How to See Yourself As You Really Are

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jeffrey Hopkins, Jeffrey Hopkins

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780743298698
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

Like the two wings of a bird, love and insight work cooperatively to bring about enlightenment, says a fundamental Buddhist teaching. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In How to See Yourself As You Really Are, the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic -- and loving -- perspective. Step-by-step exercises help readers shatter their false assumptions and ideas and see the world as it actually exists. By directing our attention to the false veneer that so bedazzles our senses and our thoughts, His Holiness sets the stage for discovering the reality behind appearances. But getting past one's misconceptions is only a prelude to right action, and the book's final section describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration to the service of love, and vice versa, so that true altruistic enlightenment is attained. Enlivened by personal anecdotes and intimate accounts of the Dalai Lama's own life experiences, How to See Yourself As You Really Are is an inspirational and empowering guide to achieving self-awareness that can be read and enjoyed by spiritual seekers of all faiths.

Part I

The Need for
Insight

1

Laying the Ground for
Insight to Grow

When starting to practice, be eager like a deer trapped in a pen seeking to get out.

In the middle be like a farmer during harvest not waiting for anything.

In the end be like a shepherd who has brought the flock home.

—PALTRUL RINPOCHE’S SACRED WORD

What makes all this trouble in the world? Our own counterproductive emotions. Once they are generated, they harm us both superficially and deeply. These afflictive emotions accomplish nothing but trouble from beginning to end. If we tried to counteract each and every one individually, we would find ourselves in an endless struggle. So what is the root cause of afflictive emotions that we can address more fruitfully?

In the many scriptures of the Buddha, we find descriptions of practices to counter lust, such as meditating on what lies beneath the skin—flesh, bone, organs, blood, solid waste, and urine. These reflections do indeed temporarily suppress lust, but they do not accomplish the same for hatred. And the reverse is also true: those practices taught for the sake of undermining hatred, such as cultivating love, do not act as cures for lust. Like medicines used to counteract a specific illness, they do not treat other illnesses. However, because all counterproductive emotions are based on ignorance of the true nature of things, practices that teach us how to overcome that ignorance undercut all afflictive emotions. The antidote to ignorance addresses all troubles. This is the extraordinary gift of insight.

As preparation for developing insight into how you, other persons, and things actually exist, it is crucial to study spiritual teachings closely, thinking about them again and again. This is important because in order to generate a state that allows us to penetrate clear through to reality, we must first correct our mistaken ideas about existence.

Identifying Ignorance

To succeed at developing insight, first you need to identify ignorance. Ignorance in this context is not just a lack of knowledge—it is an active misapprehension of the nature of things. It mistakenly assumes that people and things exist in and of themselves, by way of their own nature. This is not an easy concept to grasp, but it is very important to identify this faulty perception, for it is the source of destructive emotions such as lust and hatred. In Buddhism we repeatedly speak of emptiness, but if you do not see how people mistakenly attribute to things their own inherent existence, it is impossible to understand emptiness. You have to recognize, at least in a rough way, what you are falsely superimposing on phenomena before you can understand the emptiness that exists in its stead. Understanding how you actually exist, who you really are without the overlay of false imagination, is the main topic of this book.

All of the Buddha’s many teachings are aimed at attaining liberation from cyclic existence—with its endless movement from one life to another—and achieving omniscience. Ignorance is the root of everything that stands in the way of these attainments. Ignorance binds us to suffering; therefore ignorance has to be clearly identified. To do so we must consider how this false quality of inherent existence appears to the mind, how the mind assents to it, and how the mind bases so many ideas on this fundamental mistake.

Ignorance is not just other than knowledge, it is the contradiction of knowledge. Scientists tell us that the more closely we examine things the more likely we are to find empty space. Ignorance, by relying on appearances, superimposes onto persons and things a sense of concreteness that, in fact, is not there. Ignorance would have us believe that these phenomena exist in some fundamental way. Through ignorance what we see around us seems to exist independently, without depending on other factors for its existence, but this is not the case. By giving people and things around us this exaggerated status, we are drawn into all sorts of overblown and ultimately hurtful emotions.

Identifying this false appearance of things and acknowledging our tacit assent to this illusion are the first steps toward realizing that you and other beings, as well as all other objects, do not exist the way they appear to; they do not exist so concretely and autonomously. In the process of developing an accurate assessment of who you actually are, you need to appreciate the disparity between how you appear to your own mind and how you indeed exist. The same holds true for other people and all the other phenomena of the world.

Meditative Reflection

Consider:

1. All counterproductive emotions are based on and depend upon ignorance of the true nature of persons and things.
2. There are specific ways to suppress lust and hatred temporarily, but if we undermine the ignorance that misconceives the nature of ourselves, others, and all things, all destructive emotions are undermined.
3. Ignorance sees phenomena—which actually do not exist in and of themselves—as existing independent of thought.

2

Discovering the Source
of Problems

Attracted by light and heat, a moth flies into a flame.

Stunned by the sounds of a guitar, a deer stands unaware of a hunter.

Drawn by the scent of a flower, a bug is trapped inside.

Attached to taste, a fish rushes to a hook.

Pulled to mud, an elephant cannot escape.

