Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 8; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 8

Transglomeration: “B-but, this hasn’t been done … this is only just started … this is only half-finished; and death … all of a sudden at my door; n-ngha, this is it, I’m finished!”

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 7 death will pounce suddenly …
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 8 … right in the middle of my trying to do all the things of my life – never at the right time

Summary: embroiled in too much doing (just the ordinary doing of life), too many projects, plans and desires, death will suddenly happen; complete despair, only then, at the point of dying, will we realise the value of the PHR; too late

Reflection: the exclamation ‘alas, I am lost/undone!’ has, buried within it, that all those projects mentioned in the first part of the verse were not just a list of any old jobs on a list on the side in my kitchen, these were projects with which I was building my world and building my place within it, as I have been doing all of my volitional life, the things through which I defined myself, the things I wanted to see established in the world to make sense of it all; this is why I am lost, not because I didn’t get to tick them off, but because I never got the chance to yet further prove what I think I am, I am undone … literally; and this whole verse is a gaggling-stammer-filled expostulation: arrival of death (tadaa!) “ngaah! b-but, haven’t f-finished-started-hlf-dn, wait, needto, `portant, I…”; also, a nice twistofthedagger in the verse: the first part panicking about all the things not done (not put together/compounded/conditioned) and the end realising that “I” … (to whatever extent I had hubris-dly manufactured both it and my world) am un-done, unravelled

Determination: quick, before it’s too late, get going

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 7; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 7

Transglomeration: There is time before death will have gathered all its conditions and suddenly arrive for me; it will be too late to do anything then, like giving up my lack of effort.   Between now and then I should be gathering my own stores (of merit and wisdom).

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 6 while death watches me, has my whole life covered …
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 7 … and will pounce suddenly, too late to practise then, do it now!

Reflection: we need to act (virtuously – accumulating wisdom and virtue)

(Realisation:) now, while we have the chance/time (Holmes, ‘right now get rid of time-wasting’), not when death is actually happening (Wallace, ‘with its implements prepared’ – presumably the reference to ‘gathering provisions/necessities’ refers to things such as illness, injury, aging); one will naturally abandon one’s laziness when death is leaning over you, but by then it is too late; as Batchelor brings out, this verse is in reply to the prevaricating of the lazy mind that has been forced to accept that death is inevitable but that it’ll do something about it (making use of the PHR) later; the Wallaces’ translations of Sanskrit and Tibetan shows that the emphasis on gathering virtue now rather than wait for deathbed-regret, is a Tibetan addition/emphasis (… although I’m not sure that closer reading of either the Sanskrit or Tibetan maintains this distinction incontrovertibly …)

Parallel/Echo: death gathering the conditions for our death // we should be gathering the accumulations of merit and wisdom the while

Verse: the whole verse seems to have the flavour of ‘if you wait … then it will be too late’, but I am not skilled-enough at reading the Sanskrit to see if that is how it is really meant; the Tibetan seems to leave out death’s ‘preparations’ emphasising, rather, it’s sudden arrival

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 3; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 3

Transglomeration: Lounging about in bittersweet pleasure, abandoning myself to daydream and sleep rendering me inured to the sufferings inherent to the rounds of becoming in life, engenders laziness to grow within me, complete and thorough.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 2ii – obstacles of the four lazinesses
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 3 which spring from languishing in rebirth and becoming through inertia, sleep and learnt-dependence

Wording: ālasya – lethargy, indolence, inactivity; caused by:

1. (Berzin, ‘relishing’) a taste for worldly, ephemeral joys
2. excessive craving for sleep/torpor (Berzin, ‘as a haven’)
3. absence of disillusion with, insensible to, apathy towards, unconcerned with saṃsāra (Sharma, we remain in saṃsāra ‘like worms wriggling in a dirty drain’); (Matics, ‘an eagerness to be protected’); (Crosby & Skilton, ‘the longing to lean on others’); is this what Chögyam Trungpa called ‘nostalgia’ for saṃsāra?;

Personal Reflection:

1. attachment to the good quote, the skyline scene, eating, (the need for recognition?), what things looked like at the moment of the inspiration;
2. sleeping, anyway, but also the going-into-neutral zone of my life when it all becomes a little too overwhelming (or even when it isn’t overwhelming, but I don’t know what to do with the question of existence), wanting to zone-out into a film or television or music or comics, wanting to be able to hit the right perspective which will carry me through a situation in idle;
3. thinking ‘it’ll be alright’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’ when giving in to self-indulgence;

