The Buddhist Art of Manifestation

Rev. Fa Jun Shakya

Preface Buddhism and worldly success are two concepts which have not often been associated in the world of late. Fortunately, this trend is changing. In the past, many Buddhist practitioners were in positions of great worldly power. Ancient kings of India and Tibet were great meditators and people of high ethics. How did they attain this power, and how did they utilize it for the benefit of all beings? These are some of the questions that will be addressed by this book. Our world and our modern Western culture requires a spiritual practice that obviously plays a role in our material lives. Some practitioners have already realized that, conveniently, material life is the perfect laboratory to test the principles of our spiritual practice. Beyond this, there is no escape from life in the world. We may take extended retreat, we may renounce certain aspects of our own lives, but all the ancient spiritual masters knew that the only reason to undertake these ascetic ways was to intensify the benefit we could be to others. As an author, I am not a great master of Buddhism. It is always with trepidation that I undertake to share my understanding of spiritual practice, because I recognize how limited it is in comparison with the scope of ancient wisdom laid down by the great Teachers. The reason for writing this short book is that I understand the need for a simple and lucid exposition of the principles by which we can enable our spiritual practice to generate great happiness in our material lives. There are other texts that will give the student a deeper understanding of the ancient theories that Ive employed here and been inspired by. I simply hope to add a small bit of simplified instruction to the corpus of valuable information that already exists. I recognize that as my understanding grows, I will come to recognize errors in the text that I cannot currently see. I pray to the Masters of the lineage for their forgiveness for any oversights included in this work. And dedicate the merit generated by this work to the full liberation of all living beings. Introduction Often, Buddhism in the world today is known primarily for its stance of

renunciation from the world. If someone mentions Buddhism, a few images may be conjured in the popular mindset - one of a monk who has turned away from the worlds troubles in order to seek a deeper truth, or possibly of colorful idols and religious ceremonies. Both of these popular conceptions are certainly major parts of the large culture of the Buddha Dharma, but they are not the only representations of this ancient tradition. Ancient stories from the repositories of Buddhist wisdom relate tales of individuals who were so skilled in their mastery of the forces underlying apparent reality that they were able to achieve miraculous feats. Even the historical Buddha Shakyamuni - the greatest renunciate in history according to this tradition - was supported financially by countless lay followers. The Lord Buddha was supported in such great measure that he was able to create the institution of monasticism in ancient India. This institution became so strong that eventually great universities of monks were established to study the Dharma - supported completely by the lay populace. None of this could have happened if the Buddha did not have some secret strength by which to bring it about. In the modern world, there are new tendencies toward movements such as engaged Buddhism. These movements are based upon the growing understanding that - while renunciation is essential in the quest for spiritual development, activity in the world is a requirement of our compassionate heart. If we are going to be able to engage in a way that is powerful and helps many beings, it would be valuable for us to understand the principles that underlie how things are created in this world. This is especially valuable because if we truly want to help others to have happiness, we can do this best if we know how happiness is actually created. Rather than giving a person a fish, as the old saying goes, we can teach them to fish and feed themselves through the principles weve come to understand. Manifestation Manifestation is a word often used in new-age circles today, and in ever expanding populations who are coming to understand its significance. A similar term that is frequently heard is the Law of Attraction. The recent movie The Secret popularized many of these concepts to a whole new audience of seekers, but the use of the mind to influence - or even create - reality has been known to

select individuals for a very long time. Basically put, the Law of Attraction states that the contents of your mind will attract objects of a similar vibrational frequency. There are many methods that people have used to activate this power of the mind, including visualization, affirmation, ritual, hypnosis, and other methods. What all of these techniques share is the ability to change the content of the mind toward a more favorable direction in order to change the world that one perceives. This is very easy to experience for oneself by practicing simple exercises like the one that follows. Exercise: Thought Into Manifestation First, think of something that you would like to be different in your life. Often generalities work better at this stage than very specific things because you need a certain degree of faith in the process to get something very specific to manifest. For example, you might like to see more financial abundance in your life - this is a better goal for this experiment than saying I want $300 to show up by next Tuesday. Similarly, you could say that you would like to start making better choices related to your health - rather than I want to lose 10 pounds. When you have come up with the area of your life that youd like to change, find a journal or notebook to record your experiment in and write it down. Imagine as clearly as you can what it would be like to have this new reality manifest in your life - what would it look like, feel like, sound like, smell like? See the picture of it in your minds eye with all the senses vividly present - sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste. Also, think of a short sentence that expresses this new reality. If you used the above examples, it might be I enjoy great financial abundance! or my new choices make my body feel healthy and vibrant! Write down this statement in your notebook. Now, over the next week or so - in the morning when you wake

up, and in the evening before you go to sleep, take a few minutes to reflect on the new reality youd like to see manifest. Notice any changes that take place in your world as, and after, you do this process. If you like, write them down in your journal. If you practice the above exercise, or something similar, with any consistency, youll find changes begin to take place in your world quite spontaneously. Sometimes these changes will be small and make you wonder if you are just imagining them or maybe just noticing things in a different way. Other times, these changes will be dramatic and may leave no doubt in your mind that something new is going on. After experiencing this numerous times, your conviction grows that the contents of the mind have an uncanny influence over the reality that you perceive. The New Car Phenomenon There is a phenomenon that many people in the market for a new car will experience. As soon as you begin to seriously consider a car youd like to buy - you begin to see it everywhere. This is often explained as being a result of your mind becoming sensitized to the existence of this car model in a way you were not before. These cars were already there, but you just were not seeing them. I personally had an interesting experience, though, that caused me to reconsider. I had been in the car market for a few months and had experienced the above phenomenon about many of the models I was considering. I had assumed that it was, perhaps, just a form of hyper-sensitization. Until I began to consider a specific car - the 2 seat Honda Insight. What is interesting about this car, is that it was a very limited model, and there are not a great many of them in circulation. Driving down the road I might see a great number of Honda Accords, and Volkswagon Jettas - or any number of popular SUVs, but Id rarely see a Honda Insight. Now, I personally know that I wasnt seeing them, because Im already sensitized to them by having owned one in the past - of which I was quite fond. If I see a 2 seat Insight on the road I tend to register it pretty strongly and think oh cool. So, it was surprising to me that as I started to consider this

model of car for purchase, all of a sudden I began to see 2 or 3 every day during my commute to and from work. Then, when Id go on to thinking of something else, theyd somehow magically disappear. This was illustrative to me because I had experienced the same thing in other situations. Perhaps you have experienced it too. You become interested in a certain new subject and all of a sudden you just happen to meet new people who are interested in the same thing, or have some experience or expertise in that field. I have long had this experience in used book stores that I would frequent - for weeks, Id look in some of the same sections - and there would be a similar selection of books. Then, Id get interested in some subject and the next time Id go in, a book on the very subject would be in the sections Id been looking at for weeks. These experiences, which Ive had in many different ways, have been enough to convince me that there is some very interesting connection between the minds contents and the world that it perceives. All of the Mind So, once we are at least somewhat convinced that there is some interaction between the mind and the world - a problem arises. Simply put, it is this: if the thoughts I think are in some way influencing, or creating the reality I see around me - then what about the things which happen that I dont want? And for that matter, what about the things that we do want which dont seem to happen? The problem here is not that the mind is failing to influence reality in the way we are proposing - it is that our concept of the mind is often a very limited one. If we are talking about the mind having an effect on the world we must be very clear that this means ALL of the mind. Put very simply, it means that the unconscious parts of our minds get to play a part too. What many of us tend to think of as the contents of our minds is usually limited to the conscious stories that we are aware of telling ourselves on a day to day basis. These are all the tales we tell about who we are, what we want, where were going, etc. Unfortunately for our egos, this is only actually a small portion of what really makes up our consciousness. Underneath our concepts of who we are and what we are thinking, there exists a very influential portion of ourselves which is subconscious. This might not be such a big deal - except that our

consciousness is kind of like the tip of the iceberg, while our subconscious is the gigantic mass beneath. They also seem to have power proportionate to their size - the subconscious plays a much greater role in creating our world than does the conscious. Anyone who has ever tried to become fluent in a foreign language, learn to drive a manual transmission car, or master a rigorous sequence of dance or martial arts will know that the conscious mind is very clumsy. If you rely on being able to think of what move or word comes next, your performance will be lacking. True masters of their respective arts realize that it is only when you have reached a point of unconscious mastery are you actually fluent in something - able to utilize the skill upon command. Now, if it were just mastery of things that we consciously chose which became embodied in the subconscious, this would be just fine but in fact - many of the contents below the conscious mind are things that we might not choose to have there. Ideas that are in some cases erroneous, and in other cases down right destructive. What You Find With Meditation One simple way to begin to recognize these underlying sentiments is by adopting a regular practice of meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation, but here we are just concerned with getting the mind a little bit quiet, and then learning to observe its contents. The value of this is very straightforward. We observed in the previous exercise how intentionally planting a thought in the mind through visualization and affirmation could change what we see in the world. If we begin to practice introspective meditation, we may begin to notice that what we are thinking in the depths of our minds is also constantly shaping the world that we can see. In this way, we can think of meditation as giving us a kind of scuba equipment that we can use to go under the waters of consciousness and observe the shape of the larger mass of the iceberg beneath. When we begin this process - many insights into the nature and habits of our own mind that we never recognized before become clear to us. We can then start to observe how these patterns of the subconscious play out and shape our world. Its not that we can sometimes consciously sit down and influence our reality by choice - we are always influencing reality, whether we are choosing to or not.

Where The Iceberg Comes From For now, in thinking of where this iceberg comes from, we can think of the homes in which we were brought up. This can be a very fruitful experiment in determining what kind of affirmations you are already carrying around in your own subconscious. If you, for instance, were brought up in an affluent home - it is likely that you are able to easily visualize a life of material abundance. It is also likely that this will easily manifest for you. Individuals who were brought up in less prosperous surroundings can have a more difficult time achieving their material desires. It is a common (and even clich) observation nowadays that individuals will tend to recreate their parents relationship unless theyve done significant work to recognize where those patterns lie in their subconscious. This amazingly even happens when people are specifically trying NOT to recreate these relationships. They somehow seem to just keep attracting a person who will show up as their original home situation until they resolve those unconscious issues. These subconscious patterns also come from anything that weve told ourselves - or have been told over a long period of time. People who were brought up in a relatively safe and sane home can still get into emotionally abusive relationships and for some reason stay in them for long periods. It can take a long time to deprogram oneself from the low self-esteem, or other patterns that are picked up from such a relationship. The mechanism by which this takes place is simply repetition. If you repeat something often enough - the subconscious starts to adopt it. It doesnt really question whether it is true - it just notes continued exposure and starts to adapt to the stimulus. These thoughts can also get programmed in by importing them during special states of consciousness. This is the power of hypnosis - in such a state you get direct access to the unconscious parts of the mind and can make dramatic changes in a very short time. The Storehouse Thinking of the subconscious mind still seems to leave a few problems though. For instance, if it is mind that creates the world, how do peoples minds get created? If the mind can influence things like peoples health, bodily structure, and family or relationships - then

how are children born with birth defects, or into abusive families? Finally, we must ask - what about those people who were raised in poor families, but struck out on their own and just seemed to get lucky - or knew exactly what to do to get rich? What about individuals where were in abusive families but never let their spirit become repressed? Or were in abusive relationships and somehow made them turning points of strength rather than jumping off points to a downward spiral? This is where the ancient science of mind developed by Buddhists over thousands of years can add a great deal to our understanding of the way the world really works. In the Buddhist teachings, there is recognized something called the Alaya - usually translated as storehouse consciousness. According to this theory, the Alaya is a repository of impressions picked up by the mind for as long as it has been in existence. For a Buddhist, the mind has been in existence for much longer than an individuals physical body. In this way, they account for the variations in the situations to which people are born. This understanding was culled from years of meditation experience of a similar variety to that spoken about earlier specifically, quieting the mind so much that you can examine its contents. When you do this for significant amounts of time, you begin to be capable of entering deeper and deeper states of concentration. In these deep states, more and more of the subconscious is revealed to you. As you explore these states, you begin to have experiences that seem to precede this life - and the ancient meditators claim to have been able to remember existences previous to this physical embodiment. Regardless of whether we will be able to recall previous embodiments, we can begin to understand the alaya through our own experience. Basically, the function of the storehouse consciousness is simply this: to record any and all experiences - and specifically our own actions. This means that in any action you take - anything you say or do, you are on candid camera. The alaya, then, becomes the record of all the things you have done, thought, and felt. The Power of Belief Where this really becomes important is when we begin to understand what goes into making the most powerful forms of manifestation in

our world - namely, Beliefs. You see, you can think new thoughts, or visualize images for a while, and they can make some superficial changes in your world but if you have a strong belief stored in the subconscious or the deep unconscious mind, it will eventually reassert itself. This actually explains a lot about why some people seem to have a great experience with the law of attraction for a while, then something bad occurs - an accident, a financial loss, etc. It is not necessarily that they have somehow messed up in using the principles of influencing reality through changing the minds contents it is simply that theyve only changed the thoughts, and have not yet changed the beliefs underlying them. There are old impressions from long ago still bubbling up to the surface. There is a great deal of research on the placebo effect in medicine - the phenomenon that a non-medical substance can have therapeutic effect if the patient believes it is medicinal. Some researchers feel that this accounts for 1/3 or more of therapeutic benefit in Western Medicine. What is interesting to our discussion is that you cant just hand someone a sugar pill and tell a person to convince themselves that it will work. They know, they believe it is NOT medicine, and so it will not work for them. On the other hand, if you hand them a sugar pill and tell them it is medicine and they believe that this is the case, you can get a profound therapeutic result. The same result can be seen in some cases of faith healing. The patients belief somehow makes it happen. These are not thoughts, these are beliefs. If you practice looking within, you may find that it is not so much that the world outside has formed your belief system - but perhaps the other way around. The world out there looks so much like what you expect because of what you are expecting. How to Make-Believe So, if we accept the premise that it is our beliefs that are helping to form our reality, the next question we ought to be asking is how do we make beliefs? This is a very valuable question. We already saw that continued experience during our formative years can plant beliefs into the subconscious through continued exposure. We also saw how we can start to plant these beliefs ourselves though techniques like hypnosis.

