“This is my teacher, without him I wouldn’t have this day. The Walk of Peace wouldn’t have happened. Because of his kindness, I said yes to all the monks…and took on that journey. He always stood behind me for everything that I did…”
These are the words of the Venerable Monk Pañnăkära, who along with eighteen other monks walked for 108 days, from Texas to Washington D.C., on a twenty-three hundred mile mission of peace. His humble and selfless concern for all beings above his own personal discomforts demonstrated, perhaps defined, what a Buddhist mission is all about.
Within all the Dharma circles, occasions arise for members of the sangha, monastic and lay communities, to take up a ‘mission.’ It may well be requested of you by your teacher. Or it may just come, as many good ideas do before prayers and meditation, as an ‘inspiring thing to do’—a phrase we can use here as a working definition for the word ‘mission.’
In the auspicious advent a Buddhist mission arises on our path, as it so significantly did for Ven. Pañnăkära, it may be received by the prospective missioner in two determinate, defining modes: One, you first see how it suits your needs and then you make a choice to do it or not. Two—the more exemplary path—disregards self-interest entirely and holds to an inner voice of certainty to ‘just do it.’ No doubt some doubts may later arise. Some nuanced reasoning, especially once the inflated state of inspiration begins to flatten, weakening your first resolve.
In either case, when deliberation arises, with the ego offering up its resume of ‘I already did this and that for everyone,’ recall what one’s inner voice clearly told you: ‘just do it.’ Beware of the Hamlet or Arjuna moment and act without attachment—or descend into a hapless, stuttering decision making—casting doubt on whether this mission or any mission, a commission of faith, is necessary at all. One’s faith in fact already ‘told’ us, in the way conscience reinforces moral compass, that the very purpose of a mission is to eliminate always thinking of oneself first.
In choosing ‘against’, since jealousy as a motivator is a kind of sweetening ‘toxin,’ the thought occurs to the deliberator that if another sangha member does it, he or she will be lauded by the teacher and they’ll feel inferior or insignificant. William Blake wrote, “Is not Merit in one a Cause of Envy in another…?” This could well be the coup d’gras ego commits upon itself that works in favor of preserving both the Sasana and one’s Buddhist practice. Whereas Blake wisely observes that merit provokes envy, the Sasana in its its infinite compassion, has the Abhidharma which provides us, blessedly, a precise antidote to envy’s reflex of hostility. And that’s found in the prescribed Buddhist training of muditā, where one rejoices in others’ merit.
In either event, both choices for or against selfless activity, come out of desire. As we know, desire is one of the three poisons, along with anger and ignorance, riding rough-shod over our predispositions. These strong emotions negatively condition our volition, compelling bad behavior and cause us to throw negative karma throughout endless cycles of birth and deaths. Desire, however, is also our greatest impetus to accomplish the best of everything. Called ‘chanda,’ it’s the desire for good, such as the motivation to practice meditation, uphold ethics, or achieve liberation. It is active, not passive, and acts as the ‘will’ to engage in wholesome actions.
Choosing ‘against’ the taking up and completion of a mission—with the mind factoring in physical discomforts, personal inconveniences, and so forth—demonstrates a predisposition for weakness in desire. Weak desires do not withstand the test of being good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end. Taking on a mission, however, is born of strong desire, and seeing it through passes the goodness test by not prioritizing selfish concerns, which are never entirety good. So the strength coming from strong desires in one’s practice drives the accumulation of merit, leading in turn to more wisdom and fortunate outcomes in the present and future lifetimes.
This is particularly true if one has fully accepted truthful conclusions about the nature of existence and one’s dilemma within it. Buddhist refuge, if authentic, is consciously driven by either fear, faith, or compassion; a combination of these two, or all three at once. The refugee needs to constantly revisit those motivations until becoming a fully fledged enlightened Buddha. Through the supreme kindness of Shakyamuni Buddha, having faith in his great dispensation—the right view, meditation, and behavior—has, as its guidance, the Four Noble Truths, which includes an Eightfold Noble Path. From one’s whole life perspective this eightfold noble path can be likened to a grand mission, the ultimate concern of which is the end of pain and suffering for oneself and all beings. But as it is said, where there’s Dharma there’s Mara—and his children—in reality, the ego and our deluded, enslaved aggregates. So overcoming these obstacles is a constant test of one’s greater, grand mission.
Deshung Rinpoche, Kunga Tenpay Nyima taught us the most profound teachings are in the beginning. In the beginning of my Dharma training, our Teachers used to give us many things to do, and we just did them because these great lamas and the missions they sent us on engendered so much faith in us.
This ‘doing’ is foundational training no different from the Foundation Practices, four, five, or six in number, such as refuge recitations, prostrations, mandala offerings, and Guruyoga, which appear more strictly like ‘Dharma practice.’ I’ve noticed among my vajra siblings that the ones who had to do things for their Guru and lamas, in order to receive teachings, take on Buddhist missions more readily and have fewer personal preferences in general. That is a big less that is really so much more. As Shantideva taught, in not thinking to leather the world with our preferences, but to simply put on the shoes of tolerance, life then becomes infinitely easier.
As a parent, I know this is the proper way to raise children, giving them purposeful (or not) chores. In my case, the ‘or not’ chore may have been raking rocks in the vacant part of our backyard, something my schools friends use to tease me about. But studies show that kids with chores grow up and make more successful adults than those without them. One only needs to remember or look into the biographies of both Milarepa and Naropa. Their teachers Marpa and Tilopa gave them all kinds of things to do, both functional and idiosyncratic as a ‘life’ sadhana, with Milarepa only receiving a ‘meditative’ sadhana much later through the ‘kindness of the mother,’ Marpa’s wife. While at times seemingly outrageous, it’s clear these ‘sage’ parental strategies played an essential role in their attaining siddhis.
Of course, fear, faith and compassion, as well as love of Guru, underline those successes in both cases, and indeed all cases where a Buddhist siddha blooms. This is the real Guruyoga—a life and death situation—a desire so strong one will do anything as proven by the scholarly Naropa’s larceny for his teacher, from which he received beatings from the common folk he stole from. Indeed, as we read much about it in the ‘Lives of the 84 Mahasiddhas,’ demonstrating abjectly subservient behavior toward one’s Teacher was often the foundation of a siddha’s extraordinary accomplishments. The ego is decimated and the student’s will, like a candle’s wick, becomes a supplicant, waiting to be lit from another candle, a transference of the Enlightenment experience passing from, but still remaining in, the Guru, one’s personal Buddha, which then shines in the student as the Gotama’s wisdom ignites. One’s Guru can also be likened to a lens, Lord Sapan taught, magnifying the sun-like radiance of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, ‘baking’ into the disciple their irrefutable truths.
A mainstay practice in Vajrayana Buddhism, because of its immeasurable kindness and blessings, the profundity of Guruyoga was also recently demonstrated quite dramatically by a Shravaka monk, that same Venerable Pañnăkära, whose words open this piece. On the occasion of a momentous return, he stood with the Master who trained him on the porch-like, ‘sala kan parian’ of their home temple in Texas. Before them was a large crowd in the rain that came to celebrate the completion of his mission, which some commentators are already calling “one of the greatest Peace walks in America.” After praising his teacher extensively, unexpected in this joyous public moment, the Venerable One started to cry, and dropping to his knees at the feet of his teacher, beseeched forgiveness, saying, “if I’ve done anything wrong during the walk, to hurt you…please forgive me.”
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