The ten bodhisattva stages

In the Then and Now class, consisting of 37 sessions, Ken makes the classic Tibetan text, Jewel Ornament of Liberation, accessible while also revealing how such texts can be approached by modern readers. I found this clip from TAN36 inspiring.

The ten bodhisattva stages (from TAN36: Then and Now (class) 00:22:31.00 - 00:25:02.05)

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The ten stages are--I think we covered this a little bit last time--the ten stages mark the degree to which the experience of the totality of experience, or the experience of pure being, is present in one’s experience all the time. When a first level bodhisattva is resting in emptiness--he or she is supposedly having the same experience as you’d have when you're Buddha, when you're fully awakened.

But the difference is, when you get up from that meditation, how much is that experience or understanding actually present in your interaction in life? We all know there's quite a difference there.

The technical terms in Tibetan are composure and subsequent understanding or subsequent attainment. Composure is when you're sitting in meditation--that is when attention is unmixed with activity--you know how things are: completely groundless, things arise like dreams, like illusions. You get up from that and at the beginning, that's not too present in your life. By the time you reach full buddhahood, there's no difference between when you're meditating--or when you're sitting unmixed with activity--and when you're doing things.

So what the ten stages of a bodhisattva describe is the extent to which you're are able to mix, to be active and doing things and still have that quality of completely present, awake attention.

And in this sense it's not so much like climbing stairs--it’s actually gradual growth of an ability. I think the better metaphor--rather than looking at it as stages, step one, step two, step three, where that would be the natural question; can you skip steps--is as a process of something growing. And when something grows, it’s a process of evolution. There's no possibility of skipping steps. You're growing gradually in abilities and these things unfold.

Everything grows in its own way

Everything grows in its own way (from TAN22: Then and Now (class) 00:57:37.20 - 01:0:45.20)

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What makes bodhicitta--awakening mind--so wonderful is that when it actually becomes our intention in life, then as we were discussing a couple of weeks ago, there is an inexhaustible fountain or font, of goodness that comes from that. And an inexhaustible energy that comes from it. But, yes, one encounters many difficulties in the way but it gives you a way of meeting all of those difficulties.

This isn’t everybody’s spiritual path. What's very important--this came out of a conversation I was having today--we have to be very, very careful with the Tibetan tradition because it sets out a path so clearly. And we can say, "Okay this is the path," and many of us feel a connection with it and want to follow it. But one of the things I've come to appreciate about teaching is no system actually works. Sooner or later, if you're in a teaching position, you're going to have to adapt whatever process or procedure you have for teaching, to the needs of an individual because everybody's different. If you're teaching something that's relatively straightforward for a short period of time you may be able to get everybody through just a, b, c. But teaching and learning are primarily about growing, not being processed. And everything grows in its own way. You plant two seeds of exactly the same plant, like say a tree, and they will branch in different places. You can't get them to branch in the same way. One will branch and the branch will go to the right and one will go to the left or straight ahead, or something like that.

So I've come to the conclusion that if you have a system, you can only use it for a certain period of time with people and how long you can use it is going to vary on those particular people. For some they can follow that system for a longer period of time, for others for a shorter. But at some point, they're going to have to make it their own and figure out their own relationship with it.

It's not an assembly line

In this clip from Then and Now, Ken points out that the process of institutionalization of a spiritual tradition may lead to approaching spiritual development as if it were a manufacturing process, an assembly line rather than an unpredictable and highly organic process of growth.

It's not an assembly line (from TAN09: Then and Now (class) 00:51:49.00 - 00:58:39.03)

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Susan: I was actually kind of intrigued by the very last paragraph in the introduction where it talked about the different practices. And I was wondering is it referring to specific practices or actual paths when it says, "Some of the objects of the cultivation of the mind." Does that mean like it's talking about shamatha? Or is it talking about something more like say, deity or yidam?

Ken: Oh in this context it's talking about things like shamatha. This is not a Vajrayana text, per se.

Susan: So everything, every general category that he mentions there, there are actual, specific practices?

Ken: Yeah. And that's what we'll be going through. Some of those will be in the Six Perfections, and so forth.

Susan: I see. Okay.

Ken: This is a system. I always find it interesting when people talk about systems. In 1986 one of Canada's top nuclear scientists [Ursula Franklin] delivered a very prestigious series of lectures known as the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto. And what she chose to lecture on was the real world of technology. And you can actually get those lectures. I think you can get them on Amazon. One of the distinctions she makes which I found extremely useful in a lot of areas is the distinction between growth processes and manufacturing processes. In manufacturing processes you do the same thing to each item and you get identical results at the end. Your classic manufacturing process is the assembly line. So everything is reduced to a series of easily described, repeatable tasks. And you put in the raw materials and you get a car or whatever at the other end.

The growth process is totally different because you can never predict how things are going to grow. So you have to have all kinds of other stuff in there because you don't know whether it's going to grow too much in this direction or whether you're going to need to support it there or whether this is going to happen.

What I find fascinating is that throughout history, whenever institutions develop, they seek to establish a manufacturing process for whatever they're doing, whether it is appropriate or not. And so there's an awful lot of good material in here as many of you have come to appreciate in our talks so far. What's being described here is a kind of manufacturing process. We take the buddha nature and you put it with a spiritual friend and you do this meditation and you do this meditation and you do this meditation and you do this meditation and--bong--you're awake.

Jack: Like a little robot.

Ken: Well that may be a bit harsh, Jack, but yeah, like a little robot. It just doesn’t work that way. Why? Because, at least from my point of view, cultivating that quality of buddha nature in people is much more a growth process than a manufacturing process. And I have no idea when I work with a person, when I work with a student, what I'm going to run into or when I'm going to run into it. And usually they don't either. So things can be cruising along quite happily and suddenly, wham, you just ran into some old pattern that nobody knew was there and now you gotta restructure the whole practice to start working with that.

So I would encourage you to look at this as very, very general principles. In terms of application, be very sensitive to your own experience as, "Where do I need to move now?" or "What feels out of balance?" or "What is missing?" Even though I've worked with people in a somewhat systematic way I've always found I've had to make quite significant individual adaptations in everybody's practice. And I think that's quite appropriate. So these are a set of practices but experience has shown that for many people this particular sequence will be very fruitful, but it doesn't necessarily work for everybody and within an institutional framework one can feel, "I'll have to do this and then I'll do this." And you'll get people in various institutions and they'll tell you, "I've done this practice and this practice, this practice, this practice and I've done them all in the right order." There's a certain amount of understanding but something is often missing. You know what I mean?