"The_Dalai_Lama_-_An_Open_Heart_-_Practicing_Compassion_in_Everyday_Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lama Dalai)

I profoundly believe that real spiritual change comes about not by merely praying or wishing that all negative aspects of our minds disappear and all positive aspects blossom. It is only by our concerted effort, an effort based on an understanding of how the mind and its various emotional and psychological states interact, that we bring about true
spiritual progress. If we wish to lessen the power of negative emotions, we must search for the causes that give rise to them. We must work at removing or uprooting those causes. At the same time, we must enhance the mental forces that counter them: what we might call their antidotes. This is how a meditator must gradually bring about the mental transformation he or she seeks.
How do we undertake this? First we identify our particular virtue's opposing factors. The opposing factor of humility would be pride or vanity. The opposing factor of generosity would be stinginess. After identifying these factors, we must endeavor to weaken and undermine them. While we are focused on these opposing factors, we must also be fanning the flames of the virtuous quality we hope to internalize. When we feel most stingy, we must make an extra effort to be generous. When we feel impatient or judgmental, we must do our utmost to be patient.
When we recognize how our thoughts have particular effects upon our psychological states, we can prepare ourselves for them. We will then know that when one state of mind arises, we must counter it in a particular way; and if another occurs, we must act appropriately. When we see our mind drifting toward angry thoughts of someone we dislike,
we must catch ourselves; we must change our mind by changing the subject. It is difficult to hold back from anger when provoked unless we have trained our mind to first recollect the unpleasant effects such thoughts will cause us. It is therefore essential that we begin our training in patience calmly, not while experiencing anger. We must recall in detail how, when angry, we lose our peace of mind, how we are unable to concentrate on our work, and how unpleasant we become to those around us. It is by thinking long and hard in this manner that we eventually become able to refrain from anger.
One renowned Tibetan hermit limited his practice to watching his mind. He drew a black mark on the wall of his room whenever he had an unvirtuous thought. Initially his walls were all black; however, as he became more mindful, his thoughts became more virtuous and white marks began to replace the black ones. We must apply similar mindfulness in our daily lives.
CHAPTER 4
KARMA
OUR ULTIMATE AIM as Buddhist practitioners is attaining the fully enlightened and omniscient state of a Buddha. The vehicle we require is a human body with a sane mind.
Most of us take being alive as relatively healthy human beings for granted. In fact, human life is often referred to in Buddhist texts as extraordinary and precious. It is the result of an enormous accumulation of virtue, accrued by us over countless lives. Each human being has devoted a great amount of effort to attaining this physical state. Why is it of such value? Because it offers us the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth: the pursuit of our own happiness and that of others. Animals simply do not have the ability to willfully pursue virtue the way humans do. They are victims of their ignorance. We should therefore appreciate this
valuable human vehicle and must also do all we can to ensure that we shall be reborn as human beings in our next life. Though we continue to aspire to attain full enlightenment, we should acknowledge that the path to Buddha-hood is a long one for which we must also make short-term preparations.
As we have seen, to ensure rebirth as a human being with the full potential to pursue spiritual practice, one must first pursue an ethical path. This, according to Buddha's doctrine, entails avoiding the ten nonvirtuous actions. The suffering caused by each of these actions has many levels. To give ourselves more reason to desist from them, we must understand the workings of the law of cause and effect, known as karma.
Karma, which means "action," refers to an act we engage in as well as its repercussions. When we speak of the karma of killing, the act itself would be taking the life of another being. The wider implications of this act, also part of the karma of killing, are the suffering it causes the victim as well as the many who love and are dependent upon that being. The karma of this act also includes certain effects upon the actual killer. These are not limited to this life. Actually, the effect of an unvirtuous act grows with time,
so that a ruthless murderer's lack of remorse in taking human life began in a past life of simple disregard for the lives of others as seemingly inconsequential as animals or insects.
It is unlikely that a murderer would be immediately reborn as a human being. The circumstances under which one human being kills another determines the severity of the consequences. A brutal murderer, committing the crime with delight, is likely to be born to great suffering in a realm of existence we call hell. A less severe case Ч say, a killing in self-defense Ч might mean rebirth in a hell of lighter suffering. Less consequential nonvirtues might lead one to be born as an animal, lacking the ability to improve mentally or spiritually.
When one is eventually reborn as a human being, the consequences of various unvirtuous acts determine the circumstances of one's life in different ways. Killing in a previous lifetime dictates a short life span and much illness. It also leads to the tendency to kill, ensuring more suffering in future lives. Similarly, stealing causes one to lack resources and be stolen from; it also establishes a tendency to steal in the future. Sexual misconduct, such as adultery, results in future lives in which the company you keep will
be untrustworthy and in which you will suffer infidelity and betrayal. These are some of the effects of the three non-virtuous acts we commit with our body.
