What Does It Mean To Embody the Dharma?

I would like to offer some reflections on what it might mean to embody the Dharma, versus just having a Dharma practice. These reflections are not intended to be points of judgment towards our own or someone else's practice. They're more a way to start to look at the core elements of our practice, to explore some ideas on how we might embody the Dharma, and how to allow the Dharma to deepen and coalesce in our being a little more.

For those of you newer to the Buddhist path and/or newer to meditation, this could also be a way to take in some new ideas or a different way to look at why we meditate. Again, I'm offering these reflections so that we may take stock of our practice in a compassionate way, not from a place of judgment or not-enoughness. 

First off, having a Dharma practice is just fine. There's actually no way to become a Dharma person without having a Dharma practice. So, we all start with a Dharma practice. Most of us are also in some in-between where we have a practice, we're seeing some changes and transformation, we're starting to understand how to be a Dharma person, or that's just happening naturally as a result of our practice. But we also have practice, we have something we're committed to, and without that, there's no way to transform.

So what does embodying the Dharma actually mean? There are many takes on this, many approaches to discuss this. You could probably find some really awesome material out there from lineage Masters in the Tibetan Buddhist Traditions, as well as other Buddhist lineages, and I'm sure other Dharma paths as well, on what it means to embody the Dharma. But when I was reflecting on this, I ended up coming back to a core quote from the historical Buddha, Buddha Shakyamuni that really sums it up. And this quote goes like this: 

"Commit not a single unwholesome action, cultivate a wealth of virtue, to completely tame this mind of ours, this is the teaching of the Buddhas."

You can find this quote throughout traditional Buddhism, especially in Himalayan Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism. You see this taught often, sometimes people even inscribe it in rock or stone, or paint it on a wall of a temple. And this is because this is one of the most famous quotes from the Buddha, and it really sums up the entire path of the Dharma.

Let's unpack it a little bit so we can see how it applies to our own practice of embodying the Dharma. I'd like to take a more fruitional approach to this quote by starting at the end of the quote rather than the beginning. The end of the quote says, "This is the teaching of the Buddhas." Just a little side note to my audience here, which I'm guessing is majority Western, sometimes when we read quotes like this, we can take it dogmatically. We could read this, "This is the teaching of the Buddhas," sort of like it's a command or like it's God speaking down to us telling us how we're bad or wrong. That's not the intention in this quote at all.

I usually recommend to look at these quotes differently, to look at them with more curiosity or from the perspective of a question, rather than someone telling us something or ordering us to do something. I don't know about you, but for me, as someone who's grown up in the United States, I have a sensitivity to this, so I have to be especially careful when I read things like this. So, we have this teaching of the Buddhas, sort of like it's this absolute thing. For me, because of this sensitivity, I think it's important to pull apart the meaning behind the words in quotes like this.

Let's start with the word "Buddhas" and unpack that a little bit. The Sanskrit word "Buddha" means an awakened mind, a mind that no longer experiences the falsities of a dualistic reality or a subject-object experience. In other words, it is a mind that doesn't experience projection anymore and has ceased all cultivation of the causes of suffering.

But an awakened mind or a Buddha has not just eliminated the causes of suffering, they also have the ability or efficacy to fully benefit others. This is a fuller idea of what a Buddha is, although it's still a pretty vague term for most of us because we don't have that experience. However, it's important to at least understand it a little bit, so we have some idea of what we're moving towards.

In taking this quote in a more fruitional way, we're looking at what it ultimately means to be a Dharma person. It means to be a Buddha, to be free, to be awake with the complete efficacy and ability to fully benefit others and help wake them up out of their dreamlike appearances (because we are no longer caught by them) that are causing suffering.

I like that approach because, for me, it's quite inspiring and makes me want to become a Dharma person. I don't see this quote as trying to create rules or rigidity around me. Instead, I see it as pointing me towards freedom, which is really embedded in the end of the quote.

Next, we have this verse: "To completely tame this mind of ours." What is an awakened being? It's someone who has completely tamed their mind. Ultimately, taming the mind means that through our learning, reflection, and meditation, we've been able to cut through the delusion of dualistic clinging. We've been able to cut through the delusion that “it's all about me,” or that the world revolves around us.

