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

This is my contemplation on the second line of verse 20 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Expecting a lot from people, you do a lot of smiling;

Needing many things for yourself, you have many needs to meet;

Making plans to do first this, then that, your mind’s full of hopes and fears—

From now on, come what may, don’t be like that.”

 

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I’ve recently fallen in love. His name is King Arthur. I confess, he’s not an actual king. In fact, my true love isn’t actually a person. Nevertheless, I pursue King Arthur with the ardent enthusiasm of a virgin chasing after her first love. I’ve recently discovered baking as a passion in my life. The King Arthur Flour website is my baking hang out. If you don’t think you need anything, if you think you’ve got everything you need to bake, just one click on their “SHOP” link will show you just how wrong you are. I once had twenty-seven items in my cart. I’d thrown caution well beyond the winds and clear into the next galaxy.

We all have a King Arthur in our lives. Sometimes we call it a career. If we meet enough deadlines, go to enough meetings, network with the right people, we’ll make it. Sometimes we call it our dream house, and we’ll do anything, drive any number of miles to get just the right antique for that corner near the front door. Sometimes we call it marriage, and our whole life becomes a search for the ‘perfect’ partner.

In this chase through life, we convince ourselves of all the things we ‘need’. If I’m going to be CEO, I need the right clothes, the right car, the right house. If I’m going to fill my house with antiques, I need the money to buy them. I better work overtime. If I’m going to find the perfect marriage, I need to be beautiful. I better go to Macy’s and shop.

We go on and on like this our whole lives. And each need we satisfy creates yet another need. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “If we could taste the ambrosia of the gods, we would long for something even more delicious…”.

Our chase through samsara only leads us deeper into our own suffering. Isn’t it time we realize that “…the only worthy aim in life is to practice the Dharma in order to help all beings”?

***

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

A while back, in my early days here in Texas, I wanted to listen to Ken Follet’s book World Without End. It’s the sequel to Pillars of the Earth. I decided that since I hadn’t read Pillars of the Earth in a couple of decades, I’d go back and re-read it before moving on to World Without End. Next I decided that if I was going to listen to over eighty hours of audio books, I’d need a project to work on. Knitting a blanket sounded good. Since they were such long books, it would need to be a pretty big blanket. Also, since I wanted to be able to mostly concentrate on the books, rather than a complex knitting pattern, I needed to do something in garter stitch (knit every row). But garter stitch is really boring to look at unless you have interesting yarn, and of course since it was going to be such a big project, I’d need a special long circular needle. These wouldn’t be Walmart buys.

Off I went to Woolie Ewe, a sort of boutique knitting store. I got really interesting yarn on sale and the circular needle.

Then I decided…well, sitting all those hours at night, I’d need a good light and a comfortable chair. Off I went to Ashley, a local furniture store. I found the perfect chair. But then, all those long hours sitting and listening and knitting, my back might start hurting. So I found the perfect ottoman too, and a beautiful lamp. I didn’t have a table for the lamp, but the Ashley salesman was of course, happy to help me with that problem. About twelve hundred dollars later, I decided to go home and think about it.

I never got the furniture or the lamp. I downloaded Pillars of the Earth and listened to about one hour of forty. I started the blanket, which I now call my Eight Year Blanket because it’s not finished yet.

Looking back on this time in my life, I could have asked myself if I really ‘needed’ all of that to listen to a book. Having noticed that I didn’t actually ‘need’ any of it, I could have asked myself what discomfort I was trying to escape.

If I’d breathed and let a moment of peace and clarity arise, I might have noticed that I’d just escaped a nightmare relationship and moved to a brand new place where there was nothing familiar. I learned to knit when I was a little girl. Pillars of the Earth was my favorite book in high school. (I even thought about becoming a nun!) All of those needs were my attempts to barricade myself from the unknown by immersing myself in the familiar so that the unknown wouldn’t seem so terrifying.

Having noticed this, I might have been a little bit free of my fear.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is the Pilgrimage of 62. I remember when I first started planning it. I thought I needed so many things. Should I get special clothes for meditation? Maybe some scented candles? How about a special chair? Well, I obviously needed a dedicated notebook; a pretty one. Or maybe one that looked like a pilgrim’s notebook, uncut pages, sewn together with rustic thread. Should I get a Buddha poster so that my meditation / writing / prayer space would be inspiring? Or how about music? Maybe I needed authentic meditation music so I could seriously meditate. It went on and on.

Looking at the actual situation of the pilgrimage now, I can see that I didn’t need any of those things. In fact, if I’d bought a fancy notebook, a poster or two, a chair, and all of that, I would feel obligated to do it. A big part of the pilgrimage would have become, “Well, I bought all this stuff, so I guess I better do it.” At the time, I just wanted things to be ‘right’. As it turned out, things don’t need my help to be ‘right’.

I think a lot of our needs come from that very strong urge to make things ‘right’. We believe that if we get the right props for our life, then somehow, like a stage play, we’ll come out with a happy ending. Unfortunately, what needing things actually leads to is a pointless drama of needing more things. It leads to deeper entanglement in samsara. Dilgo Khyentse says we exhaust ourselves uselessly like children, “…running to find the end of the rainbow…”.

Before the pilgrimage, I barely escaped the drama of need, but only because time was short. However, having escaped the drama of need, I have seen the wisdom of not bringing it into my life.

***

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

There are around thirteen items in my cart at King Arthur’s. This weekend I will be shopping. I don’t need Ancient Grains flour to make bread, or an oblong clay baker, or a nine flour grain blend. But I’ll probably purchase them. They’re within my budget. On my King Arthur wish list is the Kitchen Aid Professional model stand mixer they recommend, and for $549, it can be mine. I swear, if someone gave that to me, I’d marry him. Or her. Hey, it’s a Kitchen Aid.

This weekend as I do my shopping at the KAF website, I will bring to my awareness that not one thing I buy on the website (even, sadly, the Kitchen Aid) will satisfy me. I will bring Dilgo Khyentse to mind and realize that KAF is my ambrosia of the gods.

In shopping this weekend, I will turn my mind to the Dharma, and bring to my awareness what will actually be done with the flour and other things I buy. I rarely keep what I successfully bake. I either bring it to work to share or I give it to a Dharma friend in support of his life’s work in teaching the Dharma. Recently I’ve begun baking bread that I donate for a meal for the homeless. Each loaf is a chance for me to work with my indifference to the homeless around the world.

In other words, when I shop on KAF this weekend, it won’t be with the intent to satisfy a need that can never be met. It will be with the intent that what I buy will be used to benefit others. I’ve never done this before, so I’m not sure, but I think shopping for baking supplies this way will lead to an even more satisfying experience of baking.

I don’t think, while we’re embodied, that we can ever eliminate “I need”. But I know we all have the capacity to at least ask, “This is what I think I need. How can I use this to benefit others?” I suspect if we did this consistently, we would find our needs shifting away from “What do I need?” toward the other end of the spectrum, “How can we all benefit?”