Reflection: so this is exploring the lack of a mind of renunciation from saṃsāra, but also situating it within the Vow that a Bodhisattva has taken to liberate all beings from all suffering … and here I am, Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and flip-flops thinking ‘sometime I oughta do something about all this’

Determination: to engage myself in mindful activity and engagement, like keeping my abdomen through all movements

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 2ii; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 2ii

Transglomeration: What is understood to frustrate effort?   The laziness of indolence, the laziness of being attached to unwholesome, un-virtuous habits and experience, and the laziness of allowing ourselves a lack of resolve and urgency leading us like sheep to the laziness of lacking confidence and low self-esteem.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 2i vīrya – riding the understanding of karma to build benefit
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 2ii – despite the four lazinesses

Wordings:

• lethargy, sloth, laziness, indolence, languidness, lack of élan, faintness
• attachment to, weakness for, clinging to (bad actions)
• despondency, disinclination, discouragement, despair, apathy, lack of resolve
• result: self-reproach, low self-esteem, self-contempt, self-deprecation

Recognition: 1. ‘… can’t be bothered’, 2. ‘just a minute, I’ll just finish …’, 3. ‘can’t get no satisfaction’, 4. ‘it’s just not me’; like a recalcitrant school-child being unrelentingly urged by the class teacher through the stages of a self-fulfilling prophecy which holds many of us back; the reticence that keeps us on the swimming pool edge for ages and ages; the unwillingness to embrace the whole of life in case we get it wrong; the feeling the fear and building our whole identity around the not-trying (the lack of self-compassion that lets ourselves fail at first); the depression of saṃsāra

Reflection: can’t be sure if there are three (Tibetan) or four (Sanskrit) lazinesses; if there are three then the Tibetan has rolled the third (discouragement) and fourth (self-contempt) into one or the latter three (from the Sanskrit listing) are understood as iterations of laziness overall

Reflection: verse 2 is just business: a definition and a preliminary breakdown of what frustrates it; the rest of the chapter is the explanation of its resolve

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 2i; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 2i

Transglomeration: What is effort, vigour, endeavour?   It is taking delight in what is virtuous, it is putting energy to what is beneficial.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 1 without the wind of vīrya, nothing happens
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 2i vīrya – riding the understanding of karma to build benefit

Text-stitch: when in verse 1 it refers to there being no merit without effort, in verse 2i it makes the link in defining effort as delight in doing good, virtue, wholesomeness etc; merit can seem a bit boy-scouty, but working delightedly in benefit for self and others sounds … square-jawed heroic

Etymology: descriptors of effort: wholesome, enthusiastic, zestful, proper, delighting, joyful, endeavouring, courageous, vigorous, striving

Reflection: enthusiasm, excitement for goodness; not having done something good (‘what a good boy, Mark’), but delight in (the rightness) of so-doing; I do it because it is good, I am happy to do it because it is good; as with patience, it is not just the absence of laziness but the positive enthusiasm for virtue

Reflection: as Patrul Rinpoche points out, vīrya is a virtue of the mind which informs all other virtues (cf. of body and speech, vīrya is the cause of virtuous acts and word, acts and speech are not virtuous in themselves); this is a re-enforcement of the points made at the beginning of chapter 5 (all the Perfections are trainings of the mind), but it is a welcome reminder here: virtue is not defined by what you say or do, it is all about the mind first; because the practise of the Perfections is stepped (or, better, telescoped) then it should come as no surprise that virtue is first-of-all in the mind and that the engagement of the practice of vīrya begins once we have laid down clinging to good-acts or good-speech as an outer, quantifiable, objective form

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 1; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VII– verse 1

Transglomeration: Then, having established patience, engage joyful effort in your practice; because working toward Awakening only comes about when grounded in engaged effort.   As there is no possibility of movement without the agency of wind, there is no generating merit without effort.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

Metaphor: as there can be no movement without wind, there can be no development without vīrya; this abides by the analysis that everything happens only under causes and conditions (flavour from the previous chapter), but particularly re-establishes it here in relation to inner, spiritual happening; ‘wind’ is a specific example, here, of there needing to be an agent to make movement happen, and it is presented as a simile in the translations, but I wonder if it is to be understood much wider than ‘a puff of wind’ blowing some dried-up ‘leaf’ – nothing moves by itself, it needs to be moved by something other than it, anything which, itself, is moving and which was set in motion by something else, by something else, by something else etc; back to the verse, this is flagging that you can’t just ‘quiet’ yourself through spiritual development, you need to actually drive it too

