Tea For Me - Practising Compassion Towards Oneself

One of the things I miss most about Ratu is after having a particularly difficult day, he would simply look at me, sense how I was feeling, and offer me a cup of tea. I would sit quietly in his presence whilst he joked and laughed, and slowly the tension of the day would leave my body.

Like Dharmakirti, the teacher of Atisha, and most Indonesian masters from our lineage, Ratu's compassion was limitless like the vast sky. It is said that such was Atisha's gratitude to Dharmakirti that he was unable even to hear his name without bursting into tears for teaching him how to develop compassion or bodhichitta.

Atisha

Compassion is not pity, nor feeling sorry for oneself or the misfortunes of others. Nobody likes to be pitied, but everyone needs to feel understood. In actuality pity is a form of arrogance, because the underlying belief is that one is better off than others. This arrogance can take the form of bearing suffering like a martyr because you think that you shouldn't complain because there is always someone else less fortunate than you are.

That is certainly true, but pain is pain, whether it is physical, mental or emotional. In practicing Dharma one must begin to practice being truthful to one's heart. If you are in pain you need to acknowledge and feel it hundred percent. You will soon realise the truth of impermanance, that pain like everything in the universe changes. If you embrace your pain and not avoid it, you will realise the First Noble Truth and give birth to compassion. To understand compassion is to realise that even the illusory nature of a hypochondriac's pain is just as real to them as yours is to you. 

Compassion is an empathetic feeling of what it must be like to be in another person's shoes and a heartfelt wish to share it based on the right understanding of the Four Noble Truths.

Unlike love, respect or creating wealth, compassion is the one thing that we must receive from ourselves first before giving it to others. To receive love, respect or create wealth, we must give it first before we can expect it to be returned. To practice compassion one needs to feel the depth of one's suffering to truly understand another person's pain, otherwise it can turn to pity.

How to Give Compassion to Oneself

Meditation is perhaps the most beneficial method to give oneself compassion, because in essence meditation is sitting with one's heart, the heart of the Buddha. Only your own heart can truly understand how you feel and what you are experiencing. An aspect of meditation is to get to know oneself, be truthful to how one feels, then letting go and following the technique of breathing.

However, here's a practical tip that most women have practiced since the dawn of time - make yourself a bath. Pamper yourself with perfume, soothing music, flower petals and candles. Romance yourself as you would a lover. Give yourself the undivided attention you would give to someone you love.

Too many times we give so much to others that we leave nothing for ourselves. To do so is to deny the First Noble Truth, that we are all suffering - including ourselves. If you feel guilty for giving yourself pleasure, make it an offering to the Buddha or divinity within you. That way you (the ego) is not involved. This is a form of Bhakti Yoga in the Balinese tradition.

One practice I gave a friend to teach her to love herself was every time she made herself a cup of tea, she should make it with all the love and care she would normally lavish on a loved one. She told me today that this small practice actually helped her in just three short weeks. It's a great practice for mothers, who give so much of themselves to their children but never leave enough for themselves.

Meditation is being present in the moment. It is not just sitting practice. Therefore if you practice mindfulness in ever day life, you are in a state of meditation.

Videos of Sogyal Rinpoche Teaching

Before Ratu passed away he asked his good friends Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche and Sogyal Rinpoche to look after our Sangha if we required guidance. Traleg Rinpoche presided over Ratu's cremation ceremony, and Sogyal Rinpoche has undertaken the further training of Ratu's wife and consort, H.R.H. Princess Maitrie Vairocani Devi, a wonderful teacher in her own right. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Guru-Student Relationship in Vajrayana, if we want to progress on the path, we will need the guidance of a qualified teacher at some stage of our spiritual journey. I highly recommend finding one who can transmit the majesty and beauty of the Buddha's words, and breathe life into His teachings.

People in the West are often wary about joining "cults" or falling prey of unscrupulous charlatans who claim enlightenment. If this is a very real concern to you, find a copy of The Words of My Perfect Teacher, by Patrul Rinpoche. This classic book is recommended by the Dalai Lama and other senior Buddhist teachers. It includes a great chapter outlining the qualities of an authentic teacher of Dharma, who can be relied on to guide your spiritual education. 

No Lama will ever ask you to convert, since Buddhism is a study of the mind, not religion or belief in God. The Buddha's teachings are based on the Four Noble Truths, which is basically why we suffer, where suffering comes from, the end of suffering is possible and how to do it. You can take these teachings, especially the meditation practices, and apply it to your own faith.

Sogyal Rinpoche's book the Tibetan Book on Living and Dying was one of the first Buddhist books I read when I first began to practice. Click on this link to see this eloquent Lama give an introduction to meditation and explain the essence of the Buddhist teachings.

