The Best Partners Are Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and the Good-Hearted
The Best Partner Is a Buddha
Your next question was about how to find a partner. This answer to this question is very important because a lot of suffering occurs in the world due to people not knowing how to choose a suitable husband or wife. Making a bad choice can lead to fighting and court cases where people lose all their money in a divorce and end up in debt. Sometimes the situation is so bad that a husband ends up killing his wife or a wife ends up killing her husband. Here, I will talk about finding a good husband, but the same advice can be applied to someone who wants to find a good wife.
The very best husband is a buddha. A buddha has no suffering. They also have no obscurations, both gross and subtle, and have completed all the realizations of the path to enlightenment. They have omniscience and, therefore, directly know the past, present and future at the same time. They have perfect power to guide others from suffering to temporary happiness, to the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara, and to the peerless happiness of buddhahood. They are able to guide sentient beings from life to life exactly as needed and without the slightest mistake.
A buddha also has great compassion embracing every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human being, asura, sura and intermediate state being in the numberless universes. Unlike us, a buddha does not discriminate some people as friends and others as enemies, some as good and some as bad. If someone cuts the flesh from the left side of a buddha’s body piece by piece with an axe and if someone else rubs the right side of their body with the most expensive perfume, from the buddha’s side they have exactly the same compassion for both these people. In other words, a buddha has no anger toward the person who cuts their body and, likewise, has no attachment to the person who puts perfume on them. From beginningless rebirths we have been guided by the buddhas out of their compassion and they will continuously guide us until our enlightenment.
The Second-Best Partner Is a Bodhisattva
The next best husband is a bodhisattva. Even before they generated bodhicitta, a bodhisattva generated renunciation of samsara. They did this by seeing their own samsara, or cyclic existence, as being totally in the nature of suffering, like being in the center of a fire, like sitting naked on a thorn bush, like sitting on the tip of an iron needle, or like being in prison. They understood that due to being in samsara, sentient beings experience the suffering of pain, the suffering of change and pervasive compounding suffering. The suffering of pain is all our physical and mental suffering. The suffering of change is all samsaric pleasures. The third suffering, pervasive compounding suffering, is from where the first two sufferings come. This suffering is the aggregates, or the body and mind, being under the control of delusions and karma and, therefore, being pervaded by suffering. In addition, the aggregates are the contaminated seed of delusions and karma; from the seed, delusion arises again, and from that, suffering arises again. Because a bodhisattva understands their own suffering, their mind is totally detached from samsara and every second they want to be free from it. This is a realization of renunciation of samsara.
After developing renunciation, this person then thinks about how others are also suffering in samsara. As a result, they give rise to great compassion for every single sentient being. Then, wanting to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and the causes, delusions and karma, and bring them to buddhahood, they realize that in order to be able to do that they need to achieve omniscience. Thus, they generate the thought of enlightenment, bodhicitta, and become a bodhisattva.
A bodhisattva cherishes sentient beings the most. This is because they have realized the extensive kindness of sentient beings that I mentioned before: (1) we receive all our past, present and future happiness from sentient beings, (2) they have been our mothers and have been kind to us in the four ways, and (3) they suffered, were killed, and created negative karma in order to provide us with the pleasure and comfort of having a house, clothing and food, due to which we can remain healthy and live a long life. Due to understanding sentient beings’ kindness, a bodhisattva sees them as more important than their own heart. They see sentient beings as most precious, most dear, most kind and wish-fulfilling because every happiness comes from them.
Every single action of a bodhisattva’s body, speech and mind, even breathing in and out, is only for sentient beings. It is only to free them from suffering and cause them happiness. Therefore, each time they breathe in and out, it is for every single sentient being. It is for the numberless hell beings, the numberless hungry ghosts and the numberless animals. The numberless animals include the numberless animals living in the ocean, the numberless animals living in the ground, such as worms, and the numberless animals living in bushes and grass, such as tiny flies and other insects. When a bodhisattva breathes in and out, it is for every single ant among the 13,000 kinds of ants identified by scientists. It is for every single mosquito. It is even for every single tiny microorganism living in the bodies of human beings and animals. Their breathing in and out is also for the numberless human beings, the numberless asuras, the numberless suras and the numberless intermediate state beings.
Every single action a bodhisattva does is like that—it is for everyone. It is only for other sentient beings’ happiness. When a bodhisattva goes to sleep, it is for every sentient being. When they eat, it is for every sentient being. When they sit, it is for every sentient being. When they walk, it is for every sentient being. When they meditate, it is for every sentient being. Everything they do is for sentient beings.