Embroidery: this flags a gear-change in the practice of the Perfections: the first three Perfections are stopping miserliness, carelessness and anger respectively, effort is the start of making realisations happen; you can’t just give or discipline or calm your way to Enlightenment, you actually have to cultivate the realisations, you actually have to do the Work (as Gurdjieff (and others) worded it); there is not just purification, there is also accumulation; and, again, the Perfections are accumulative steps in development, they are not stand alone qualities, and so effort will incorporate whatever relinquishment you have achieved in giving, whatever discipline you have cultivated in your behaviour, whatever reserve you dwell in in your interactions, and it will project through your development of concentration into the realisations of relative and ultimate Bodhichitta

Translations: Matics emphasises the complementary translation of ‘vīrya’ as ‘heroic’ (Padmakara, ‘courageous’) rather than simply ‘effort’, emphasising also the need to ‘stand firm’; the next Perfection; you can’t just stop yourself from committing bad stuff, you need also to develop good stuff too; there needs to be a movement beyond one’s limited self, beyond one’s self-limits, despite oneself, otherwise there is no movement – one is stuck; this involves a bit of gritted teeth, but, as is to be seen (verse 2aa), it needs to be ‘joyous’ rather than just (‘self-defining-and-focussed’) effort

Reflection: the Perfections are causal stages so, to the extent that one has developed patience (of not reacting to conditions based on what one wants/doesn’t want and having bathed in the contemplation of the pervasiveness of cause and conditionality and also having developed compassionate sympathy with others caught in that same cause and conditionality), then one has the reserve to be able to focus one’s efforts more directly, more purposefully, according to the needs of the situation and the needs of others without all of one’s ‘me, me, me’ getting in the way; and because ‘me, me, me’ doesn’t get in the way so much, messing things up and making everything all gloopy and magnetised about itself, then there is the space to act more cleanly and effectively as a result

Resolve: I need to get shifting, I can’t just sit around having nice thoughts and being inspired by other peoples’ words and practices

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verses 128-132; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verses 128-132

Transglomeration: [128] For example, acting completely alone, a king’s officer could intimidate and persecute a whole crowd of people, but those in the crowd who are clear-headed would not react even if they had the opportunity.   [129] This is because they know that the officer does not act alone but with the power of the king.   Likewise, I should not make light of or react to even the slightest of these beings who do me even the slightest wrong … [130] for they are backed by the power of both the guardians of hell and the Compassionate Ones.   So I should respect and please each of these beings as I would the officer of that fiery king.   [131] Moreover, what could even such an enraged king unleash upon me comparable to the tortures and agonies of hell which would certainly become my experience from causing the sorrow of beings?   [132] And what possible reward could a gratified king bestow comparable to the realisation of Buddhahood which would certainly be achieved if I was instrumental in bringing benefit and happiness to beings?

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 127 serving beings serves Buddhas, serves my own ends, ending suffering = my Vow & practice
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 128-132 benefitting beings using the analogy of a king’s steward

Reflection: [128] it is best not to retaliate against bullies in power [129] because they have the might of that power protecting them; the full force – the punchline – of these two verses does not come until verse 130; these verses establish clearly (i.e. spells it out over two verses) that you don’t mess with other beings who are well-protected (in this case under the protection of a king: now, the ‘might is right’ is not so openly practised as to provide a useful example; now it is the fear of law (maybe…), social approbation (maybe…), but I can’t think of an example of an ‘untouchable’ outside of the social dynamics of gangsterism … maybe the equivalent is politicians, now, but their conduct has become the policy of repression, and their ‘protection’ is that ‘them’s makes the rules’, the Law), even though they might be one against a whole crowd, a whole populace, of people, because the punishment/retribution/comeback for messing with them would be definite and probably enhanced far beyond what you did; it is the definiteness and the extent of the comeback which would hold you back, and this is the point to be clearly established here using a worldly/political/military illustration, so you just wouldn’t do it, if you’re at all wise; even though the ‘steward’ might be just one against thousands, even though the crowd would be able to tear him limb from limb and eat his liver, even though he might personally be completely uncharismatic or stupid or impetuous in his actions, as long as he bears the king’s insignia, he is untouchable; it’s not saying it is right, it is merely establishing a clear illustration of how you ‘don’t mess’ with some people even if you have the perfect opportunity when you meet this person alone in a dark alley (in a neighbourhood from which the whole local population has been inexplicably moved out for … reasons, so there are no witnesses), and you happen to have a whole workshop of freshly-sharpened disembowelling knives and machetes with you and a spare machine-gun in your back pocket, ‘just in case’, still, this person is protected, don’t mess …); the point is some people are untouchable because someone else has their backs, they are protected by someone else – this is the only point being established in these two verses

