May 11, 2014 by dharma pen

On the never-failing refuge…

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 line of verse 24 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones. This contemplation focuses on the second jewel, the Dharma.

“The only never-failing, constant refuge is the Three Jewels.

The Three Jewels’ single essence is Chenrezi.

With total, unshakeable trust in his wisdom,

Convinced and decisive, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I’m the kind of person who should have GPS to cross the street. No, really, I have absolutely no sense of direction. People give me directions, and they say things like, “Head north about two miles, then you’ll see it right there on the southwest corner”.

What??

I nod politely, all the time thinking, you know, cartography isn’t really my thing. Then I ask for a physical address, which goes in my GPS. Now, once the address is in my GPS, I am absolutely fearless. I follow the directions (which are sensible like, “turn left in .5 miles”) faithfully and without question because GPS always, always gets me where I want to go.

In samsara, our GPS, the path that will lead us to our own Buddha Nature is the Dharma, the second of the Three Jewels. And it’s better than GPS! The satellite connection never gets lost, you never run out of battery power, and you don’t need to be near a Buddha Broadcast tower. The Dharma is never-failing because it’s based on what is. It doesn’t need artificial support.

In samsara, when I want to go to that really great vegan bakery I keep hearing about, I completely take refuge in my GPS. I have utter faith and trust that if I put in the right address, GPS will get me there.

On the path, I take refuge in Dharma GPS. The Dharma lies well beyond the fictional truth of samsara. The Dharma is not subject to birth, aging, disease, or death. It is the one true path to our Buddha Nature. Why take refuge? Why not simply have faith, I used to ask myself.

Faith, coming from my Christian background, is tainted with fear and hope—the fear of a powerful God outside myself and the hope that I can appease Him and cajole Him into doing what I want. Refuge is a relationship based on trust that arises from experience. For instance, if we see a mountain cave withstand many hurricanes, we would take refuge from a storm there because our experience tells us the mountain can withstand the storm.

There are 84,000 ways for us to have our own experience with what is—the Dharma. The truly wonderful thing about the Dharma is that once we have our very first experience with it, we are drawn to take refuge, and trust spontaneously arises.

***

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

Last June, I had to train a new person in my department at work. Layoffs have reduced the size of the department to two people. This new person—Salem—is fifty percent of the department.

Salem has been with the company for fourteen years. The company I work for is a title company. After working with her for nearly a year, I can unequivocally say that she doesn’t have the first clue about even the most basic principles of real property title examination.

There is a guide at work that I designed that has hundreds of scripted responses to clients. In her training, Salem refused to use them as is. She constantly altered them in ways that resulted in ‘bounce-back’ emails from confused clients. When I pointed out what she’d done, she’d launch into a twenty-minute, extraordinarily convoluted explanation of why she was right. I spent about six months in a Hell of frustration and resentment. Salem, completely in her comfort zone, spent those same six months in our manager’s office constantly reshaping events so that she was right. It was exasperating and infuriating.

Finally, I decided to put mind-training in the place where the rubber hits the road. I stopped trying to make things work out my way. I began to recite mind training prayers and mantra hourly at work. I stopped engaging Salem altogether. I stopped trying to get her to do things the “right way” (ie: my way). This was an extremely difficult process for me. My old habits rose up with a vengeance. I had to literally bite my tongue sometimes to keep my mouth shut. I had to get up from my desk and take long walks and recite mantra. I had to write reams in my journal. I had to constantly bring mind back to the task of reciting mantra or prayer.

At first, it was like trying to drag an angry Rottweiler along behind me, all the time its heels dug in, teeth bared, snarling at me. But gradually, that Rottweiler got smaller, less angry, less stubborn. Today, as I write this, it’s more like herding along a wandering puppy…no, this way, over here, come here…good girl.

Salem continues to make gross errors, and our manager continues to cover them up. Gaining a sense of perspective has helped me to realize that it is beyond my current level of skillful means to do anything but observe the unhealthy relationship of guilt and blame developing between them.

