Embrace Life

Now you can see that our tendency to run away from life comes from being unable to transcend our own fear or resistance. This is the reason.

So the Bodhisattva’s main commitment to practice is the promise to embrace life. All the principles and precepts of Mahayana can be included in this simple statement: embracing life, whatever may come.

If you are dying, embrace it. If you are winning the lottery, perhaps that would be easier to embrace. Or if you were enlightened in this moment, perhaps it would be easy to embrace. If somebody is being unfriendly to you right now, embrace that, without any action, without trying to defend yourself. If somebody is really kind to you, embrace that. Embrace every moment.

Whatever is happening to us is unavoidable reality. We can deny it, we can distract ourselves, but we cannot avoid it. When we are sick, we have to face reality in order to get well.

In India, people can pay baksheesh (bribe) for anything, but not for impermanence and reality. We have to go through an amazing change, the way we look at what we believe is happiness, what is good, what is beauty. We have to change completely, because our old perception is based on dualistic mind or false belief systems, the ego.

The ego is the prime factor in samsara, all the tragedies and sorrow we go through. We have to sue the ego, bring it into court, as the culprit for all our suffering. There is no culprit outside of ourselves that we can blame for this suffering. The ego, this one misperception, causes all samsara. Ego is the Pandora’s box.

The main practice of the Bodhisattva is conquering the ego. Shantideva says if you conquer the enemy from outside, there will always be more enemies. But if you conquer the ego inside, you will be completely victorious.

Imagine the earth is covered with thorns and we can’t walk it because it damages our feet. Then imagine trying to cover the whole earth with leather so we could travel in comfort. How absurd! It would be impossible! Instead, we only need to wear just enough leather on our own feet, then we can walk the entire earth without mishap.

Dealing with ourselves, making our own issues the priority, eliminates so much of what is unnecessary. If we try to defeat death, misfortune, sickness, enemies, our perception of bad luck, we will die tired, broken, and totally unsuccessful. We can never defeat them all. We may defeat one but there will always be more.

But if we look inwardly and find the root of our resistance to reality, we can defeat the ultimate enemy. Then we will be the victorious one. That is what we call an arhat, conqueror, the one who conquered not outer enemies but inner enemies, the ego.

This whole process is about subduing one’s own ego, which is the source of samsara. When we identify ourselves with this ego, we cannot recognize our Buddha essence, the nature of our minds, rigpa. We cannot unfold love and compassion for other beings. As much as we are able to eradicate our identification with ego, we come closer and closer to who we are, which is the authentic realization of love and compassion.

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Ego

Ego consists of various misconceptions, attachment to name, body, possessions, and our life stories. It is all hallucination, a dark phantom. It seems so concrete to us because we have habitually believed in this sense of “I.” This ego is deeply rooted in each of us. The moment we are born we have innate ego. It is the most ancient habit we have. It is the fundamental tendency. Right now we are not doing so much dedication. Our life is mostly lived under the influence of ego.

We have to change and dedicate our life to the cause of liberation of all beings, not to the strengthening of ego. Our ego and attachment become stronger and stronger until we really undertake the Bodhisattva’s path and purify that false belief system.

The practice of tonglen is a very good practice to do this. Tonglen is a very powerful method that allows us to deal directly with our egos. A Bodhisattva is in a battle, not with outer circumstances, but with transforming the ego. Bodhisattvas do not use weapons, guns, spears, anger, or hatred. He or she uses the weapon of wisdom—the realization of emptiness, or Buddha mind. This is the Bodhisattva’s secret weapon.

In tonglen, we have to face our ego right on the spot. Especially if we are practicing the visualization of giving away everything to others and taking their suffering into ourselves. Our egos wake up right there, saying, “No, no, I can’t do that!” It is a reversal practice. We see that ego pop up, wrapped in fire with lots of teeth.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the demons are a symbol of ego. The wrathful deities, like Vajrakilaya, they are trampling on demons. We can visualize the ego as very angry, insecure, feisty, obnoxious, and demanding. We can feel that ego. We do not have to try to do analytical meditation. We can feel it immediately when we practice tonglen. I think tonglen is one of the most transformative practices.

Ego is a misperception of who we are. It’s an “I” that is perceived as a separate entity from everything else. But if we want to feel it, perhaps the best technique is not to go through intellectual inquiry, but to do tonglen practice. We feel ego right there in the form of fear and aversion. We immediately feel fear of suffering, stinginess of not being able to let go of our happiness and possessions. Even though there is no form or color, we can feel the ego in our flesh and in our bones. Ego just pops up.

There is a method by Kadampa masters called a hunter’s expression—they hunt an animal and put smoke on the other side because the animal is very smart. It is the same with facing ego. When dealing with the ego and the kleshas (defilements), we do not delay or procrastinate. We immediately attack, right there, by meditating on the nature of reality. We subdue ego right there, right here, in this moment, by realizing it’s nature. But we have to be mindful in every moment, otherwise one spark, which is thought, sets the whole forest, which is consciousness, on fire.

We have to be mindful at a very deep level. Not just seeing that cars are coming and going, whether people are walking around, whether it’s raining, how the flesh feels.

Mindfulness is about observing one’s own emotions arising and catching them on the spot. When we are mindful and witnessing whatever is arising in our consciousness, if love and compassion arises, rejoice. If we are experiencing kleshas, like hope, fear, and identification with ego, witness that and be mindful without changing or altering anything. My teacher said, “Be selfish mindfully.”

Mindfulness is all that matters. It’s the catalyst. Mindfulness is the ground of all development. We have to be like the Tibetan hunter who is waiting to see if kleshas come up, without any procrastination, and we use the method, whether tonglen or deity yoga, and we allow ourselves to experience instant liberation. This is being taught a great deal in both Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings.

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