—PALTRUL RINPOCHE’S SACRED WORD

Our senses contribute to our ignorance. To our faculties of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling, objects seem to exist in their own right. Presented with this distorted information, the mind assents to this exaggerated status of things. Buddhists call such a mind “ignorant” for accepting this false appearance instead of resisting it. The ignorant mind does not question appearances to determine if they are correct; it merely accepts that things are as they appear.

Next we become committed to the seeming truth of the concreteness of objects, thinking, “If this is not true, what could possibly be true!” As we do so, our ignorant misapprehension gets stronger. For instance, when we first encounter something or someone nice, we briefly take notice of the object of our attention, merely recognizing its presence. The mind at this point is pretty much neutral. But when circumstances cause us to pay more attention to the object, it appears to be attractive in a way that is integral to the object. When the mind adheres to the object this way—thinking that it exists as it appears—lust for the object and hatred for what interferes with getting it can set in.

When our own self is involved, we emphasize that connection: now it is “my body,” “my stuff,” “my friends,” or “my car.” We exaggerate the object’s attractiveness, obscuring its faults and disadvantages, and become attached to it as helpful in acquiring pleasure, whereby we are forcibly led into lust, as if by a ring in our nose. We might also exaggerate the object’s unattractiveness, making something minor into a big defect, ignoring its better qualities, and now we view the object as interfering with our pleasure, being led into hatred, again as if by a ring in our nose. Even if the object does not seem to be either agreeable or disagreeable but just an ordinary thing in the middle, ignorance continues to prevail, although in this case it does not generate desire or hatred. As the Indian scholar-yogi Nagarjuna says in his Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning:

How could great poisonous afflictive emotions not arise

In those whose minds are based on inherent existence?

Even when an object is ordinary, their minds

Are grasped by the snake of destructive emotions.

Cruder conceptions of “I” and “mine” evoke grosser destructive emotions, such as arrogance and belligerence, making trouble for yourself, your community, and even your nation. These misconceptions need to be identified by watching your own mind.

As the Indian thinker and yogi Dharmakirti says in his exposition of Buddhist thinking:

In one who exaggerates self

There is always adherence to “I.”

Through that adherence there is attachment to pleasure.

Through attachment disadvantages are obscured

And advantages seen, whereby there is strong attachment,

And objects that are “mine” are taken up as means of achieving pleasure.

Hence, as long as there is attraction to self,

So long do you revolve in cyclic existence.

It is crucial to identify and recognize different thought processes. Some thoughts merely make us aware of an object, such as seeing a watch as just a watch without any afflictive emotions like lust. Other thoughts determine correctly that an object is good or bad but still do not introduce any afflictive emotions; these thoughts just recognize good as good and bad as bad. However, when the idea that objects inherently exist takes hold, fundamental ignorance has been introduced. As the mistaken assumption of inherent existence becomes stronger, lust or hatred become involved.

The turning point from mere awareness to misconception comes when ignorance exaggerates the status of the goodness or badness of the object so that it comes to be seen as inherently good or bad, inherently attractive or unattractive, inherently beautiful or ugly. Ignorantly misjudging this false appearance to be fact opens the way for lust, hatred, and myriad other counterproductive emotions. These destructive emotions, in turn, lead to actions based on lust and hatred. These actions establish karmic predispositions in the mind that drive the process of cyclic existence from life to life.

The Root of Cyclic Existence

The process I just described is how we are ruined by our own ignorance and fixed to this round of suffering in life after life that we call “cyclic existence”; some levels of mind which we normally identify as correct are actually exaggerations of the status of persons and things that create trouble for ourselves and others. Ignorance keeps us from seeing the truth, the fact that people and other phenomena are subject to the laws of cause and effect but do not have essential being that is independent in and of themselves.

You need to identify this process as well as you can, gradually developing greater and greater understanding of the sequence of events beginning with dispassionate observation and culminating in counterproductive emotions and actions. Without ignorance, counterproductive emotions are impossible; they cannot occur. Ignorance is their support. This is why Nagarjuna’s student the Indian scholar-yogi Aryadeva says:

Just as the capacity to feel is present throughout the body,

Ignorance dwells in all afflictive emotions.

Therefore all afflictive emotions are overcome

Through overcoming ignorance.

Meditative Reflection

Consider:

1. Does the attractiveness of an object seem to be integral to it?
2. Does the attractiveness of an object obscure its faults and disadvantages?
3. Does exaggeration of the pleasantness of certain objects lead to lust?
4. Does exaggeration of the unpleasantness of certain objects lead to hatred?
5. Notice how you:
   First perceive an object
   Then notice if the object is good or bad
   Then conclude that the object has its own independent basis for existing
   Then conclude that the object’s goodness or badness exists inherently in the object
   Then generate lust or hatred according to your previous judgment.

3

Why Understanding the Truth
Is Needed

Much of our planning is like waiting to swim in a dry ravine.

Many of our activities are like housekeeping in a dream.

Delirious with fever, one does not recognize the fever.

—PALTRUL RINPOCHE’S SACRED WORD

If you do not have insight into the way you yourself and all things actually are, you cannot recognize and get rid of the obstacles to liberation from cyclic existence and, even more important, the obstructions to helping others. Without insight you cannot address any problem at its root or remove the seeds that might produce it in the future.

To overcome the misconception that things and people exist as self-sufficient entities, independent of consciousness, it is essential to observe your own mind to discover how this mistake is being conceived, and how other destructive emotions arise with such ignorance as their support. Given that lust, hatred, pride, jealousy, and ...