What Id like to explore now, is a method that can be even more powerful than these: Taking action. The alaya consciousness is very perceptive. It records all of our experiences in a special way. The one thing consistent about each thing it records is that it is from our own perspective - and colored by our own thoughts and feelings. I experienced the power of action to create new beliefs when I was working to grow my practice of massage therapy. I noticed a very interesting phenomenon. There were a number of items that were necessary for me to purchase in order to develop my business. Many of them were just the simple things that you need for any business - a computer, a printer, pens, etc.; as well as some things specific to massage therapy. I personally have been challenged at times in this life by a belief that there is not enough to go around (which consequently manifested as a lack of wealth or abundance in my own world). This belief would regularly lead me to try to look for ways to cut costs or cut corners. In beginning to shop for my new practice, I faced a very important decision - whether to go cheap and try to build up slowly, or to jump in and purchase the things that would make my business flow smoothly and comfortably - even though I was a little scared about where the money would come from. In considering this decision, I was influenced by some thoughts I was reading on the law of attraction and decided that I would purchase the things I needed as an affirmation that I had plenty of money to spend on necessary items. After trying this out, I noticed that my business picked up greatly - more so, actually, than it had when I had tried other methods like affirmations and the like. This happened without me going out and doing anything different with my marketing, or any other external cause. What I recognized after trying this experiment a few more times is that I was basically cementing the belief that I wanted to have by acting as if it were so. You see, the deep unconscious does not only record, but it also plays back. It takes the impressions we make upon it and spins them out to create our world. The stronger the impression - the more you will see of it out there.

Karma This brings us down now to the crux of the matter - and that is what the ancients called Karma. Karma literally just means action, or cause and effect. In some languages derived from the original Sanskrit, the word just means to do your work - like the laundry, accounting, gardening, etc. Karma is often a highly mystified concept, and therefore not usually very useful to us. If we unpack it a little bit though, we can find out how to use it to our advantage. What goes around, comes around The common understanding of karma is that what goes around comes back around - and this is a good place to start from. The only challenge is that we may have a fuzzy idea of how this works. We may say oh, sounds like youve got bad karma or dont worry, karma will come back around. We may even talk about an illness or situation being a result of something we did in a past life. But these concepts are kind of misty and dont give us a handle on what to do about it. Karma, as action means the actions that we undertake in the world. Specifically, these are the actions undertaken which we see ourselves undertaking and which we record in our deep unconscious. It is important to know that ALL of our actions are seen by this deep unconscious. It is a part of us that never sleeps or goes off line. Its not like some kind of security camera that might have a blind spot, or can be erased. There is really no hiding from it at all. What was said earlier is that the alaya specifically records everything we do from our own perspective. Especially what we were feeling or thinking at the time. These things then get translated into what Ive been talking about as beliefs - and then get projected back out to create the world that we see. To understand how this happens, we should take a couple of examples. Let us say, for instance that your friend has a neck ache. If you were to give this person a massage and try to help him or her, you would be acting out a certain belief in that moment. This belief might be something like people deserve to feel good, or everyone should get relief from their pain. This is recorded in the deep unconscious and will eventually get spun back out in some very beautiful manifestations. You see, the mind that is influencing reality thinks that everyone should get relief from their pain or feel good -

and that includes you! A contrary example might go as follows: Perhaps you need something that you cannot procure by completely honest means. You decide that it would be ok to lie at this time, and do so in order to get what you think you need. The impressions stored by the mind this time might be summarized as People can take things which belong to other people, or I cannot be trusted. These impressions, when they spin back out go on to force you to see a world where people steal from other people - including you - as well as a world where you are not believed or trusted. Now, if you think about an average day, you should realize that every second, you are taking countless actions and thinking countless thoughts. Many of these are likely neutral, some of them are positive, and some of them are negative. If we are going to use this theory to help us manifest all that we truly desire, it is important to start recognizing the type of beliefs were planting deep into the most powerful part of our minds. How Karma Manifests When karma is coming up into our world, it does so according to very specific rules. The ancient schools recognized this and taught them to seekers to help us. The first rule we need to know is that karma always produces a result similar to the cause. This is just like gardening - you shouldnt plant grapefruit seeds and expect an apple tree to sprout up. Similarly, if you see yourself doing negative actions, youll record some unpleasant beliefs, and will later see a world that reflects those beliefs. You will not just by chance see a positive world, even though you planted negative seeds. Karmas always breed true. The next rule that you need to learn is that once a belief has been planted, it must come about. These impressions do not just go away. There are things you can do to moderate or modify how they manifest, but you cannot stop them from manifesting. Why Bad Things Happen to Good People At this point we come up against the ancient question of why do good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people? If we look deeply into the theory, the answers become very

clear. These answers here also provide a breath of fresh air for those of us who have always felt there was some kind of justice in the world - but couldnt quite see how it could be. When karmas are recorded, they do not ever dissolve. This means, that for however long your mind has existed - karmas have been getting stored in the deep unconscious. The thing about bad people is this: we dont really know how long theyve been bad. Even if theyve acted the way they have for the entirety of this life - it is possible that theyve lived before, and acted in a completely different way. [This, by the way, is one of the old arguments for doing as much spiritual work as you can in THIS lifetime - because you may forget what you know on your journey to the next one] The same holds true for good people. Theres no way to know (well, at least not until considerable skill in meditation has been gained) what karmas are waiting in the queue. If something bad happens to you, its not necessarily because of what you did last week - it could be from something you thought in High School, Elementary School, infancy, or possibly before. These concepts can actually be quite valuable in taking some of the guilt out of the knowledge that thoughts can influence reality. One of the challenges with studying the power of the mind to manifest is that if you do happen to get sick, or have some other misfortune - it seems logical to assume that its your own fault. That somehow the thoughts youve been thinking recently in your conscious mind are to blame. That you were somehow in control of what was manifesting and therefore should feel low self-esteem about your inability to control your mind. In actual fact, these problems are arising from deep beneath where your conscious thoughts are occurring. In a way, what you are experiencing is your fault - but guilt will not help the matter in any way. When problems come up, you can recognize that an unwholesome seed was planted at some point in the past and resolve not to plant that kind of seed again. In a later section, well explore how to go about uprooting the seed that is sprouting. The Role of Intention So, weve found out that karmas are stored up and are in a kind of queue - just waiting for the opportune moment to go off. The other thing that we need to know if we are to understand why bad things

happen to good people and vice versa is how our impressions are colored by our intentions. You see, because the storehouse consciousness is recording everything from our perspective and making beliefs out of all of our actions, it is also recording the beliefs with which we do those actions. So, to use an obvious example - there is a big difference between cutting off someones leg out of malice, or cutting off someones leg because it is diseased. In the first case, the belief you are expressing might be something like people deserve to be hurt and deprived of a full life if someone else is angry at them. You can imagine the unsavory repercussions that thoughts like this could bring. In the second example, the belief might be more along the lines of beings lives are important and others do whatever it takes to save them. The action on the outside may look very similar, but on the inside - the part that matters most - it is an utterly different affair. Magnification A final rule of how karmas manifest that we should know for now is that they grow. This too is similar to the way the seeds of plants will grow. If youve ever planted a garden, youll already have great idea of how this next concept works. Also, if youve ever seen a pine nut, or an acorn, and compared these seeds to the size of the trees they produce, youll get the picture. Basically, karmas expand exponentially before they manifest. Some say that the power of these beliefs will double in size each day that they are stored in the consciousness waiting for the right conditions in which to manifest. This can be very problematic according to the ancient teachings, because our karmas often wait around to manifest until our next lifetime, or a couple of lives from now. According to this type of thought, what we are living now is actually mostly generated from whoever we were before we were even born - and theres not much way to know what kind of stuff that consists of. This is why in the ancient teachings we are often advised to put a lot of effort into creating a good life for ourselves next time around - because this time has already been set into motion. You can perhaps see that if your karmas were doubling each day, and they hung around for. Oh 60

or 80 more years of this life. A very small action could create a very large result. Now - to me, waiting around until the next lifetime just somehow doesnt seem as fun as seeing the karmas manifest right in front of me. At least, this seems fun in regards to the good ones - for the bad ones, I dont want to give them that much time to grow before they surprise me and manifest after Ive forgotten all about them. Fortunately, the powerful Teachers of the past have left us with techniques by which we can speed the process up. Some of these teachings, it is said, can even enable one to become completely free and empowered in the course of this single human lifespan. Putting it into Practice Now that we know how belief seeds are created and stored in our deep unconscious mind, we are ready to start a full scale practice of karmic gardening and this begins with the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule Weve probably all heard the Golden Rule before - Do unto others as youd have them do unto you - but many of us have never been given a very important piece of information. That information is called whats in it for me? The great thing about the Golden Rule is that it is actually the way to create happiness for yourself. All ancient religious and social systems have had some similar principle at their core. Some explain this as a way to keep societies under control and functioning smoothly, some just see it as a moralistic dogma. When we understand the operation of karma - we begin to see how this Rule is truly the way to create whatever life we dream of! Put very simply, the fundamental rule of working with our karma to create the life we dream of is this: Whatever you want for yourself, do for someone else. We know how this will work. We see ourselves doing these actions and then our mind stores the impressions and spins them back out as our world. Its an amazingly simple process! Planning the Karmic Garden When weve begun to think of our karma as seeds that get planted in the deep unconscious, then grow and blossom as the perception of

our lives, we can begin to conceive of what wed like our karmic garden to look like. Imagine that youve inherited a plot of land, and on it you can grow whatever kind of food and landscape you wish. You could raise animals, you could grow beautiful flowers. The only problem is that this land hasnt been really tended by someone who knows how to grow a garden - you have to start from scratch. This is like the condition of our minds and lives when we first start the process of manifesting our most beautiful world. One of the first things well need to do is to make a plan of the kind of garden wed like to grow. This means we get to do a really fun process of imagining the happiest world that we can. But - since were new to the process, lets start small. Weve got a big piece of land to work with, but we can only really do it a piece at a time. The kind of gardening were talking about here is highly experimental - we want to see if it works first, and we want to be able to find out how best to implement our plan of action. Choose Just One Thing To begin, our first assignment is to find one thing in our lives that wed like to improve. This should be something manageable - like a manageable sized piece of earth that we can till and plant. Perhaps youd like to grow some more money in your life (many of us wouldnt mind that). Perhaps youd like to lose some weight or improve your health in another way. Later, well talk about how to take on big issues that involve many people and our world as a whole. Once you have found the area youd like to create change in, you should begin to go through the process we described in the earlier section on manifestation. Create an image in your mind complete with sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Create words or phrases that embody this intention for change that you can use to remind yourself. This does not have to be a one time process - you can revise your ideal as often as youd like - but its important at the very beginning to put some firm effort into thinking of what it is you want to create. This helps you to have the big picture, to formulate a plan of action. If you were planning a garden for the first time - or even just for the season - you would probably be more efficient if you had some idea of what youd like to grow, rather than just heading to a local

