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

This is my contemplation on the first two lines of verse 32 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

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“Recitations, sadhanas, and powerful spells are just complications;

The all-inclusive six-syllable mantra is the very sound of the Dharma.

All sounds have never been other than the speech of Sublime Chenrezi;

Recognizing them as mantra, resounding yet void, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 

 Full Disclosure:

This was a hard one! I’ve never thought of separation this way.

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite TV shows was Bewitched. I was intrigued by the idea of spells and witchcraft, and that just one twitch of the nose could get you what you wanted. Or for the really big jobs, you could cast a spell.

What I didn’t notice back then is that instantaneous satisfaction of desires only led to more and more complications. In fact, there were a few seasons’ worth of problems that instant gratification and long range spells couldn’t solve. These problems kept screenplay writers in jobs for years.

In going about our lives, we treat spirituality the same way, I think. Since I’ve come to Buddhism, my thinking has shifted from, ‘If I act right, God will be pleased and I’ll get what I want’ to a subtle form of, ‘If I meditate and practice and do recitations, then my karma will be purified, and I’ll get what I want.’

As an embodied being, as a former Christian in recovery, it’s extremely difficult to resist seeing spirituality as a kind of Super Discount Mall. Although it’s subtle, I sometimes catch myself thinking things along the lines of, When my karma’s purified, I’ll…Essentially, I’m thinking that when I get to the stage of being “Good”, then I’ll go shopping at the Super Discount Mall of spirituality and see what all that credit (merit) I’ve accumulated will get me.

However, as I work on my path, I’m beginning to learn the value of separation. I am beginning to think of a spiritual path less as something I find with Buddha-GPS and then follow to the very end to some ultimate goal of ecstatic enlightenment, complete with levitation and rays of light emanating from my widely opened, All Seeing Third Eye. Now I’m beginning to see the path more as a recovery of what already is.

When I lived in Fort Lauderdale, I saw the aftermath of many hurricanes. Sometimes there was so much debris, the roads were indistinguishable beneath the fallen trees, the shattered homes, the overturned cars. It was just one epic landscape of confusion, a massively entangled pile of wreckage that completely denied the very existence of a road of any kind. But little by little, crews would come by and drag things away, and then it would seem miraculous that under all that debris, the road was still there, unchanged. 

I’m beginning to see the spiritual path this way, as a clearing away, a separation from debris left from lifetimes of storms of afflicted emotions and wrong views that have left the path utterly obscured. I no longer feel that I’m looking uncertainly for a path that may possibly be there and may possibly lead in the right direction. Rather, I feel more and more that the only spiritual path that will lead to enlightenment is the one which we diligently recover by patiently removing lifetimes worth of debris left behind by afflicted emotions and wrong views. As we do this, the path, which has been there all along, and whose very existence we have forgotten, will gradually reveal itself. I think the experience of recovering our Buddha Nature is an experience of separation.

***

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

When I first came to Texas, I was intent on ‘rebuilding my life’. Very well-meaning therapists kept telling me that I needed to ‘reclaim my life’. To my credit (and theirs), after much hard work, I did indeed rebuild and reclaim my life. Unfortunately, I built an exact replica of the life that had led to an unskillful relationship. And so my newly reclaimed, rebuilt life came complete with an extraordinarily unskillful relationship that nearly culminated in suicide.

From my perspective now, I can look back and notice that what I did when I moved to Texas was rebuild an exact replica of my life right up to the point where I met my previous Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde partner. Naturally, when I built my replica life—complete with unskillful habits and tendencies—Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde dutifully came onto the stage of my life.

Had I been able to take a step back from my desperate need to have a ‘normal’ life, I might have noticed that I was cultivating the exact habits that had previously led to unspeakable misery. Rather than separating myself from my past, I was building a monument to it, preserving it. Having noticed this, I may have noticed that what I needed to do was work with my mind.

I may have noticed that rather than a job of rebuilding a fiction that had proven itself useless, I had a job of recovering who I truly was. Under all the debris of my past, there was something that called to me even then. Had I been able to pay more attention to that, I might have been able to begin working with the fossilized wreckage of my wrong views and afflicted emotions. I might have noticed that even though it felt good to rebuild on what was familiar, sooner or later the stench of building on rotting refuse would begin to permeate anything I built on such a foundation, and eventually it would sink under its own weight of illusion.

***

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

My work with silence in my life continues. In working with silence, it occurred to me this week after listening to my Dharma friend Tashi’s Dharma talk that what I’m working with doing is separating myself from random sounds coming into the mind. This separation has been very difficult. I feel like an addict in recovery. This past weekend, I put in a movie I’ve seen at least a thousand times, just to hear something.

But a funny thing happened. After the movie was over, I realized I liked the silence better. That realization has made me take a look at this path of separation that I’ve stumbled across. The mind is a very noisy place. I mean really noisy. Think Disney World at peak season, or around Christmas: rides wooshing along, people talking, kids laughing and screaming, music, parades, fireworks, arguing parents. And that’s on a calm day.

Once you actually hear your own mind, you sort of wonder that it doesn’t drive us insane to live with that noise day in and day out.

What I’m learning on this path of separation from unnecessary noise is that most of what we say or hear are complications, unnecessary elaborations. I’m beginning to experience what’s always said—emptiness isn’t nothing. Silence isn’t the absence of sound. I’m beginning to experience silence as the possibility, the potential for all sounds to arise. In the silence I’ve found some very good habits arising, and some very unskillful ones are being revealed.

But gradually, I believe I’m beginning to hear the sound of the Dharma. I experience it as moments when there is no sound at all, inside or ‘outside’, but simultaneously there are all sounds. I don’t know how this paradox can be, but I think this experience may describe undistorted reality.

***

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

Tonight when I get home, I will want to do a thousand things.  This is one of the effects of being able to hear my mind more clearly in the silence. Believe me, my mind’s got plans. Tonight, I will want to: mix up a cookie recipe so the dough can rest until Thursday night; meditate & journal; do my blog; pay bills online; catch up on reading; do some prep reading for a Dharma writing project; review notes and a draft for a John Rain novella I’m working on, and oh—start thinking about weekend baking. Time for a new muffin recipe? Maybe.

To be clear about this, because of what time I get home, and how early I choose to wake up, I have a little less than two hours after work to eat, do whatever, then go to sleep. This week in working with this verse, I can see how these plans are elaborations, complications that needlessly arise from an agitated mind. I think in some way ruminating on the Crazy List is my personal mantra I use to escape the suffering of being at work.

If I pursue a path of separation today, it will be relatively easy to whittle down the list. I’m thinking that separation always begins with a question. Even in our ordinary lives, we have to ask ourselves, do I want to turn left and get greasy fries for dinner or do I want to turn right and go home and make a healthy salad?

I think on the spiritual path, the question is relatively easy. There are things I believe I want to do. Which of these things will be a step on my path to enlightenment? As soon as I shift my perspective with this question, the complications fall away. I am able to see with clarity the best way to spend the limited time I have after work. I’ve never done this before. The question I usually ask is…what activity will benefit the most people? Then I prioritize my list that way.

But I like better slimming down the list by focusing on separating myself (and my activities) from that which will not lead to my own enlightenment with the intent of liberating limitless sentient beings.

I don’t know what will happen tonight when I try this. But, just thinking of doing it this way gives rise to some clarity in the mind.
A little separation goes a long way.