When the rubber hit the road, mind training worked with an effectiveness beyond anything I could have dreamed when I first leashed that pissed off Rottweiler. It continues to work.

Had I taken refuge in the Dharma about five months sooner, I would have saved myself (and Salem) a lot of suffering that arose from the constant aggression I was experiencing. Had I taken a step back sooner, I would have clearly seen that Salem is in my life to give me an opportunity to purify my karma. Had I sought refuge in the Dharma sooner, I may have noticed that the agitation in my mind was making it impossible to resonate with my inherent Buddha Nature.

Had I been willing to let go of my self-grasping sooner, I might have noticed that getting Salem to do the right thing was an idea based on wrong view. I may have noticed that taking refuge in the Dharma was the right thing for me to do, the only thing to do.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life is the sale of the company I work for to Interplanetary Title, Inc. This has been a time of great anxiety for me and everyone else at work.

The anxiety we are all experiencing has one basic source: we don’t know what comes next. What will the new company be like? What if we hate it? What if we can’t do the job? What if we get laid off? What if the sun doesn’t rise and the power goes out and civilization falls and we have to use carrier pigeons because there’s no internet? Okay. That last one may be a bit of an exaggeration; but only a bit.

Here’s the thing about taking refuge in the Dharma: we know exactly how things will go. Taking refuge in the Dharma is a little like reading an historical account of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. No matter how good the writer is, no matter how skillfully they write the lead-up to the romance—you know the ending. The guy with the sword comes from France, and off goes her head. No surprises.

Taking refuge in the Dharma—what is—works the same way. We get so caught up in chasing after refuge in samsara with the 210 channel satellite TV packages, the car with the You Never Die Anti-Death brakes, the house in the You’re A Success neighborhood, the vitamins from You’ll Live Forever, Inc., that we forget. We are so caught up in turning to samsara for refuge from our anxieties that we forget there’s no reason for anxiety over what the future holds. The Dharma tells us exactly how things are in samsara, how they have always been, and how they always will be. There is birth; there is aging; there is disease; there is death. Everything else, as my Dharma friend Tashi enjoys saying, is…entertainment. The burning house of samsara is blazing, the Dharma tells us again and again. Get out.

These days at work, I bring my mind to the Dharma over and over. I recite mantra. I recite mind training prayers. It has been very slow, but gradually I’m beginning to see quite clearly that this transition to a new company is no cause for anxiety. It changes nothing. It’s like changing the back drop on a stage on which the same drama of birth, aging, disease, and death will relentlessly continue to play out.

***

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

Tomorrow when I go to work, the same anxieties will arise. I don’t even have to be in the building. The parking garage is close enough for it to begin.

If I wanted to completely put things in perspective, I could remind myself that even if there is a total apocalypse, even if all the volcanoes on the planet erupt at noon, and volcanic ash totally blocks out sunlight and sets off a nuclear winter, and civilization completely collapses, there will still be birth, aging, disease, and death. That wouldn’t work for me. The idea of apocalypse is far too intellectual a concept for it to have any real impact on my thinking.

Instead when those anxieties arise, I can simply let it happen. The mind loves to elaborate. It can come up with a thousand Dire Consequences scenarios in the moment between heartbeats. Once that’s happened, I can take refuge in the Dharma by realizing that in samsara, all things are impermanent—even anxiety. All I have to do is give impermanence a chance to prove itself.

This sounds easy, but I know from experience that my habitual response to anxiety is to get caught up in it and try to find solutions to the Dire Consequences mind conjures up. Tomorrow, when I feel this nearly irresistible tug to go with my anxiety, I will recite mantra. When I do this, I will pay attention to the resonance that arises, and I will know that I am resonating with my Buddha nature, my true self, who is not subject to birth, aging, disease, or death.