Reflection: [131] (Jimmy Cagney voice): ‘… there’s protection on these beings, see; all of them, they’re very special to my dear friends; my friends, you see, they have this ‘special interest’ in all these beings: big plans, big dreams – yes, all of them (I don’t see it myself, still, that’s the way it is, I am loyal to my friends); now, we can do this the easy way – that’s how my friends would prefer it done, hell, they’d even want to include you in, the Family, sheesh – or we can spend some time (heh, quite a lotta time, actually) doing business with my boys, here (and, I’ll be totally frank with you, I’d prefer we didn’t have to use them, `always so much mess to clear up afterwards); so, come on, let’s be reasonable, here, we’re all grown-ups now, aren’t we…?’

Practice: when encountering someone who is against me, quick-as-a-flash, I imagine a hell-demon slavering behind them, newly-leering because I am about to do something which means it will be able to impale me or split me open yet one more time, and then, also quick-as-a-flash, I imagine a Compassionate Being behind them with a look of brows-raised-open-mouth shock at the harm I am about to unleash on them through my anger … that ought to calm me down

Reflection: [131] a king, an enemy with power, could deprive me of my rights, torture me, even kill me, fine, but once I’m dead he couldn’t do anything more to me – that’s the worst a sentient being could do to another; a hellish torment would not end with the exhaustion of my body, my life during that torment would not be short-lived; and this would all result from having harmed other beings in whatever way: they have the ‘protection’ of the hell-demons and the Compassionate Ones, not in the sense that they will stop the harm that we might inflict on others, but that they guarantee that there will be an outcome in terms of causal inevitability (the hell-demons will pay it back) and severity (the harm done will have hurt both the beings directly, and have frustrated the wishes of the Compassionate Ones, we don’t get away from having only hurt sentient beings, we hurt the Compassionate Ones as well – this is no small transgression); do the Compassionate Ones have wishes that we can go against and frustrate – in the sense that they are Enlightened, no, they have attained Enlightenment, but in that their only and natural function once they have achieved Enlightenment is to – by default – respond to those who, un-understandably, are not Enlightened, with compassion (they cannot not be like this, like water cannot not be wet, like water cannot not spread to the edges of that into which it is poured); if we, as deluded sentient beings are actively harming other beings, we are being more than just suffering beings needing help and direction, we are actively frustrating that very help and direction being supplied by the Compassionate Ones … have we no measure of our own blindness?

Reflection: [132] and – of course – this can be flipped (because this isn’t because it’s the ‘rules of some game’, it’s not because ‘Simon says’, it’s because this is the causal and conditioned reality devoid of the illusion of a ‘self’ of oneself or other which makes it seem like ‘all is for the taking’, ‘he who dares wins’, ‘luvvly jubbly’; when there is no self-existent anything, all that is left is the care and welfare of ‘other’ that hasn’t quite got round to realising it all yet, and what a quagmire of suffering they’re stuck in as a result): that if we pleased a ‘king’ (someone in power and influence), if we really got in there and charmed and impressed and proved indispensable to this someone of power, the best they might do would bestow some of that power, influence and maybe wealth back onto us; is that it?: power which could be undermined or equally taken away, influence that is as up to date as fashion, wealth which is only really useful when ‘liquid’ (as Gordon Gekko remarked), none of which would leave me any guarantee even into my old age, let alone my death; is that the best this king could bestow me – an unsteady burden, a shifting sand; and yet Buddhahood (no need of power or influence – no world or self to exercise over; no need of wealth and enjoyment – no need or self to indulge) could just be ours without any of the lifetime-career expended trying to position ourselves right within a loaded game in which we can never win … just by making others happy

Practice: don’t play the game, it’s always loaded; let the focus always be ‘benefit towards others’

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 125; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 125

Transglomeration: From now on, as means of delighting all Tathāgatas, I shall make of myself the loyal and life-devoted servant to all beings of the world.   Let these beings walk all over me, let them kick me in the head, but even at the risk of dying – may the Guardians of the World rejoice – I shall not retaliate!