Another quality of a bodhisattva is that they don’t feel they own anything. This is because they don’t have the thought, “This is mine,” which comes from self-cherishing. Everything they have, even one dollar, even one rupee, as well as their body, speech and mind, are totally dedicated to sentient beings.
If your husband is a bodhisattva, you also become a bodhisattva. If your husband has compassion and loving kindness, you become like him and also develop compassion and loving kindness. You can see now how it would be unbelievably beneficial for you to have a bodhisattva as a husband. Without making the slightest mistake, your bodhisattva husband will be able to bring you to the peerless happiness of enlightenment, the total cessation of the gross and subtle obscurations and the completion of all realizations. They will also bring you the temporary happiness of this and future lives, and the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara.
So now, what do you think about having a bodhisattva husband? You can pray to the Buddha to meet someone like this. Other people can pray to Tara, Medicine Buddha or other enlightened beings, depending on which one they have a stronger karmic connection with.
The Third-Best Partner Is Someone with a Good Heart
If you can’t find a husband who is a real bodhisattva, someone with an actual realization of bodhicitta, you should at least try to find a husband with a good heart. In other words, your husband should at least be a good human being, someone who has a kind heart for everybody and, in particular, for his wife, his family, and anyone with whom he lives. That is the very least quality you should look for in a husband.
You Should Also Strive to Be a Good Partner Yourself
You Should Try to Follow the Bodhisattva Example
Everything I said above was from the side of the husband, how he should ideally be a buddha or a bodhisattva, or at least someone with a good heart. But now, if he is not like that, then, from your side, even if you are not a bodhisattva, you should try to follow the example of the bodhisattvas or at the very least try to be a good human being. In other words, even if your husband doesn’t act like a bodhisattva, you should try to be like a bodhisattva and follow the example of a bodhisattva’s way of thinking and acting. Even if you don’t have actual bodhicitta, you should try as best as possible to have a good heart and be kind not only to your husband but to everyone, not only to your family and friends but also to strangers and, especially, to your enemies. These three groups—friends (those we like), enemies (those we don’t like), and strangers (those we are indifferent to)—include all sentient beings.
In short, even if your husband doesn’t, or can’t, follow the example of a bodhisattva’s attitude and conduct, you should try to do so. This would be the best, but if you also can’t do that, you should at least strive to be a good human being. You should be kind to everyone, including the person with whom you want to live your life, and try not to harm them and only benefit them as much as possible.
You Should At Least Cherish Others More Than Yourself
Most of the time we are kind and good to the people we like and, especially, to those to whom we are most attached. For example, we are willing to do anything to make our partner happy, if not forever, at least for the time being. On the other hand, we tend to be angry, jealous and nasty toward other people. We even harm and treat the people in our own family badly. But we shouldn’t be like that. We should always strive to be a good human being, one who is kind and good-hearted.
Even if your husband is a very selfish and angry person, from your side, even if you are not a bodhisattva, you should be much less selfish than he is. As I mentioned already, a bodhisattva doesn’t have a self-cherishing mind. You should try to be like that or at least try to be a kind-hearted person. In that way, your relationship will last a long time and you will experience more happiness in it. The less self-cherishing you have, the less anger and attachment you will have. The less anger and attachment you have, the more happiness and peace there will be in your relationship. Like that, if at least one of you practices the good heart, your life together will go smoothly.
As the Fifth Dalai Lama, Lozang Gyatso, says in Sacred Words of Manjushri:
By giving up the thought of cherishing yourself,
The eminent fortune occurs of simultaneously opening the door of panacea and happiness
With the key of repaying harm with benefit,
Which spontaneously accomplishes the two works [of self and others].
To give up cherishing yourself and instead cherish your husband implies that you want him to be happy rather than thinking only of your own happiness. If you have the attitude that your happiness is more important than his, the relationship won’t last. Even though at the beginning of the relationship it appears as if you care for your husband, gradually he will find out that this is not the case and that actually you are working for yourself. He will discover that your happiness is more important to you than his happiness, and that you cherish yourself more than him. Slowly, slowly, day by day, that will become more and more clear to him, even though externally you may still appear to be very nice and sweet to him and to care for him. The more time you spend together, the more the reality will become crystal clear. Gradually, you will come to hate each other and the relationship will break up. Then, as often happens, there will be a court case and an ugly divorce. Sometimes people end up physically beating or even killing their former spouse.
