boeing 767 that took them from Boston as a major cause and condition for the event to happen. Did the 767 just appear at the gate from the void for their safe passage to Florida? 

Is it in the realm of human calculation to find all the causes and conditions that built the tangible materialization of just that one Boeing 767? Not the least of these would be Adolph Hitler. What?! 

The Second World War rammed the productions of military technology and specifically airplanes with a ferocity/frenzy that was utterly unthinkable otherwise – thus propelling us into the jet age. 

Had Bob Jones not gone to the High School Prom where he met his wife Sally – how could this event originate? 

At the prom, Sally’s unconscious olfactory enjoyment of Bob’s pheromones emanating from his excited nervous sweat, over rode her dislike of his red hair and the rest was history. 

A seemingly whimsical cause and condition without which their three children could never had incarnated to be present for this so ordinary event.
 

Ok - ok, we give up!

Indeed - everything and everyone is interdependent!

Upon examining even the most mundane event, we have to arrive at the realization of the incomprehensible interdependency of all phenomena and events in this world. 

The slightest event is impossible without a universe of galactic majesty in full support of its occurring! 

How we miss the magic of every moment is one of the tragic consequences of viewing things as being really self-existent and independent. 

There are other more tragic consequences – not in the purview of our focus here – though addressed in The Wheel of Sharp Weapons and a fitting subject for a separate disquisition.

Everywhere one looks there is sustenance – just in the viewable realms. Can we dismiss the invisible electro-magnetic spectrum as not party to observable relative reality?

Hardly not. Where the dependency is lacking there is the unknowable non-origination and dependent arising.

If just in the origins of events of ordinariness there must be infinite interdependent causes and conditions constantly at work, what are we to think about the historical swells that sweep millions of people and whole countries in their wakes? 

At such times, there must be crucial causes and conditions that effect so many - so widely and wildy - into maelstroms that overwhelm millions of individual karmas' into collective epochal events.

AMERICA APRIL 2004 SUNDRY VIEWS: 

228 years after the founding of America as a true Republic – crisis and disaster inexorably avalanches with chastening fury and finality over the country …

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
 

The NEW OXFORD Dictionary of ENGLISH:
  
REPUBLIC

- a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
  
No clear-minded and intelligent person can truly say that the United States of America today is a nation in which the supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives.

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PLUTOCRACY:

- government by the wealthy.

…a state or society governed in this way.

…ELITE or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth.

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OLIGARCHY:

- a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.

…a state governed by such a group

…government by such a group.

In the year 2004 the United States of America is ruled and totally controlled by Plutocrats and Oligarchs. Today America is neither a Republic nor Democracy. America is a PLUTOCRACY. It is time to call a spade a spade.

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The Three Branches of the Federal Government:
 

The Presidency of the United States:
...is the Executive Head of the Republic - an Office that serves the people and embodies the deepest yearnings and aspirations of all past generations since 1776 and all the future generations.

In the Oval Office of the White House, sits a man (G. W. Bush) who besmirches the Presidency at every moment. 

Criminal Elites installed this man. 

Now - they can freely go about to destroy the frail remnants of the Republic, rape the Treasury and build Empire in satiating their lust for Power of World Conquest. 

To abuse in every way the Power of the Presidency of the Republic is treason of the most blatant and serious kind. Are the people offended and ready to throw out this scum to restore true dignity and purpose to their Office? 

No !

Instead, we see flag waving and obsequious rallies embracing their depraver. 

How could it get this far?

This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

Pointing Out Instructions

by Künkyen Dashi  Öser

Stillness, Movement,  and Awareness

Namo Gurave


The root of all of cyclic existence, nirvana, confusion, and liberation is the mind. 

If you analyze the characteristics of that mind by making your rounds on the inside, there is nothing beyond the triad of stillness, movement, and awareness. 

Therefore, these need to be identified. 

As for the means to accomplish that, when mind rests naturally settled without any thoughts at all stirring in it;

...it is called “stillness.”

If you analyze this naming of resting mind as “stillness,” it is empty without any identifiable essence whatsoever.

From within the sphere or the emptiness of the very equipoise of undistractedly sustaining this state, due to the conditions of seeing or hearing outer objects, such as forms and sounds, erratic good and bad thoughts arise all of a sudden.

This is called “movement.”

Not recognizing their own face, but letting them run wild, one thought leads to many kinds of other thoughts. If you fall into letting this continue, you wander around in confusion.

