Aspiration

I was thinking recently about a conversation I had many years ago with my teacher at the time when I was first exposed to Dharma teachings.  It very quickly became evident to me that in the Dharma, what we’re taught is very different and sometimes the opposite of what we’re taught in our culture. I asked my teacher about that. I said Dharma seems like the opposite of  how we usually think and act.

 My teacher told me that I was right; it’s the opposite. For example our culture says, “Look out for yourself; be successful; get ahead in life; look out for number one.” Whereas in Dharma we are taught to think about benefiting others.  So society teaches us self cherishing and Dharma teaches us cherishing others. Dharma teaches that self cherishing is actually the poison that’s keeping us stuck in suffering, cyclic existence. That’s one example.  Another example is that society, and not only society, but religions, and culture in general teach us to have hope, to be hopeful.  “Oh, I hope this happens. I hope that happens.”

In this case, there’s a difference between hope and optimism. The hope that we’re taught to have is mostly wishful thinking. “I hope I win the lottery.” It’s not really the same as optimism, which is a positive attitude.  Wishful thinking tells us to believe that things are going to get better, no matter what. Things will work out. How many times have you heard, “Oh, don’t worry, things will work out. They always do.” Well, no, they don’t always work out.  According to Dzongshar Khentsye Rinpoche, things in samsara never work out, because the nature of samsara is suffering. Buddha taught that in his first teaching.

What we’re usually taught is that happiness is found in material success, having a family, and other worldly measurements. That’s not success in Dharma.  Even what we call happiness is debunked by Dharma teachings that dissect and analyze worldly happiness and show it for what it really is. What we call worldly happiness is very, very temporary, and inevitably leads to suffering.  That’s a hard one for a lot of us to swallow, and I’ve heard people argue against this vigorously. It’s important to understand this point however, otherwise we will waste our lives chasing worldly outcomes.

So going back to the idea of hope, in Dharma teachings, hope is paired with fear, and they’re both  considered not only suffering, but the causes of suffering. We not only suffer from them, but we cause more suffering by having them. Some people might get the idea that Dharma is depressing, talking about suffering. However Dharma is aiming for a higher goal; true and permanent happiness.  We’re not going to get that by hoping for it.  So if I don’t hope, what do I do?  That leads to the topic of aspiration.

What is aspiration? How does it work? And why is that a better strategy than hope or wishful thinking?  If we look at Dharma practices, aspiration is sprinkled everywhere. So it must be an important topic. That’s a clue that it’s worth exploring and understanding and practicing.

When we’re talking about Mahayana Dharma practice, we always have to have correct motivation.  That is the motivation to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. So we attain enlightenment and then we help others do the same to be free from suffering. That is what the Buddha did.

One of the things that Dharma teachers often say is to read the biographies of great saints, mahasiddhis,  yoginis, masters, and great scholars. There are about 2,600 years of history since the Shakyamuni Buddha walked and taught in India.  When we read these biographies it is inspiring and amazing to read what people have done and accomplished and how they actually became enlightened Buddhas. There are stories about Shakyamuni Buddha himself working his way towards complete enlightenment and then becoming a teacher. 

Sometimes, I have to admit, reading those incredible stories of  great saints has left me a little bit discouraged, thinking that I could never do anything that great. Of course, as we know from the Dharma teachings, to think, “Well, I can’t do that” is actually a form of laziness. We don’t want to get caught up thinking that we can’t accomplish enlightenment.  That’s not skillful means.  We want to identify that way of thinking immediately and let it go.  But we still don’t have  something to put in the space of where hope used to be. If I can’t hope that I can do it, then what else do I have?

The Dharma answer to that question is aspiration.  In this case what do we mean by aspiration? Aspiration, presuming we have  correct motivation, is the conscious effort of thinking. “I’m not enlightened now, but I definitely want to get there and I am definitely going to get there. May I become enlightened for the sake of all sentient beings, in order to free them from the suffering of cyclic existence. One of the ways I’m going to do that is by planting the seed of aspiration.” We make a firm decision to accomplish enlightenment for the sake of benefiting all sentient beings.

The Four Immeasurable Aspirations

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. 

May all beings find the bliss that is especially sublime. 

May all beings never be parted from equanimity.

These are the Four Immeasurable Aspirations. They are immeasurable because the number of sentient beings is immeasurable, and sentient beings are the objects of our aspirations. This is an example of an aspiration prayer, and we have lots of other ones. Probably two of the most famous aspiration prayers are Samantabhadra’s aspiration prayer, also known as the King of Prayers, and the Maitreya aspiration prayer. They are similar, but they have slightly different approaches to the way to accomplish the aspiration. The aspiration is still the same: enlightenment for the sake of benefiting all beings. These two aspiration prayers are fairly long, and they go into some detail. They have the four immeasurables and the seven-fold prayer within them. All of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism use these prayers. They are powerful tools for actualizing enlightenment.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche says “Above all, aspire to aspire.”  He says that when you make an aspiration clearly and correctly, and you plant that seed in your mindstream, the result is going to happen. In effect, it’s accomplished. That’s the power of aspiration which the power of hoping doesn’t have.  If I hope to get enlightened, does that accomplish it?  Aspiration has that power.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about aspiration is to see it as planting a virtuous seed in our mind. If we have a seed and we give it water, the sun, fertilizer, and so on, we’ll have the conditions the seed will need to grow into a plant. It’s important to remember that whatever seed it is, it looks really different from the final crop or the final tree of whatever we are planting.  We shouldn’t confuse the smallness of the seed with what it can produce.

We have Buddha nature. Our nature is essentially good and pure. It’s covered up with lots of obscurations. We have to do our job, our work, to clear them away. We need to do the purification practices and the accumulation of merit and wisdom practices. Plant the seeds of aspiration correctly and give them the favorable conditions to grow and we will obtain the results.

We have the potential for Buddhahood and now we have the means.  Of course, aspiration is only one of the means, but it is very skillful.  It’s like making a deposit in our retirement fund. We don’t necessarily see the result today, but if we put money in the right fund and it matures, when it comes time to retire, we’ll have the funds and we’ll be glad that we put that money away. Aspiration is a way of guaranteeing the result that we want.  When we make the aspiration correctly, the result is, in effect, accomplished. It’s accomplished in the future. We get to walk into it, so to speak. When we get there we’ll be happy we practiced aspiration.  

We need to think about what we can do now that would actually benefit sentient beings.  It will actually help them if we practice aspiration. We need to not only think about it, but we need to actually do the practice.  It’s not enough to have medicine sitting on the shelf where we can admire the label. We also have to take the medicine to get the benefit. So we have to do the aspiration practice. It’s a tried and true method. We don’t need to doubt it. Lots of sentient beings have become enlightened in this way.

In short, we first set our correct motivation, then we do an aspiration practice,  such as the two prayers mentioned above, and then we dedicate the merit for all sentient beings. That’s the sequence.

May all beings benefit.