The Living Buddha Within

MOTIVATION

- Chapter 1

THREE POTS

We are taught that we should listen to the Dharma without the faults of the three pots. We should listen to the Dharma with a high motivation. The three faulty pots are: the pot that is facing down, the pot that is facing up but has contamination or is filthy and the pot that leaks.

Listening to Dharma with the pot facing down is like someone who comes with a closed mind. When the pot is upside down, even though it is raining hard, no water can be collected.

The second type of faulty pot is one that is facing up and opened, yet is contaminated or dirty. Even if you were to put the cleanest and finest water in that pot to drink, it will be contaminated, even though the content is good. In this example, it symbolises coming to the Dharma with wrong motivations. For example, some of you want to listen to the Dharma to pass time, or because you are bored, or you wish to find methods to get wealthy, stay young, remain beautiful, or simply to have a good life. This is listening to the Dharma with a faulty pot or with a pot that is contaminated, and therefore, the motivation is contaminated.

Finally, the third pot is the one that has leaks through its cracks. Whenever you listen to the Dharma, you may agree with it, you may like it, you may think it is excellent and wonderful, yet after a Dharma talk, you cannot remember what was said nor are you able to practise it. It simply goes in one ear and out the other. So, if we wish to learn the Dharma, we should not listen to the teachings like the three faulty pots.

We should not listen to the Dharma with a low motivation – that we may receive a good healthy life, or money, or gain the favour of a deity that will help us to sustain a long life or we may gain some practices so that we may have a good future life. We should not listen to the Dharma or practise the Dharma with low motivations when we have such a precious jewel. When we have an excellent jewel and such a method, we should always aim for the highest goal and never lose sight of its real purpose.

This would mean that all sentient beings are not different from us, in that everyone wants happiness. Everyone looks for happiness - even the smallest ant and the tiniest insects are looking for happiness. Nobody ever wants one moment of suffering. On that basis, there is no difference between others and myself. They want happiness and I want happiness. If they want happiness, there are more of them and there is only one of me. How can I, as a logical person, forsake other people and think only about myself? How can I practise Dharma for the sake of myself and care nothing about other people? That is completely illogical. I will in fact practise Dharma for the sake of all other sentient beings who are suffering and who have not met Dharma, who do not know Dharma, who have not heard about Dharma, who have no idea about Dharma and are therefore ignorant of the true method to gain happiness and the true method to end unhappiness.

So I will listen to the Dharma, and by gaining knowledge and experience of the Dharma, I shall put it into practice in my daily life in order that I may gain the fully enlightened state of a conqueror Buddha like Lord Shakyamuni. I shall not rest in Enlightenment, but come back to this world again and again and again until all suffering ceases; until the last sentient being is released. For this reason, I will become an enlightened Buddha; I shall fully learn and realise the holy teachings of the Dharma.

All mother sentient beings are ceaselessly suffering in samsara, both gross and subtle types of suffering, endlessly over and over again, year after year after year; suffering that has been going on since the beginning of time. Feeling their complete suffering and unhappiness, knowing that they know how much they are suffering, I will generate the bodhimind; I will generate the holy mind of Enlightenment in order to free all beings from complete suffering. For this reason today, I shall learn the holy Dharma.

If that motivation is held, then whatever energy that is accrued in the effort you make to learn the Dharma, even the energy of going to a Dharma talk in a car, preparing yourself and getting ready for the talk and even the trip back, that energy will be dedicated and can become merits. The whole sequence of events becomes an act of Dharma. If the motivation is low, if the motivation is simply to gain higher rebirths, in order to get more health, in order to gain more wealth, status or to achieve more beauty and power in order to gain friends and influences, or as a social activity, to go to the Dharma centres to meet other friends, if the motivation is on that basis, then it becomes not a Dharma practice. It becomes a worldly practice. Then the actions you do become worldly actions. Therefore, the actions do not result in the merits or karma for oneself to become a holy enlightened being. It is not the actions that you do that determine whether it is Dharma or not. It is the motivation behind the action.

One should develop the motivation very strongly from the heart that I will listen to the Dharma in order to root out all negativities of my mind which cause me to have negative activities, which cause me to have negative speech, therefore creating a type of negative energy and karma that will reflect back on me and bring suffering to myself and others. I will become a fully enlightened being; therefore, I will listen to the Dharma.

You should have this type of strong motivation in order for you to listen to the Dharma to make it a beneficial activity or a Dharmic activity. If the motivation is high, you will gain merit, which is something that will propel us towards full Enlightenment. On the other hand, if the motivation is low, it will become good karma, which will result in a happy rebirth and nothing more. If it becomes merit, it will result in a happy rebirth within an excellent and wonderful environment and with strong purpose. Therefore, motivation is crucial.