Among the four nonvirtuous acts of speech, lying leads to a life in which others will speak ill of you. Lying also establishes a tendency to lie in future lives, as well as the chances of being lied to and not being believed when you speak the truth. The future life-consequences of divisive speech include loneliness and a tendency to make mischief with other people's lives. Harsh speech begets the abuse of others and leads to an angry attitude. Idle gossip causes others not to listen and leads one to speak incessantly.
Finally, what are the karmic consequences of the three nonvirtuous acts of the mind? These are the most familiar of our unvirtuous tendencies. Covetousness leaves us perpetually dissatisfied. Malice causes us fear and leads us to harm others. Wrong views hold beliefs that contradict the truth, which leads to difficulty understanding and accepting truths and to stubbornly clinging to wrong views.
These are but a few examples of the ramifications of nonvirtue. Our present life results from our karma, our past actions. Our future situation, the conditions into which we shall be born, the opportunities we shall or shall
not have to better our state in life, will depend on our karma in this life, our present acts. Though our current situation has been determined by past behavior, we do remain responsible for our present actions. We have the ability and the responsibility to choose to direct our actions on a vir-cuous path.
When we weigh a particular act, to determine whether it is moral or spiritual, our criterion should be the quality of our motivation. When someone deliberately makes a resolution not to steal, if he or she is simply motivated by the fear of getting caught and being punished by the law, it is doubtful whether engaging in that resolution is a moral act, since moral considerations have not dictated his or her choice.
In another instance, the resolution not to steal may be motivated by fear of public opinion: "What would my friends and neighbors think? All would scorn me. I would become an outcast." Though the act of making the resolution may be positive, whether it is a moral act is again doubtful.
Now, the same resolution may be taken with the thought "If I steal, I am acting against the divine law of God." Someone else may think, "Stealing is nonvirtuous; it causes others
to suffer." When such considerations motivate one, the resolution is moral or ethical; it is also spiritual. In the practice of Buddha's doctrine, if your underlying consideration in avoiding a nonvirtuous act is that it would thwart your attainment of a state transcending sorrow, such restraint is a moral act.
Knowing the detailed aspects of the workings of karma is said to be limited to an omniscient mind. It is beyond our ordinary perception to fully grasp the subtle mechanics of karma. For us to live according to Shakyamuni Buddha's pronouncements on karma requires a degree of faith in his teachings. When he says that killing leads to a short life, stealing to poverty, there is really no way to prove him correct. However, such matters should not be taken on blind faith. We must first establish the validity of our object of faith: the Buddha and his doctrine, the Dharma. We must subject his teachings to well-reasoned scrutiny. By investigating those topics of the Dharma that can be established by means of logical inference Ч such as the Buddha's teachings on impermanence and emptiness, which we shall explore in Chapter 13, "Wisdom" Ч and seeing them to be correct, our belief in those less evident teachings, like the workings of karma, naturally increases. When we seek ad-
vice, we go to someone we consider worthy of giving the sought guidance. The more evident our wise friend's good judgment is to us, the more seriously we take the advice given. Our developing what I would call "wise faith" in the Buddha's advice should be similar.
I believe that some experience, some taste of practice, is necessary for us to generate true, profound faith. There seem to be two different types of experience. There are those of highly realized holy beings who possess seemingly unattainable qualities. Then there are more mundane experiences that we can achieve through our daily practice. We can develop some recognition of impermanence, the transient nature of life. We can come to recognize the destructive nature of afflictive emotions. We can have a greater feeling of compassion toward others or more patience when we have to wait in a line.
Such tangible experiences bring us a sense of fulfillment and joy, and our faith in the process by which these experiences came about grows. Our faith in our teacher, the person who leads us to these experiences, also intensifies, as does our conviction in the doctrine he or she follows. And from such tangible experiences, we might intuit that continued practice could lead to even more extraordinary
attainments, such as those immortalized by saints of the past.
Such reasoned faith, stemming from some taste of spiritual practice, also helps strengthen our confidence in the Buddha's account of the workings of karma. And this, in turn, gives us the determination to desist from engaging in the unvirtuous actions that lead to our own ever increasing misery. It is therefore helpful in our meditation, after even the slightest insight into the subject we have studied, to spend some time recognizing that we have had this insight and acknowledging from whence it derived. Such reflection should be thought of as part of our meditation. It helps strengthen the foundation of our faith in the Three Jewels of Refuge Ч the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha Ч and helps us progress in our practice. It gives us the heart to continue.