We can all do this. Taking refuge in the Dharma is as simple as turning our attention to what is. It’s no different than changing a channel on TV, or tuning in a different radio station. We can take refuge in the Dharma by texting to our true selves. Instead of ‘i♥u’, to our Buddha Nature we say the six-syllable mantra and then wait in the silence that arises. If we wait long enough, we will begin to experience the resonance with our true self that is always there, the text from our Buddha Nature which speaks without words.

May 4, 2014 by dharma pen

On endlessly rolling waves…

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 23 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Whatever I know I’ve left it as theory;

it’s no use to me now.

Whatever I’ve done I’ve spent on this life;

it’s no use to me now.

Whatever I’ve thought was all just delusion;

it’s no use to me now.

Now the time has come to do what’s truly

Useful—recite the six-syllable mantra.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was a little girl, my favorite game was ‘When I Grow Up’. As a child, I understood growing up to mean getting bigger—taller—and escaping the carping tyranny of my mother. I never told anyone this. It was an imaginary game I played in my mind. In those games, I had a house with a pretty garden of roses and ‘yellow flowers’ (maybe doll house they were daisies), and everything in the house was exactly as I wanted it. Back then this meant my dolls were my blessedly silent and always smiling companions. We enjoyed tea from my tea set. Of course I didn’t go to work or pay bills. I had only the dimmest understanding of why my parents left me with a babysitter all day long except for two days a week. I had no concept of bills at all.

This comforting dream became my Secret Fairy Tale; a place to retreat when the outside world became intolerable. Then of course, I really did grow up, and eventually found the whole business of being an adult to be a complete let down. Houses came with thirty-year mortgages, lawns to be mowed, and a bizarrely endless list of repairs to be done.

For the most part when we grow up, we convince ourselves that we’ve let go of whatever our Secret Fairy Tale was. But if we take an honest look at our lives, we’ll notice that the underlying drive of our lives is a vain attempt to make some aspect of our Secret Fairy Tale come true.

All of our dreams of what we want, what we yearn for, amount to one thing: I want to be happy. And not just for a day. We want Happily Ever After. In writing we call this the HEA ending. If we’re honest with ourselves, isn’t that what we’re always going after?

We spend decades upon decades fruitlessly going after our idea of the perfect HEA, but like sand in a dream, it slips through our grasp, and heartbreakingly dissolves to nothing. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “Like waves, all the activities of this life have rolled endlessly on, one after the other, yet have left us empty handed.” The answer to this dilemma of searching and never finding is “to do what’s truly useful—recite the six-syllable mantra.”

***

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

If I think back, my very first sojourn through Hell was sixth grade. My parents divorced the summer between fifth and sixth grade. I was shipped off ‘for my own good’ to live with an aunt in upstate New York. That year was my first time away from home. I felt abandoned, angry, resentful, and utterly disillusioned. I had neither the emotional vocabulary nor the verbal vocabulary to express any of these things, so for a while I withdrew, only talking when I had to.

It was a year of heartbreak and grief. Like most children of divorce, I thought I’d somehow caused this cataclysm.

Fast forward about twenty-five years to my second sojourn through Hell with my companion on the ride, My Favorite Sociopath. Looking back I can see how the ghost of the heartbroken sixth-grader haunted that relationship. She was always there, a writhing mass of confused, overwhelming emotions, determined to get it right this time.

When I look at the two ‘me’s’ who participated in that relationship, I can notice how neither could have what they wanted. The sixth-grader wanted unending happiness. The thirty-something wanted the Perfect Relationship. Had I been able to take a step back and pause in my chase after the end of the rainbow, I may have noticed that I’d been searching for the same HEA since I was five years old—over thirty years—and still hadn’t found it. Had I noticed this, I could have breathed and done mantra and allowed a moment of peace and clarity to arise in the confusion of my mind. If I’d been able to do this, I may have noticed that my search for happiness had been fruitless because I was looking to other people to give me happiness. Having seen this, I may have turned my search inward, and begun to look at the causes of unhappiness that I was daily bringing into my life.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life is the company I work for shutting down in twenty-seven days. It’s been bought by a company I’m going to call Interplanetary Title, Inc. No one’s calling it a shut down; everyone goes around talking about ‘transition’. As I live through these days, anxiety is very much with me. Insomnia has started, but nothing like it used to be. I can sleep through most of the night.

