by Pema Chodron
And this, as we may see, is but the mind itself.
In verses 9 through 17, Shantideva presents a helpful approach to understanding the six paramitas: generosity, discipline, patience, enthusiasm, meditation, and wisdom. He explains how they are transformed into enlightened activity by taming the mind. Until we work with the mind, the paramitas can’t really liberate us. This is because the paramitas and letting go of self-clinging are the same.
So it is with all of our actions: they either undercut our attachments or strengthen them; they bring us into the present or distract us. Whenever any action takes us beyond self-absorption, it becomes a paramita, but this only happens when we’re willing to tame our minds.
For example, bodhisattvas practice the first paramita, generosity, with the wish to end the poverty of beings. Now, a skeptic might say, “The aspiration is noble, but I notice nothing much has changed; material poverty still runs rampant.” To which Shantideva might reply, “Until we deal with poverty mind, the redistribution of all the wealth in the world won’t change the outer situation.”
A beggar woman once asked the Buddha for food. Seeing her immense craving, he wished to alleviate her suffering at the core. So, when she held out her bowl, he promised to give food to her and her family every day for the rest of their lives, on one condition. She had to say “No, I do not need this,” and then wait a few minutes before taking her food. Sadly, the poor woman couldn’t bring herself to say these words. The Buddha gave her that day’s food anyway, but she never appeared again.
With insatiable craving, whether we’re rich or poor, we will always find ourselves living in a world of never enough. This is Shantideva’s point.
5.11
Where, indeed, could beings, fishes, and the rest
Be placed, to shield them totally from suffering?
Deciding to refrain from harming them
Is said to be perfection of morality.
The same logic applies to the paramita of discipline, in verse 11. Until we decide never to harm others, how can beings find a place of permanent safety? To the degree that we refrain from hurting one another, to that degree the world is a kinder place. Without this clear intention, no conventional disciplined conduct, however ethical it seems, will ever free us from the unconscious actions of a self-centered mind.
5.12
The hostile multitudes are vast as space—
What chance is there that all should be subdued?
Let but this angry mind be overthrown
And every foe is then and there destroyed.
This verse refers to the primary antidote to aggression: the paramita of patience. Again, Shantideva points to the interdependence of our states of mind and our perceptions of the world around us. Thus, without anger, there is no enemy. By calming our enraged mind, every foe is then and there destroyed. Certainly we know danger when we see it, but this doesn’t mean we hate the person holding the gun. When hatred consumes us, we perceive enemies everywhere.
5.13
To cover all the earth with sheets of hide—
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather round your feet,
And it’s as if the whole earth had been covered!
Verse 13 is probably the most famous verse in the Bodhicharyavatara. The analogy suggests we’ve been walking barefoot over blazing hot sands, thorns, and stones, and our feet are bruised and bleeding. Suddenly, we come up with a way to end our suffering: we’ll cover the surface of the whole world with leather! This is, of course, impossible. But what if we wrapped leather around our feet? Then we could walk anywhere without a problem.
Our problems can’t be solved by eliminating each and every outer cause. Nevertheless, people everywhere take this approach: “It’s the world’s fault; it’s too rough, too sharp, too alien. If I could get rid of these outer woes, I’d be happy.”
Shantideva says: If you want to protect your feet, wear shoes; and if you want to protect yourself from the world’s provocations, tame your mind. The antidote to misery is to stay present.
5.14
Likewise, we can never take
And turn aside the outer course of things.
But only seize and discipline the mind itself,
And what is there remaining to be curbed?
Sometimes we can change or turn aside the course of outer events. Just look at the work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. But we can see from our planet’s history that injustices never seem to end. The only way to make real change in the world, Shantideva says, is to discipline the mind. Imagine how the world would change if everyone were taming their mind.
5.15
A clear intent can fructify
And bring us birth in lofty Brahma’s realm.
The acts of body and of speech are less—
They do not generate a like result.
From the Buddhist point of view, a clear and concentrated mind can bring us the bliss of lofty Brahma’s realm. Mere actions and words can’t generate a like result. A clear, stable mind, in fact, brings the even greater benefit of eliminating our own and others’ suffering where it originates. To attain that kind of settled mind we need the paramita of enthusiasm to keep us motivated.
5.16
Recitations and austerities,
Long though they may prove to be,
If practiced with distracted mind,
Are futile, so the Knower of the Truth has said.
Even years and years of meditation, if practiced with distracted mind, won’t free us from habitual patterns. The paramita of meditation is about taming the mind, not just sitting in an upright posture, thinking about life’s joys and sorrows.
