Compassionate Listening and “The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation”
Essay and Translation
by Aaron PoochigianWhen I first stumbled upon the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in a book, he was exactly what I needed: a compassionate listener. He sits and listens. He hears what is said and what is unsaid. I can think of no nobler occupation in this universe. Omniscient listening, it seems, is his very core. When he first appears in Sanskrit fragments, he is Avalokitasvara, “he who looks down at sound.” This synesthetic name combines the visual and auditory and implies that he is listening, with his gaze, to the cries of sentient beings. He later becomes Avalokiteshvara, “the Lord who gazes down” at the world. This Sanskrit name is more closely parallel with his Tibetan name, Chenrezig, which consists of spyan (eye), ras (perpetuity) and gzig (to look): “the eye perpetually looking” at the world. The early shift from one name to another is entirely in keeping with Avalokiteshvara’s character. Over the centuries he has shown a remarkable aptitude for transformation and expansion.
It is his perfect openness, perhaps, that allowed him to absorb other deities and assume their characteristics through syncretism. We are told that “Avalokiteshvara was responsible for introducing popular deities into the Buddhist pantheon” by reciting their titles and epithets in dharanis— chants believed to work, in an apotropaic way, as talismans against harmful influences. We are told, for example, that Avalokiteshvara originally recited the Nilakantha-Lokeshvara Dharani in honor of Nilakantha (“the blue-necked one”), a title of the Hindu god Shiva. With time, however, praiser and praised ended up fusing. Avalokiteshvara absorbed Nilakantha and became the addressee of that dharani. Avalokiteshvara knows no bounds, it seems. He became gender-fluid, for example, when he traveled to China and became the female bodhisattva Guanyin, a widely beloved Chinese Buddhist divinity. Perhaps in a kind of rivalry with Hindu Shiva and Vishnu, he acquires their epithets sahasra-bahu (‘thousand-armed’) or
sahasra-bhuja (‘thousand-handed’). The diverse faces and attributes that Avalokiteshvara acquired came, with time, to be regarded as a function of his bodhichitta, or “intention of awakening” sentient beings. In the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha himself explains that Avalokiteshvara appears in whatever form is most useful for helping a particular person. Avaolokiteshvara’s pragmatic versatility is made explicit and succinct in the Karandavyuha Sutra: “he teaches the Dharma in whatever form a being can be taught through.” (This sutra famously introduces om mane padme hum, the most popular Buddhist mantra, as the “innermost heart” of Avalokiteshvara.) Since my introduction to the thousand-armed bodhisattva of compassion, I have come to find it soothing just to think of him—forever listening with perfect understanding to the cries of sentient beings and doing whatever he (or she) can do to help them.
After Avalokiteshvara had become a prominent figure in Buddhism, the Tibetan monk Langri Tangpa (1054—1123), founder of the Langtang Monastery, wrote The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation for use as a conjunct to devotional contemplation of an image of him. Langri Tangpa is a legendary figure. He was so dour, we hear, that he laughed only three times during his life, but his presence had so calming and peaceful an influence that none of the wild animals around the monastery ever harmed each other while he was there. His teachings fall squarely into the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, which maintains that everyone has an unchanging, incorruptible “luminous mind” and can achieve buddhahood through the bodhisattva path.
Adherents of this branch of Buddhism maintain that bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara altruistically stay in this world to liberate all other sentient beings from the round of rebirth by guiding them into enlightenment.
This path and Mahayana Buddhism in general provide essential background for understanding
The Eight Verse of Thought Transformation. They were written for use in a devotional context: under the guiding influence of an image of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the aspirant accepts that “everyone is as opulent and magic as a wish-fulfilling gem,” that is, capable of attaining Buddhahood. Langri Tangpa’s Verses went on to become one of the most popular texts for Lojong, or mind-training, a fundamental Buddhist pursuit.
