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ing, you need to reflect on the dire condition of being trapped
in cyclic existence.
He describes the process of cyclic existence birth, aging,
sickness, and death as stemming from ignorance and nour-
ished with attachment and grasping. This means that our sense
of self is exaggerated beyond what actually exists, and based on
this exaggeration, we are drawn into many problems. Once the
I is exaggerated, the mine the things that are owned by
the I, mind and body also becomes exaggerated, overblown.
We say, my mind : something we use. It is true that body,
mind, hand, head, house, clothing, are mine ; they do belong
to us, but we have an exaggerated sense of owning them.
Conceiving of a concretely existing I and then conceiving
188 a truthful heart
of concretely existing mine, we enter into desire and hatred
and are drawn down into cyclic existence battered, bruised;
falling down into lives as animals, hungry ghosts, hell-beings;
being reborn again in higher lifetimes as humans, demigods,
and gods. Every sentient being throughout all of space is suf-
fering this way. I am suffering this way. This is to be thought
first with respect to yourself, realizing your own state how
many headaches, how many illnesses you have, and if you
do not have many illnesses now, how many you are bound to
have in the future, how pleasure turns into pain, how we are
caught in a contaminated process of conditioning.
Meditation:
A Bucket Battered in a Well
Chandrakirti presents a vivid example for contemplation of
how sentient beings suffer:
Homage to that compassion for transmigrating beings
Powerless like a bucket traveling in a well
Through initially adhering to a self, I,
And then generating attachment for things, This is
mine.
In meditation, imagine a bucket traveling in a well, tied to
a wheel, controlled by the operator of the mechanism, going
down into the dark depths and up to the brighter top over
and over again, being drawn up with difficulty and strain
and easily descending back down to the bottom, involved
compassion seeing suffering beings 189
in a process the order of which is difficult to determine, and
while clattering against the sides of the well, being battered
and broken.
Contemplate: Just as the bucket is tied by a rope to the
wheel, so we are bound by past actions contaminated by
the afflictive emotions of lust, hatred, and ignorance. Just as
the turning of the wheel be it a water wheel with many
buckets strapped to it or a windlass with one bucket tied to
it depends upon a person operating it, so our wandering
in cyclic existence depends upon consciousness. Just as the
bucket travels down to the bottom of the well and up to the
top, so we travel among the stations of cyclic existence, being
born over and over again as hell-beings, hungry ghosts,
animals, humans, demigods, and gods. Just as the bucket
descends easily in the well but is difficult to draw upward
even with hard work, so our own tendencies of mind
our lust, hatred, and ignorance are such that we are eas-
ily drawn down into lower states of existence, but to change
the momentum of this movement to lower states and move
toward higher ones we must make a great deal of effort. Just
as with the turning of a water wheel or the wandering of
the bucket in the well, the temporal order of what happens
first, in the middle, and last is difficult to determine, so our
afflictive emotions, actions, and sufferings mutually lead to
each other, making it impossible to determine in general the
order of these three. Just as the bucket is battered against
the walls of the well, so we are battered by the sufferings
of mental and physical pain, the suffering that occurs when
190 a truthful heart
pleasure leads to pain, and the suffering that comprises the
mere fact of being caught in an afflicted process of condition-
ing. Powerlessly, sentient beings are wandering among bad
states and better states.
When, through analytical meditation, a vivid sense of their
pain is manifest to you, within a sense of their closeness as cul-
tivated in the earlier steps, take your best friend to mind. Con-
template: How nice it would be if this person were free from
suffering and the causes of suffering! When a strong sense of
compassion arises, stick with this feeling in stabilizing medi-
tation. Then, pass on to your next best friend, and repeat the
process in brief form if you are successful and with more detail
if further cultivation is necessary. Continue this way through
neutral persons, lesser enemies, and finally stronger enemies.
By consistently making progress the walls of bias gradually dis-
appear, and the possibility of the truly universal is glimpsed.
Using the same format, in meditation cultivate the second
level of compassion: May they be free from suffering and
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