In February I talked about the first of the Eight Verses of Mind Training, a popular little text of the eleventh century Tibetan yogi Langri Tangpa, in which he exhorts us to see all sentient beings – who are, for us, “more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel” – as “most dear.”
From the perspective of an ordinary person, one for whom attachment is the default state of mind, these teachings are shocking. You mean the bad people too? Everyone? How is it possible to see them as “most dear”!
And I think the second verse is the most shocking of all! I always joke, but I mean it: if you were given this advice by your therapist, you could happily sue them! You listen to this next verse: “When you are in the company of others always see yourself as the lowest of all, and see others as superior.”
To try and put this in words that we comprehend psychologically is really quite difficult. This is why we need to be a suitable vessel to hear these teachings, as Pabongka Rinpoche puts it. If we hear this verse out of the blue, we’re going to say, “Well, excuse me, mate, I already think I’m the lowest of all. What are you trying to do? Rub my nose in it?”
We simply don’t get the point because it’s such an advanced teaching – it’s the bodhisattva path – so we’ve got to try and comprehend that these teachings called “exchanging self for others” are literally that.
So, a “suitable vessel” is someone who understands the law of karma, knows their own mind intimately and can distinguish between the delusions and the virtues, who clearly understands their own suffering and its causes and wants to get rid of it.
That person can now see that everyone else is in the same boat and only wants to help them. With that view they can learn to see all other beings as more precious, more amazing, more marvelous than ourselves, and we are attempting to dedicate our life to only work for them. This is what a bodhisattva does.
We love to hear about compassion, we love to hear about bodhichitta, but when we spell it out like this, it’s really quite shocking to us, you know? Remember, it says all sentient beings and to see oneself as the lowest of all. The words are so heavy for our mind, but if we understand the point behind it – what bodhichitta actually is – then it begins to make sense.
When you’ve got bodhichitta – not just a moment of it, not a flash of it, but an actual stable realization from having practiced for God-knows-how-many lifetimes – the first criterion of having accomplished bodhichitta is that there’s literally no longer the thought of “I.” This sounds like mental illness to us in our psychology, which is why we’ve got to understand the bigger picture.
The more we understand the path, the more we understand that for us, I – the word I – is the central player in our head. Everything is in reference to I. In the mind of a bodhisattva, there is literally no thought of the I. I mean, they know they’re I as opposed to you – they’re not foolish – but they’ve given up self-centeredness. We know some people can be less self-centered than others, but to think that you want to get rid of that utterly is too weird – and we’re not discussing emptiness here; we’re talking conventionally.
So how would you practice this? What would be the words we would use to make it palatable for us? Well, to begin with, right now, when we’re with others, we’re always finding fault. It’s almost embarrassing to admit it, but we’ve got to look at this: because of the fact that we’re seeing ourselves as this separate person, all the time, one of the commonest things we do is we point fingers. Our mothers would tell us, “It’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
We’re always pointing fingers: “Look at him, and look at her, and look at that politician, and look at him,” and if we go to a party or an event, within ten minutes we’ve already identified the people we don’t like, and we’re finding fault. And we even find fault with our friends. It’s arrogance, isn’t it, as if somehow we don’t have those faults.
According to the Four Noble Truths, the main problem in daily life is attachment – it’s very specific – but in the compassion component of the path it’s different: because of attachment to get what I want, we therefore cherish me more than others. So as we know, the Tibetans call that self-cherishing; we call it selfishness, self-centeredness.
With Bodhichitta the holy beings have made this paradigm shift finally, where others are now in the forefront of their mind.
This practice – the second verse – is a major way to practice that: to place others in the forefront of our mind, to put others first. It’s very simple.
The way to practice this is to start with one person: you look at another person – people at work, people in the Dharma center, especially if you don’t like them much, which means you find fault – and you find just one thing about them that’s better than you. I mean, a specific quality, a specific characteristic: maybe they’re thinner; maybe their ears are cuter; maybe their hair is a nicer shape. I’m talking simple things here – maybe they’ve got nicer feet.
I always joke about this. I was into martial arts: I trained in my 30s and then again in my 40s. When you do martial arts, you’ve got bare feet, right? And I was always very arrogant about my feet: I always thought mine were the best kung fu feet on the planet because I’ve got short, fat, sturdy feet that can do a good kick – I’m being very ridiculous here but we all know what I’m talking about: I thought mine were the best feet!
And so what I’d purposely do is I’d always praise Paulette – who had long skinny feet! – because she was much better at kung fu than me, she had a higher belt, so I’d always praise a particular quality of Paulette that was definitely better than me.
We’ve got to see that we always find fault. It’s so automatic, and we would never even admit it most of the time. The practice, instead, is to consciously find a quality in others that’s better than you.
Our trouble is we think Langri Tangpa is telling us to have low self-esteem: “Oh, I’m a creep.” No! We’re simply saying that Paulette has got a better kick than I have, that someone else has got a cuter nose; that person’s got a quicker mind; that person knows things better. It’s genuinely praising a quality in a person that’s better than you. It’s a gradual process of breaking down the barriers that attachment and self-cherishing have constructed between self and other.
We all can admire people; we can all put a person up; there’s nothing wrong with that. We have a mentor; we have people we revere. We’re not trying to do the extreme, neurotic one: “Oh, she’s so perfect. I’m terrible.” Not like that – not like that at all, you know?
This is a way to bring this practice down to earth. I mean, to say that I am the lowest of all and everybody else is superior seems extreme to us. Instead, make it real, and catch your mind every day. Take it one person at a time. It’s a very powerful teaching, and it’s very humbling.