Through directly looking at the face of whatever thought that comes up at the very start [of a potential train of thought], without being able to stand its own ground, just like a rainbow fading away in space, this thought vanishes into emptiness !

Since you arrive at such within the previous experience of stillness, if you become familiar with it, the stream of confusion is severed through thoughts coming to rest on their own and vanishing on their own.

Hence, if you know how to sustain this, even if you regard movement as a flaw and try to stop it, you need neither stop it nor apply any other remedy for the movement of thoughts.

Rather, by sustaining the state of realizing their own essence, you realize the essential point that all the various appearances of happiness and suffering emerge from the mind and dissolve back into the mind.

Through this, you realize the essential point that all of cyclic existence and nirvana is produced by the mind, the mind resting naturally settled without being affected by thoughts about the three times.
By looking undistractedly at the own face of the arisen experience of the essence of uncontrived emptiness-luminosity and thus familiarizing with it, though [mind] is still, it does not fall into ordinary dullness and sluggishness.

Through the essential point of not being carried away by the distractions of confused thoughts even when [mind] moves, you see the actuality that both stillness and moving are emptiness in which there are no distinctions as to them being something good or bad, or to be stopped or accomplished.

This [seeing] is “awareness.”
If you seize your own ground by sustaining this state of ordinary mind just as it actually is throughout meditative equipoise and subsequent attainment, the experience of one-pointed meditation has arisen.

Initially, in order to easily recognize the nature of the mind, it is given the three names of “stillness,” “movement,” and “awareness.”

However, ultimately, there is nothing to be realized other than just this single Mind.

Therefore, if you count the six syllables of the consummate speech of the supreme noble being, the Great Compassionate One, within the state of not losing the innate ground of stillness and movement not being two, that is, naked emptiness-luminosity just as it is, you meet the Avalokitesvara [Chenrezig] of the definitive meaning.

This is what the lord of Dharma Patrul Rinpoché said.

As the aids to this practice, renunciation toward cyclic existence, properly adopting and rejecting cause and result, being urged on by impermanence, taking  refuge, generating the  mind of  enlightenment [Bodhicitta], hundreds of thousands of the hundred-syllable [Mantra of Vajrasattva], malas, and prostrations, and especially compassion and the devotion of the guru yoga are crucial.

This was written by Mangala,  

the Omniscient Dashi Öser.

Künkyen Dashi Öser (1836-1910) was a great scholar and
meditation master who served as the abbot of the monasteries of Baljor and Palpung,
1188 the latter being the main seat of the Tai Situpas. As a disciple of Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö
Tayé (1813-1899), Jamyang  Kyentsé  Wangbo (1820-1892), and Dza Patrul Rinpoché (1808-1887),
he was greatly involved in the nonsectarian Rimé movement in eastern Tibet.
Dashi Öser is also credited with bringing back the second Jamgön Kongtrul, Kyentsé Öser (1904-1953),
who had reincarnated  as the son of the Fifteenth Karmapa, Kakyab Dorje (1871-1922),
from the latter’s seat in Tsurpu to his monastery of Palpung. After Dashi Öser had finished
the reading transmission of the entire Kangyur (the Tibetan canon of the Buddha’s words)
upon the invitation of the Fif- teenth Karmapa at Tsurpu in 1907, the Karmapa said that
he would fulfill any wish of his, so he asked for the permission to take the Karmapa’s son
back to Palpung, which Kakyab Dorje granted.

GREAT DEDICATION PRAYER OF JIGTEN SUMGÖN

                                                                                  

DHARMA LORD JIGTEN SUMGÖN'S

   DRIKUNG DEDICATION PRAYER     

Glorious, holy, venerable, precious, kind root and 
lineage Lamas, Divine assembly of Yidams
and assemblies of Buddhas,Bodhisattvas,
yogins, yoginis and Dakinis dwelling in the
ten directions;

Please hear my prayer !

By the power of this vast root of virtue,

May I benefit all beings through my body speech and mind.

May the afflictions of desire, hatred, ignorance, arrogance, and jealousy - not arise in my mind.

May thoughts of fame, reputation, wealth, honor, and 
concern for this life not arise for even a moment !

May my mind stream be moistened by 
Loving-kindness, Compassion, and Bodhicitta;

and through that may I become a spiritual master with good qualities equal to the infinity of space.

May I gain the supreme attainment of Mahamudra 
in this very life !

May the torment of suffering not arise even at the time of my death !