In the last few days something’s happened that’s made me put this whole transition thing in perspective. I won’t write here about what’s happened, but I will say that it’s given me a long range outlook. When I first heard the announcement of the company being sold to Interplanetary Title, Inc., I just about freaked out.

Since then, I’ve taken every chance I can to work with anxiety, even when it’s keeping me up at two in the morning. Just lately though, I’ve been thinking about the final transition we’ll all make out of this life. I guess death is the ultimate lay-off. As I go through this transition at work, I’ve begun to think about my own death, and what that transition will be like.

It will be frightening, certainly. Beyond that, I don’t know. No one does. Even if I could raise a zombie from the dead, all they could tell me would be their experience of death. This has made me consider my daily life in terms of Patrul Rinpoche’s words, “Now the time has come to do what’s truly useful…”. So far I’ve spent five decades in this lifetime, and it’s only the last two or three years, since I’ve been studying the Dharma, that feel useful.

As I watch myself go through this transition, I constantly ask myself—how can I bring this to the path? I am not always successful in doing that, but I am mindful that I must find a way to do it. Our death is certain, but the hour is unknown. As I go through this transition, I remind myself that with every heartbeat, every breath, I am transitioning from life to death.

On June 1^st, after the sale contract is executed, I’ll have a different employee name on my electronic pay stub; transition complete. All that I will truly take with me through the transition are the tendencies and habits I practice up through and during the transition. The same is true of death. At the moment of our death, all that we will have are the habits and tendencies of a lifetime. Knowing this, shouldn’t we live our lives as though each moment were the time to “do what’s truly useful—recite the six-syllable mantra”?

***

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

At work, as the transition date draws closer, rumors fly, tempers flare, anxiety permeates the air like mild mustard gas. I make a conscious effort not to participate in the rumor-driven gossip. I know this would only lead to more agitation in my mind. When I see tempers flare, or when I’m targeted by a flaring temper, I take a step back until I can at least marginally include that being in my compassion. When anxiety hangs heavily in the air, I offer an upbeat word or two.

As I go to work tomorrow, I will continue my work with mantra. Doing mantra silently every hour at work helps to my keep my mind from becoming more and more agitated as the day goes on. Since I’m less agitated, I’m not adding to the atmosphere of anxiety. Since I’m not adding to the atmosphere of anxiety, I’m able to offer words of comfort to others.

The very act of pausing to do mantra in the constant whirl of the corporate workplace seems to give mind a resting place. It feels like the cool refreshing waters of a desert oasis. There will be times tomorrow when I feel like…No. Not now. I’m too busy. Tomorrow I’ll be especially sure to stop at those times and do mantra.

When I do silent mantra at work, there is a moment of perfect peace, perfect rest, perfect clarity. Of course, as soon as I stop, all the stress and anxiety rushes right back in. That’s all right, because they don’t seem so solid after that moment of rest. Tomorrow as I practice, I will remember that anything I build or accomplish in samsara is only part of the endlessly rolling wave of my life, and it will ultimately leave me empty handed. I will remind myself that the most important activity we can do in this precious birth is to study the Dharma.

At the moment of our death, I will remember, we take nothing with us but our karma. Understanding this, what could be more important than using mantra to purify our mind, purify our karma? At the end of this lifetime, don’t we want to know that we’ve done all we can to avoid harm, do good, and purify our mind?

March 30, 2014 by dharma pen

On a heart always joyful and confident…

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

This is my contemplation on the fourth line of verse 21 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Even if you die today, why be sad? It’s the way of samsara.