Lord Buddha, in one of his previous lifetimes in the Jataka Tales, was on a ship travelling with five hundred merchants. He was the captain of the ship, in charge and responsible for the crew. Although he was not a Buddha then, he was a highly realised bodhisattva and it meant that he had very powerful clairvoyance and could read the minds of others. While he was travelling on the ship, he realised that one of the members on board had the intention of killing the other members and robbing them of all their possessions. Out of great compassion and meditation, in order that the four hundred and ninety eight members of the crew were not killed, and in order that the intended killer did not gain such negative karma and go to the lower realm for countless millennia, Buddha himself had no choice but to kill that person. This killing became an act of Dharma and a very powerful act of merit for Enlightenment because the motivation was completely pure, the object was correct and the intention was faultless.

Therefore, even actions that are seemingly negative, if done on the basis of Bodhicitta or compassion, will gain good results. Whereas actions that seem like Dharma, such as going to the Dharma centre, meditating, praying, doing your mantras, making offerings, buying statues, doing charity, helping the poor, are baseless if acted with the motivation or intention to gain position and power, to move up in life, to impress, to gain higher rebirth or to gain wealth. That action in itself is not Dharma. That action has become stained and it becomes a worldly action. Therefore it does not equate to Dharma.

So, when we go to the Dharma centre, we take refuge, we have a nice altar, we make offerings and we chant mantras and prayers, all this does not make us Dharma practitioners. We know when we are Dharma practitioners when all of that is done without the eight worldly concerns.

THE EIGHT WORDLY CONCERNS :

Any Dharma action, in order for it to be qualified as a Dharma action, must be free of the eight worldly concerns, also known as the eight worldly Dharmas. These are: the concern to encounter pleasure, the concern to encounter material gain, the concern to encounter praise, the concern to acquire fine reputation, the concern to avoid pain, to avoid material loss, to avoid blame and poor reputation. If you do Dharma with the motivation of gaining pleasure, material gain, praise and fine reputation, and to avoid material loss, blame and poor reputation, then you are not doing Dharma correctly.

You can be sitting in a cave reciting millions upon millions of mantras and doing millions upon millions of meditations, but if any one of your Dharma practices is done with any of the eight worldly concerns, you are not a Dharma practitioner. You may practice Dharma for seven, eight, nine or ten years; you can practice for twenty, thirty or forty years and if you check yourself carefully and deeply, you will find not one single grain of improvement. Your mind becomes lower, more attached, angrier and more negative. In fact, you will start using Dharma as an excuse to cover up your shortcomings, your mistakes, your pride and your ego.

If you are practising Dharma without those eight worldly concerns, then every year, you should see an improvement in your mind and in your worldly situations. If your years spent in the Dharma are increasing but your worldly situations are deteriorating, in general it is a very bad sign. It is a sign that you have not been practising the Dharma sincerely or well. If you find that over the years, your mind becomes more and more agitated, angry, hateful, more spiteful, more vengeful, then you have been doing your Dharma practice wrong. It is not that the Dharma is wrong, it is not that the Buddha is wrong, it is not that the practice is wrong, it is the way that you are doing it that is wrong. If you have a wonderful car but you don’t drive it well and you have an accident, you cannot blame the dealer, you cannot blame the maker, you cannot blame the car. You can only blame yourself.

The Dharma is excellent, pure, unstained and unsullied, but we must know how to practise Dharma. Before any type of Dharma practice, we should definitely internalise, get to know and understand what is to be avoided and what is not. We must realise that if we practise the Dharma with any of the eight worldly concerns, we will definitely not gain the results.

UNIVERSAL

VALUES

- Chapter 2

In general, all religious traditions basically have one aim. All religious traditions aim to bring about harmonious interaction, love and compassion, the betterment of society and the happiness of the individual. Therefore, on the basis of knowing that motivation, any religious teacher in the past of any religious denomination has taught a particular path according to the time, geography, culture and situation of the people. Those religious teachers might have changed the words or the circumstances but the meaning is basically the same. It is not to harm nor bring unhappiness to others but to increase other people's happiness, to increase benefit for others; that is the basic fundamental aim of any religious practice.

If a certain religious practitioner of any denomination does it wrong or has a bad way of doing things, it does not mean that Dharma is bad, it does not mean that the particular religious denomination is bad, but the person, like the unskilled driver of a car, does not know how to practise that particular faith well.

Therefore, we acknowledge that every single religious teacher in the world, of any religious denomination, has taught a particular path to bring about harmony and happiness for us. On that basis and on that motivation alone, we can gain a wonderful respect, a deep appreciation and a very broad overview of all religious faiths and denominations. Any religious faith or any denomination is excellent because it teaches a very pure path. If we want to go from one town to another, we can take different types of road to get there. We can take a rough road, a smooth road, a slow road or a fast road. We can take it by walking, by riding a bike, by taking a vehicle or we can fly by airplane. How fast or how slow and by what road, it does not matter so