Çiva Buddhism

Bali is known throughout the world as the "Island of the Gods". It is considered by the Balinese as the “Island of Bhakti”. The name “Bali” is derived from the Sanskrit words “wali” (ceremony) and “banten” (offerings). Bhakti is how the Balinese express their devotion to their gods and deities through beauty. Indeed art and beauty permeates the whole Balinese culture, from the way they dress and relate to one another, to their appreciation of their environment and their general attitude towards life.

The Balinese practise Çiva Buddhism, which is also practised in Nepal, the birthplace of Lord Buddha. Çiva Buddha, or Indonesian Vajrayana Buddhism, is a Hindu-Buddhist hybrid from the Sailendra Dynasty and Majapahit Empire and is unique to Bali. It was brought to Bali when the Majapahit Empire crumbled into warring sultanates with the spread of Islam, and the royal families, priest and warrior castes, intelligentsia and artists fled Java and established their kingdom in Bali in the 13th century.

Basically in Çiva Buddha, the Hindu aspect was taught to understand the cosmos, and Buddhist meditation was taught to realise full enlightenment.

Ratu's root Lama, the late Ratu Giri Mahatera, once explained that the principle difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is that Hinduism stresses yadnya (sacrificial rites), whereas Buddhism does not.

Ratu's skill as a teacher was to use the the four yogas taken from Çiva Hinduism as the Preparation Stage on the path to enlightenment, namely:

(1) Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion to the gods, goddesses, gurus and deities through Pancha Yadnya or "five sacrifices"

(2) Jnana Yoga, the collective wisdom through meditation practice,

(3) Karma Yoga, putting practice into action, and

(4) Asana Yoga, maintaining one’s physical body and well being so one will have a long life in order to realise enlightenment in one lifetime.

In upcoming posts I will attempt to shed some light on these four yogas and how they relate to the Buddhist Path.

Feng Shui & Beautifying Yourself Through Your Surroundings

Most of us are familiar with how our emotions can affect the way we see the world. Similarly, by changing our external reality, we can make positive changes to how we feel. Perhaps this is a reason some of us use retail therapy to make ourselves feel better. These feelings of happiness tend to be fleeting because they are attached to our egos and how we see ourselves. However, if we were beautifying ourselves as appreciation for being alive, or as a way to thank God for this precious human birth, our feelings towards ourselves would be radically different.

The Vajrayana is often called the path of bliss. As a Balinese prince, Ratu taught us many methods from his rich culture to beautify ourselves and our surroundings by developing our appreciation and individual passion as a way to pay homage to the buddha or divinity within all of us.

Following are some notes I took from many impromptu teachings Ratu gave whilst listening to music, sharing a meal or just generally hanging out. I have used these invaluable insights into feng shui to overcome many of my negativities.

Feng Shui and the Home

Our homes are our places of refuge, where we recharge to be able to face the many vagaries of life. Our homes should be a place where you can be yourself and receive support and encouragement.

Treat your home as a sacred place, where the Buddha or divinity within you resides. An appreciation of this fact is a key to happiness.

If you live in a shared house, especially with like-minded people like a Sangha household, it can be great place where you can practise compassion, since we are all positive and negative reflections of each other. If a person brings up negative reactions within you, ask yourself, "What is it about me that I see in that person being reflected back at me?" Use the experience to develop more tolerance towards others and perhaps yourself in the process.

Your home should not be a place of comfort where people come together simply from a sense of desperation to pay the bills or rent. This will only increase your poverty mentality. Similarly surrounding yourself with negativity can enhance your own negativity.

Every room in the house relates to a specific aspect of mind. Beautify or make offerings in the wealth corner of the rooms.

Sacred Space: The Meditation Room/Altar

The Meditation Room, or where you keep your altar (if you have one), relates to you and your relationship to your Lama and Lineage. Daily offerings should be made of flowers, incense*, money, etc as an act of devotion and appreciation to the Lama, especially in Vajrayana. Therefore it must be filled with everything that is beautiful and important to you (like family snapshots) as an offering to the all the Buddhas.

*Note: It is important to burn 3 incense sticks during your practice since burning only one represents death!.

Secret Space: The Bedroom

The bedroom is your sacred inner sanctum. Therefore, it is important to knock first and respect a person’s privacy as it is a place where one is the most vulnerable. It is best not to work in your bedroom, since it is a place for relaxation and sleep.

Beautify this area and keep it tidy and clean. Decorate it to express your individuality and passion. Organising your CDs is important because music is a symbol of your passion.

The state of your bedroom relates to your mind. If it is dirty or messy, your life will reflect this chaos. Therefore, if you are feeling lost or depressed, clean up your room. You will feel much better for it!