Even if you live to be a hundred, why be glad? Youth will have long since gone.

Whether you live or die right now, what does this life matter?

Just practice Dharma for the next life—that’s the point.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

How many times have we said to someone, “that’s not the point”? This inevitably leads to the question, “then what is the point?” It seems this should be an easy question to answer especially if you’re in the process of doing something, and we’re always in the process of living our lives. We don’t do things unless there’s a point to doing it, a motivation. Would we take out all the ingredients for a cake then leave them on the counter, untouched? Of course not. The point of taking out the ingredients is to make a cake.

Yet this is how we live our lives. The main ingredients in our lives are karma and skillful means. These ingredients are so powerful, we could mix and bake the equivalent of a thousand-layered wedding cake the size of the moon. But do we? No. We spend our lives pointlessly caught up in the mini-dramas that arise from our afflicted emotions. And since there’s no time in the mind (or anywhere else, really), these dramas can stretch over lifetimes, creating an epic soap opera that spans eons.

Is that the point? Is that why we’re here—to engage our afflicted emotions and generate negative karma, perpetuating our personal hell lifetime after lifetime? The fact that we indisputably have Buddha Nature, which therefore makes enlightenment inevitable at some point, offers a resounding no to this question.

If that’s not the point, that what is? Dilgo Khyense offers this point of view. If, he says, our mind is “…filled with faith in the Three Jewels…” then we “…will both live and die with…” our heart “…always joyful and confident.” This is the point. This is why we’re here. We were drawn back to birth in samsara because we were so firmly bound to and engaged by the drama of our afflicted emotions. Now that we’re here, the point is to avoid harm, do good, and purify our minds of wrong views.

***

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

When I was a little girl, I wanted to fix myself. I didn’t exactly know what was wrong with me, but my mother would always say to me, “What’s wrong with you, child?” In English, this comes across as pretty benign. But in Patois (a blend of broken English and French, a language of native Jamaicans, and also the language of my mother’s anger), it has more the flavor of…have you lost your freakin’ mind, acting like that, kid? So obviously, if she thought something was wrong, there had to be something to fix. I’m not assigning blame here. My mother was in nursing school, and I was five, and let’s just say I went on the theory that her books could be colored in too. She had good reason. This continued through my teen years—me wanting to fix myself I mean, not coloring pictures in medical textbooks. I went through more than four and a half decades of my life firmly believing there was something broken about me, something to be fixed and made right.

This state of disrepair manifested as being too dumb, so I went to college. In college, I was too fat, so I lost weight. After school, I was too single, so I proceeded from one romantic debacle to another. Mercifully, I never married.

Looking back on those decades, I can notice mind at work, doing what mind does best—being a peerless servant. Because I believed there was something very broken about me, mind did me the service of constantly showing me what needed to be fixed. In this way, the point of my life, for many decades, was to endlessly improve myself, as if I’d moved into the Fixer Upper from Hell.

Having noticed that the source of my sense of being ‘broken’ in some way came from my thoughts, I might have taken a breath, and allowed a moment of peace and clarity to arise. In that moment I might have taken a step back and noticed that the thoughts were not me. They were just thoughts arising in mind. Had I seen this, I may have noticed that nothing needed to be fixed—not even the thoughts. All I had to do was let them go. If I’d been able to see that and notice the source of the thoughts, and notice that mind was simply showing me what my thoughts said I wanted to see, I might have been able to change my thoughts. I might have been able to send my good and faithful servant, mind, on a new quest to uncover my natural perfection.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life at this writing is the Pilgrimage of 62. The pilgrimage ends tomorrow. As the end approaches, looking back and asking myself—what was the point?—is unavoidable.

In a way, I think I began the pilgrimage to answer a question. If I framed the question in hindsight, it would be something like…I’m about to turn fifty. What is the point of having been in this world for five decades? It’s been a difficult question to answer. One of the gifts of the pilgrimage has been a marked increase in peace and clarity in both my mind and my ordinary life. A while back, I used to believe that having a peaceful existence was the point of life. But I’ve come to realize that in samsara, a realm whose very fabric is a complex weave of eons of afflicted emotions, true lasting peace is impossible.

