Seven Points of Mind Training

Point 4 : Using Practice in One's Whole Life

17: Practice the five strengths the condensed heart instructions.

Point Four : Practice the five strengths the condensed heart instructions.

Commentary :

We have five types of energizing factors, or five strengths, so that we can practice our bodhisattva discipline throughout our whole life: strong determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, reproach, and aspiration.

Strong Determination

Number one is strong determination. You are determined to maintain twofold bohichitta. The practitioner should always have the attitude of maintaining bodhichitta - for this lifetime, this year, this month, this day. Strong determination means not wasting your time. It is also making it a point that you and the practice are one. Practice is your way of strengthening yourself. Sometimes when you get up in the morning, particularly if you have had a late night or you have been partying, you feel very feeble, somewhat uncertain. Quite possibly you wake up with a hangover, feeling very guilty. You wonder whether you were foolish the night before, whether you did absurd things. You wonder what other people think of you and begin to be afraid that they might have lost their respect for you or that they might have confirmed your feebleness. You do a lot of worrying in that kind of situation.

The idea of the first strength is that as soon as you open your eyes and look out the window, as soon as you wake up, you reaffirm your strong determination to continue with your bodhichitta practice. And you do the same thing when you lie down on your bed at the end of the day, as you reflect back on your day's work, its problems, its frustrations, its pleasures, and all the good and bad things that happened. As you are dozing off, you think with strong determination that as soon as you wake up in the morning you are going to maintain your practice with continual exertion, which means joy. So you have some sense of looking forward to tomorrow, an attitude of looking forward to your day when you wake up in the morning.

Strong determination is connected with developing an attitude toward your practice that is almost like falling completely in love. You would like to go to bed with your lover; you long for it. You would like to wake up with your lover; you long for that, too. You have a sense of appreciation and joy; therefore, your practice does not become torture or torment, it does not become a cage. Instead, your practice becomes a way of cheering yourself up constantly. Your practice might require a certain amount of exertion, a certain amount of pushing yourself, but you are well connected, so you are pleased to wake up in the morning and you are pleased to go to bed at night. Even your sleep becomes worthwhile; you sleep in a good frame of mind. The idea is one of waking up basic goodness, the alaya principle, and realizing that you are in the right spot, the right practice. So there is a sense of joy in strong determination, which is the first strength.

Familiarization

The second strength is known as familiarization. Because you have already developed strong determination, everything becomes a natural process. Even if you sometimes are mindless, even if you lose your concentration or your awareness, situations will remind you to go back to your practice. This is a process of familiarization in which your dharmic subconscious gossip has begun to become more powerful than your ordinary subconscious gossip. Bodhichitta has become familiar ground in whatever you do - whether vice, virtue, or in between. So you are getting used to bodhichitta as an ongoing realization.

Again this process is analogous to falling in love. When somebody mentions your lover's name, you feel both pain and pleasure. You feel turned on to that person's name and to anything associated with him or her. In the same way, the natural tendency of mindfulness-awareness, when the concept of egolessness has already evolved in your mind, is to flash on to dharma. You familiarize yourself with it. In other words, you no longer regard dharma as a foreign entity, but you begin to realize that dharma is a household thought, a household word, and a household activity. Each time you uncork your bottle of wine or unpop your Coca-Cola can or pour yourself a glass of water - whatever you do becomes a reminder. You cannot get rid of it; it becomes a natural situation.

So you learn to live with your sanity. That is very hard for many people at the beginning, but once you begin to realize that sanity is part of your being, there shouldn't be any problem. Of course, occasionally you want to take a break. You want to run away and take a vacation from your sanity. You want to do something else. However, your basic strength begins to become more powerful, so that your basic wickedness or insanity is changed into mindfulness and realization and familiarity with wakefulness.

Seed of Virtue

Number three is known as the seed of virtue. You have tremendous yearning all the time, so you do not take a rest from your wakefulness. It means not taking a break from your practice, basically speaking, but continuing on - not being content with what you are doing and not taking a break. You do not feel that you have had enough of it or that you have to do something else instead.

At that point, your neurosis about individual freedom and human rights might come up. You might begin to think, "I have a right to do anything I want, and I want to dive to the bottom of hell. I love it! I like it!" That kind of reactionism could happen. But you should pull yourself back up from the bottom of hell - for your own sake. You should realize that you cannot just give in to the little claustrophobia of your own sanity. In this case, virtue means that your body, speech, and mind are all dedicated to propagating bodhichitta in yourself.

Reproach

Number four is reproach, reproaching your ego. It is revulsion with samsara. Whenever any egocentered thought occurs, you should think, "It is because of such clinging to ego that I wander in samsara and suffer endless pain. Since ego-clinging is the source of pain, if I try to maintain ego, there can be no happiness. Therefore, I must try to tame ego as much as I can." If you even want to talk to yourself, you should talk in this way. In fact, sometimes talking to yourself is very highly recommended, but it obviously depends on what you talk to yourself about. In this case, you are encouraged to say to your ego: "You have created tremendous trouble for me, and I don't like you. You have caused me so much trouble by making me wander in the lower realms of samsara. I have no desire at all to hang around with you, I'm going to destroy you. This 'you' - who are you, anyway? Go away! I don't like you."

Talking to your ego, reproaching yourself in that way, is very helpful, It is worth taking a shower and talking to yourself that way. It is worth sitting on the toilet seat and talking to yourself in that way. It would be a very good thing for you to do when you are driving. Instead of turning on the rock-punk, just turn on your reproach to your ego instead and talk to yourself. If you are being accompanied by somebody you might feel embarrassed, but you can still whisper to yourself. That is the best way to become an eccentric bodhisattva.

Aspiration

Number five is aspiration. The practitioner should end each session of meditation practice with the wish 1) to save all sentient beings - by himself, single-handedly, 2) not to forget twofold bodhichitta, even in his or her dreams, and 3) to apply bodhichitta in spite of whatever chaos and obstacles that may arise. Because you have experienced joy and celebration in your practice, it does not feel like a burden to you. Therefore, you aspire further and further. You would like to attain enlightenment. You would like to free yourself from neurosis. You would also like to serve all "mother sentient beings" throughout all time, all situations, at any moment. You are willing to become a rock or a bridge or a highway. You are willing to serve any worthy cause that will help the rest of the world. This is the same basic kind of aspiration as in taking the bodhisattva vow. It is also a general instruction on becoming a very pliable person, so that the rest of the world can use you as a working basis for their enjoyment of sanity.