Inner Space: The Kitchen

The kitchen relates to wealth and livelihood, since wealth comes from the depth of one’s love. The kitchen is the heart of the home where food is prepared. Food is a celebration of life. Sharing food is sharing love. If you are stingy, or calculating with food, you will be stingy and calculating with love and wealth. Stinginess will only increase your poverty.

The practice of Dana Paramita (generosity) and yadnya (offerings) will help you let go of attachment to the mundane concerns of this world.

It is important to learn to share, practice appreciation and consideration to develop a family bond with others. However, always remember that some of us do not know what is the true meaning of family from our own childhood trauma. Sometimes when you forge closer bonds with others, family issues will inevitably arise. Simply relax and use this experience to learn about yourself. The situation may be showing you that you need to stand up for yourself. Alternatively it may be an opportunity for you to listen to how your behaviour hurts or affects others.

Cleaning & Maintenance

Laziness comes from deep depression. Depression is like a miserable demon that possesses our mind and arises from childhood trauma. Any act of cleaning is the practice of Karma Yoga, which with right understanding, is the antidote to depression since it gets you out of your head and benefits the household.

Cleaning and washing dishes is a symbolic of cleaning one’s thoughts as in meditation practice. Do this regularly.

The toilet is a reflection of one’s own resentment and judgement (dirty mind). Clean the toilet if these feelings arise.

Outer Space: The Living Room

The lounge room represents your public image. It's the stage where one meets and greets people. It is a place where you network and should be warm, inviting and a reflection of your hospitality.

If you want to create wealth this stage must be set accordingly because you carry this image outside with you psychically.

If you want find out more about traditional feng shui, check out Lillian Too's site. She's a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and written a couple of great books on Dharma.

The Guru-Student Relationship in Vajrayana

It is sometimes difficult to explain to non-Buddhists the relationship students have towards a Lama, especially on the tantric path. "Lama" is a Tibetan word for "spiritual friend". The Lama is like a living embodiment of the Buddha's teachings - a symbol of kindness, wisdom and compassion. 

There is a saying in the teachings that likens the Lama to a mirror; we know our face (heart) exists, but we cannot see it without the aid of a mirror. Similarly, the Lama is the mirror that shows us the truth of who we are under all our suffering - a potential Buddha.

The journey towards Buddhahood requires being 100% truthful to how you feel and what you think, but at the same time developing the faith in the teachings that all suffering is in actuality an illusion created by one's mind - the "Second Noble Truth". All pain and suffering are like layers on an onion; peeling back a layer, simply reveals another layer (which is the essence of the "First Noble Truth"). Self reflection through meditation simply reveals deeper levels of understanding of our suffering as one's awareness grows through spiritual practice and direct experience of life's challenges. It may sound crazy, but it's actually fun to experience pain! 

We need a Lama or living example of the teachings to progress on the path, especially in the Vajrayana. Buddhism is based on direct experience and without a living guide the teachings can become strictly a conceptual exercise. For example, a person can read dozens of books on swimming, but until someone is actually there teaching them to swim, they will more than likely drown! Similarly, Dharma practice can be a dangerous exercise without a spiritual friend.

Ratu was my root Lama, which means that he was the key to unlocking the Buddha's teachings for me and as such has special place for me. I imagine its like remembering your first love! There's a great analogy that a famous Tibetan Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche uses to describe the evolving relationship a student has with a Lama.

When we are first drawn to a Lama we are like a person needing immediate medical attention. We are dying from our suffering, completely out of our minds from the pain we feel. We want someone to simply fix us, because we don't have the tools to help ourselves. He gives us a glimpse of the peace and clarity we have always sensed deep within our being but have been unable to articulate because of our lack of understanding of our true essence, which is love and compassion. I think that is why, if your heart is open, it simply feels right when the Lama speaks; he is not teaching anything new, but reminding us of the innate wisdom that has lain dormant within us.

Some people are satisfied with this quick fix and go on with their journey attaining enlightenment through simply living their lives. At a rudimentary level enlightenment is simply wisdom gained from life experience. However, true wisdom is the embodiment of our Buddha-nature, which is compassion itself.

On another level there are some people who want to help heal themselves and go to the Lama for advice like a doctor. Our egos perceive him like someone who is more learned than ourselves and the relationship is almost professional. We give him symptoms of our mental illness (mental obscurations like anger, loneliness, sadness, fear, etc are considered states of mental illness because we are ignorant to the true nature of these emotions. In other words, we don't understand that these states of mind are simply energies that we judge from our ignorance). The Lama gives us a diagnosis and we go away and take his medicine in the form of practising meditation, for example.