As I’ve taken this pilgrimage, I’ve been able to experience this line from Patrul Rinpoche in the workings of my ordinary life. He advises us to practice the Dharma for the next life. On March 1^st when I began the pilgrimage, I didn’t have nearly the focus on prayer and meditation that I have had these past thirty days. This has inevitably led to a deeper focus on the Dharma and bringing it into my ordinary life. As I did that day in and day out, I found that I was avoiding harm, doing good, and purifying my mind of wrong views.

Hmmmm….that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I took a vow on March 1^st that I would finish the pilgrimage. Short of some cataclysmic nuclear event, I’ll finish the pilgrimage tomorrow. On April 1^st, I will experience, I think, birth into my “next life” after the pilgrimage. Knowing that, I have proceeded with extreme caution in my ordinary life because I want that birth to have in place many causes for happiness. And how did I do that? Gee…what a surprise…I did it by avoiding harm, doing good, and purifying my mind of wrong views.

To paraphrase my Dharma friend Tashi, the “next life” is the boundless life, the life that’s meant to be lived, not this constrained facsimile. Yes, indeed. And that next life of true purity, true bliss, true self, and true permanence is the point of this life.

***

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

On April 1^st, in just one more day, the Pilgrimage of 62 will end. This has been a spectacular month of insight, struggle, and discovery. As the end approaches, there’s the feel of stepping into the unknown. There’s also a feeling that I don’t want the pilgrimage to end. Living life with the Dharma as the central focus has been an experience of swimming with the current of my life rather than against it.

So what about April? What about May? What about December? I think taking a vow to meditate and pray every single day for the rest of my life is just plain silly. Life happens. I learned that in just these short thirty days.

But now that I’ve done these thirty days, one of the wonderful gifts of the pilgrimage is that mind is onboard with meditating and praying. It doesn’t fight me anymore. It still comes up with some hilarious distractions in sitting meditation (think Shirley Temple singing and dancing to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’), but that’s just mind being mind.

I have to admit that when I began the pilgrimage, I gave absolutely no thought to bringing it into the rest of my life beyond March. But with the rest of my life rapidly looming on the horizon, it’s time for a plan. So this is what I’ve decided. I’ve taken a vow to meditate and pray in April as I did this month. The only difference is that if I’m really tired or sick or whatever, I can take a step back and do a mala and a short version of my recitations.

I’ve taken this vow because I’ve really enjoyed feeling like my life has a point these last thirty days. I enjoyed feeling that I was living my life in a way that was of benefit not only to myself, but to others as well. I don’t know if I’ll feel this way forever, but I know the Dharma is that which holds, and I know it’s always there holding out the promise of a life lived with a heart always joyful and confident.

March 25, 2014 by dharma pen

On an immeasurably precious chance…

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 21 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Even if you die today, why be sad? It’s the way of samsara.

Even if you live to be a hundred, why be glad? Youth will have long since gone.

Whether you live or die right now, what does this life matter?

Just practice Dharma for the next life—that’s the point.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

Vampires have changed a lot over the decades. I believe the very first vampire movie was a silent black and white, Nosferatu. That vampire was one scary looking dude. He was bald and wrinkled, and you got the impression (even in black and white) that he was the color of spoiled milk. In today’s beauty-obsessed world, vampires are Calvin Klein models with lustrous hair, six-pack abs, and deep brown eyes with just the barest hint of menace. Even their blood sucking fangs are sexy. What a difference a few decades make! Vampires have gone from terrifying blood-sucking creatures to Harlequin cover models. And what’s more, they won’t ever get old. They’re young and hot…ahhh…excuse me…young and beautiful forever! How cool is that?