CHAPTER 5
THE AFFLICTIONS
WE HAVE SPOKEN of the afflictive emotions and the harm they wreak upon our spiritual practice. It is, I must admit, natural for us to experience emotions such as anger and desire. However, this does not mean that we needn't do anything about them. I am aware that in Western psychology, expressing feelings and emotions, even anger, is often encouraged. Certainly many people have endured traumatic experiences in their past, and if these emotions are suppressed, they may indeed cause lasting psychological harm. In such cases, as we say in Tibet, "When the conch shell is blocked, the best way to clear it is to blow into it."
Having said this, I do feel that it is important for spiritual practitioners to adopt a stance against strong emotions such as anger, attachment, and jealousy and devote themselves to developing restraint. Instead of allowing ourselves
to indulge in occurrences of strong emotions, we should work at decreasing our propensity toward them. If we ask ourselves whether we are happier when angry or when calm, the answer is evident. As we discussed earlier, the troubled mental state that results from afflictive emotions immediately disturbs our inner equilibrium, causing us to feel unsettled and unhappy. In our quest for happiness, our main aim should be to combat these emotions. We can achieve this only by applying deliberate and sustained effort over a long period of time Ч we Buddhists would say many successive lifetimes.
As we have seen already, mental afflictions do not disappear of their own accord; they don't simply vanish over time. They come to an end only as the result of conscious effort to undermine them, diminish their force, and ultimately eliminate them altogether.
If we wish to succeed, we must know how to engage in combat with our afflictive emotions. We begin our practice of the Buddha's Dharma by reading and listening to experienced teachers. This is how we develop a better picture of our predicament within the vicious circle of life and become familiar with the possible methods of practice to transcend it. Such study leads to what is called "under-
standing derived through listening." It is an essential foundation for our spiritual evolution. We must then process the information we have studied to the point of profound conviction. This leads to "understanding derived through contemplation." Once we have gained true certainty of the subject matter, we meditate on it so that our mind may become completely absorbed by it. This leads to an empirical knowledge called "understanding derived through meditation."
These three levels of understanding are essential in making true changes in our lives. With greater comprehension derived through study, our conviction becomes more profound, engendering a more powerful realization in meditation. If we lack understanding derived through study and contemplation, even if we meditate very intensely, we have difficulty becoming familiar with the subject we are meditating on, be it the devious nature of our afflictions or the subtle character of our emptiness. This would be similar to being forced to meet someone whom we don't wish to meet. It is therefore important to implement these three stages of practice in a consecutive manner.
Our environment also has a great influence on us. We need a quiet environment in order to undertake our
practice. Most important, we need solitude. By this I mean a mental state free of distractions, not simply time spent alone in a quiet place.
OUR MOST DESTRUCTIVE ENEMY
Our practice of the Dharma should be a continual effort to attain a state beyond suffering. It should not simply be a moral activity whereby we avoid negative ways and engage in positive ones. In our practice of the Dharma, we seek to transcend the situation in which we all find ourselves: victims of our own mental afflictions, the enemies of our peace and serenity. These afflictions Ч such as attachment, hatred, pride, greed, and so forth Ч are mental states that cause us to behave in ways that bring about all our unhap-piness and suffering. While working to achieve inner peace and happiness, it is helpful to think of them as our inner demons, for like demons, they can haunt us, causing nothing but misery. The state beyond such negative emotions and thoughts, beyond all sorrow, is called nirvana.
Initially, it is impossible to combat these powerful negative forces directly. We must approach them gradually. We
first apply discipline; we refrain from becoming overwhelmed by these emotions and thoughts. We do so by adopting an ethically disciplined way of life. For a Buddhist, this means that we refrain from the ten nonvirtuous actions. These actions, which we engage in physically by killing or stealing, verbally by lying or gossiping, and mentally by coveting, are all expressions of deeper mental afflictions such as anger, hatred, and attachment.
When we think along these lines, we come to realize that extreme emotions such as attachment Ч and particularly anger and hatred Ч are very destructive when they arise in us and that they are also very destructive when they arise in others! One could almost say that these emotions are the real destructive forces of the universe. We might go further and say that most of the problems and suffering we experience, which are essentially of our own making, are ultimately created by these negative emotions. One could say that all suffering is in fact the result or fruit of negative emotions such as attachment, greed, jealousy, pride, anger, and hatred.
Although at first we are not able to root out these negative emotions directly, at least we are not acting in accordance
with them. From here we move our meditative efforts to directly counter our afflictions of the mind and to deepen our compassion. For the final stage of our journey we need to uproot our afflictions altogether. This necessitates a realization of emptiness.
CHAPTER 6