By doing so, we come into not only a clearer and more accurate perception of reality, but also a more open, compassionate, and loving expression that can help others more skillfully. We have the freedom and ability to focus more on the needs of the whole, as opposed to solely oneself, and to do that from a place of seeing reality, which has so much skill and wisdom embedded in it.

This is one way to talk about taming the mind, although it's related to the end of the quote, which has a more complete idea of what it means to tame the mind. Along the path, there are various stages where we're taming our mind, working with our emotional reactions, trying to be mindful of them, and mitigating actions of body, speech, and mind that are destructive to ourselves and others.

This all comes back to a practice of mindful awareness. But the point is to understand and see where and how we're bound, where the mind is binding itself, which we would call an untamed mind. 

When we have an untamed mind, we act from afflictive emotion, which causes harm to ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we tame the mind, we see clearly the nature of the mind and our afflictive emotions and thoughts. Therefore, our conduct can be in line with more compassionate skill and wisdom. 

This connects to the second part of the verse, which encourages us to cultivate a wealth of virtue. When we move away from a dogmatic approach to virtue and non-virtue, we focus on a healthy relationship to cause and effect, seeking to reduce suffering and increase contentment in alignment with natural cause and effect. A tamed mind is characterized by a wealth of virtue, where our thoughts and intentions align with our conduct. 

It is important to take stock of where we are in our practice, while also remembering that embodying the meaning of this verse takes time. Taming the mind is connected to developing a wealth of virtue, and reducing harmful actions is often the first step for most of us. How can we cultivate virtue if we continue to cause harm? 

In Buddhism, we use the framework of the 10 non-virtuous actions and their opposites, the 10 virtuous actions, to guide us. The three non-virtuous actions of the body are avoiding taking someone's life, stealing, and harming others through sexuality. The four non-virtuous actions of speech involve avoiding harmful speech, such as hurting others or slandering them behind their backs, as well as avoiding lying and gossip. The three non-virtuous actions of the mind include avoiding harmful intent, excessive clinging to what we don't have, and having a wrong view that denies cause and effect. 

By understanding and practicing the opposites of these non-virtuous actions, we can cultivate virtue and align ourselves with reality as it is. This is the first part of the quote, committing not a single unwholesome action. And this is a practice of mindfulness, more or less. It's not a set of rules or dogmas.

If we can, we should try to study these 10 non-virtuous actions and their counterparts, the 10 virtuous actions, and understand them. For me, I find more freedom, curiosity, and flexibility through learning, rather than just taking something dogmatically. And like I was saying, ultimately, Buddhist ethics are taken up as a mindfulness practice. They're not there as dogma. They're there as a way to refine the mind, as a way to understand where our conduct can provide more contentment for ourselves and others. 

There’s no need to take an overly moralistic approach. It's much more aimed at a way to cultivate an open, compassionate, loving mind. And again, when we're cultivating a more open, compassionate, and loving mind, we're moving towards virtue. And when we're moving more towards the virtue of an open, compassionate, loving mind, we're going to start to tame the mind, meaning the afflictive emotions that take us over and cause us a lot of pain, will have less power over us. And as we go further and further in our practice of virtue, we eventually open to the full awakening of Buddhahood. 

So for me, these verses from the Buddha really sum up what being a Dharma person means. We all start our practice at the beginning of the quote, so there is still a path and stages of a path to work with. But when understanding it, I do find it helpful to start at the end, to understand why we practice mindful awareness and the cultivation of virtue on the Buddhist path. 

When we understand cause and effect, when we understand the mind in this way, when we understand that what we think, what we say, and how we act matters and affects the mind, and ultimately affects whether we're free or not, then we start to become a Dharma person. 

We start to understand the deeper meaning of why meditation matters, we start to understand the deeper meaning of why Buddhism matters and why the Dharma matters, and then we apply it in a practical way. 

To me, this is about something practical, how to integrate the Dharma into our daily life, how to work over time to take stock gently and compassionately of ourselves and our practice, and to progress skillfully and steadily on our path.