obstacle | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Entering the Path”

In a sense, the first thing the teacher does for you when you come to the path is to say, “Put on your crash helmet, study this obstacle course, fill up with gas, gun your motor, here we go. Put a spare in the trunk, carry a set of jumper cables, be fully equipped. Have a miniature, dehydrated tow truck in the back of your car. Just add water, and you’re set to go!” That’s the kind of instruction your teacher gives you. Your teacher very carefully lays out a program and says do the Seven-Line Prayer, do your Ngöndro. Do these things in order to accumulate merit because what happens is that should you use up a vast amount of merit when you first come to the path – and you will – you may experience obstacles. This doesn’t mean that you should not come to the path; this means that these obstacles are in your own mindstream. The causes for these obstacles have been in your mindstream since who knows, time out of mind maybe. They would have ripened eventually, they will ripen anyway, but if they ripen without the guidance of the teacher and without the tool of the path, they will ripen out of control. One never knows.

You know yourself that you’ve gone through life and things have wham! hit you just when it looked like things were going great and you had everything under control. Several times during the course of your life already you’ve looked in the mirror and said, “There is no such thing as control here in samsara! Things are really wacky!” But whatever obstacles arise when you first come to the path are yours. They’re not mine. I didn’t give them to you. I mean really, I didn’t do it. They’re not someone else’s. They didn’t do it. And yet, as new practitioners we think, “What’s happening here? Everything’s wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t do this stuff.”

Actually the opposite is true. You should think like this. You should think, “Now my mind is being ripened. Due to my merit and virtue I am able to hook into the path. I have to stabilize that. I have to take responsibility.” Think like a big boy or a big girl for a change: “I have to take responsibility for this. I have to stabilize my mind and stabilize my practice.”

So how is that going to happen?

The thing that you need to do to flush out any obstacles that ripen on the path is to first of all stabilize your mind. Relax. Don’t be such a heavy breather. Chill, will you? Get mellow! So you relax. Just relax. Be confident on the path. Be confident that you are in a boat with no holes.

Yeah, it’s scary to cross the ocean of suffering, but friend, you’re going to do that anyway, either in a boat or not. So you’ve got a choice. You can get out and do the backstroke or cross the ocean of suffering in a boat with no holes. You’re in a boat with no holes. You’re fine. You’re OK. Plus you have a good captain, a good captain who has themselves crossed the ocean of suffering before and brought others. So you should be confident in that. Relax. Try not to get yourself so worked up all the time. Just relax.

Remember, the more emotional you get, the more bent out of shape you get, it’s like you’re stirring up the water. Think of your mind as being like a bowl full of liquid soap, and if you start stirring it up like that with emotion, you know what you get? Bubbles and foam. Have you ever had that happen to your dishwasher or your washing machine where you get the bubbles and foam that come out all over the floor and then you’ve got to spend the rest of the day cleaning it up and the clothes are not clean, everything’s a mess? You have to think like that. Cheer up. Don’t get yourself all foamed up. Just relax. You’re on the path. You’re safe. Be cool.

The following is an excerpt from Patrul Rinpoche’s “The Words of My Perfect Teacher”

Now surely, if anyone takes harmful spirits as something to be killed or beaten, it must be because his mind is under the power of attachment and hatred and knows nothing of great impartial compassion. When you think about it carefully, those malignant spirits are far more in need of compassion than any benefactors. They have become harmful spirits because of their evil karma. Reborn as pretas, with horrible bodies, their pain and fear is unimaginable. They experience nothing but endless hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. They perceive everything as threatening. And their minds are full of hate and aggression, many go to hell as soon as they die. Who could deserve more pity? The patrons may be sick and suffering, but that will help them exhaust their evil karma, not to create more. Those evil spirits, on the other hand, are harming others with their evil intentions, and will be hurled by those harmful actions to the depths of the lower realms.

If the Conqueror, skilled in means and full of compassion, taught the art of exorcising or intimidating these harmful spirits with violent methods, it was out of compassion for them, like a mother spanking a child who will not obey her. He also permitted the ritual of liberation to be practiced by those who have the power to interrupt the flow of evil deeds of beings who only do harm, and to transfer their consciousness to a pure realm. But as for pandering to benefactors, monks and others that we consider to be on our own side, and rejecting demons and wrongdoers as hateful enemies — protecting the one and attacking the other out of attachment and hatred — where are such attitudes mentioned in teachings of the Conqueror? As long as we are driven by such feelings of attachment and hatred, it would be futile to try to expel or attack any harmful spirits. Their bodies are only mental and they will not obey us. They will only do us harm in return. Indeed, even if our feelings for such gods and spirits are very positive — not to speak of desire and hate — we will never subdue them as long as we believe that they really exist.

When Jetsun Mila was living in Garuda Fortress Cave in the Chong valley, the king of obstacle-makers, Vinayaka, produced a supernatural illusion. In his cave, Jetsun Mila found five astaras with eyes as big as saucers. He prayed to his teacher and to his yidam, but the demons did not go away. He meditated on the visualization of his deity and recited wrathful mantras, but still they would not go.

Finally, he thought, “Marpa of Lhodrak showed me that everything in the universe is mind, and that the nature of mind is empty and radiant. To believe in these demons and obstacle-makers as something external and to want them to go away has no meaning.”

Feeling powerful confidence in the view that knows spirits and demons to be simply one’s own perceptions, he strode back into his cave. Terrified and rollingtheir eyes, the astaras disappeared.

This is also what the Ogress of the Rock meant, when she sang to him:

This demon of your own tendencies arises from your mind;

If you don’t recognize the nature of your mind,

I’m not going to leave just because you tell me to go.

If you don’t realize that your mind is void,

There are many more demons besides myself!

But if you recognize the nature of your own mind,

Adverse circumstances will serve only to sustain you

And even I, Ogress of the Rock, will be at your bidding.