seed store and looking around. Youll need to know what kind of space you need for things, whether they like shade or sun, how much water will be required, and all the rest. Of course, shopping can be a good way to figure out what most inspires you. Some gardeners love to head to the seed store - or sift through catalogues to see what is available and what others have done so they can get inspired about the possibilities. Going Seed Shopping Once you have planned out the plot youre going to work on, youve got an idea of what you want to see come up in the Spring. Now its time to go out shopping for the seeds youll need to plant to see those beautiful flowers and fruits. So first, we remind ourselves of karmas Golden Rule - that whatever we want in life, we must see ourselves doing for another. With this in mind, we can look at a couple of examples of how to apply this in our own lives. Abundance With one of the examples above, that of wishing for more abundance in our lives, the seeds are very straightforward - GIVE. What is very nice here is that it doesnt even require that we be materially abundant already. All the different kinds of giving show up in our own unconscious in the same way - as a belief in an abundant world where people help each other. Often, if you are saving seed, youll know that you need to save about 10% or so of your crop to reinvest in next years crop. These are plants that you plant not to eat right now - but to eat later in the form of more plants. This 10% rule is also utilized in many religious traditions that emphasize tithing. The idea is that you give 10% to the church or spiritual organization or person in order to help them to thrive. The secret that we do not often learn is that this 10% not only helps that organization to thrive, but comes back to you as continued material abundance. So to begin our experiment, we can look at taking about 10% of what we have and finding a way to use it to benefit others. When we look at it with an open mind, we may find that we actually have a lot to give. For example - if we happen to be without a job, it is likely that we are very rich in time. What would it cost you to take just 10% of that time and donate it in a meaningful way to someone who could

truly benefit by it? Incidentally - it has been shown that the people who are happiest in this life are those who feel like they have some way of contributing to others. One of the worst things about being unemployed or in some other unfavorable situation is the feeling of boredom, depression, or uselessness that can come to you. Getting out and helping others is one of the quickest ways to overcome these negative feelings. In addition to these things making you feel happy, and helping snap you out of the funk that can be caused by unemployment, happier people are generally the ones who get picked for jobs - they just seem to have a glow about them. Happy people radiate a kind of magnetism that attracts others to them. Beyond all the subtle causes of karma were talking about here - there are plenty of gross/apparent reasons that helping others can help you manifest the life you most deeply desire. So, back to the subtle, karmic causes. What are some of the things you can give? Well, you can give of your time - as we said already, and obviously you can give materially. But this doesnt mean just money. Ive often noticed a great spike in my own level of income and abundance after cleaning out my closet and donating old clothes to organizations that would distribute them or the proceeds of their sale to others in need. We can also give of ourselves emotionally. If we are generous with our happiness, generous with our listening, generous with our love - we are planting very strong seeds in the garden of our lives. Health In the other example given above - that of wanting to lose weight, the seeds to plant may not be as obvious, but upon reflection will be seen to be just as straightforward according to the principles weve been discussing. To hone in on what kind of seeds well need, we need to find out what losing the weight means to you. A couple of common ideas about a thinner body are that it means better health, or that it means greater attractiveness. These two have slightly different seeds that need to be planted - but by all means, dont restrict yourself to just one - why not be both radiantly healthy, AND attractive? To create greater health, all we need to do is focus on increasing the health of another. Back toward the beginning of the

book, I mentioned that if you help a friend with a neck ache, you plant beliefs that people should have their pain relieved. Basically, you planted a karma of good health for yourself by helping to improve the health of another. Many people who have successfully improved their own health have found that having a partner in the process is very beneficial. Usually we think of these people as being there to help us. We think that the benefit is coming from them being there to keep us on task. Oh, Id better not fall off my program, because Ill have to check in with my friend later. In actual fact, though, it is actually our desire to help THEM that makes the arrangement effective. Some readers will already intuitively know this. They know that its not the thought of getting in trouble for falling off the diet that keeps them on track - its the thought that their friend might get discouraged and fall off too. When youre working for someone else, it empowers you to do more than youd ever be able to do just for yourself. People starting an exercise program can experience this as well. Having a buddy to go to yoga class with is often more fun than just trying to get yourself there on your own. Yes, its the togetherness, the camaraderie, that creates the feeling of fun - but what is creating that feeling of camaraderie? What gives you the good feelings is actually the act of extending your care and aid to your friend. This is what gives you enough good feeling and life force to get to the class and do the workout. So, we can see some examples of this in common situations. These are not the only ways to go about it though. You can find all sorts of situations throughout the day to improve the health of others. Maybe there is a rug that sticks up in the hallway that always trips people - you can straighten it out for them so no one gets injured. Maybe you can find creative ways to sneak more healthful food into your familys meals and thereby reduce their trips to the doctors office or days sick at home. If you start doing these things, you will soon notice that it is that much more easy to hold strong to your new health program. You may even notice that pounds start to fall off and your quality of life increases without you making any changes to your diet and exercise. Generally, though, all of these efforts to assist others actually start to change the subtle causes in you in sneaky ways that leave you craving for a healthier lifestyle. The subtle energetic origin of karma operates through the apparent causal factors of our tangible world

and, before you know it, creates the life youve always dreamed of. Attractiveness The seeds we need to plant to see ourselves (and have others see us) as attractive may not be immediately intuitive, but make perfect sense. The seeds that cause this are ones of kindness. When we are kind to others, we are planting the impression that will make us see a lot of very friendly energy coming back in our direction. It is very interesting, when we decide wed like to be kind, it seems like we start to get more and more opportunities to do so. One of those opportunities is created because we become more and more attractive to others. Our kindness starts to radiate out from us in a beautiful glow - and the same thing that makes this glow happen on the outside also works inwardly - it supercharges our systems and literally begins to transform our physical body into one that we perceive as beautiful. We can also find ways of helping others to feel more beautiful. This might mean buying them something we think would look great on them. It might mean that we simply use our speech in very kind ways to tell them how radiant they look. Anything we can do to increase their esteem will ultimately reflect back and increase our own. When we have the belief that we are great, beautiful, radiant, that this reflection creates - the body simply follows what the mind is telling us and creates the most beautiful form we can imagine. In the next section, well look at more of the types of seeds we can plant to create any circumstance we desire in this life. Buddhist Precepts - The Karmic Seed Store In traditional Buddhism, there are a number of different vows that one takes depending upon the level of study one is undertaking. A monk may take many vows, but a lay person traditionally takes five. What is wonderful about these vows is that they give us a great beginning of understanding how to plant the karmic seeds for any issue we may be struggling with. In this section, well take a look at these precepts and how they relate to our path of planting karmic seeds to create our garden. 1. Do not kill - respect all life The original vow of a Buddhist practitioner is not to kill. This has

varying levels of intensity - from abstaining from taking human life - to abstaining from taking that of animals and even insects. For our purposes, though, we can think of this as a vow to respect and promote all life. This life promoting urge can be a simple as the examples above - where we helped our friend with a neck ache, or became a yoga buddy with someone to help them get to class. The result of this karmic seed is that we begin to see greater and greater health. When we respect and promote life, we have ease in the body. Classically, it is actually said that keeping this precept is what makes medicine work, makes qigong, yoga, or exercise make you healthier. Lacking this precept, we give in to actions which intentionally harm life, or allow beings to be harmed without intervening to protect them. Many people who will read this book are already likely very good at not physically harming others, but we should be equally careful with our thoughts. Thought is said to be about 70% of our karma. So any time something bad happens to another and we either feel good about it (because we think they deserved it for some reason), or even fail to feel sorry for them, we generate a karma to see ourselves in some physical pain or distress. Practicing this precept is the karmic cure for physical pain or illnesses. In some schools of traditional Buddhism there are even rituals in which they will release animals that were going to be killed with special prayers. In our lives, we do not need to learn any new rituals, we can simply learn to protect life wherever we see it. We can give aspirin to a friend with a headache. We can give a shoulder rub to someone who is stressed out. We can teach someone some simple yoga, or make them a healthy dinner. All of these actions will plant in our mental gardens the seeds to see a world of good health and physical ease. 2. Do not steal - Give to others Put negatively, this vow means to take nothing that is not your own. In the positive sense, it is to give to others and be generous. When we put this into practice, we plant beliefs in our deep unconscious which will flower as the perception of material abundance and wealth. When we fail to uphold this precept and steal from others, we plant a belief that will make us see ourselves losing our possessions

and lacking access to wealth. Stealing is an interesting example of how occasionally you can have apparent success - some people succeed at stealing and gain the possessions of others. Unfortunately, though, we may misperceive where this apparent wealth is coming from. In fact, the wealth that is gained from stealing, can only actually ever come from generosity that one has done in the past - the karmic cause of wealth. Stealing, on the other hand is the karmic cause of poverty - when you use up your karmic wealth in this way, you have actually deprived yourself of that wealth for the future, by planting the beliefs that will ultimately steal it from you. Its just a matter of time. This precept is the karmic cure for any kind of poverty on the material level. Classically, the training in generosity would be done by lay people by giving to monks, but we can begin to find all kinds of generosity. As was stated above, there are many ways to give. We can give material wealth, we can give of our time, and we can give the highest form of giving, which is giving others the understanding of how wealth is created - karmically. When we give in this way, and refrain from taking the possessions of others we plant the beliefs that create a world in which we see material abundance. 3. Avoidance of lying and misuse of speech - Always speak truthfully and kindly The avoidance of lying creates the karma which allows you to be believed, and also to avoid being lied to. Put positively, when we speak truthfully and use our speech kindly, we are readily believed by others and become influential while also seeing conflict and corruption cease in our world. This precept actually involves three possible misuses of speech. The first is lying - which refers to intentionally misleading others. The second is engaging in gossip and speech that is wasted. The final is engaging in divisive speech. To lie causes you to be disbelieved, and to be misled. To engage in wasted speech means to talk unnecessarily and also to listen to things unnecessarily (such as many forms of entertainment like most of whats on T.V.). Wasting speech is wasting the life force energy of your body and mind and can cause you to create a world in which you do not have enough of those things - you may also be deprived of enough time to accomplish your goals, or to rest after doing your required work.

Divisive speech refers to any speech which tears people away from each other. This may mean spreading gossip which reflects others in an unsavory light. This can also be combined with false speech - where you tell lies about others in order to divide people. Needless to say, this kind of combination creates very negative impressions in your own consciousness. On the positive side, kind and honest speech is the karmic cure for being misled, not being believed or respected, corruption in your personal environment, workplace, or even state or country. If you want to be more influential, popular, or attractive, this is the area in which you should work. If you are dealing with being often misled by others, or have trouble trusting others because of incidents in the past, this precept can be of great assistance. Once you have let go of the need to ever mislead others with your speech, you can begin to cultivate speech which truly lifts people up. You can use your speech to bring people together by sharing someones positive qualities with another. You can intentionally find ways to help others get the right auto mechanic, carpenter, or whatever it is they need. If you want to supercharge this kind of karmic seed of honesty, you can not only not lie, but you can find ways to make your speech extra true - by only speaking of things that are especially meaningful and uplifting. Eventually, individuals will be very attracted to you because of the subtle causes you are creating, and also because your every word is so on-point and on purpose that people naturally feel uplifted when they are around you. 4. Refrain from sexual misconduct - Respect the relationships of others. This precept refers to honoring the commitments of another in regards to relationship. This does not only refer to legally married individuals. If were thinking of the subtle causes - what the deep unconscious sees is whether our actions have the intention or the potential of causing pain to another. When it comes to intimate relationships - the potential for causing pain and confusion is very high, so we must be especially careful to weigh our intentions and the probable effects of our actions. Remember also that, like was said under the precept against harming life, 70% or so of the karma that is created is created by your thoughts. Jesus is often quoted in saying that if you have adultery with someone in your thoughts, it is the same as if you did the action

in the flesh. This may not be a popular viewpoint, but the results of this action can readily be seen if one starts on the practice of karmic gardening. The positive side of this precept is to honor your own commitments regarding intimate relationships. If you have a spouse or intimate partner, always respect them with your actions and thoughts. Do not fantasize or flirt with the spouse or partner of another. Only engage in intimate relationships with consenting adults who can enter into the decision with full consciousness. This is the karmic cure for all kind of relationship issues. If you have a relationship that contains any kind of strife, look to the seeds that you are planting in this area. If you are not in an intimate relationship, but would like to find one, this is the precept to focus on. What is interesting and wonderful to note here, is that you can use these methods without having a partner who is supportive or even interested in them. The way your partner is able to show up in your world is totally dependant upon how you allow them to show up through the beliefs of your deep mind. That means that regardless of who you are dealing with, regardless of if you have a partner or not, regardless of your relationship history - you have all the power you need right in your hands to create the relationship of your dreams! You can plant these seeds by the above mentioned means, which are mostly things to avoid. On the positive side, you can help others with their relationships by being a wise counsel to friends (and using that non-divisive speech that brings others together). You can help to set friends up with potential mates or double date with them and help everyone there have a good time. One of the most powerful seeds you can plant, regardless of whether you are trying to find a relationship, or simply improve the one you have, is to help others who are lonely. You can go to a senior home, or a hospice center and just spend time with others. You can find the awkward person at a party and decide to be their friend and protector. You can volunteer with Big Brother or Sister organizations. Try any or all of these out and watch how much love streams into your life from all directions. 5. Avoid Intoxicants - Maintain the clarity of your mind Classically, this precept for a monk means the avoidance of intoxicating substances entirely. Some of the traditions for lay practitioners simply advise avoiding having your thoughts, senses, and feelings befuddled by substance abuse. In my understanding,

this precept also warns us to avoid falling into a trap which is sometimes referred to as false worldview. This is the trap of letting the mind meander off into its familiar views of the world even though we understand they are not true - usually out of laziness, or an arising negative emotion. The worldview we would like to cultivate is the one presented here - that we can find the underlying causes that make us see the world that we see and we can use them to create happiness for ourselves and others. All of these activities - using intoxicating substances, indulging in false or disempowering worldviews - have the result of making the mind more befuddled. If we look at them, all of these activities are ways of not relating to the truth we would perceive if we were paying attention. The result of these karmas is that we store an impression that we would rather not see too deeply into reality. As with the apparent causes of long term drug abuse, the mind gets slower and less able to grasp new concepts. Following this precept is the cure for a sluggish mind, or a mind which seems unable to keep up with the world around it. It can be used to help deal with learning disabilities, or just to supercharge your ability to grasp and process new information. We can plant seeds in this area in a number of ways. The one most directly opposite to the use of intoxicants is to feed the body only healthy and vitalizing substances that empower the minds activity and rest. We can also be sure to get the adequate amount of sleep and exercise. For creating clarity of mind, we can spend time studying matters of deep spiritual import - this plants within us the deep belief and impression that wed like to see into the underlying nature of how things really work. We may start to notice that concepts come faster, or new sources of information on things were interested it spontaneously start showing up in our world. Traditionally, a person taking lay or monastic initiation in Buddhism would take one or all of the above precepts as vows - utilizing them as the fastest way to see a beautiful world created all around them. In our own life, these precepts can be a great start on thinking about how to go about planting our karmic garden. Review this list often and see what thoughts and inspirations arise in your own mind about how to plant your actions to create the life youve always wanted.

