Dharma in Trying Times
The shoe leather gambit
Śantideva tells us that it is easier to wear shoes than cover the whole Earth with leather.
We can recall the preciousness of human birth, its impermanence, the faults of samsara, and the inevitability of karma. We can recall the dependently originated nature of phenomena and understand all compounded phenomena arise from causes and conditions. We can recall bodhicitta. We can recall emptiness. All of these contemplations merely serve one purpose: to cause us to have genuine remorse and sadness towards samsara.
We cannot change existence, but we can change our minds. Whether or not we continue taking birth in samsara is our choice.
The world we were born into is the result of our individual karma. All pain and suffering we see and experience is a result of our own nonvirtuous actions in this and previous lives. All happiness and wellbeing we see and experience is a result of our own virtuous actions in this and previous lives. Suffering is not something imposed upon us by external conditions, but is a result of the actions of countless lifetimes we cannot remember at this point in time. Some people are upset by this message. They feel it is victim blaming—but it isn’t. Karma and its ripening are completely impersonal and inconceivable.
It is often said that if we wish to know what is our karma from past lives, look at our present life. If we wish to know what the next world will look like after our aggregates break up and reform in the next life, look at our present actions. Even so, without freeing ourselves from afflictions and karma, we will be like bees trapped in a jar. As Maitreya said, there isn’t a pinpoint of happiness in the three realms of existence.
Since happiness and wellbeing are not permanent states, it is important that we not give in to the temptation to respond with misdeeds to the nonvirtuous actions we witness all around us.
No matter how many sets of preliminary practices one does, no matter how diligently one makes offerings to the Three Jewels and the dharmapālas, no matter how diligent one is in practicing one’s pledged deity (yi dam) sādhana, no matter how many sesshins one sits, koans one solves, Nembutsus, Manis, Rengekyos, Vipassana retreats one has done, no matter how long one can sit in perfect śamatha, no matter how many treatises one has studied, etc., at the end of the day if one has a bad attitude and lacks renunciation, one is not practicing the Dharma.
Many people, teachers and students alike, think they are making great progress in teaching and practicing the Dharma, but in reality, they are just caught in the māra of exhilaration (dga’ byed bdud). Why? Because as Padmasambhava says to Nyan Tingzin Zangpo, they have not sufficiently contemplated impermanence and death, and their practice is not properly grounded in renunciation. They remain distracted by mundane goals.
There is only one way to practice the Dharma: generate remorse towards samsara and its causes—which are nothing other than one’s own afflictions and actions—and generate enthusiasm for liberation, which simply means eliminating the causes of samsara.
Thus, the shoes of the Dharma are nothing more nor less than the weariness and sadness that arises from contemplating the causes and results of samsara. If we put on the shoes of the Dharma, we do not need to cover the world with leather.