Our attitude towards him initially is one of admiration, awe and sometimes fear. These qualities can sometimes become a hindrance to your spiritual development because the Buddhist teachings state that there is not a hair's breadth difference between the Buddha Nature (quality of love, compassion, wisdom, etc) of a Lama and ourselves. The Lama simply has had the experience of "crossing the oceans of samsara" (suffering) and has come back to tell us of the bliss and inner peace on the other side.

He's almost like the best travel agent you have ever known. You ultimately make the journey yourself, but he is there to guide you from his experience on the pitfalls, dangers but also the joys and wondrous things you will experience on your journey. There is an aspect of faith in this process because you have actually met someone just like you who has made the journey. It's very inspiring.

This where a friendship begins to develop. The more he gets to know you, the more dreams and fears you share, the more he can advise you on the best route for you to get there. The Dalai Lama states that the purpose of the Buddha's teachings is happiness.

And why not? It makes sense that when you happy within yourself, you are relaxed, more tolerant, more loving, more generous, a pleasure to be around and a benefit to others! (I think that some of the religious doctrines have over-emphasised fear and guilt to control our basic human emotions with the emphasis being on becoming a "good" person. Whatever that is!)

I am highly suspicious of "good" people, because they are generally more judgmental and intolerant of others. Whereas someone, who has experienced real pain and has gained wisdom from hardship is more apt to be compassionate and understanding towards the suffering of others. What I mean is all people BELIEVE they are good; I'm positive that Hitler and George W. Bush believed they were good people when they started wars to impose their ideas of what is right on the rest of the world.

Concepts of good and bad are simply words of comparison. What is "good" for one, is "bad" for another. Compassion on the other hand is a basic understanding that once you strip everything away, we are all basically the same; none of us want to suffer, and all of us want happiness. And we all have the same Buddha Nature and potential for Buddhahood. We are all manifestations of the divine.

The Buddha states that we are already perfect, but we just don't realise it, and that's why the Lama is so important.

The interesting thing is when we become friends with a Lama, we are surprised that he too experiences pain and suffering. We are shocked to discover how human and ordinary he actually is. Sometimes we begin to judge him, because we want someone who is powerful to take responsibility for our suffering and our lives. "I don't want to make decisions for myself! You tell me what to do. But if I suffer more, it's your fault!" We think that a spiritual master should be above suffering otherwise he isn't very accomplished. But it's this very quality of ordinariness that we should rejoice in. We've been conditioned to believe in miracles as an example of spiritual power and dismiss the incredible miracle of simply being alive!

All that said, all the Lamas I have ever met, all had a great sense of humour because they never judged their thoughts, emotions and feelings from a realisation that they were essentially empty and an illusion.

The spiritual journey with a Lama is extremely difficult because like a good friend he will tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurts. As an example, once Ratu told me that I was talented and a good-looking man. I made a joke about it and he became extremely angry. He asked me, "Why is it that every time I point out all your suffering about yourself, you believe me and give yourself a hard time, but when I tell you the truth about your good qualities, you think I am lying! Don't you think it is harder to tell someone something negative than to tell someone something good?!"

I was shocked when he exposed a basic way my mind worked. He later gave me a teaching to simply say thank-you whenever someone gives you sincere compliment. Oh, how uncomfortable I was for such a long time practising this small thing! I was breaking decades of habitual self-deprecation. It's not that Ratu was saying that self-deprecation is wrong, but I was harming myself by reflecting on all my negativities rather than seeing myself through his eyes and the eyes of others. He made me understand that when someone does not accept a sincere compliment, it is actually a form of arrogance. You are basically saying to the other person, "You don't know what you are talking about. Only I (my ego) can accept what is truth". What an insult!

This is how stupid we can be. We think we see ourselves better than others see us!

Everyone's suffering is exactly the same, your anger and loneliness is just as painful as mine. Everyone's positive qualities, however, are unique (beauty, talent, kindness, etc) and is the result of purifying karma from past lives. This is why Ratu gave so many teachings on developing our inner beauty through art, dance, healing etc.

The religious mindset is that we have to purify ourselves constantly to become a "good person worthy of God's love". But when will we ever be good enough? When will we allow ourselves to finally be happy? 

The Buddha taught that suffering is an ever present reality because of the truth of impermanence. We are all going to get old, sick and finally die. Everything in this physical plane is subject to the law of impermanence. To fight it is to suffer.

If we are all going to die, and suffering is ever present, why spend all your time purifying yourself trying to be a better person? Do you actually know what it means to be better person? And who is that person within you that will finally judge you worthy?

Suffering comes to all of us, therefore rejoice and seek happiness. When suffering arises, deal with it then. It's useless trying to be "better" person with the specter of death peering over your shoulder. Let Death be your adviser. If I have a difficult decision to make I ask myself, "if I were to die next week, would I be doing what I'm doing now? Would I put off what I've always wanted to do?"

This a particularly powerful Buddhist meditation practice.