mind. If we apply the appropriate methods they can be completely eliminated, and we will experience the supreme happiness of full enlightenment.
Everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to suffer, but very few people understand what is the real cause of happiness and what is the real cause of suffering. We tend to look for happiness outside ourself, thinking that if we had the right house, the right car, the right job and the right friends that we like, we would be truly happy. We spend almost all our time adjusting the external world, trying to make it conform to our wishes. All our life we have tried to surround ourself with people and things that make us feel comfortable, secure or stimulated, yet still we have not found pure and lasting happiness. Even when we succeed in fulfilling our desires, it is not long before our desires change and we want something else. We may find the house of our dreams, but a few months later we feel that we need a bigger kitchen, an extra bedroom or a larger yard, and we begin to think of moving. Or perhaps we meet the “perfect” partner, fall in love and move in together. At the beginning our partner seems to be the most wonderful person in the world, but before long we begin to see faults in him or her. We discover that we are no longer in love, and soon we are looking for someone else to fulfill our desires.
Throughout history human beings have sought to improve their external situation, yet despite all our efforts we are no happier. It is true that from the point of view of material development many countries are making progress. Technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, and worldly knowledge has increased dramatically. We know so many things we did not know before and can do things we never even dreamed of. Superficially it looks as if our world is improving, but if we look a little more deeply we will see that there are now many problems that never existed before. Terrifying weapons have been invented, our environment is being poisoned and new diseases are appearing. Even simple pleasures like eating or lying in the sun are becoming more dangerous.
The result of an unbridled pursuit of happiness from external sources is that our planet is being destroyed and our lives are becoming more complicated and dissatisfying. It is time we sought happiness from a different source. Happiness is a part of the mind that experiences inner peace, or peace of mind, so the real source of happiness must lie within the mind, not in external conditions. If our mind is pure and peaceful we will be happy, regardless of our external circumstances, but if it is impure and unpeaceful we will never be happy, no matter how hard we try to change our external conditions. We could change our home or our partner countless times, but until we change our restless, discontented mind we will never find real happiness.
If we have to walk across rough and thorny ground, one way of protecting our feet is to cover the whole ground with leather, but this is not very practical. We can achieve the same result in a much simpler way—by covering our feet. Similarly, if we wish to protect ourself from suffering we can either try to change external conditions to make them conform to our wishes, or we can change our mind. Until now we have been trying to change the external conditions, but this clearly has not worked. Now we need to change our mind.
The first step toward changing our mind is to identify which states of mind produce happiness and which produce suffering. States of mind that are conducive to peace of mind and happiness are called “virtuous minds,” whereas those that destroy our peace of mind and cause us suffering are called “delusions.” We have many different types of delusion, such as uncontrolled desire, also known as desirous attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, laziness and ignorance. These are known as “inner enemies” because they are continually destroying our inner peace, our happiness, from within. Their only function is to cause us harm.
Delusions are distorted ways of looking at ourself, other people and the world around us. The way a deluded mind views these phenomena does not accord with reality. The deluded mind of hatred, for example, views another person as intrinsically bad, but there is no such thing as an intrinsically bad person. Desirous attachment, on the other hand, sees its object of desire as intrinsically good and as a true source of happiness. If we have a strong craving to eat chocolate, chocolate appears to us to be an intrinsically desirable object. However, once we have eaten too much of it and start to feel sick, it no longer seems so desirable and may even appear repulsive. This shows that in itself chocolate is neither desirable nor repulsive. It is the mind of attachment that projects onto it all kinds of desirable qualities and then relates to it as if it really did possess those qualities.
All delusions function like this, projecting onto the world their own distorted version of reality and then relating to this projection as if it were true. When our mind is under the influence of delusions we are out of touch with reality and are, in a sense, hallucinating. Since our mind is under the influence of at least subtle forms of delusion all the time, it is not surprising that our lives are so often filled with frustration. It is as if we are continually chasing mirages, only to be disappointed when they do not give us the satisfaction for which we had hoped.
The source of all delusions is a distorted awareness called “self-grasping ignorance,” which grasps phenomena as inherently, or independently, existent. In reality all phenomena are dependent arisings, which means that their existence is utterly dependent upon other phenomena, such as their causes, their parts and the minds that apprehend them. Objects do not exist from their own side, in and of themselves; what they are depends upon how they are viewed. Our failure to realize this is the source of all our problems.
The type of self-grasping that harms us most is grasping our own self, or I, as inherently or independently existent. We instinctively feel that we possess a completely real and objective self or I that exists independently of all other phenomena, even our body and mind. One consequence of grasping at our self as an independent entity separate from the world and other people is that we develop self-cherishing, a mind that regards ourself as supremely important. Because we cherish ourself so strongly, we are drawn to the people and things we find attractive, we want to separate ourself from the people and things we find unattractive and we are uninterested in the people and things we find neither attractive nor unattractive. In this way attachment, anger and indifference are born. Because we have an exaggerated sense of our own importance we feel that others’ interests are in conflict with our own, and this in turn gives rise to competitiveness, jealousy, arrogance and lack of consideration for others. By acting under the influence of these and other delusions we engage in destructive behavior, such as killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and hurtful speech. The result of these negative actions is suffering for both ourself and others.
Even though our delusions are deeply ingrained, they are not an intrinsic part of our mind and so they can definitely be removed. Delusions are just bad mental habits, and like all habits they can be broken. Through making a sincere and consistent effort to become familiar with constructive states of mind, we can eliminate even the most stubborn delusions and replace them with the opposite virtues. For example, we can weaken our anger by familiarizing our mind with patience and love, our attachment by familiarizing our mind with non-attachment and our jealousy by rejoicing in others’ good fortune.
To eradicate delusions completely, however, we must destroy their root—the mind of self-grasping. To do this we need to familiarize our mind with the true nature of reality, or ultimate truth. This is explained in detail in the chapter on training in ultimate bodhichitta. If we destroy self-grasping, all other delusions cease naturally, just as the leaves and branches of a tree die if we destroy its roots. Once we have completely eradicated our delusions it will be utterly impossible for us to experience unpeaceful states of mind. As we will no longer have the internal causes of suffering, external causes of suffering, such as sickness or death, will have no power to disturb our mind. This permanent cessation of delusion and suffering is known as “liberation,” or “nirvana” in Sanskrit.
Although attaining our own liberation from suffering is a wonderful achievement, it is not enough. We are not isolated individuals but part of the family of all living beings. Everything we own, everything we enjoy, all our opportunities for spiritual development and even our very body come from the kindness of others. Are we to make our own escape from suffering and then abandon