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 124 confession for harm caused to Buddhas by harming sentient beings
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 125 confession follow-through: let them do anything to me, I will be the servant of the world

Text: deliberation over the words to use for (a) ‘pleasing/satisfying’ the Buddhas, of making myself the (b) ‘slave/servant’ of the world; I need to get to the intention of what these references mean otherwise it is going to be too easy to fall into a perverse sadomasochistic relationship here, which I am sure is not healthy; also (c) ‘the crowd’ of sentient beings, and also does the ‘crowd’ (d) put the foot on my head and break it and/or kill me, (is this ‘foot on the head’ as in the ultimate show of disrespect)? … Sanskrit: (a) ‘to please or satisfy’ (the Buddhas, (b) ‘servitude’ to the world, (c) ‘mass, multitude’ as in all beings, (d) ‘foot on my head’ – can’t find any explicit reference to killing, possibly the reference to ‘foot on the head’ is indicative of ‘all sorts of violent behaviour including up to …’, ‘foot on the head’ would be culturally and suggestively evocative of the ultimate violence rather like ‘taking a spade to the head’

Personal: and have you noticed, Mark, that this Vow requires that you benefit all beings even if they kick you in the head and kill you and far, far, far from benefitting them all with the hope that they’ll recognise what a visionary teacher you were or what jaw-dropping writer you may have been; this Vow never was, and certainly shouldn’t be some perverse mode of ‘me, me, me’; you have touched the minds of whosoever’s mind was to be touched in teaching quite independent of whether you had a wonderful mark-book or a cognitive infrastructure of lesson-construction or not; and you have moved whosoever’s mind’s eye was to be moved in your poetry quite independent of how many hit you have got on your blog; stop getting in the way of yourself, so much – let the benefit flow through you, despite ‘me’

Reflection: so this is like an echo/reflection of the Bodhisattva Vow established in chapter 3 but built upon the realisation, this time, that quite despite whatever nice intentions we may have had beforehand, we have harmed and damaged other beings through our self-centered behaviour and that, from this moment onwards, we will stop it (in order to fulfil this Vow); the avowal to go as far as letting people put their foot on my face or kill me doesn’t mean I’ll invite people to do that, but that beings may harm me back (as they will because of the karmic debt I have left with them through my previous behaviour) and that I would not retaliate even if they showed me the ultimate disrespect or killed me: this comes towards the end of the long chapter on the discussion of the minutiae of patience, what is therefore left implicit in this verse is … ‘I will not retaliate’ to this abuse and killing for all of the reasonings that this chapter has been exploring; this is not scary stuff, this is not sadomasochistic stuff, this is the inherent grandeur of the Vow that has been taken, this is how far a Bodhisattva is prepared to take it, either in actuality or aspiration … ‘may it increase infinitely’

Practice: bottom-line: ‘do what thou wilt’ to me, I will (use all of my mulched wisdom about how things work to make sure I do) not retaliate

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 127; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 127

Transglomeration: It is just this that both honours and delights the Tathāgatas, it is just this that also wins fulfilment of my own true purpose, it is just this that ends the suffering in the world, therefore it is just this which is my life-long Vow and practice.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 126 because Buddhas see the nature of beings as themselves
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 127 serving beings serves Buddhas serves my own ends ending suffering = my Vow & practice

Text: Sanskrit has this verse as ‘my Vow’; Tibetan has it as ‘I shall always practise it’ – they are saying the same thing, Sanskrit names it from the point of view of the result (the Vow – vrata), Tibetan describes it from the point of view of maintaining the Vow (what else do you do with vows in order for it to be named the Vow you have taken…?)