Karmic Weeding Now that weve got some idea of the plan for our garden, and weve taken the time to select the seeds - were going to have to get down to business. And that means weeding the garden. Lets face it, for most of us, we have likely not been saints all our lives, and even if youve done a pretty good job during this life - it is possible that youve got a big store of seeds from all the lives that preceded this one. So we had better get busy on weeding out all the undesirable seeds from our garden before they choke out the new life that we want to see coming up. How do we know what kind of seeds are in the storehouse of the past? Very simply, we look to where the problems are in our lives. Pulling a Karmic Weed Pulling up a karmic weed takes a couple of very specific steps, but once youve done it, you dont have to worry about it coming back. Karmic weeds are just like weeds in real life - if you dont find them and pull them in time, they just put out new seeds, and then youve got a whole new string of weeds to deal with later. If you can catch them when theyre coming up, you can save yourself a great deal of misery. To strongly plant a karmic seed, you need a number of factors. You need to recognize yourself doing the action - and the stronger you recognize yourself, the better. You need to rejoice in yourself doing the action. And finally, you need to feel proud of the action, and that youd do it again in the future. The sad thing is that many of us fail to really strongly recognize and feel proud of the good actions that we do. These seeds thus get planted, but not very deeply. Negative actions, on the other hand, are often performed when under the influence of a strong emotion. We feel vindicated when we are acting, thinking, or speaking out of anger or sadness, and we therefore meet the above requirements. We see ourselves doing the action and we record it very strongly with the intensity of the moment, we rejoice in our success in the action, and we think that we would do the same again if offered the opportunity. If we are going to uproot these karmic seeds, we must apply a reverse process. Here is the way it works: First, you have to identify where the problem is in your life and

recognize that it is coming from your past actions. You can do this by thinking about the things that are unsatisfactory in your world, and checking the results listed under the precepts above to find out what the karmic causes are. To follow the metaphor of gardening, this would be locating the roots of the weed. Secondly, you have to reverse the tendency of rejoicing in your negative actions by cultivating a healthy regret for having behaved in this way in the past. This should not be confused with simply feeling guilty, and especially not with feeling sorry for yourself. You simply realize that you acted out of ignorance or weakness in the past and it is now manifesting in a way that is unpleasant. You acknowledge that this is not a desirable state of affairs, and so you start to feel sorry that you acted in that way previously. Third, you must make a resolve not to engage in this kind of action again in the future. This helps to reverse the effects of having felt proud of your negative actions in the past and feeling that youd do them again if you had the chance. This step of resolve is one of the fastest ways to cut off the unpleasant effects of a negative seed sprouting. Fourth, and finally, you must find the antidote. The antidote is an action which is the opposite to the type of action you did in the past and which helps to balance out the play of forces in your life. The above 3 steps help to lessen the effect of the karma that has been set into motion, but they cannot really reverse it. Doing the opposite puts new seeds into action which counterbalance the negative input of the past seeds. To understand this process more clearly, lets take an example of how this might work. Lets say that the problem were dealing with is one of being in a company where the management seems to be corrupt. You cannot quite always trust what they are saying. Lets say, for example, that its not feasible for you to leave the organization, so you want to try to fix it karmically. For this, you look at the list of precepts to find out how youve

created the corrupt environment that you find yourself in. We find that this is a result of harmful speech - lying, and dividing others with your words. Once youve found the true cause, you should try to think of times in your life where you have lied to others, or divided others with your speech. If you believe in past lives, you should also consider that you have likely used divisive or misleading speech at times in those embodiments as well. Knowing that this type of speech has caused your current issue, you generate a feeling of regret for your past ignorant actions. From this place of regret, you can come to feel resolve to no longer divide people with your speech, and to no longer mislead them. You vow to yourself to change these patterns and to not go back to your ignorant ways of acting which cause you so much trouble. Finally, you find out what the opposite, positive actions would be that could moderate and counterbalance this negative state of affairs - namely - positive and truthful speech that brings people together. You might start to consciously try to compliment others in the workplace, and help them get to the right person to get a job done. You would be careful to be completely honest in your dealings with people. Through these steps, you can find that situations in your life change rapidly. Often the hardest step is just the first one - figuring out or remembering that it is your own past actions which have created the current state of affairs that you are perceiving. Once you recognize that, the other three steps seem to flow all on their own. In my own experience, by the time I have resolved to no longer do the offending action, the problem has all but disappeared from my life on the apparent level. Applying the antidote action serves to change situations in the most beautiful ways that are usually beyond what I could have imagined. Renunciation, Repentance, and Resolve At this point, a question might be coming up for you. What should we do if we dont want to have to wait for problems to manifest before we can uproot our past negative karmic actions? What is wonderful is that just asking the question shows that you have the capacity to find these old seeds and uproot them before they can take root and sprout.

The way that this is done is very simple, we simply think back to all the past actions which we know will bear a type of fruit that we do not want, and we consciously take account of them and apply the same process as above. To practice, you can take the list of precepts and look through while thinking about your past actions in this life - look for things youve done which you are not proud of, as well as things that you know will sprout as a world which is not so pleasant to inhabit. Then, simply think of all these actions and how you feel sorry that you did them out of ignorance. Form the resolve to avoid these type of actions in the future. Go on to find out what the antidote is as before, and just do it. Planting antidotes in this way is kind of like the practice of planting a cover crop. Theyll nourish the soil for the future karmic imprints that you will plant, and at the same time theyll choke out any weeds and fill up the space so theres no room for anything to grow but goodness! As you get good at this practice, you start to realize what the ancient traditions meant when they spoke of renunciation. If you look into any old religious tradition there is always this sentiment expressed that if you want to grow youll have to renounce the world. This renunciation is actually simply renouncing the type of actions that only bring misery. What a wonderful way to grow spiritually - to resolve to only engage in actions and thoughts that will bring happiness not only for you - but for all others in the process! The Planting and Nourishing of a Karmic Seed We reviewed above some of the conditions needed to help a karmic seed take root and grow strong. This is like tending to the condition of the soil and making it suitable for the seed to flourish. To review, you will need to strongly recognize and record what you are doing, rejoice in your actions, and resolve to do them again. Recognizing and recording what your are doing mean that you take note when you do something that is kind to another and which will bring about the kind of world you would like to live in. Often, we do many things that are kind throughout the day - like obeying traffic rules, opening the door for another, avoiding harsh or malicious speech to our loved ones, etc. These are actually great stores of potential seeds for our karmic garden, but we dont give them the attention they require to truly thrive. The other aspect of this

important first step is that we engage in the process with a full knowledge of how it works. When we are generous to another, we should give with the knowledge that it will come back to us. This causes our deep unconscious mind to perk up and listen carefully as it records the imprint and belief of the action. If recognizing the action helps to prepare the soil, rejoicing in our action helps to give the seed the water and sunlight it needs to thrive. By doing this, we are adding energy and attention in the deep unconscious mind that says we are really happy about what weve just done. This magnifies the effect of this particular imprint in the mind. Finally, resolving to continue this action into the future does a couple of things at once. First, it is the final step in making sure that this little seed gets all the nutrients it needs to sprout and blossom strongly, but it plants a secondary seed that makes it more likely well plant this same kind in the future and create a karmic upward spiral (which well discuss in a later section). Fertilizer and Amendments Now that weve got these beautiful seeds planted, all weve got to do is sit around and wait for the beautiful world weve nurtured to sprout up where we can see it. Theres a small problem here, though. The standard karmic seed can actually take a loooooong time to sprout. This, as was mentioned before, is actually part of why they are usually so big when they come back around as our world. For those of us trying to live this life in a good way, it can seem like a challenge to wait until next time around for the resources we need to help others. Fortunately, there are ways of speeding the process up! The first is actually what we did at the very beginning of the book. Asking very clearly for what we want. This invokes the power of our intention. As many people will recognize, the intention plays a very strong role in what is able to manifest in ones world. Now were going to learn to utilize this intention and load it with all the positive impressions weve made through our good thoughts and actions toward others. The Role of Intention The Master Jesus told a very famous story about a man with

some seeds. In the story, the man is walking along and some of his seeds spill into different environments. It is only the seeds that get planted in the field that bear good fruit. Hidden in this story is a key to how we can use our intention to influence the manifestation of karma. We can change the type of soil that is available so that our seeds can take root in it and come up. Many people already know that intention can have some influence on material reality. There are even some interesting scientific studies of late that have started to measure this phenomenon. People all over the world have had good results with things like affirmation, creative visualization, focused prayer, ritual, and hypnosis. If youve ever practiced any of these, one thing should be clear - they dont always work in the same way. Sometimes when you do affirmations, you get a tremendous result immediately, other times, the result is more subtle and takes a long time. Sometimes prayers are answered directly, sometimes more indirectly, and sometimes it seems that they are answered not at all. Sometimes youll use a technique to get exactly what you wanted, and then it will all fall apart on you after a short time. The secret to learn here is that it is not the methods you are using themselves which cause the manifestation. It is whether they are loaded or not, and what they are loaded with. What we load these various methods with is our karma - the deep impressions of our storehouse consciousness. It is actually the same with any of the actions we undertake. If you ask different people about dating, one will tell you that going to bars is a great way to meet people - another will tell you that never works and you have to go somewhere like a library or church. Another will tell you that none of these works, its all just random luck whether you find someone or not and have a connection. In business, some will say that you have to be very conservative, others will tell you that you have to take a lot of risks - and theyre both right, and wrong. You can see examples in the world of people using very disparate means to achieve the same kind of ends. You can see other people using the same means and getting different results. It seems as if the things that they are doing are not, themselves, the cause of success and failure. It is the same with the use of intention. Your intention directs the way that the seeds are going to manifest, like planting rows in the

garden, or determining how much water or sunlight the sprouts will get. The intention does not, however, cause the manifestation to occur. That is facilitated by something different. Intention is very valuable though. If we want our seeds to sprout up in a certain way, and at a certain time, we can use the power of our mind to plant them, water them, and put them in the sun. We do this through concentrating on the desired outcome - whether you want to do this through prayer, ritual, hypnosis, art projects, or whatever. When you know what is powering these various techniques, you have something that will work every time. You just have to make sure that your technique is loaded. If you want some great abundance to come into your life - you have to have been doing a bit of giving before your prayers can even be answered. If we think of this in terms of what the mind is thinking, you are making a little petition with your intention or prayer that says you want a certain thing. With your actions, though, youve got to be saying the same thing. Otherwise, youve been walking around and broadcasting the exact opposite to the deep consciousness. Youve been telling yourself that the very thing you want is not actually possible, and your actions (karma) always speak louder than your words (thoughts/intentions). So, if you want to see the karma start coming up, just follow the steps weve put forth so far - weed your garden, fill it with seeds, and then water them with your intentions. Soon, youll have a garden the looks exactly like youve been dreaming of. Miracle Grow So far weve been discussing the ordinary type of karmic seeds that you can plant. These are by far the most important, because soon your life becomes so full of ethical actions that there is no room whatsoever for any lesser action to pop up. As you walk or drive down the street, your walking and driving is an expression of your ethics and kindness. As you speak with other beings, you find yourself continually tuning in to the ways that you might be able to help - to what you could say to help them be just a little bit happier. These kind of seeds are so important because they are the foundation of creating the beautiful world you would like to see. They are the type of actions and thoughts that you can do on a continual basis without ceasing or failing. There are, however, another kind of karmic seeds which are

