Strength

This is how an apprentice described the nature of momentary feelings – and in so doing delightfully defined absence of strength: ‘I am making all the same old decisions underground and pretending I am not and feeling bad that nothing is different.’ It can be useful to explore the reasons for the absence of a quality in order to understand how the quality could gain ascendancy through practice. The lack of any quality is mainly due to the way in which we undermine ourselves. We wish to change – but we hang onto old patterns. We want a different situation – but act in all the ways which created the situation to which we have been accustomed for so long.

Strength is an expression of confidence in our innate goodness – the confidence that when our elaborate patterns fall apart – someone will be left, rather than an ‘empty shell of someone’. Strength is the confidence in the fact that we are not merely the meschuggas of our hopes and fears. Strength is the unrestrained willingness to leap over the edge of anything into a state of being which has not been carefully rehearsed. The leap is a non-referential leap – and therefore unselfconscious. The leap simply occurs.

Strength comes from acknowledgement of weakness – the ability or strength to be vulnerable. When cavalry charge the enemy, it is not that they are unaware of the immanent risk of death. The warrior is fully conversant with the reality of the situation – but the warrior simply acts in that knowledge. This is an act of bravery rather than ‘an act’. An act is merely bravado – a mechanism implemented to conceal vulnerability.

To experience the power or strength to leap over the edge of change – we must acknowledge that we are wholly responsible for our emotional responses to the way that things are in our lives. Our life circumstances are subject to the dance of emptiness and form. Sometimes we experience the best possible luck – and at other times, the worst. Sometimes adventitious rewards ripen – and sometimes the most wretched conclusion that could occur – does just that.

Often there is an element of our own ‘historical decision-making’ embedded in the way that our circumstances pan out – and therefore we need to accept responsibility for that rather than bemoaning the swamp, desert, wasteland, or prison we may have assiduously created through wilfulness, embattlement, or intransigent myopia.

Our circumstances appear either to work out or not. We are not wholly responsible for every aspect of our circumstances but we are entirely responsible for our emotional responses in each moment.

We need strength to be open to the raw texture of our lives without recourse to refuge in positivism (eternalism) or despair (nihilism). Each of these methods seeks to provide us with comfort – providing a buffer against the actuality of our lives.

Strength is required in terms of cooperating with the Lama’s view of ourselves – cooperating with the Lama’s advice which is consequent to their view. Strength is a state of complete openness – the condition in which one has the ability to offer no resistance to the nature of vajra relationship.

The degree of power is related to that which contains it. A firework is only powerful because the gun powder and other inflammables are contained by a cardboard shell. When the firework is ignited the resultant explosion depends on the rigidity of the containment. Ngak’chang Rinpoche used to play a game called ‘genies’ when he was a boy. This involved cutting open a firework and sprinkling the gun powder on the ground, standing astride it and then dropping a lighted match. He or one of his friends would then ‘appear like a Genie’ in a harmless puff of smoke and sparks. If Ngak’chang Rinpoche had chosen to hold the firework tightly in his hand – the result would have been the loss of his hand. Without the container – the firework loses its power.

Similarly, for a horse to move in a circle with sufficient power and strength to carry itself correctly its energy must be contained by the rein, otherwise the energy is continually lost by the horse becoming front-heavy. When the horse becomes front-heavy it moves in an unbalanced way, almost dragging its quarters behind.

For practitioners the container is constructed by the precepts and vows. When a practitioner uses the container of the vows, their power is directed strongly and focused in a precise direction. The copious energy of an authentic practitioner is not dissipated in a brief puff of smoke – but rather their energy surges into the appropriate spacious method required by every circumstance.

The Ten Paramitas

(Parol-tu Chinpa Çu – pha rol tu phyin pa drug phar bCu)

1.    Generosity (jinpa – sByin pa – dana paramita)
2.    Discipline [energy / morality] (tsultrim – tshul khrims – shila paramita)
3.    Patience (zopa – bZod pa – kshanti paramita)
4.    Diligence (tsöndrü – brTson ’grus – virya paramita)
5.    Openness [transcendental knowledge or insight] (samten – bSam gTan – dhyana paramita)
6.    Knowledge (shérab – shes rab – prajna paramita)
7.    Method – skilful means (thab – thabs – upaya paramita)
8.    Aspiration power (mönlam – sMon lam – pranidhana paramita)
9.    Strength (tob – sTobs – bala paramita)
10.  Primordial wisdom (yeshé – ye she – jnana paramita)