You Should Stop Harming Others and Bring Happiness to Them
Here I’m telling you that if you want to have a lasting, peaceful and happy relationship, the very basic thing you need to do is to [cherish] your partner from your heart, not just politically. To do this, begin by thinking that the purpose of your life is to not harm and to bring happiness to others, not only to your husband but to all sentient beings, and especially to all the obscured suffering sentient beings. This includes wishing to bring them all three levels of happiness: temporary happiness, which is the happiness of this and future lives; the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara; and the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. At the very least, even if you don’t know the Dharma, the Buddhadharma, and are not thinking to attain liberation from samsara or enlightenment, you should at least live your life with the intention to not harm others and to cause them happiness. That means not only not harming and benefiting your husband and family, but also not harming and benefiting every living being as much as you can.
The kind of attitude you have makes a huge difference. If your attitude is to cherish yourself, there will always be problems in your relationships. You will cause much suffering to yourself and to the other person. On the other hand, the less self-cherishing you have, the more peace and happiness there will be in your life, even if your partner doesn’t practice in the same way.
You Need Wisdom in Addition to Compassion
Of course, you also need wisdom. For example, if your husband wants you to kill everybody in the world, cherishing him doesn’t mean that you have to agree to do that and then kill everybody in the world. I’m not advising you to listen to whatever he says to do, as if he were God, and then do it. Nor am I advising you to treat him as if he were your guru and do whatever he says, like the advice with respect to one’s spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism. I’m not saying that at all. You need wisdom, especially the wisdom that is able to discriminate whether what your husband wants you to do is beneficial or not. There are many situations in which you need to apply wisdom before acting. Without that, you will end up being totally foolish.
Similarly, that the buddhas and bodhisattvas serve sentient beings doesn’t mean that if one sentient being wants them to kill everyone, they listen to that sentient being and do that. They don’t do that; they are not foolish. They not only have compassion; they also have much wisdom. They have compassion that is like the ocean or sky for every sentient being, and they have wisdom that is like the light of the sun. When the one sun rises in this world, both animals and people enjoy the light and warmth.
There is a story about a bodhisattva who through his clairvoyance saw that by going to the king’s palace he would be able to give teachings to many thousands of people, but as a consequence he would be killed by the king. Yet he still went to teach them the Dharma and as a result was killed by the king. In this case the benefit for other sentient beings far outweighed the risk of harm to his own life. He was motivated by concern for others, thinking that they would receive great benefit by his giving them teachings. Because of this, he had no fear even though he knew that he would be killed. This is an example of the bodhisattva attitude, but I’m not like him.
Generally, how long a relationship lasts depends on the attitude. If both people have strong self-cherishing thought, their two egos will crash against each other, like two cars in an accident. Because of this, in the morning they get married and in the evening they separate. Or today there is a wedding and tomorrow there is a divorce. When one partner finds out that the other is a bad person, it will eventually lead to separation either the next day, the next week or the next month.
Contemplating the Kindness of Your Partner
All Your Past, Present and Future Happiness Also Comes from Your Partner
I already mentioned that in regard to taking care of your child, you should understand well the kindness of sentient beings, in general, and of your child, in particular. I said that because all your happiness from beginningless rebirths, now and in the future comes from every sentient being, it also comes from your child. You should also apply this way of thinking and meditating to your husband. In other words, you need to realize the same thing in regard to your husband. This means that you receive every single happiness—all your happiness from beginningless rebirths, all your happiness now, and all your happiness in the future—by the kindness of your husband. Of course, your happiness comes from the kindness of every sentient being, but, in particular, it also comes from the kindness of your husband. By understanding that, you will be able to see your husband as most kind, most precious, most dear and wish-fulfilling.
Your Partner Has Also Been Your Mother and Been Kind to You in the Four Ways
On top of that, like all sentient beings, your husband has been your mother numberless times from beginningless rebirths and has been kind to you in the four ways. As your mother, he has (1) given you a human body, (2) protected you from hundreds of dangers every day, (3) borne hardships for you, and (4) educated you in the ways of the world. He has been kind to you in these ways from beginningless rebirths, and he will be your mother again in the future, while you are still in samsara, and be kind to you again.
Your Partner Has Also Given You a House, Clothing and Food
Also, as I mentioned before, you have received the happiness of living in a comfortable house, which protects your body from the elements, from numberless sentient beings who suffered, were killed, and created negative karma in order for the house to be built. Likewise, your husband in many past lives also suffered, was killed, and created negative karma for you to have a house.
