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

This is my contemplation on the final line of verse 22 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Ah! Fount of compassion, my root teacher, Lord Chenrezi,

You are my only protector!

The six-syllable mantra, essence of your speech, is the sublime Dharma;

From now on I have no hope but you!”

 

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I was shopping for laundry detergent the other day. One of the glossy orange packages said something like ‘guaranteed clean’. Guarantees like that always make me wonder. Who’s to say what’s ‘clean’?  Is it mass annihilation on the level of microbes in my clothes? Does it bleach my clothes so that the dirt’s still there, but invisible to my eye? What if it’s not clean enough for me? Will they refund the cost of my water and the wear and tear on my washing machine? Guarantees like that don’t make sense to me.

We live in a realm dominated by entropy. Nothing becomes more whole with movement through the aspect of space we call ‘time’. On the contrary, integrity is lost with every tick of the clock. With every heartbeat, we are one moment closer to crossing the threshold of death. Yet we seek guarantees. We seek assurances that things will not fall apart. We seek a faith that will speak of things staying as they are. In samsara, there is no such assurance, no such faith.

For such assurance we must look beyond the realm of samsara to the Buddhas. They offer a guarantee that is unfailing because it is not subject to the entropy of samsara. Dilgo Khyentse tells us that the merit generated by a single recitation of om mani peme hum is so immeasurable that “…even if all the forests on earth were made into paper, there would never be enough to write down more than the minutest part.” Now that’s what I call an assurance—it’s so good, we can’t even tell you how good it is.

Although Patrul Rinpoche specifically refers to Chenrezig—compassion—experience has taught me that sincere practice of any aspect of the Dharma brings immeasurable benefit into our lives. In this Dharma Ending Age, such a guarantee is priceless.

***

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

I used to be the kind of person who made hope a religion. No kidding. At Christmas time, I would hope for exactly the Barbie I wanted. I never got it. On my birthday, I would hope for my very own tape recorder. I got it and got bored with it. When things got really bad at home, I’d fall asleep hoping my parents would stop hating each other. They got divorced.

Hope played a big part in my life right up until last year when I finished writing a book and hoped it would be a bestseller. Only then did I learn the true faces of hope: fear, disappointment, betrayal, despair, dejection. By then I was already studying the Dharma, but it was something separate from my writing; or at least I thought it was.

Looking back on that time, I can notice how I had allowed hope to calcify my writing into something very rigid and nearly completely leeched of creativity. Had I noticed this, I may have been able to take a step back and notice what my ‘hope’ amounted to. Having done this, I may have seen that I was desperately afraid that not only had I wasted the last year and a half of my life, maybe I’d wasted the last twenty years. I may have noticed that what I was ‘hoping’ for was redemption (from outside myself) from my own fears.

Had I been able to see this, I may have been able to breathe, and begin to learn mantra. I may have been able to glimpse the true permanence, true bliss, true self that is always within us, whole and untouched by the entropy of samsara. Had I been able to do that, I may have realized that in the constantly disintegrating realm of samsara, the Dharma is the only real hope any of us have.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is the company I work for being bought by another company. I won’t work for a bank anymore. That’s a big plus for me. I’ll be glad to escape the stench of that particular manure field.

The hardest thing about this situation for me is the uncertainty that comes with anticipation. It’s a little like going to the dentist to get a tooth pulled. I’ve done this twice. They give you anesthesia. During the procedure, you feel nothing. But you feel all these metal things in your mouth; you hear that whining drill; you feel a really, really hard pull, and then the dentist mutters something like ‘missed a piece’, and the drill starts up again. The whole time I’m sitting there thinking…when all this pain stuff wears off, this is going to seriously hurt. I hope it doesn’t. But I know it will.

Work is like that. They keep saying it’s a transition. We’re ‘transitioning’ to Interplanetary Title, Inc. They’re the best in the business. This is going to be smooth. Sure, we’re a smaller company. Sure, Interplanetary Title, Inc. has bought lots of companies, but your company is important to us.

The lies are hip deep. It’s like bad anesthesia. It hurts just enough for you to know there is some heavy duty pain coming your way. These men, who have gotten to their six figure salaries by making a career of lying and deceiving others…are nervous. They try to hide it. But to me, it’s all over their syntax, their body language, their constant repetition of pet words like ‘transition’.

All of this has led to levels of anxiety for me that feel unbearable at times. It used to be that when  my internal storms reached hurricane strength (currently Cat 6), I’d hunker down and just hope it would pass before it wore me out.

But this time is different. I could even say that these anxiety levels have come at the perfect time on my spiritual path. In the midst of the storms, at the very height of the howling winds of anxiety rattling the windows of my sanity, I turn to the Dharma. Sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe. No problem. I don’t need my breath to do mantra.

Doing mantra doesn’t calm the storm. Repeating those words (om mani peme hum or om amideva rhih) lets me resonate with a part of myself that is utterly whole, utterly untouched by the storm—my Buddha Nature. This is the hope the Dharma offers all of us at any time, regardless of the storms raging around us. For me, those moments are bliss.

***

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

Later today, as my anxiety builds about going to work tomorrow, I will want to do everything. Let me be clear. This is a short sampling of what I will want to do:

Go through my recipe binder and try out a couple dozen recipes

Finish the novel I started a couple years ago

Finish the Dharma collaboration project that I’m working on with a friend (only about eight prayers and roughly 60,000 words to go)

Try out a new sourdough starter (this takes hours)

Re-decorate my apartment

Pack my books and donate them to the library (I have at least a hundred)

Make banana bread

Finish the book I’m reading (I’m on page 30-something of about 400)

Re-organize the kitchen cupboards

Do my nails

Finish my latest assassin novella

Submit my novellas to a publisher who’s inviting writers from my publisher that shut down

This is maddening. This is anxiety manifesting. It’s part of the storm. The later in the day it gets, the more of this list I will want to do. I’ve never really understood this, but I think the general idea is to work myself into a state of exhaustion and thereby avoid thinking about anxiety. It doesn’t work. I have to sleep sometime. And my anxiety loves, loves, loves to dream.

Knowing this is what’s coming today, I am going to try a new strategy. Whenever one of these ‘Conquer the World Today’ thoughts arises, I will breathe (if I can), and deliberately, slowly recite a mantra a minimum of ten times. This has a very calming effect. It’s like keeping my head above water.

The thoughts will come back with a ‘New and Improved Plan to Conquer the World Today’. They always do. I’ll do mantra again.

In doing this painstaking process of working with these waves of anxiety, I will deal with my confused mind in a compassionate way. When I recite mantra today I will be aware of joining an eons old river of recitation, as Tashi put it.

It certainly feels that way. Mantra feels like something that has preceded the vagaries of samsara, and will continue long after samsara and our Ozymandias-like delusions of permanence fall away. In this we can all find the kind of hope Patrul Rinpoche speaks of. We can find peace, find clarity in the midst of our confusion.