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

This is my contemplation on the last  line of verse 11 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

This was my first time working with renunciation. It was interesting.

“Being learned these days doesn’t help the teachings—

 it just leads to more debate;

Being realized these days doesn’t help others—

it just leads to more criticism;

Being in a responsible position these days doesn’t help

govern the country well—it only spreads revolt.

Think about these times with sorrow and disgust.” 

      

 Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was younger my two favorite cartoons were The Flintstones and The Jetsons. My two favorite ‘people’ shows were Star Trek and Lost in Space. I liked them because, even though I couldn’t articulate it as a child, I thought their problems were so much different than mine, so very removed. They had no constantly fighting parents, no homework, no bullies at school, no stupid dishes to wash.

The Jetsons had robots to do all the cleaning. Captain Kirk was out meeting aliens and having adventures on the edge of the universe, and even though he made trouble in every episode, things always worked out okay for Dr. Smith and the Robinsons. The Flintstones were so far back in time, they had a dinosaur for a pet and a bird with teeth for a can opener.

As an adult looking back on those stories, I can see the human drama being played out from the Stone Age all the way up to an idealized future where drudgery was wholly removed. Yet, there was still drama. How can that be? How could George Jetson fly to work in a hover craft and still have problems with his boss? Why didn’t Captain Kirk bring a message of everlasting peace to the aliens he met? After all, they were smart enough to build a star ship and beam people down to planets. Why didn’t the Robinson family become ambassadors of peace after spending all that time lost in space? And finally, how could a Stone Age man like Fred Flintstone have the same drama with his boss that a future man like George Jetson had?

The Dharma teaches us that, “Worldly pleasures are deceptive,/and bring no lasting joy, only suffering.” Even though this is our experience day in and day out, we live in a constant painful denial of this very basic truth of our lives. We reach for happiness in the material world constantly—a good meal, a good partner, a new pair of shoes—and are constantly disappointed to find that our happiness is at best, fleeting.

If we look upon these times with disgust and sorrow, and develop a mind of renunciation, then we will be ready to put our feet on a path that leads to permanent happiness.

***

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

There was a time when I believed with all my heart that Texas was Heaven, Nirvana, a place where no problem could stand in the face of such paradise. I believed that merely by being here, the problems I had outrun would simply dissipate, and I’d go on with life, reborn into a land of milk, honey, and cowboy hats. I was in the Promised Land.

The day I got here was one of the worst ice storms Dallas had seen up until then. I stood outside the Dallas airport shivering miserably in my Florida-weight clothes (because it never gets cold in Paradise) and was turned down by taxi drivers who didn’t want to risk crossing the icy bridges between Dallas and Plano. A driver finally took pity on me. By the time I go to the rental office (which was closing due to the storm) to claim my new apartment, I was grateful to be alive after slipping and sliding over very icy roads with a driver who apparently had a pressing appointment with Death. I had no food. The restaurants in the Downtown Plano area were closed due to the storm. My first meal in Texas was a giant Hershey bar and a bottle of water purchased in a gourmet candy store that hadn’t closed yet.

So began my sojourn in Paradise.

This was emblematic of what was to come. There seemed to be so many obstacles to the bliss I so richly deserved: no car, nightmares and insomnia, flashbacks, anxiety. What? I asked myself. I’m in Paradise. How can there be problems here?  I became angry, confused, disillusioned. Without the help of a very skilled therapist who explained the truth of things to me and helped me learn the skills I needed, I would have been lost in paradise.

Looking back on that time, I can notice that I behaved as though changing geographically would mean leaving my samskars behind. I believed that happiness (in the extreme) was to be found if I could only figure out the right thing to do with my life. I believed that happiness was out there somewhere for the taking. Having noticed this desperate brand of constant searching, I might have taken a step back and asked myself if I’d ever found lasting happiness in the material world. Once I’d had the courage to be honest with myself and admit that I never had, I would have been ready to begin developing a mind of renunciation.

***

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

When I first started learning about renunciation in the Dharma, if I’m honest, all I could think of was tonsured medieval monks wearing threadbare robes with hair shirts underneath, living in a monastery on some very cold, very isolated hill top in England. They never talk to each other. They have cold gruel for their one meal a day. They pray six times a day—including in the middle of the night! They live in little tiny rooms called cells where the only things on the dank stone walls are a miserably crucified Christ and a whip. The whip of course is for self-flagellation while penitently murmuring, ‘mea culpa’.

In a word, for me, renunciation was a synonym for denial and purification by suffering. I owe this gross misunderstanding partly to growing up Seventh Day Adventist and partly to Hollywood.

As it turned out, I came to do serious renunciation in my own life nearly by accident. After pursuing the craft of writing fiction for decades, I became so disillusioned with it that I couldn’t bear it anymore.

What’s interesting about this is I didn’t want to renounce writing. I wanted to renounce the way I was doing it, the way I was seeing it in my life. In doing this, working with it daily, I find the act of renunciation to be joyful and incredibly liberating. Now that I don’t write fiction anymore, I don’t have to read it anymore. I hadn’t even realized how unbelievably bored I was with fiction. I’ve been devouring non-fiction as fast as I can download it to my Kindle. My latest kick seems to be Tudor history. Now that I don’t write fiction anymore, I’m free to write what calls to me, rather than being caught up in deadlines, plot devices, character arcs, blah, blah, blah.

What I’ve learned is that fiction writing had become a prison. Renunciation was just setting myself free. In the same way, samsara is a prison. It is in fact inimical to who we truly are. It is utterly unnatural that we would live in a world of duality. When we begin to “Think of these times with sorrow and disgust”, we’re not giving up anything. Far from it. We are setting ourselves free of the illusions and delusions and pains of the prison of samsara and aligning ourselves with our innate perfection.

***

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

Right now as I look for a job, my life is in transition. In this Jetson-like age, job applications are done online. There’s always a moment of anxiety before I click SUBMIT, when I say to myself, “Do I really want to do this?” Then I click the icon.

As I work with finding a new job, I haven’t thought of renunciation. I am thoroughly nauseated with my workplace, but not enough to actually want to leave. It’s more of an intellectual realization that I have to leave or burn out. I have not yet reached the level of disgust and sorrow that for me, seems to be required for renunciation.

From this I’m learning that renunciation isn’t an act of turning away, or denying. My experience is that it’s just the opposite. It seems that renunciation is a whole-hearted embrace, an understanding of what is. And then the next step seems to be an understanding that if you continue with things as they are, it will lead to more and more suffering. Then finally, the last step seems to be renouncing the suffering.

As I go to work today, I can notice how much I suffer there. Yes. There are many good things there. There is the comfort of having a job and a steady income. There is the convenience of a ten minute drive. But the suffering of being there day in and day out has gone on for years. I’m not sure what it would take for me to renounce the suffering of the situation of my workplace.

I can breathe and look back at other times in my life when I renounced the suffering of a situation. By the time I did, things had reached a point of crisis. And when I finally did experience renunciation, it led to very positive changes. Oddly, knowing this doesn’t help.

I guess what I can take a look at is…haven’t I experienced enough sorrow and disgust with that situation to have the wisdom that renunciation of that particular suffering is the right choice? The best choice? Maybe the only choice?