even more powerful. These are seeds which we can use to quickly create a large store of goodness in our own lives, and the lives of others. They are seeds that grow quickly, and carry with them a great force in the direction that we want to go. These seeds are those kind actions that you do to someone who is, him or herself, very important. The first of these kind of people are spiritual teachers. If we think about this, its actually kind of obvious why the seeds here are so powerful. A spiritual teacher is not just someone who helps the temporary happiness of others, it is someone with true methods by which people can lift themselves up and out of suffering forever. When you help a person like this, it is as if you are taking part directly in their mission. Then, some of the karma of that mission (which is considerable) becomes your own good karma. As this spiritual person goes through life, changing the lives of others for the better, you get to say I helped with that. Every time you make that recognition and rejoice that such good is happening in the world, it plants new karmic seeds to see more and more of the same kind of goodness. Another powerful person to help is anyone who helps others in a more temporary way. These are people like doctors, or philanthropists. People who are making a difference in the lives of many others. It is the same principle as that above for spiritual teachers. It is also of great power to help your own parents. This is regardless of whether you think they did a good job or not. There is deep theory regarding why this is powerful which we do not have time to go into here, but one piece of the theory goes like this. The fact that you have a body is the gateway to the possibility of happiness for you - not only in this life, but in whatever is to come. Just the fact that your mother brought you into this world through the gate of her body is possibly the greatest gift you could have been given - no matter how she treated you after. This last seed also refers to anyone who has done great good for you. In almost all cultures, a sign of a good heart is that a child loves its mother and takes care of her. Part of the reason is this - if someone sacrifices for you, just to see you safe and nurtured, and then you turn your back upon her - this is a grave offence which plants very unpleasant beliefs in your own psyche. Other people can recognize this - and the intelligent ones dont want to associate with such a person. Doing kindness to someone who has been good to

you in your life plants very powerful beliefs in your own mind, and they are beliefs which come quickly to fruition. The final type of person on this list is a person who is seriously in need. Someone who is very poor, very sick, having a difficult time emotionally, or something similar is a great candidate for your kindness. If you can successfully help such a person, or even offer them comfort, it creates very powerful reverberations in your psyche that show up as a beautiful world. Doing something nice for a rich and healthy neighbor is of course wonderful - everyone deserves kindness after all - but doing something nice for someone who is really struggling will likely mean a lot more to them. When something means a lot more to the person youre doing it to, it means just as much to your own deep consciousness. One final note on this last type of person. It doesnt just mean there is one kind of need. Everyone you meet is likely to have some deep need that they would love to have comforted. It can be our exciting adventure to help ferret it out and then give them what they wanted. We get to be a sort of ninja of kindness. Find out what your rich and healthy neighbor does struggle with, and then help him or her have the most complete happiness they could ask for. Other Karma Boosters There are two other ways that we can powerfully boost our karmic impressions and see them flower in a very short time. The first is by rejoicing in the happiness and goodness of others, and the second is by gratitude. The first method is this - when you see someone, or hear of someone who is doing something wonderful for others, simply be happy about it. Yep, thats all. By doing so, you actually get a measure of the karma of that act (the Teachers say 10% of the karma, to be specific). Why is this so? Well, put very simply, when you feel happy about good things getting done in the world, you are believing in those actions. You are impressing that belief deeply into your unconscious storehouse, and you will see it flower as those type of good things happening to you. The other way that this works is that it creates a kind of wish in your deep mind that eventually gathers strength and comes about. This wish is that you too could be doing that same kind of good in the world. Perhaps right now you are just not able. Maybe you dont

have the financial resources, the courage, the good health, etc. By rejoicing that at least someone is doing it, you actually plant the impressions that will bring to you the inner and outer resources to do those things yourself. Lets look at a couple of specific, practical examples. In the previous sections we mentioned a couple of the biggest issues that many people face - wealth, and health. Lets look at health first. Imagine that you are trying to create better health in your life either weight loss, dealing with a particular illness or condition, quitting a destructive habit like smoking, or the like. If you want to speed up the karma for this, you may realize that theres only so much you can do on your own, so you decide to try the rejoicing thing. What youd want to do is think of someone who is doing a lot to increase the health and wellness of others. Perhaps you know someone who has a community acupuncture clinic where they work for low rates one day per week. Maybe a physician friend travels to impoverished areas, or areas where there have been natural disasters. Maybe you dont know anyone like this, but youve heard that someone, somewhere does something like this. To apply the method, all you have to do is sit down and go Wow, how cool that theyre doing that. And thats all - youve done it. If you want to take it just a bit farther, you can think I hope one day to be that cool and be able to do something like that, but how great that they are doing it now! By this kind of thinking, youve just planted a bunch of powerful, fast-growing impressions into the mind that youll see coming back in no time. Similarly, if you are attempting to generate more wealth, youd find someone who is extremely generous. I personally tend to think of all the moms that I have ever met. Moms are people who give of their time, their money, their emotional presence, and more. They do it all out of love. Perhaps youve heard of big philanthropists or organizations which are doing something you can really get behind. Just take a few minutes per day and reflect on how great that is. If you want to boost it even more - reflect on how great it is and wish that you could do something that great one day. Thats it! Contrary to instinct One of the things to recognize about planting the type of world we want through our karmic impressions is that it often requires us to do that which seems counterintuitive. If you need more abundance,

going out and giving more away is not usually the first thing that pops into your mind. If your health is low, it can be hard to take care of yourself - let alone someone else. And yet, these are precisely the acts which will improve your personal situation. In the practice of rejoicing, this is also true. Normally, there is a subtle level of competition associated with being a human. We see someone doing a great good and we think I wish Id done that and we actually feel a little bit bummed that they did the good thing because it wasnt us. Each time we do this, we chip away at our store of positive karma. If we can train ourselves to reverse the natural instinct to compete with others in this way, we have the opportunity to be continually generating the kind of mind impressions that will come back around as a beautiful world to inhabit. Gratitude The second major booster to help our karma grow powerfully and rapidly is the practice of gratitude. This is another type of mental state that is generally looked upon highly by all the ancient systems of ethics. Why is this? I think there are a couple of reasons. One, is that people feel better about giving to you (and even dealing with you) if they know that you are grateful. Another is that if you truly appreciate what you have received, you are more likely to give something back - as weve seen, this not only helps everyone else, but helps you too. Finally, gratitude just feels good. When you are grateful, it creates a kind of open expansiveness in the heart that makes everything a little brighter and more enjoyable. When we get down to the art of manifestation, gratitude works in a very specific way. First of all, that expansive feeling in the heart is usually a very good sign that youve aligned yourself with the way things really work. Its a feeling of literally having more energy available. Thus, when you decide to direct that energy with your intentions, the results will be magnified. Its also very hard to act in ways that will create negative impressions when youre feeling all grateful all the time. Finally, holding a mindset of gratitude keeps your intention honed on what you do want in your world. It is a little known secret that everything we think throughout the entire day is a type of intention that puts our karmic impressions into action. Its just that our thoughts are usually so unfocused that not a lot happens thats very amazing. If we can learn to focus our

thoughts in a particular direction - the manifestation of those thoughts occurs very rapidly. Gratitude is a way of creating this focused intention. If you are walking through life and thinking wow, Im driving down a street, how nice of someone to pave this for people to drive on, and how amazing that I have a house to live in and comfortable blankets to sleep with you are training the minds focus onto the things you love the most. When the mind chooses what directions to manifest in, it will naturally fall into those grooves. If we do the opposite oh, this street is always so congested and I hate potholes or this house is getting so run down I feel so poor and deprived, the mind takes these beliefs and runs with them. When we practice gratitude intentionally and consistently, we are inculcating into the mind the beliefs that we want. Soon, gratitude becomes a habit and we get happier and happier. This empowers the entire garden of our karmic impressions. Beyond the Me So now we have all the basic principles that we need in order to plant our karmic garden and start to see beauty all around us. Once we know the principles, we can start to work on the real reasons that were doing all this work. Come on, you didnt really think that a book called The BUDDHIST Art Of Manifestation was going to be all about you, did you? Some readers will be very grateful for this section of the book, because were going to be moving into what most of us know intuitively to be true - that focusing all of these ideas around yourself and what you want is only half of the story. To truly understand these principles on a deep level, weve got to start to look into how they work on our understanding of, and relationship to others. Set Free to be Compassionate The wonderful thing about these specific teachings is that they can set us free to be the loving and compassionate beings that weve always wanted to be. If we look honestly at life, there are only a few reasons why we would not want to be loving and kind - while there are multiple reasons why we should want to be. The only reason that we ever shut down love and compassion is the impression that we have to choose between making others happy and having happiness for ourselves. When we understand

that making others happy and making ourselves happy are actually the same thing, we get set free to create all the happiness we always wished - both for others and for ourselves. The beautiful thing we can come to realize is that we can have everything we ever wanted, but we are saved from becoming selfish because the only way we can get it is by serving others. We also realize that we can serve others, but are saved from becoming martyrs because the more we give, the more we seem to receive. It is a middle way between extremes that finally allows us to attain a true and lasting happiness. The False Impression of Self and Others When weve practiced the art of gardening our karmic impressions for a while, we get more and more convinced that the easiest way to get something for ourselves is to give it to someone else. As we do this, an interesting thing begins to happen to our understanding of the world - we cease to see other people so much as out there and start to feel as if in here is a lot bigger than we used to think. This is actually what it feels like to be in love. If youve ever been really in love, youll know that it feels, at times, as if you and the beloved are no longer two, but one person. People report feeling as if they care more about their beloveds welfare than their own. Parents will know this about their own experience with their children. The child becomes the most important thing in their lives and they will do whatever it takes to make sure the child is healthy and happy. To anyone whos been in love, its easy to understand that this is probably the best possible feeling in the entire range of human emotions - and in fact amplifies any other emotional experience we might have in a wonderful way. The reason for this is that we are getting a glimpse of the real nature of what we are. The real nature of what we are is in no way separate from others. We have only two options, to understand this nature and act from that understanding, or to deny that nature and act out our misunderstanding. The first option brings us happiness, and results in more and more power to manifest the world we desire. The Delusion of Self-Sacrifice Some of us were brought up to believe that sacrificing oneself is the highest ideal. When we hear ideas that say that we can manifest a life of happiness and enjoy it, we may begin to feel that there is some

kind of temptation in that - that its not really a pure path, because it emphasizes personal happiness in addition to the happiness of others. It turns out, that this idea of self-sacrificing is just a backdoor means of solidifying a sense of separate self. The pain of feeling separate is quite addictive, and we shouldnt underestimate it. We cling to it because it is what feels most normal to us - and therefore most comfortable. Even when its excruciatingly painful to be me, because the circumstances around that me are torturous - we may still cling to that me because its all weve ever known. A part of us is terrified to think that we may not exist in the way we always thought we did. We think, on a certain level, that if we let go of grasping at our single, solitary SELF, then well just disappear. But WHO could disappear? Anything that is real cannot be destroyed. As we practice, we recognize that all we have to lose is pain. The thing that makes this type of practice work is the interdependence of self and others. We need to become beings of complete happiness, because it is the only real way we can be of benefit to other living beings. The true path of selflessness only begins to dawn when we realize how our old thoughts of self were deluded. Then our selfless actions do not become acts of denial - but Acts Of Truth. We walk everyday and every breath as the knowledge that there is no concrete, inflexible border between me and you. My happiness is your happiness, and your happiness is mine. Why We Need Power If you think about it - what is the use of being a very compassionate person and yet never being able to do anything of real value for others? If we want to truly be compassionate, we need a set of skills and abilities by which we can act that compassion out. Otherwise our compassion is impotent. It is wonderful to feel compassion toward beings, but if we dont have a way of making it manifest, it eventually just turns to sadness. We wish that things could be better for them, and our heart breaks because we dont know what we can do to help. Attaining the power to manifest our desires only serves to bolster our ability to love others - because now we have a way to make that love real. If we want to truly make change in the lives of others, we need to know how to make change occur in our own world. It is in our own world that these so-called others are existing.