5.17
All who fail to know and penetrate
This secret of the mind, the Dharma’s peak,
Although they wish for joy and sorrow’s end,
Will wander uselessly in misery.
Ultimately the key to happiness and freedom from suffering is a direct experience of the emptiness or suchness of all experience. This is the Dharma’s peak, the subject of Shantideva’s ninth chapter. Since this book does not include teachings on the ninth, or “wisdom,” chapter, let me say a few words here about its importance.
None of us wants to be miserable; we all want to be happy. But we can’t achieve this aim if we stay stuck in biased, narrow-minded thinking. No matter how much we long for joy, it will elude us if we continue buying into concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, acceptance and rejection. What ultimately frees us from these constricting patterns is to stop reifying our experience, and to connect with the ineffable, groundless nature of all phenomena.
This nature cannot be said to exist or not exist—or anything in between. As Shantideva says in the wisdom chapter:
9.34
When real and nonreal both
Are absent from before the mind,
Nothing else remains for mind to do
But rest in perfect peace, from concepts free.
There is no better use of a human life than to realize the unfabricated nonconceptual freshness of our mind. This is the source of all wisdom and all compassion.
5.18
This is so, and therefore I will seize
This mind of mine and guard it well.
What use to me so many harsh austerities?
But let me only discipline and guard my mind!
Just as harshness doesn’t work to tame a wild animal, it also doesn’t work to tame the wildness of our minds. Rather than the austerities of some traditions, Shantideva encourages us to use gentleness to train the mind.
5.19
When in wild, unruly crowds
We move with care to shield our broken limbs,
Likewise when we live in evil company,
Our wounded minds we should not fail to guard.
5.20
For if I carefully protect my wounds
Because I fear the hurt of cuts and bruises,
Why should I not guard my wounded mind,
For fear of being crushed beneath the cliffs of hell?
If we have a broken limb, we’re quick to protect it. We pay attention, for instance, when we pass through a wild, unruly crowd. We can use this same natural response to guard our distracted, impulsive mind. In situations that could easily trigger this overreactive mind, we’d be wise to be especially alert and attentive to what’s happening.
In certain places or with certain people, we might easily get swept into aggression or addictions. It’s not that those people or places are inherently “evil”; our mind is just still too vulnerable not to get into trouble. When we are in recovery, for example, we do not risk hanging out with our old drinking or drug-using buddies.
The consequences of being taken over by addictions—or jealousy, hatred, or ignorance—are both painful and predictable: it can feel like being crushed beneath the cliffs of hell.
5.21
If this is how I act and live,
Then even in the midst of evil folk,
Or even with fair women, all is well.
My diligent observance of the vows will not decline.
Shantideva was addressing an assembly of celibate monks, for whom women were generally regarded as temptation and trouble. Here he addresses their prejudiced and fearful minds. He’s saying, in effect: You may think the problem is fair women, but the problem is your mind. If you monks tame your minds, you can go anywhere and be with anyone; you could hang out with Playboy bunnies without any difficulty. There’d be no such thing as evil folk. Without a steady mind, how can you speak of wanting to help all beings? You’ll always be caught by attraction and aversion.
5.22
Let my property and honor all grow less,
And likewise all my health and livelihood,
And even other virtues—all can go!
But never will I disregard my mind.
5.23
All you who would protect your minds,
Maintain awareness and your mental vigilance.
Guard them both, at cost of life and limb—
Thus I join my hands, beseeching you.
Having made an irrefutable case for taming the mind, Shantideva now discusses more precisely how it’s done. The primary instruction is to nurture mindfulness and alertness, translated here as awareness and mental vigilance. In Tibetan these are trenpa and sheshin: trenpa, or “mindfulness,” is the mind’s natural ability to stay present; sheshin is “alertness,” the mind’s ability to know what’s happening. These qualities may be dormant at present, but they can be revived through shamatha meditation.
Shantideva is beseeching you to cultivate mindfulness and alertness and maintain these two qualities. “Please listen to me,” he says. “You will never regret it.”
5.24
Those disabled by ill health
Are helpless, powerless to act.
The mind, when likewise cramped by ignorance,
Is impotent and cannot do its work.
The ignorance referred to here is twofold. The deepest ignorance is our misperception of reality, our dualistic perception. This is the illusion of subject and object, self and other. The translator Herbert Guenther calls this “primitive views about reality.”
This ignorance is so ingrained, we take it for granted. Yet this misperception of separateness sets off an unfortunate chain reaction: it creates a tension between you and me that leads to concepts of “for and against,” “like and dislike,” “want and don’t want,” and all the rest of our misery.