Also, the comfort and protection that you receive from the clothing you wear, whether it came from an animal’s body or not, has come to you through numberless sentient beings having suffered, been killed, and created negative karma. Just as this clothing came to you from the kindness of sentient beings, so too did it come to you in the past from the kindness of your husband.
Likewise, the food you eat comes to you from the kindness of numberless sentient beings. As I mentioned before, if you think back in time to when rice first came into existence in this world, you will see that for one plate of rice, and even for one grain of rice, numberless sentient beings suffered, died, and created negative karma. By eating the rice, you survived and received happiness. It is the same for all the rest of the food you have eaten. For example, many sentient beings suffered and died when the vegetables and fruit you ate were sprayed with insecticides, and many human beings created the negative karma of killing those insects. You have also received this happiness of eating food numberless times from your husband in the past.
If You Understand Your Partner’s Kindness, You Will Only Want to Make Them Happy
It is very important to meditate on the reality of this kindness in order to understand the kindness of sentient beings, including your husband, and to feel it deeply. Of course, the best is to actually realize it from the depths of your heart. Then you will want to stop every single suffering your husband has, and you will want only to help him. You will want to do whatever you can to serve him and bring him happiness. When you manage to save him from even a small suffering or bring him even a small happiness, you will experience incredible joy. This is because you realize the unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable kindness you receive in so many different ways from sentient beings, including your husband. If you remember this, there will be much joy in your relationship and there will be happiness, real happiness, in your heart, day and night. Your life and your relationship will become very meaningful.
In conclusion, through understanding deeply the kindness you receive from sentient beings, when you decide to live with someone you should make the determination to dedicate your life to them. You should resolve not to harm them and to offer them happiness. You should have the attitude of always trying to serve them. This should be the purpose of your life. When you are able to give yourself to someone in that way, you will experience much happiness in the depths of your heart. Otherwise, if you have self-cherishing and your partner has self-cherishing, there is no way for you to continue to get along with each other.
Most Relationships Start Off as Blissful and End in Separation
Now, I will mention what happens with most relationships in the world. At the beginning of the relationship, before you start living together, you see each other as wonderful. But that doesn’t last for long. After you move in together, you get to know the reality of each other’s personality. You find out the truth of who each other really is.
Generally, it goes like this. First, you meet someone and think, “Oh, he is fantastic.” That person also acts very nice and is very kind and very loving, almost as if he will do anything for you. He seems to be extremely sweet. You think, “If I were to live with this person, wow, it will only be bliss.” You think it will only be bliss and peace with no suffering at all. You never think that there will be suffering. You never think that you will experience the various human sufferings explained in the lamrim teachings.
Then you spend a lot of money on presents for that person, on a place to live together, and on a wedding. At last, you move in together. But then, as the days go by, you come to know more and more about that person. You come to know the reality. Then, even though you are physically sleeping together and living in the same place, as the weeks and months go by, your hearts become more and more distant from each other. He doesn’t agree with what you want—what your selfish mind wants for your happiness. Instead, he wants something that you don’t like, something that your selfish mind doesn’t like. Then you no longer fit each other. Even if you continue to live together, you fight day and night.
At the beginning, when you first met, you thought, “When can I be with this person? I can’t wait even another day, hour or minute for that to happen.” But now you can’t wait even a day, hour or minute for the other person to leave you, or for you to leave them! Living with them has become like being in prison. Meanwhile you meet someone else and the whole thing starts all over. They appear nice and very kind. They give you a lot of presents. Thinking that this person is much better than your partner, you leave your partner to live with them. Then once again, after spending time together, you begin to see each other’s true personalities and mistakes. I’ve heard that it even comes as surprise that the other person does kaka in the toilet just like everyone else! Somehow you never thought of that before.
You Should Pray to the Buddha to Find a Good Partner
You can see now that all these things—how to be a good mother, how to bring up children and how to find a partner—require much prior knowledge. If you look at the whole world, you will see that people suffer a lot because most of them don’t know about these things. Tibetans, for example, have the advantage that they can make use of astrological calculations to check whether someone would be a suitable partner or not. Of course, the most important thing for your relationship to not turn out bad, for there to be less suffering and more peace and happiness, is your attitude and the attitude of your partner, whether you and he have a good or bad heart.