With just a little practice, we quickly learn that the more we can succeed in giving them happiness, the more happiness seems to show up in our own lives. The more happiness we are experiencing, the more we want to give away - and the more we are capable of giving away. It is a beautiful, self-perpetuating cycle. Disillusioned By Self-Grasping At some point in this life or another, all beings will eventually come to realize that the belief in a distinct self is the cause of all unhappiness. This does not mean that you shouldnt take care of your body, take time alone when you need it, or anything like that. It simply means, that eventually you realize that living for your own gratification is extremely lonely. Many people already recognize this, but sometimes we get lost along the way. The main ways that we get lost are slipping into a belief in a 50/50 relationship with others - give a little, get a little; or slipping into the delusion that what we are really craving is love from others. It is an amazing realization when we find out that were really looking to give love away. If youve ever dealt with any kind of addictive behaviour, youll know that there is a certain tendency that you can never quite get enough. This is actually true in all of the activities and interactions that we can engage in. We try to get fulfillment and we eventually use up our relationships by trying to get our needs met in this way. The Buddha referred to this as the suffering of change. Any high you go on will eventually let you down. Anything you do for your own pleasure, ultimately has to end - and when it ends, you just crave more. Theres no end to the search for personal fulfillment. It turns out weve got it all backwards. When we learn to start giving, somehow our needs seem to magically get met. First, our emotional needs get met - immediately! Try it and see - feel lonely? Comfort someone else and watch the loneliness disappear. Feel depressed? Just help make somebody else happy and notice that you can hardly remain depressed if you give it any kind of effort. After a little while, you begin to see that your physical problems are mysteriously disappearing. One day you just wake up and realize that youre content. You notice that your circumstances have changed for the better, and you watch them slowly transform into a life of complete beauty for you and all those around you.

Manifesting Enlightenment To become completely enlightened is said to require a couple of things. These are called the Two Accumulations. We need to accumulate both. These accumulations are Merit, and Wisdom. Merit Merit means nothing more than what weve been talking about all along. It is the virtuous impressions that have been planted in your mind by the virtue youve done to others. In wisdom traditions all over the world, people have understood that a higher order of existence is possible. There are beings of great power that exist only to serve other beings (because theyve found out that thats the best way to be happy themselves!). If were serious about being of help, we should think about getting this kind of higher order existence for ourselves. Classically, it is said that what will create this for us is the accumulation of all of our good actions. Just think, you can probably do a lot of good for those you love, but imagine how much more you could do if you never had to get sick. What if the amount of sleep you needed was drastically reduced, or the need for sleep was eliminated entirely. In the ancient stories, liberated beings could even fly through the sky, or be in more than one place at a time. According to the theory weve been exploring, the only thing that could cause these amazing manifestations is the desire to do them for others, and a lot of practice at acting out the kind of beliefs that youd need to be this kind of being. Even before we learn how to fly, though, we can see this manifest in more run of the mill, easy to believe fashion. Imagine, if you will, that you could afford to fly in an airplane anywhere in the world, and had the material abundance to help support the needs of anyone who called upon you. Imagine that you had a mind so clear and powerful that friends always thought of you if they had a tough decision to make, and that you were really able to help them. Imagine that you became so attractive and influential that you could share the teachings that made you that way and people would truly listen and strive to put them into practice. These are just a few of the results that we can expect from the accumulation of merit. Imagine what the world will look like as more and more people have this type of influence, this is something that you can create - just through the simple thoughts and actions weve been discussing.

Wisdom The second accumulation is the accumulation of Wisdom. Since this is a book primarily about karmic gardening and manifestation, we dont have the space to go deep into the discussion of what Wisdom means in a traditional sense. It will suffice for our purposes here to say that it starts with understanding the very principles weve been covering in this book. The principles about how reality really works that weve been discussing are this same wisdom. Accumulating wisdom is said to go hand in hand with accumulating merit. I think that part of what this means is that in order to really understand how reality really works, you have to test this theory out. As you begin to realize that these theories and practices really work, something begins to soften in you. Some piece of your heart that has felt bound up and suppressed for eons suddenly becomes untied. As this happens, you really begin to know that you are not separate from everyone else. This is the dawning of wisdom. A beautiful thing begins to happen - this understanding makes you grow even more compassionate, which makes you more and more wise. These two become like the wings upon which you fly higher and higher. Karmic Self-Perpetuation Another wonderful thing about the way that karmic impressions form, is that if you have a good idea about what you are doing, the spiral of positivity becomes self-perpetuating. How does this occur? Well, it is very simple. You see, when you see yourself doing something kind to another, you get an impression planted in the deep consciousness of something like people do kind things for one another. Now, we already discussed how this belief comes into manifestation as seeing people do kindness to you, but another aspect of this belief is that you see yourself doing kindness again. Eventually, if you keep up with your karmic gardening - pulling the weeds, planting new seeds - youll find that it becomes almost effortless to do the right thing in every moment. And the right thing is that one which is going to bring happiness for you and all those around you. Soon, a mysterious thing starts to happen - you begin to see around you the perfect opportunities arise for you to do good to others. Where before, you may have found that there werent a lot of opportunities for you to help, or you may have felt that you did not

have the required resources needed, now you find that you always seem to have something to give. Even better than this youll start to get subtle intuitive clues about what would most help someone else. Exponential Re-Investment Possibly the best thing about this is that each time you do something kind, you get a little better at being kind. Its like anything else - you get better with practice. What is wonderful here, is that the seeds you are planting start to grow into this impression that says I get better and better at being a help to others. The impressions start to add up, and then after a bit of time adding up, they begin to increase exponentially. The master Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. It is among the tiniest seeds around, but eventually grows into a plant in which birds can nest upon and shelter under. The good you do starts out small, but each of those small mustard seeds grows into 15 foot plant and bears more seeds. Each time you do this you are also practicing that precept about clarity of mind, which plants seeds that ripen as a deeper understanding of things. As this understanding grows, you get ever more skillful at seeing into the subtle nature of how karma works and where the events of your life are coming from. As time goes on, you start getting glimpses of what the future could look like if you were to engage in a certain type of action. At other times, youll be thinking of a project youd like to accomplish, or a need you have - and someone will come along asking for exactly the kind of help that would plant for you the seed you need for your own project. Later you rejoice as it all comes up for you as you thought it would. Just like a plant grows and bears fruit, and each fruit is full of seeds, so also grows your karma. Just one of the fruits would be enough to dramatically improve upon the karma that created it - so think about what would happen if you invested two or three. The potential for expansion is infinite. For example, lets say that you are still working on increasing your wealth like we spoke about above. Perhaps youve tried out some of the concepts in this book and all you wanted is starting to flow in. Now youve got even more resources to work with. This is the crucial point of power that can make this process an amazing upward spiral that never ceases, or can let it drift into mediocrity and decay like so many things.

The thing to remember to do is take at least 10% of this new found wealth and invest it into the true causes that create more wealth aiding others. And you know what will happen when you do that that 10% will grow and expand just like the last seeds you planted. If you invest again 10% or so well, you get the picture. Whats amazing is that after just a little experimentation, youll probably NOT be investing 10% though, youll want to invest a lot more. Youll do this both because you have started to recognize that the process works, and works consistently, but youll also do it because something in your heart has started to feel somehow right. For the first time maybe in your whole life - and maybe in many many lives, things have started to feel like they are right and whole and operating in the way youve always known they should. Why were talking about this in this section is because it is this karmic upward spiral that is what is going to enable us to become a completely enlightened beings. Eventually, the momentum gets so great that youll never even think about going back to the old ways in which you used to make yourself (and everyone else) suffer. The momentum of your correct views about the world will begin blossoming as more and more wisdom, until finally all the old stains of your mind and all the old stains of your negative actions can have no more effect on you. From that point onward, you can experience a world that is only love. An existence centered completely around happiness for all beings - which just happens to be full of happiness for you. Things Fall Apart The understanding of how our karmic impressions can create a selfperpetuating upward spiral also gives us a clue into how some of the other kind of self perpetuating cycles in our lives happen - namely the downward spirals. It also helps us to explain why things can start out great, and then eventually just peter out, or in unfortunate cases go really badly. If youve tried out the karmic upward spiral and have started to experience how it works, then you will have started to realize that thats actually how everything works. The good things that we have in our lives are based on the good weve done to others. What keeps good things happening in our lives is our ability to reinvest those karmic impressions to keep the spiral going up. When we dont reinvest the karma, things have a tendency to

simply fall apart. It was an amazing day when I realized that this was what had happened to any failed relationship or job that Id ever had. They started out with so much hope, so many dreams and beautiful ideas, and then somehow, that magic just seemed to pale. Everyone has probably had some kind of experience with this - perhaps a friendship that was amazing, heart opening, and fulfilling for you both, but then just seemed to disappear one day when people changed. The fact is that everyone will experience this, as this is the true cause behind aging - the powerful karma that gave you this body eventually wears out and the body begins to get slower and slower until it eventually stops. If we know this secret, then we have a powerful tool to avoid having to watch the things that we love fall apart. In the Buddhist tradition, it is said that one of the qualities of all conditioned things is that they are impermanent. In the way weve been talking about it, it sounds almost like a curse - that everything we love will fall apart. But when we know how karma is working to shape the reality that we see all around us, we begin to understand that we can make impermanence work for us, rather than against us. The reason for this is that impermanence is also working on all the things that are unpleasant about our lives. We can look at anything that is unsavory in our worlds and we can say this too shall pass. Making impermanence work for us is as simple as this: take any bad situation and start making it better and better by reinvesting the karma. Because things are impermanent, they can be changed. That means that you can notice when problems start arising and apply the antidotes. You can turn a karmic downward spiral into a karmic upward spiral in a very short period of time. Resting On Your Laurels This is an important place to talk about another phenomenon to watch out for. In the ancient tradition it is often referred to as the God Realm. In the classical lore, it is said that if you do a certain amount of virtue, and reach certain states of meditative accomplishment, you can be reborn in a realm of amazing power and ecstasy. At first glance, this seems like a great reward for all the good that youve done. Theres a problem hidden here though. We, in our human embodiment, have a chance to learn where our karma comes from - while those in the god realm are too busy having fun, generally, to get interested in the deeper things in life. Meanwhile,

the karma that got them there is slowly burning out, but they dont realize it until the last few months of life as a god (which, by the way equals an almost inconceivable amount of time for us humans). The next life is likely to be filled with great pain and suffering because all their good has been burned up, and it never occurred to them to reinvest the karma. Whether you believe in other planes of existence or not, we can take a lesson from this idea of the lives of beings in the god realm. That we should never just sit back and get content with what weve been able to generate in our lives. We shouldnt get caught up in making a fortune, or getting our own emotional or health situation squared away - because all of these things eventually come apart when the karma that created them wears out. Karmic seeds are just like any other kind of seeds - they flower, and then they die. The power that makes them ripen is spent on the ripening. We need to learn how to reinvest. Perhaps this is the reason that many ancient and modern Buddhists actually vow that they will never stop working for the benefit of others until all others attain complete and total happiness. Until then, theres always some work to be done. Theres always another turn on the karmic upward spiral. This is not about just slaving away throughout eternity - its about making happiness continue in a way that never has to stop. We make happiness continue simply by making happiness. We make it for others, and that makes it for ourselves. Saving The World The most inspiring thing to me about the idea of a karmic upward spiral is the knowledge that a dedicated person can, through using the principles underlying how reality appears, actually save the world. It was a sad day for me, when my utopian idealism finally succumbed to the notion that corruption seems to rule the day, and that the problems that humanity faces are perhaps just too large to find a solution to. It seems that no matter how much recycling you do, no matter how many cigarette butts you pick up from a national park, no matter the fuel economy of your own car, there are always 5 more people who dont really care. The reason that these teachings, for me, reinstill hope is because they give a clue as to where these other people are really coming from. I mean, think about it for a second - if your thoughts,

beliefs, and actions really are having an influence upon the reality you are able to see, then who are all of these other people out there? After just a bit of practice, amazing things start to happen that change your views of reality. People in your own life change in dramatic and unpredictable ways just as you change a pattern of thoughts and behaviour. Seeming miracles occur on a daily basis, and you start to wonder if your old view of reality as a fixed thing coming from out there had any basis in fact at all. A great and important realization begins to dawn - that those other people coming from out there dont exist in quite the way you thought they did. Whether they are going to recycle or not is not the issue. Whether they drive a gas guzzling car or not is not the issue. Because you see, the only thing that can actually allow them to continue engaging in destructive activities is your karma. Really, instead of saving the world, we should call it saving your world. Because the world you perceive, and therefore the only one you can save, is centered around you. Honestly, we have no way to know or understand if or how things exist on their own. We can only know how they exist in our perceptions. By changing the impressions in our deep consciousness, we change - slowly but surely - the world that we perceive. This does not just mean that its the same old world, but we are less stressed out about it - the world itself actually starts to change! This change can only come from us. When you make the change in yourself, it starts a cascade of ripples that flow out from you in every direction. Every person you can help with this kind of knowledge then becomes another ripple-generator, until the waves of change are rolling through your world on a vast scale. The potential for transformation is enormous and inspiring. No Act Is Insignificant Sometimes it seems as if the small things that we can do to help our world are not even a drop in the bucket. Sometimes I see litter in the woods and I get so sad because it seems that Ill never be able to help clean things up in any real way. Then I remember where things really come from. That trash is only showing up where I can see it because of something that exists inside of me. If I pick it up, Im actually doing something infinitely more powerful than sitting around fretting about the state of things, Im making a change in my own karma. It goes like this. I see some trash in the woods, I pick it up and