This generates the second kind of ignorance: the ignorance of the kleshas. Once born, our emotions quickly intensify, and suffering increases. Thus the ignorance of dualistic perception leads predictably to turmoil.
Just as ill health incapacitates the body, ignorance covers the freshness of our pristine, naked mind. The inability to see without bias and preconceptions clouds our natural mindfulness and alertness. Without a clear, stable mind, we live a fear-based life so controlled by our emotions that we don’t really know what’s going on. Just as physical therapy can restore the body to basic health, shamatha meditation is the mental therapy that can restore our basic sanity.
5.25
And those who have no mental vigilance,
Though they may hear the teachings, ponder them or meditate,
With minds like water seeping from a leaking jug,
Their learning will not settle in their memories.
When we are distracted, we can’t remember anything we’ve studied or read. Our mind is like a leaking jug or a pot with a hole in the bottom. If we continue cultivating distractedness instead of the alertness of sheshin, we will become even more proficient at mental wandering than we already are.
5.26
Many have devotion, perseverance,
Are learned also and endowed with faith,
But through the fault of lacking mental vigilance,
Will not escape the stain of sin and downfall.
Kleshas and distractedness go together. Even with the excellent qualities of devotion, perseverance, learning, and faith, the kleshas will continue to capture us. Unless our mind is present and relaxed, we will find ourselves frequently worked up, which, as we know, has unpleasant consequences.
5.27
Lack of vigilance is like a thief
Who slinks behind when mindfulness abates.
And all the merit we have gathered in
He steals, and down we go to lower realms.
5.28
Defilements are a band of robbers
Waiting for their chance to bring us injury.
They steal our virtue, when their moment comes,
And batter out the life of happy destinies.
These verses repeat the main instruction: the kleshas overtake us when we’re distracted. Like a band of robbers, they wait until we’re unconscious: it’s when we’re not paying attention that we get mugged, and all our good fortune and happiness is lost.
Emotional chaos can do us more harm than any ordinary bandits. With mindfulness, however, we can catch the klesha urges while they’re small and disarm them before they harm us.
5.29
Therefore, from the gateway of awareness
Mindfulness shall not have leave to stray.
And if it wanders, it shall be recalled,
By thoughts of anguish in the lower worlds.
The gateway of awareness refers to our growing understanding of what truly helps and harms us. This intelligence is traditionally called “knowing what to cultivate and what to refrain from.” It isn’t based on some preconceived list; it’s knowing for ourselves what opens our minds and what increases our misery. When we see the mind get stuck in notions of “for and against” or some seductive fantasy, we recall how much pain was caused by getting swept away in the past and we gently return to the present. As soon as we see we’re hooked, we let go of the story line and return to the immediacy of our experience.
5.30
In those endowed with fortune and devotion,
Mindfulness is cultivated easily—
Through fear, and by the counsels of their abbots,
And staying ever in their teacher’s company.
In verses 30 through 32, Shantideva talks about devotion. This is the gratitude and love we have for our teachers. In mahayana Buddhism the teacher is called the kalyanamitra, or “spiritual friend.” But this friend does not exten
d to us what Trungpa Rinpoche called “idiot compassion,” continually feeding our neuroses or bailing us out so we can get in trouble again. This friend teaches us to help ourselves.
Earlier Shantideva said that devotion won’t help us if we have a wandering mind. Here he goes further: with the openheartedness of devotion, it is much easier to cultivate mindfulness.
Why is this so? If we have the good fortune, or merit, to meet a man or woman who’s awake, just being in his or her presence, or encountering their teachings, we experience the clarity of our own mind. Sometimes when my habitual patterns seem overwhelming, just imagining the face of Trungpa Rinpoche inspires me to come back to being present. When nothing else works, the thought or words of our teachers can motivate us to stay alert and not be seduced by old patterns.
Devotion, gratitude, and love for our teachers bring us back to the vastness and warmth of bodhichitta. Whether or not they’re physically present, we are always in their company. When we combine their wise counsel with a healthy fear of continuing to make the same mistakes, we find we have all the support we need to cultivate mindfulness and alertness.
5.31
The buddhas and the bodhisattvas both
Possess unclouded vision, seeing everything:
Everything lies open to their gaze,
And likewise I am always in their presence.
5.32
One who has such thoughts as these
Will gain devotion and a sense of fear and shame.
For such a one, the memory of Buddha
Rises frequently before the mind.
The buddhas and the bodhisattvas embody awakened mind. To say that everything lies open to their gaze means that the clarity and warmth of that mind is always available. In that sense, we are always in the presence of awakened mind and can tune in to it at any time. Realizing this brings both inspiration and the support of what here is called fear and shame.