May I not die with negative thoughts.

May I not die confused by wrong view.

May I not experience an untimely death.

May I die joyfully and happily in the great Luminosity of the Mind-as-such and the pervading clarity of Dharmata.

May I, in any case, gain the supreme attainment of Mahamudra at the time of death or in the bardo.

By the virtues collected in the three times
By myself and all sentient beings in Samsara and Nirvana
And by the innate root of virtue,
May I and all sentient beings quickly attain
Unsurpassed, Perfect, Complete, Precious Enlightenment.

FINAL HEART ADVICE AT DEATH TSELE RANDROL

CITIPATI

TSELE NATSOK RANGDROL
Born 1608 Tibet

FINAL HEART ADVICE JUST BEFORE HE DIED

THE ORAL INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN BY THE GREAT VIDYADHARA OF IMMORTALITY WHEN HIS PHYSICAL BODY WAS ABOUT TO DEPART INTO DHARMADHATU

At all times and in all situations, I bow to and take Refuge in the sublime qualified Master endowed with boundless Compassion who is like a wish-fulfilling Jewel !

To attain the state of unexcelled Enlightenment, upon entering the gate of the precious BuddhaDharma, you must give up concerns for this life !

Your parents , family, friends and other people lead your mind towards the fleeting goals of this life’s activities, and offering all kinds of seemingly affectionate advice. 

Fooling yourself with all this will only result in various hindrances for Dharma practice.

So it is essential not to listen to their words !

Besides a qualified Master you won’t find anyone who can give genuine spiritual advice. If you want to truly practice Dharma you must quickly make preparations for Death. Besides that, someone who entertains many temporary and ultimate plans will not be able to be a Dharma practitioner.

People nowadays may outwardly pretend to try and please everyone but that only proves they are possessed inwardly by Mara.

Place your trust in Dharma and your Master ! 

Take mountain retreats and un-peopled valleys as your dwelling place ! 

Give up clinging to the short lived pleasures of food, clothes and the like ! 

Cut your ties to close family members ! 

Cast away all hypocritical flattery and manipulation ! 

Focus one-pointedly on whatever your Master says ! 

By doing so your Dharma practice will be pure.

In general, people nowadays fall under Mara’s reign. In particular, fickle and indolent women don’t follow the advice of their teachers and instead take guidance from their family. By doing so they postpone doing what they definitely should be doing now: studying and training in Dharma practice. 

They seem to be primarily caught up in pointless worldly activities, kowtowing to family and friends, and the like. 

Therefore take hold of the “rope to your nose” and don’t listen to others !

Sincerely take to heart the fact that the time of Death lies uncertain. Then knowing that there is not time to waste, diligently apply yourself to spiritual practice !

Your parent’s kindness can only be repaid through Dharma practice, there is no benefit in repaying them in with mundane attainments. Your teacher’s kindness can only be repaid by practicing meditation, nothing else will do.

You can only benefit sentient beings through the Bodhichitta resolve and by making aspirations; comparatively any other immediate action is of little benefit.

As for your vows and samayas, unless you take your own conscience as witness, you will only become a hypocrite even though you may maintain a superficially virtuous morality and exterior.

Remain in secluded valleys and mountain retreats, because any spiritual practice done among the masses will only get you caught up in one situation after another. If you fail to take control of your own mind, even though you may make many promises and take many vows, they will result in hardly any benefit at all.

Unless you realize the key point of Natural Awareness ~~~ that knowing one thing liberates all ~~~ you won’t find any certainty in pursuing endless seemingly “important” information.

To summarize all vital points: with the thought “I will surely die !” hasten your plans to practice the Dharma ! 

Since a Master is your only hope, supplicate him/her from your Heart ! 

Since all pleasure and pain, whatever befalls you, is a repayment from the past, don’t entertain many plans ! 

Treat good, evil and impartial people as being above you and always take the lowest seat !

Train in impartial pure perception and do not belittle others ! 

Acknowledge your own faults and don’t meditate on others’ shortcomings ! 

Since the vital point of all the Teachings lies in your own mind, always scrutinize its nature !

Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness ! 

Decide that whatever you experience is the playful expression of Awareness; don’t try to improve good or correct evil !

All experience is your own Mind and this Mind, free from arising and ceasing, is the identity of the Trikaya Guru. This Guru is indivisible from your Natural Awareness. Its cognizant Radiance encompasses all that appears and exists.