it sets off this whole karmic cycle that brings more clarity into my own life and mind. I give just a little bit to an environmental protection organization and it starts coming back to me as financial abundance. From there, its just a matter of the upward spiral. I can reinvest this karma more and more. Eventually, the power, influence, cooperation, and resources available are beyond what I could have dreamed of. At one point in my life, I had the thought: If just one person in this world was really able to live their convictions, if just one could take the plunge of true faith and act according to their heart - the whole place could change. I now recognize that that person has always been me. And it has always been you. Never doubt that you are the one. You are in fact the only one. It will not take any great actions on your part just yet. Just recycle. Just pick up that trash. Just be kind to someone who needs a friend. Never fall into the laziness that comes from doubt. Never let the demon voice of what I do doesnt matter anyway cloud your mind. How do you know that some little bit of kindness you do today will not be the spark for an innovation that changes life for people everywhere in ways we could never have dreamed? How do you know that the one small effort you make today is not the last one needed to start a whole new cycle of upward growth for living beings everywhere? There is no way to know this. And if karma is true - it will not take long to recognize that THIS is the most important act you will ever do. However small, however seemingly insignificant, this is the ONE. Do it with kindness in your heart, and with pride. Putting It Into Practice Now that weve got all the basic ideas down, were ready to put it into practice. The section that follows is series of practical suggestions for how to practice day to day in manifesting the world you desire - for the benefit of all beings. 1. Concentrate Concentration empowers the mind to manifest. What we expose the mind to strongly makes strong impressions. All the ancient traditions of spiritual cultivation have utilized some exercise in concentration. Youll likely notice that within just a short time of beginning to cultivate concentrative practice, your thoughts begin to manifest very powerfully. At this point, youll get very concerned with regulating the

type of thoughts you think - simply because theyll all begin to show up reflected in your world. If youve got a mind full of unsavory thoughts, youll have a world that is pretty unpleasant. Conversely, if you have a mind that is filled with pleasant thoughts, youll see a world that is very enjoyable. Fortunately for us, the very process of cultivating concentration gives us greater ability to regulate the contents of the mind. It gives us the power to choose what we think, and when we think it. Step 1. Choose An Auspicious Object The object chosen for ones concentration practice is of the utmost importance, because the mind is impressed by what it is fixed upon. It is for this reason that the ancients always recommended that an aspirant focus the mind upon a holy teacher, a spiritual principle, or another uplifting image. Any of these are great options, but since we are cultivating manifestation, you can also focus on the object which you would like to manifest. A great practice can be to alternate focusing one day on a specifically spiritual object like a holy being, or your Teacher, an on the next day focusing on your manifestation project. Step 2. Focus With Intensity Once youve decided upon your object, focus on it with intensity. It is important that once you have chosen an object for meditation, you do not change your object during the entire meditation period. If it helps your focus, you can have a picture of your meditation object and you can alternate gazing at it with open eyes, then recreating the image with your eyes closed. When your eyes are closed, try to recreate the object in complete detail. If you are focusing on a spiritual teacher, you can even imagine that they are there with you in the room, try to hear the sound of their breath, and feel their presence there with you. 3. Keep Coming Back The third step is the most important. If you happen to lose your focus, just keep bringing it back. Losing ones focus is a natural part of meditation. The training here is to continue to return the mind to its chosen object again and again. Eventually, the mind

naturally gravitates to any object you choose to rest it upon. This natural gravitation is the actual achievement of concentration. 4. Relax The final step is really important throughout the whole process. To truly concentrate, we need to learn to rest the mind. You may eventually notice that after a meditative session of clear concentration upon an object you feel re-energized and invigorated. Part of the reason for this is that as you are concentrating, you are actually resting the mind very deeply. If you want to do concentration properly, you cannot try too hard. If you do so, its actually like your pressing the gas and the brake pedal at the same time. Youre using more energy than you need to, and this adds unnecessary upset to the mind - making the entire process more difficult than it needs to be. Just keep bringing the mind back - focus with intensity, but restfully - enjoy the process. Another way of cultivating concentration is to take up a practice of regular meditation. Simple practices are easy to learn at most local yoga studios and may involve learning to count the breaths, focus on a mantra, or repeat a prayer. All of these methods are valuable ways to train in concentration and clarity of mind. Find the one that works best for you and apply yourself to it diligently. 2. Use Immeasurable Thoughts There is an ancient practice in yogic schools known as the Four Immeasurables. These thoughts are used because certain thoughts relate strongly with your deep unconscious mind. They are like a shout of correct worldview that reverberates deep within the storehouse consciousness and causes change to occur rapidly. The Four Immeasurables are: Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity. The skilled practice of these type of thoughts can reverse old tendencies that cause the type of karmic imprints we dont want, and can create a large store of the type of impressions that we do want in the mind. Practicing the Four Immeasurables

Equanimity When practicing these four thoughts, we start with the last one first. We start with equanimity. In this context, equanimity refers to having an equal feeling for all beings. We try to practice seeing each person as worthy of our love, kindness, and respect. In actual practice, this can be very difficult. To truly practice requires that we take even those others who have hurt us in the past and wish for their joy and success. The importance for this is explained as follows: every time we have a negative thought toward another, we plant a karmic impression that will create for us a world that contains pain for us within it - remember, thoughts are responsible for 70% of your karma. These impressions occur regardless of whether the person you are thinking them toward has been kind to you, or has been unkind. The recording process of the deep unconscious mind does not discriminate like this. It creates karma for you regardless. One way that we can make this process a little bit easier is if we remember where the people who have harmed us are coming from. They are coming from our own past actions. This is sometimes a bit hard to swallow. I mean, its a great theory when were talking about how to manifest our desires, but when it comes down to seeing the people who have caused or are causing us pain as the result of our own thoughts, it can be a little more difficult. Even more challenging is the notion that we are supposed to love them and wish them joy. This is where we can employ a little bit of enlightened self interest. In the Tibetan traditions, they actually will do reviews in their thoughts daily to remind themselves of how things in the world are created. Thats because this view is often so contrary to how we normally think that it is extremely difficult to access in a moment of anger and pain. Its extremely important, because accessing this knowledge in moments of pain and anger is the only way that we can prevent having to feel these emotions again in the future. We need to remind ourselves that if we want happiness, we need this kind of equanimity for others. So to practice, simply recognize and remind yourself that these pains that came to you have come from your own karma. If you do not want to experience this kind of pain in the future, cultivating equanimity in this way is the way to stop it. Other methods can also be valuable. We can remember that any individual causing another pain is sourcing their own actions out

of some pain of their own. If we can learn to suspend our own indignation and help free them from their pain, they are less likely to harm others in the future. The traditional Buddhist training to help generate this feeling of love for all beings is dependant up on the understanding that if weve lived countless times before, these others have not only been our enemies, as we perceive them now, but have also been our friends, lovers, parents, children, and siblings. Never before have we been able to think or act in a way that honors them and allows the love we shared together to last. Now that weve come into contact with the Teachings that lead to happiness, we should cultivate them so that we do not have to create enemies out of those we love now over countless more lifetimes. The other two categories we need to develop concern for are those we already love, and those who we feel neutral for. Those we love are easy to feel concern for, and usually well start with them as a kind of warm-up. It is very important, though, that we focus upon those toward whom we feel neutral. These are regularly ignored individuals, but extremely valuable to our development of wisdom, happiness, and spiritual power. Loving-kindness The next of the four immeasurables that we practice is known as loving-kindness. This is simply the desire to see others have happiness. This thought is extremely important, because the simple wish that others be happy is a thought that has vast repercussions in our storehouse consciousness. Simply wishing others happiness creates a great deal of happiness for ourselves in the future. To practice, we should think first of ourselves. When we do this, it forms a foundation for working with others, because we can relate to their desire to be happy - we understand them because we want to be happy! This can also be a great practice for working with low self-esteem - a state in which it is hard for us to feel we deserve happiness, and ask for it. Practicing in this way can help us with manifesting our deepest wishes, because well be allowing those things into our lives. So, first just think about your own life, and the types of happiness that you desire. Feel and recognize the part of you that wants joy, peace, and every fulfillment in your own life.

Then just make the wish May I have happiness and the causes of happiness. Next, we think of someone that we love. Often it is good to think of someone who has done some good to us in this life. If we have a natural feeling of gratitude arise, this makes the process that much easier. Think of the ways that you know they want joy in their lives and know that it is just like your own desire for joy. Simply make the wish may you have happiness and the causes of happiness, and mean it as much as you can. Visualize and imagine their life as the happiest possible and wish that it could be so. Next, think of someone about whom you feel neutral. Try to feel some of the same love for this person as for the person you love whom you thought of before. Make the same wish that this person have happiness and the causes of happiness. Finally, think of someone that you personally find it difficult to feel love toward. Apply any of the above discussed processes (see the equanimity section) that you need in order to try, as much as you can, to feel a genuine wish for their happiness. Dont worry if this feels contrived at first, just mouth the words if you need to, and eventually there will be genuine feeling behind it. Feel your own desire for happiness in your life and realize that this person wants the same thing (even though the ways they try to get joy may seem counter-productive). Wish for them May you have happiness and the causes of happiness. [Note: In practicing for people who have harmed us, it is important to recognize that we are not wishing that they have any type of typical temporary happiness. We are not wishing that they can continue to harm others and get away with it, or be satisfied by it. We are wishing them, actually, the ultimate happiness that can only come when a person really knows how reality works, and is living from kindness. These are the causes of happiness.] Compassion

Practicing compassion is done in a very similar way to lovingkindness. Though instead of wishing happiness for the person, we are wishing that they be free from suffering. You can begin the same way, first with yourself, then with someone you love or feel grateful for, then with someone neutral, and finally with someone more difficult. This time, think of some pain that you and they both experience. These are all the normal pains of life, and the pain that lies behind all of them, creating them - the pain of ignorance of how things are really operating. Think of their pain and generate the wish May they be free of suffering, and the causes of suffering. Go through, one by one, first for yourself, then your friend. Visualize and feel each one strongly, and make the wish for each one. This is an especially good practice to do on the spot when we see others suffering. If we are not able currently to ease their suffering, we can make the wish that their suffering be eased. This has the karmic effect of, slowly but surely, increasing our power so that one day we will be able to help them. Sympathetic Joy Sympathetic Joy means that we vicariously take great pleasure in the pleasure of others. This practice is extremely efficient in cleaning up old bad impressions that keep us from manifesting the world of our dreams. Anytime we feel a bit of pleasure at the misfortune of others, it creates a little misfortune for us. Whereas, anytime we feel pleasure at the fortune of others, it calls in that same kind of fortune for our own lives. In some understandings of the Law of Attraction, this is because what we focus on is what we get. If we are rejoicing in others pain, we are magnetizing that pain into our own lives. If, conversely, we continually place our attention on their happiness, the recorder in our deep mind records a great deal of impressions of happiness and magnetizes or creates them in our own world. The practice is simple, any time you see someone else succeed, get something they like, or just looking happy, inwardly say Yay! Im so glad youre happy. I hope you get happier and happier! To practice more formally will make the tendency more habitual

in your mind during the rest of the day. Try the following: Sit down and concentrate on the breath for a few minutes to calm the mind. Now concentrate on the reasons it is important to learn to cultivate joy in the happiness of others, how it will benefit both you and ultimately them too. Think of yourself first - just like we did in the last two thoughts. Think of some happiness you already have and think May my joy increase! Go on to think of your good friend or loved one. Recognize that they crave happiness in the same way you do. Think of something that you know makes them happy and simply rejoice that they have it. Make the wish May your joy increase. Continue this practice for a neutral person and also for your enemy (whos actually your greatest karmic helper!). Wish that their joy can continue to increase. During this meditation, if you resonate with it, you can add another line to May your joy increase. It goes like this May your Joy increase, happiness upon happiness, until the complete happiness of total liberation. When we make this kind of wish, we are making it very clear that we dont just want any old run-of-the-mill happiness for our friends and karmic helpers, we want for them to go all the way we want only the highest for them. Practicing like this helps us again in working with the people it is challenging to feel compassion for, perhaps because theyve been perceived to act in ways that harm others. When we make it clear that we want the highest joy for them, its like wishing that they can both enjoy what happiness they have now AND that it will lead them to an even greater happiness that they may not even be able to contemplate yet. You First One final element of Sympathetic Joy is the idea that we put others first. I know, to some readers this may sound like the old idea of martyrdom that we tried to get past earlier. Really, it is totally selfless

and totally self-serving all at the same time - just like the rest of the practices included here. This is one of the more difficult practices in the whole repertoire - but also one of the most powerful. Remember the basic Karmic Golden Rule? It was Whatever you want for yourself, do for another. Well, when we practice sympathetic joy, we have the opportunity to take it one step further. Whatever we want for ourselves, we wish it for another. Now, this does not mean that if you want a better relationship with your wife, you should wish your best friend to have a relationship with your wife. What it does mean is that we wipe out any thoughts of competition in our mind. If you want fame and popularity - put aside your own struggle to get there for a few minutes and wish it for one of your competitors. If you do this, you will be surprised at the results. Often, we set our sights so low that we dont even know what is possible. You think you want that promotion at work, so youd never even consider wishing someone else got it. But maybe one day you just get fed up with the struggle of life and decide to try the karma thing. You wish for one of your competitors to get that promotion. And then something amazing happens THEY DO! But dont worry, thats not all - because of the practice, someone sees your good qualities and promotes you to an even better position than the one you were dreaming of. It is all potentiated by wishing it for someone else. Its like were climbing a wall, and we can only get over by standing on each others shoulders or pulling each other up. The taller your friend, or the stronger their arm - the easier its going to be to get to the top. The more happiness you wish for everyone else, the more beautiful a world you will see - more beautiful than you even thought to wish for. 3. Cultivate Daily When we have decided to get serious about putting the law of karma to work for us, it is important that we develop a regular practice of tuning the mind in a way which will cause the life we wish for to appear. In developing a daily practice, there are a few important considerations. 1. Try to have a uniform time to practice This allows the mind to start to rest into the idea of regular cultivation.