Abstract: being the benefitting of beings by recognising and responding to their true nature as being identical with the compassion of the Buddhas … pleases the Buddhas, source of infinite personal virtue, dispels the suffering of the world

Reflection: Geshe Kelsang makes it explicit (in Meaningful to Behold), but what is otherwise referred to as a ‘Vow’ or ‘my Practice’ is actually keeping patience with beings and holding them as the same nature as the Buddhas in compassion, which is the other side of the coin of practising patience

Embroidery: is this Vow different from the Bodhichitta Vow taken in chapter 3: no, this is the very same Vow, but that the practice of patience, now, has enhanced and deepened it; the Perfections in general are the practice of that self-same Vow (‘… may I become a fully Enlightened Buddha in order to benefit all migrating beings’), which practice implements and deepens the Vow, each in their particular ways (giving, discipline etc.); the practice of patience is based both on developing the understanding that everything is subject to causes and conditions (and therefore there is no basis on which to get angry – so this stops anger) and (and this makes it the practice of the Perfection of Patience) realising the nature of sentient beings is that they are embraced by the compassion of the Buddhas; sentient beings are not just subject to causes and conditions rendering them like phantoms (cf. verse 31) and that’s all they are; they are also sentient, they want happiness and do not want suffering (a glimmer of that ultimate true nature of theirs (of ours) which is stuck in conditionality) and whose ultimately empty nature is infused with the compassion of the Buddhas; so they are more than phantom nuisances who just keep pushing my buttons and stop me practising patience, damn them, there is much more to them than this; and this ‘infusion’ is not some boon or grace bestowed from benevolent ones who have chosen to bestow it (maybe on some, maybe not on others … is it a punishment if I don’t get this infusion …?), rather it cannot not be infused, the same as water being poured into a body of water will become water without any transformation (of the nature) of either the water added or the body of water to which it was added; therefore the recognition of the empty-and-compassion-infused nature of sentient beings (a wisdom) and the response to that recognition (by deepening one’s Vow through determining to benefit beings according to this empty-and-compassion-infused nature, rather than vie with them as rivals to my self-grasping/cherishing nature) like water pouring into water (a method) is dissolving that trichotomy, benefitting both myself and others; this is the Bodhichitta Vow; with this recognition (of beings’ and Buddhas’ nature) and commitment to see them and myself as of the same nature, I and all beings become like water in water and the Bodhichitta that has taken birth, increases infinitely

Determination: therefore “just this” will be my Vow and practice, certainly for the rest of this life, and hopefully with enough momentum for future existences too

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 31; reflectionary

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Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 31

Transglomeration: Thus, everything that happens is under influence of, subject to and governed by something else, and even those other governing factors, powers, causes, influences on which they are dependent are not autonomous: they are not self-controlled, they are not self-caused.   So, having understood this correctly, why, and how, could I get angry at things – people, the way things are, events, attitudes – that, like automatons, do not initiate activity themselves and move about like magical apparitions and phantoms.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 27-30 – there is no real universe or Self towards which to get angry
↑ Embroidery↓
V. 31 – everything is like an illusion – there is no worthy object of anger

Reflection: … because nothing (world or person) is self-sufficient in this (above-shown) way, there is nothing ‘solid’ to which to react, it all (all appearances, good or bad, in all their variety, in all their sight, sound, smell, taste, feel), are just myriad conjunctions and crossroads of a million shifting threads of causation like mist in the wind; Geshe Kelsang has emphasised, in his heading in Meaningful to Behold, that this verse is about curbing anger towards beings whereas all other translations have it as curbing anger towards all phenomena (although nevertheless-nevertheless it does mention in verse 22 that we don’t get angry with ‘things’ but usually only people – so Geshe-la’s bevel, here, is just a thread loop – up and over to be plainly seen – a reminder of what the whole sense of these verses is about: curbing anger … wherever it is directed);

Embroidery: the power of verse 31 would not be there if there hadn’t been a previous exploration that maybe there are some things which are not caused to which we can direct our anger; having cleared the mind that it is even possible for something un-caused to exist, then … the fact that things appear to exist that harm us is lessened by the fact that they must be illusory appearances, they cannot be truly existent, they cannot be true threats;

Reflection: easy to get attached to the idea that they are illusory/like phantoms, and let the conclusion rest there, thinking that all attacks and difficulties are wafting all about you and are insubstantial like ghosts passing through walls, passing through you: if you just stay with this idea, there is a tendency to think that the walls through which they pass are real, that the ‘you’ through which they pass is real; there is more to this verse than that, it is emphasising both that all things are dependent-arisings and that this fluid determinacy makes them ‘like’ phantoms (but doesn’t make them ‘transparent’ in an otherwise solid universe)

Practice: holding the understanding (Geshe Kelsang, ‘…remember to look at things in this light…’, Pema Chodron, ‘… see the absurdity…’), and therefore the experience of the understanding, that there is nothing (real) to get angry at …