So here, I want to ask you to pray to the Buddha to find a good person, someone who is either a buddha or a bodhisattva; someone who can help make your life beneficial not only for yourself but for other sentient beings; someone who can help you be kind to others and give happiness to many sentient beings. Basically, you should pray to the Buddha to find someone who can help you develop your compassion and wisdom. That will bring you happiness even in a secular life in which you don’t take reincarnation and karma into account. And if you take reincarnation and karma into account, through developing your compassion and wisdom you will experience even deeper happiness—happiness in all your future lives until you are free from samsara. That will also bring you the ultimate or everlasting happiness of liberation from samsara, as well as the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. All these come from finding someone who can help you develop your compassion and wisdom.
Saying it like that is putting things in a brief way. The more elaborate way to say it is as I explained before about how the very best partner is a buddha, someone who can guide you in the development of method and wisdom on the path to enlightenment and so forth.
You Should Develop the Bodhisattva Attitude
The other motivation, as I said before, is that by understanding their kindness, from your side you take care of the sentient being who is your husband. You stop harming them and only give them the many different levels of happiness. Then no matter how selfish they are, it doesn’t matter to you; you still rush to offer happiness to that sentient being. It is similar to having the bodhisattva attitude—you never expect the other person to be kind and to treat you well, but from your side you try always to be kind to them, to help them and to bring happiness to them.
To understand more about the bodhisattva attitude, it is like this. For hearer-listeners and solitary realizers, those who are seeking liberation from samsara, it is unbelievably important to achieve nirvana. But for bodhisattvas that thought seeking liberation for oneself alone is like used toilet paper; it is disgusting and something to throw far away. Or, as it actually says in the traditional Buddhist texts, for bodhisattvas this thought is like the stones on the road on which people have blown their snot. Instead, bodhisattvas have a strong desire to be born in hell even for the sake of one sentient being. To spare even one sentient being from having to experience that suffering, bodhisattvas are willing to take the suffering of hell upon themselves in order for that sentient being to be free from it. Bodhisattvas enjoy that suffering and experience it as even more happiness than the everlasting happiness of nirvana experienced by arhats. It makes them unbelievably happy. One text says that they enjoy the suffering of hell just as swans enjoy entering a cool pond on a hot day. That is the bodhisattva attitude.
You Can Also Remain Alone
Of course, if instead of finding a partner we remain alone, all our wishes will be fulfilled and we will have much more freedom. One reason some people choose to live isolated from other people is to be able to stop harming them due to giving rise to negative, harmful thoughts, and to be able to develop a good heart, such as bodhicitta, wishing to benefit them. That’s the reason why Christian and Buddhist monks and nuns, for example, prefer to live in a monastery, nunnery or hermitage.
Another reason to live alone is to achieve liberation from samsara. To do that, we need to totally cease the causes of suffering, delusions and karma, by actualizing the remedy, the path. To do that, from among the three higher trainings we need to actualize the higher training of wisdom. This is done by achieving shamatha, single-pointed concentration, and then doing analytical meditation on emptiness, whereby we achieve special insight, vipassana. Thus, to actualize the higher training of wisdom, we first need to actualize the higher training of concentration. To actualize the higher training of concentration, we need to achieve perfect meditation by actualizing the nine stages of calm abiding, or shamatha. These nine stages gradually cease both gross and subtle sinking thought and gross and subtle attachment-scattering thought.
To achieve those stages, we need to achieve the higher training of morality. To do that, we need to avoid engaging in nonvirtuous actions of body and speech. Without that, we can’t protect our mind. Without that, we can’t achieve the higher training of concentration. Without that, we can’t achieve the higher training of wisdom. Without that, we can’t achieve the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. Without that, we can’t cease the seeds of delusions and karma. Without that, we can’t be liberated from the three kinds of suffering: the suffering of pain, which is the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, death and so forth; the suffering of change, which is all samsaric pleasures; and pervasive compounding suffering, which is the body and mind being pervaded by suffering due to being under the control of delusions and karma and being the contaminated seed of delusion. From the seed, delusion arises, and, from that, suffering arises again. We need to become free from all three sufferings in order to help ourselves. Then, from this, we come to know how to liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. My point here is that it is easier to achieve all this if we live a life isolated from others.
I’m sorry. This has become a long letter, but your questions are very, very important ones. This is what people in the world need to be educated in and to learn. Most people don’t have a clear idea of how to go about finding a partner and bringing up children. Instead they rush to find a partner and to have children without checking beforehand how to do things properly. So, thank you very much for reading this letter and good luck with everything!
