[From a teaching on The Words of the All-Pervasive Guru given by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche at Kunzang Palchen Ling in September 2012. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso. Edited by Matt Willis. All rights reserved. The complete teaching is available as an MP3 download from the KPL Bookstore.]
Many people talk about renunciation, but mostly they’re spouting dharma jargon because it’s what they’ve been told is good, and they want to sound good. Sometimes when we’re in the presence of a great master we’re so inspired by their example that we think, “I must give up everything, immediately; give everything away; get rid of everything; give up everything.” But if you try to do that, if you try not only to emulate but actually imitate Jetsün Milarepa by living out there in a cold cave, one day you may regret it.
Dharma must be taught in a way that fits the needs of the people who are going to hear it and actually helps them move in the right direction. Even when we request the buddhas to teach, we ask them to teach in a way that is appropriate to those who are going to be listening. Now obviously to emulate Jestün Milarepa is the best possible way to ensure achieving awakening in this lifetime. But if you attempt to force yourself to emulate someone that you simply cannot emulate in this life, all you will be doing is subjecting yourself to pointless misery.
The point of this section of the text [The Mahamudra Lineage Prayer – the section that begins, “As is taught, detachment is the foot of meditation…”] is not how far you have to go, but the direction in which we need to walk. We need to ensure that however many or however few steps we take in this life we walk in the right direction. That with every step we take on the path we change, our minds change, our minds soften. That we practice day after day. We should not attempt a frantic display of superficial renunciation by taking on every practice we’ve ever heard of, or can get our hands on, and trying to live with nothing. We cannot be frantic about this; we have to be gentle. And, we have to gradually study and practice in such a way that our minds become truly mixed with the dharma, so that one day when someone asks us something we won’t have to say, “I don’t have my book with me, so I can’t tell you.”
His Eminence Tai Situ Rinpoche has often used the example of a journey that consists of one hundred steps. He said, “Maybe in this life we can only take as many as ten of those hundred steps. But if we walk those ten steps in the right direction, then we will only have ninety steps remaining in the next life.” If we take it gradually, in that way, then it is certain that one day we will have ultimate result that we seek in our hands.
Nevertheless, when we do practice dharma, stuff continues to happen to us, and sometimes we resent it all the more. We think, “Well, now I’m a dharma practitioner; I’ve dedicated my life to dharma; I’ve mixed my mind with the dharma; I only think about dharma. Why is this stuff happening to me?” We look around us and we think that worse things are happening to us than to other people, and it seems horrifically unfair. If we have actually mixed our minds with dharma, our attitude will be different from that. In the most general sense, mishaps and adversity are always a reminder to us of why we are practicing, a reminder to us of what is wrong with samsara. Also, the experience of suffering for a dharma practitioner is called “the broom that sweeps away your previous wrongdoing.” When you clean your home, you try to use the most effective, most efficient cleaning devices and materials you have access to. In the same way, we are trying to clean ourselves of the imprints of our previous wrongdoing. The willing acceptance of suffering is an excellent way to do that, because if you take the right attitude towards suffering, and you experience it without resentment, then it purifies countless amounts of wrongdoing that might otherwise have lead to far more suffering in a future life.
We must emulate the early Kadampa masters who prayed: “If it is better for me to become ill, may I become ill; if it is better for me to die, may I die.” We have to accept that although we have been born with precious human bodies, they are still the product of our previous karma. Our bodies are the ripening of our previous karma. If in the context of this precious human life karma ripens for us as illness, or as pain, or other adversities, it is much, much better than if it is allowed to remain as an imprint that will ripen in the future. Because the sooner it ripens, and especially if it ripens in the context of a human life used for dharma practice, the much less severe will the ripening be, the much quicker will the purification occur.
Actually, we need to embrace these mishaps and adversities; we need to allow them to encourage us. When you find yourself suffering and you’re tempted to think, “I’m practicing dharma; I’m trying to lead a good life. Why is this happening to me?” Instead think, “I am experiencing adversity. May this adversity, this sickness or whatever it is, take the place of all of the similar adversities or sicknesses that would otherwise ripen for other beings. Through my experiencing this may they not have to suffer in these ways. May the karmic imprints within their being that would cause them to suffer in these ways be wiped-out through my experience of this.” If you can do that, then you have no reason to resent the adversity. If you’re trying to practice ngondro, the whole point of ngondro is purification; it has no other point. And that point, that purpose of practice, is excellently achieved by taking that attitude to adversity. So, not only is the adversity not an interruption of your practice, it is actually an enhancement, a quickening, of your practice. In any case, we should not be resentful of adversity because the whole point of dharma practice, and the whole measure of whether we’re really practicing or not, is how we respond to adversity. The most simple result of our practice must be the ability to face adversity with equanimity.