The mind actually loves regularity. This step helps you to get into the swing of things without fail - because youve already decided that youre going to do it and put it into your mental schedule. When you do this, the mind has sort of prepared for things. The other alternative is to sort of just practice when you think about it unfortunately for most of us, this leads to not practicing regularly enough to see any kind of substantial change take place. If we are going to see a difference in our lives, most of us need to radically alter the ways that weve always thought and behaved. If you think about the type of practice it takes to get good at a movement discipline, or a musical instrument, youll have an idea of what it will take to get really good at karmic manifestation. None of this practice can be effectively engaged unless we first decide to make time for it. Once we have decided, and made the time - doing the practice is actually pretty easy. 2. Start small If you want to make it all the way to complete enlightenment in this very lifetime, you are going to have to work your butt off. Theres really no way around that. But, most of us are not really aiming that high quite yet, and thats just fine. Most of us dont actually have the karma to try to aim that high, and we dont have the kind of karma that it would take to do that much practice. Our body and mind would burn out after a relatively short period. If think you might want to go all the way its still important to start small. In this way, you actually plant the seeds that let you engage in more intensive practice later. Being able to have the leisure time to meditate comes from your karma. Being able to focus your mind while meditating also comes from your karma. It can be of great use to just spend a little while figuring out how the process works by trying to make a little more money or secure your health or relationships. Later, you can take that understanding and apply it to the BIG goals! So, to begin, think about spending roughly 5 minutes in the morning, and 5 minutes in the evening playing with these new thoughts. Yes, thats it! Just 5 minutes. Now, it wont always be just 5 minutes, but dont think that youll have to force yourself to sit down with a frown everyday and meditate for longer and longer periods in order to get anywhere. Its actually a very interesting phenomenon. If you start with just 5 minutes a day,

soon youll see some very small results taking place in your life. Your mind might be getting clearer, and the type of thoughts youre thinking throughout the day start to be more in line with the kind that will get you the life you want. A piece of you recognizes that the silent time you are spending in the morning and the evening is responsible for this and youll start craving more. When this happens, just dont overdo it. Youll naturally crave as much as is going to be of benefit to you. Dont jump from 5 minutes to an hour every day just because you think its going to be good for you. Generally, if you do that your concentration wont be worth much anyway. Take it in slow increments like five minutes for a week, then 10 minutes. See when your own mind and body want to take things to the next level and then take a small jump. 3. Be Consistent Even though you are going to go at a level that feels comfortable, it is important not to skip your practice. Only do as much as you can enjoy - but be aware that some days youll wake up and your mind will be telling you that the last thing you want to do is your meditation practice. If Im working on a happier life, then why dont I just sleep in? THAT would make me happy! There is actually a long tradition of understanding of this impulse. Its called a karmic obstruction. If youve ever tried any kind of diet or exercise program, youll have likely seen it there too. The old patterns try to reassert themselves, and the argument is always that it wont hurt to do it just this once. If you want any kind of good result, you have to practice consistently. This lets the mind know that you are serious, and the mind then starts to really get down to work at manifesting your dreams. By all means, take a day off during the week. Rest time and integration is vital to a practice. Just make it a consistent time if you can. If you want to take Sundays off from concentration, just make sure that its always Sunday (as much as you can) - and not sometimes Wednesday, sometimes Saturday, sometimes three days off, sometimes one. 4. Get specific If you want to truly test these principles out, youve got to get specific

about what it is that you want. You cant just haphazardly try to be a better person and expect your life to change around you magically. Youve got to apply the necessary thoughts and actions that relate to your own life situation. Its like medicine. If you have a specific disease, improving the quality of your overall diet will of course be of help - but it may not do anything to quickly rectify the main problem. For that, human cultures have always used things like herbs, acupressure, exercises, etc. that specifically target what you are working with. This is the other part of principle 2. Start Small. Choose something tangible that you can work on. Work on it diligently, and then watch for the results. Once youve got the results you want, reinvest the new karma into the next (probably bigger) project. This gives you a manageable thing to focus on. Rather than taking on the whole list of five Buddhist precepts and trying to adopt all of them at first (which is by no means a bad idea!), start with a special focus on the one that it seems you need the most. Get really good at that one, and then pick the next one on the list. After a very short time, youll be a master of them all and people will be coming up to you and asking what your secret is. 5. Keep Track This step has two parts. First, keep track of the type of thoughts youre having throughout the day, and the type of practices that you are doing. In some Tibetan traditions, they recommend that you write down six times per day the most positive (contributing karmically toward your goal), and the most negative (detracting karmically from your goal) thing youve done in each 2 hour period. You can try this if you feel it works for you, or you can do a more general type of journaling. The point is to really keep track of how you are living your life, and what kind of thoughts you are thinking. One of the reasons for this is to clue us in on how we have been pushing away the world we want. It can be surprising how many small negative thoughts and actions we engage in throughout the day. When we recognize these small negativities, we can apply the process spoken about in the section on karmic weeding and we can cancel them out quickly before they gain any momentum in our consciousness.

Similarly, with a little practice, we start gaining momentum toward doing more and more kindness to others. If we stop to take note, it plants these seeds deeper in our mind. If we rejoice in the fact that weve done good to someone, it fattens up these karmas and moves them to the head of the list for manifestation in our world. The second part of Keeping Track means that we should keep track of how our lives are changing. Take note and see if the process is working. The premise of this book is that you can utilize your life as a laboratory to test the deepest tenets of ancient spirituality. If these things work, you should start to notice change within just a few weeks of concentrated practice. Within a year, the type of happiness present in your life should be radically different than it ever was before. If it isnt, take a look - are you practicing deeply? Do you resonate with the teaching, and do you feel you understand it? Does the process work? Find out for yourself. Looking over my own progress with this type of practice, I can honestly say that Ive seen miraculous things happen in uncanny ways. The level of happiness Im able to experience has increased dramatically, and the insights revealed about the nature of reality continually blow my mind. I have become completely convinced of the validity of these methods. Perhaps you will be too! 6. Relax This was the final principle in our practice of concentration. It is the same here. The mind will have an easier time integrating all this information if it is something fun and relaxing. Similarly, if you want quick results, dont worry about if the process is working or not. Just do your practice consistently in the morning and evening and see what happens. Worrying actually plants the opposite kind of impressions from the ones that you want. This is why the ancient traditions place such an emphasis on faith. Because with faith, all things are possible through the power of your own deep mind. If you do not yet have enough experience to have a deep faith in these principles, thats o.k. - simply dont sabotage them by over thinking them. Let the process unfold, and youll be amazed at the results. Ideas for daily practice

If youre sold on the idea of a 5 minute practice every day at a consistent time, here are some ideas of how to use that time. Concentration The ability to concentrate the mind underlies all the other practices presented here. The mind must have a certain degree of clarity just to think about these principles. Try a couple of weeks doing the concentration practice give above. Thought into manifestation The exercise given at the beginning of the book is a great way to prime the minds power to manifest. Conveniently, its only takes about 5 minutes to do! The Four Immeasurables These practices can also be done in a short, five minute format. Conversely, you can choose one to focus on at a time. Spend a week really getting one principle down, or do one per day and alternate throughout the week. Review Meditation Review meditation is where you simply sit and review the information you are processing in a quiet and concentrated state of mind. You could pick any of the sections of this book, for instance, and just sit and review them. The first kind of review meditation that is valuable is to sit and find out if you agree with the concept being presented. See if it matches your experience. See if there is some other piece of information you need in order to confirm or deny this concept. Do a thought experiment and play out a scenario like a movie to see if the concept works hypothetically. The second kind of review meditation thats recommended here is where you take a concept that you feel good about and then try to burn it in to the mind. This is the most useful because many of these concepts are contrary to our instincts as was discussed above. For this type of review, you might decide to take the above list of Buddhist Precepts, or Four Immeasurables, and just go through memorizing both what they are, and why they are important. When youve gone through the process of reminding yourself of the importance of these things, youve planted a karmic impression in

your mind that will make it likely for you to access that important information when it really counts. Finally, you can take whatever project you are working on, and review the kind of actions and thoughts youll need to have to make it manifest. Take your meditation time and think those thoughts. Take your meditation time and make a plan of action for the rest of the day. Post Meditation Period Post Meditation is an old Buddhist term that just means The whole rest of the day. In fact, the post meditation period is the most important. We can think of our meditation as a form of nourishment. When you eat breakfast, it nourishes you for hours (provided that youve chosen something healthy). You dont have to just keep eating over and over. You only need to eat again when that nourishment wears off. It is the same with our daily practice. You sit down and generate concentration, or review the type of thoughts youd like to be thinking, then you just go throughout your day and think them. If youve done your practice well, youll naturally want to be thinking these new kind of thoughts. All you have to do is let them happen. Meditation Schedules There are many ways to organize your practice. If you are starting out with two, five minute sessions per day, you can do one thing in the morning, and another in the evening. One nice way to practice is to use the morning to do a review type meditation about what it is you are manifesting, and the type of karma it will take to make that a reality. In the evening, then, you think about how well you did on planting those seeds throughout the day. Take the time to rejoice in your successes, and apply the karmic weeding process on any slip-ups (but dont get guilty - just intelligent). Make a plan for what youd like to do different tomorrow. You can also do different practices on different days of the week. Like Monday working with one-pointed concentration, and then on Tuesday using that concentration skill to practice the Four Immeasurables. Eventually, as the time you enjoy spending on daily formal practice increases, you may even think about combining some of these exercises as a sort of warm-up routine for your day. A possible

15 minute meditation session is as follows. 5 minutes of one-pointed concentration on the breath 5 minutes silent review of your current goal and its karmic causes 5 minutes of practicing one of the Four Immeasurables If this practice was in the morning, an alternate practice for the evening might look like this: 5 minutes of one pointed concentration on the breath 5 minutes review of the days actions relating to your goal and its karmic causes 5 minutes practice weeding the days negative seeds (through regret, renunciation, and resolve) and rejoicing in your own and others positive actions. What is most important is to find a practice that inspires you, feels manageable, and works. With a little experimentation, you can find a daily routine that supercharges your mind, body, and your life. For further inspiration, find a Teacher whos been doing this a while - ask them their opinion. Start a study group and share ideas with friends. Use the buddy system. Find what works for YOU.

Afterward It is my hope that through reading this book you have, perhaps, gotten some new inspiration on how to use the laws underlying apparent reality to create a better life for you and for all beings. If I have even helped you to think one inspiring new thought, I will feel that this book has attained its goal. If you feel inspired by this work and wish to learn more, take heart - youve just opened the door into thousands of years of tradition and cultivation. The resources available to you are vast - all they require is the karma that will enable you to access them. It is my prayer that you create that karma easily and quickly - to become a being of great power to benefit all those around you. For more information, a good place to start (and a big inspiration for

my own practice) is with the works of Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally. These two teachers are among the few who have taken the ancient teachings of Buddhism and begun to present them in a way that many of us can really use to make our lives better in practical, tangible ways. Another great resource for dharma teachings in our modern world is the work of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His Holiness has written many works, and his style is designed specifically to take the ancient teachings of the vast tradition of Buddhism and help us understand its application in our ordinary (soon to be extraordinary?) lives. Finally, please feel free to contact the author with any questions, ideas, or concerns. Contact information and teaching schedules can be found on the website www.LingQiDao.com I offer all gratitude to the great Teachers. May any merit generated by this text be dedicated to the complete liberation of all living beings.