Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

Here is my contemplation on the last line of verse nine of the root text. As a committed rat racer for decades of my life, I couldn’t let this one go by!

“

“In this dark age, what people think and do is vile.

 None of them will help you, they’ll deceive and trick you;

And for you to be of any help to them will be hard;

Wouldn’t it be best to quit the whole rat race?”

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

Every day when we wake up, we’ve got things to do. Ever notice how you never wake up and just lie there and say to yourself, “Someday I’m going to die. What can I do today that will further my spiritual journey so that I go to my death as prepared as I can be?”

No. Never.

We turn off the third snooze on the alarm, brush our teeth, take a shower, wash our hair, and of course the “Good Morning: Here’s All the Bad News You Missed Overnight” show is babbling on in the background. Then we get in a car (or on a subway or bus), go to work, and spend our entire day caught up in petty drama that feeds our anger, resentment, frustration, and fear. 

Then we go home, say a few bare words to the people who share our living arrangement du jour, turn on the TV, mindlessly absorb the government propaganda marketed as Prime Time, then, in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, we take refuge in sleep. In our dreams, we are haunted by the fears, regrets, and longings that we repressed all day long while pursing things that didn’t matter.

This is how we live our lives, in a kind of chronic insanity. We are like rats in a stone maze that is set atop a simmering volcano. We run and run, hoping we’ll find some relief from our chronic suffering in the next marriage, the next job, the next raise, the next new house. But as soon as we get what we chase after, we can’t enjoy it because the moment we pause, we notice how the ground under our feet is too hot to bear. When we pause in our constant chase through life, we notice our own suffering and we believe the answer is to chase after something else and rely on that to bring us happiness and relief from our suffering.

Beneath all our suffering is one inescapable thought: one day, I’m going to die. If we treat death like an enemy to outrun, we will suffer all our lives and die in regret and anxiety. Yet our culture encourages us to do just that—outrun death with the latest anti-aging cream, the latest Mor-Energy drink.

This doesn’t work.

Wouldn’t it be better to quit the whole rat race and get out of the infernally hot maze before our suffering culminates in a death that will only land us back in samsara, trapped once again in the cycle of birth and death?

***

Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

There was a time when I wanted to write a bestseller. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to make millions. The money was almost an aside. What I really wanted was to be happy. I believed that selling millions of books would make me happy because it would free me of the corporate world. Then, I told myself, all my problems would be solved. I’ll experience untold bliss.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice how my unhappiness had very little to do with the corporate world. Blaming my job for my suffering was a little like blaming a stage for a bad play. I could have noticed that the actual cause of my unhappiness was my own internal drama, and my job was just the stage where it was being played out.

Having noticed this, I could have taken a step back from rabidly chasing after the goal of being a happy bestseller, and taken a look at the causes of my suffering. Had I done this, I might have noticed how Hope and Fear had starring roles in my personal drama. I might have noticed that everything I did was hooked into either desperate hope of success or desperate fear of failure.

In noticing this, I might have seen how my suffering was arising from a constant ping-pong back and forth between hoping for what I feared I wouldn’t get and fearing what I hoped wouldn’t happen.

Once I’d seen this, I could have taken a step back, breathed, and let a moment of peace and clarity arise in my confused mind. In that moment, I might have recognized that hope and fear were thoughts based on a fantasy future, an outcome I could never know. I might have noticed that even if I became a bestseller, I’d still be cruelly haunted by even bigger hopes and fears. I might have noticed that I could, at any time, choose to let go of both hope and fear, because my grip on them was all that gave them substance.

***

Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

Here I find myself back with Salem. A funny thing’s happened with that particular mental representation. It’s no longer the biggest concern in my life.

As I deal with that particular drama in my life, my most helpful strategy has been to simply let go. And boy was that hard! In the beginning, I was determined to have things my way: I was sure that the only way was for her to smarten up.

As it turns out, I’m the one who smartened up. As I’ve dealt with this ongoing drama day in and day out, I’ve finally recognized that it was my own afflicted emotions that were drawing me in and hooking me. I recognized and experienced that I could make a choice not to go with those emotions. I began to see that the entire tempest in a teapot was being stirred by me chasing after one thing: wanting Salem to be different than what she is.

Yeah. Sure. One day she’ll wake up. But in the meantime, I’ve got work to do.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen that the only way for me to work with that situation is to “quit the whole rat race”. I do this by recognizing my afflicted emotions when they arise, experiencing fully that incredibly powerful tug to act on them…and then refraining. This is the only thing that has worked.

Sometimes I only have to do this once a day. Sometimes it’s moment to moment.  But whenever I do it, I recite a verse of Dharma from my stack of index cards on my desk (the Dharma Brigade), and this re-focuses my mind. I’m able to see the rat race for what it is: an invitation to deepen my suffering in samsara. Each time I turn down the invitation, it’s easier to do it next time.

Afflicted emotions still arise, but not nearly with the strength or urgency they once did. I have by no means become Mother Teresa in that situation. The urge to throttle Salem still comes up, but these days I’m aware it’s a thought, and I’m more and more willing to give impermanence a chance to prove itself.

***

Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

As I look for a new job, it’s hard to drop the ‘rat race’ point of view. Looking for a new job, there’s no way to avoid competition. Just in the act of applying, I’m already competing.

I think the biggest pitfall for me to work with in seeking a new job is the Panacea Outlook. It comes up again and again. I have constant thoughts that when I leave this job, I’ll escape Salem for good. I’ll be happier in my work day. But gradually, especially as I work with Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones, I’m coming to see that there’s only one way that any job (inside the corporate world or outside of it) will be the cause of happiness for me.

At this stage in my spiritual cultivation, a job will only be a cause of happiness if I can bring that job to the path. Sitting here in the early morning, in pre-dawn darkness, with city sounds outside and faraway, that seems very obvious. But when I’m caught up in the job-seeking drama, it’s easy to lose sight of that.

Little by little as I study the Dharma, contemplate, meditate, pray, and practice, I start to question my decision to leave my job at all. If I’m honest with myself, the driving reason behind leaving was to put Salem behind me. But not only do I now understand how impossible that is, I no longer have a need to do that.

I ask myself now, is it possible that I’m confusing quitting the whole rat race with leaving my job? And if what I really want to do is learn to rely on my own effort, isn’t the turbulence of my workplace the perfect training ground?

As I go to work tomorrow, I’ll take time to notice…where is the rat race happening? Is it happening in the building? The people I encounter? The emails I answer? If I left my job, aside from geography, what would change? Isn’t it all the path? Will my causes for happiness increase by exiting the situation of my job? Or is the thought of leaving a part of my rat race, my illusory pursuit of happiness?

Where is the rat race? It is, of course, an appearance in my confused mind. Tomorrow at work I can notice that when peace and clarity arises, the rat race dissolves, revealing its true illusory nature.