Here in the 21st-century, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, believed to be fourteenth in a line of incarnations of Avalokiteshvara, clearly feels a close connection to The Eight Verses. He maintains that their intended audience, the original Avalokiteshvara, operates as a protector of the Tibetan people, in addition to his other prerogatives. His Holiness explains that Avalokiteshvara long ago promised the Buddha to guide and guard Tibetans and that the establishment of the Dalai Lama as both a religious and political authority has been the stage-by-stage fulfillment of Avalokiteshvara’s masterplan.
The Dalai Lama has written multiple commentaries on The Eight Verses. His explications of individual verses reveal a warm mixture of authoritative doctrinal understanding and worldly pragmatism. Let’s take, as an example, his commentaries on the second verse, which encourages an aspirant to regard him- or herself as the person “of least esteem” whenever he or she is in a group. The Dalai Lama explains that the purpose of this verse is to encourage not low self-esteem in aspirants but empathy for fellow sentient beings. He is right here in the 21st Century talking about an issue very relevant to the USA when he defines the “universal compassion” which the verse promotes as having “no element of prejudice, no
element of discrimination.” In his commentary on this verse and others, he often focuses on the good that they do for those who put them into practice. Aspirants should want to adhere to, say, the ideal of absolute humility because it promotes social awareness and discourages inconsiderate action:
By deliberately cultivating the thought of regarding others as superior and worthy of your reverence, you provide yourself with a restraining factor. Then, when emotions arise, they will not be so powerful as to cause you to disregard the impact of your actions upon other sentient beings.
Throughout his commentaries, the Dalai Lama acknowledges that The Eight Verses express ideals and that aspirants will often fall short of them. Still, he stresses that anything people do to act in accordance with the verses is beneficial to them.
My work translating The Eight Verses was revelatory to me. Though very, very far from reaching any of the ideals expressed in them, I am so grateful to know that they have been asserted with such sincerity and force and that there are people right now in this world devoutly striving to attain them. The Verses are resonant in my mind when I go out to talk and work with my fellow sentient beings each day. The Dalai Lama stresses the fundamental importance of such interactions: All the desirable experiences that we cherish or aspire to attain are dependent upon cooperation and interaction with other sentient beings. Here, because we would miss out on so much by going it alone, are The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, with an icon of Avalokiteshvara to contemplate as you read.
The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation
When you finish reciting each verse, imagine abundant light issuing from Chenrezig, flowing into you and filling your whole body. This practice both purges selfishness and ignorance, which prevent you from grasping the meaning of the verse and empowers you to understand and integrate it into your life.
1. Every person is as opulent and magic as a wish-fulfilling gem, and I will strive to cherish each of them always and rise to an enlightenment that will be freeing not just for me but every living being.
2. When I am in a group, my charge will be to feel I am the one of least esteem. I will concede with all sincerity the sway of others. They will reign supreme.
3. I will patrol my thinking as I go. The moment a malign urge comes to light, menacing me and others, I will quite intently stare it down and tell it, “no.”
4. When I encounter someone bad—a vat of virulence, a sewer of untold urges and rages—I will dote on that fantastic being like a trove of gold.
5. When envious antagonists abuse my name with blots and smut, I will recall how disentangling it is to lose and leave them to their triumph, winners all.
6. When someone I have helped and trusted in hurts me on purpose, I will discipline my pain to see that person as a prudent instructor giving insight to a student.
7. To sum my creed up: I will furnish others, out-in-the-open or behind-the-scenes, with every blessing in me, every means of help I have, as if they were my mothers. My practice, task and cause will be to pack the whole world’s noxious deeds and inner woes as my own burden onto my own back so quietly that no one ever knows.
8. I never will permit the eight pernicious worldly concerns to blemish this endeavor. By grasping life is a mirage, I never, myself, will grow distractedly ambitious while working daily to emancipate all beings from the bonds of an irate, riotous mind and the relentless debts needs leave behind.
(Tangka Icon of 1000-Armed Avalokiteshvara with Shakyamuni and All Orders’ Lamas. Courtesy of FPMT Tushita Center, Dharamsala)