The paradigm shift in how immortality is handled in our storytelling speaks, I think, to our own samsaric wish to not only live forever, but to be beautiful and young forever. Having just turned fifty, I can tell you—that ain’t how it is. Our bodies start to hurt in places we didn’t even know we had. Eyesight declines. Skin dries out. In the parlance of ordinary life—getting old sucks.

But it doesn’t have to. Dilgo Khyentse reminds us, “…once you start to practice the Dharma, then however long you live, every instant of every day will be an immeasurably precious chance to …practice…until the day of your death.” In the dependent, insubstantial, impermanent realm of samsara, this is very good news indeed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the best news we’ll ever hear in our embodied state. Yes, our bodies are subject to aging. No, youth and all of its pleasures doesn’t last forever. But the Dharma—that which holds—is not subject in any way to the nightmare vagaries of samsara. If we come to understand this, and come to make the Dharma our constant activity, then each moment of our lives becomes an immeasurably precious chance to manifest the inherent perfection of our Buddha Nature.

***

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

A little less than thirty years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was obsessed with being thin and in shape. I ran. I did aerobics. I lifted weights. I drank disgusting yogurt / protein shakes. I taught aerobics (the better to stay fit). I thought of almost nothing else but being fit and most important, staying fit. I spent hours in the gym. I even had the proverbial (and disastrous) relationship with a personal trainer at the gym. I had a killer body, but I was miserable, insecure, and terrified that I wouldn’t be able to keep it.

Looking back on those years in my life, I can notice how my all-consuming desire to maintain my body was really an expression of a wish not to age. I can notice that staying young and attractive was an attachment that bound me to incredible suffering. If I had been able to breathe and take a step back from the constant fury of my life, I might have noticed that my goal was meaningless.

If I had let a moment of peace and clarity arise, I might have noticed that staying young and attractive forever held out no hope for lasting happiness. I may have noticed that even though I was already where I wanted to be, it brought me only anxiety, angst, and the constant suffering of the fear of losing it. Had I been able to notice this, I may have been able to begin to free myself of a draining, pointless obsession in my life.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life at this writing is the Pilgrimage of 62. The main reason for beginning this pilgrimage was because of my pending fiftieth birthday. I felt I needed to take some sort of journey. At twenty-five days into the pilgrimage, and having turned fifty last week, this line takes on a special significance for me.

I only began studying the Dharma a couple of years ago. Until then, there was the nagging sensation that the ‘big five-oh’ was getting closer, and I’d done nothing with my life. I’d published three or four books and about a dozen short stories, and I was working on yet another book, but that underlying certainty that I’d done nothing with my life was only getting stronger. At first I attributed it to getting old. Maybe, I thought, it’s just part of the process. Maybe old age hormones are kicking in. What do I know?

Then I began to study the Dharma. And—horror of horrors—I saw that I’d been right. I’d totally wasted my life up until then, and the big five-oh was looming on my horizon like the iceberg that gave the Titanic a monstrously bad day. I began to panic. To be honest, when the realization that I’d been wasting my life began to dawn on me, I nearly walked away from studying the Dharma. I nearly said to myself—no, I did say to myself—I don’t need this bad news. I need to go find something meaningful to do with my life.

But I didn’t walk away. I came back week after week because a new realization began to dawn. Studying the Dharma was actually working on a very subtle level to decrease my suffering. I wasn’t Cinderella fitting into the glass slipper or anything, but things in my life that I’d thought I had no chance of ever changing were gradually improving.

After that I was hooked, and here I am on a pilgrimage at fifty, more than halfway into my life. As I take this pilgrimage, I can utterly understand how much richness the Dharma brings to our lives. I can see that if I live to be hundred, youth will have gone, but the Dharma will remain.

***

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

I return to work today after three days off. It’s been a hectic but peaceful three days. I’ve officially shifted the paradigm of my life from fiction-writing and holding out hope of blinding success in samsara to Dharma writing and baking. I’ve done this by clearing books from shelves in a kitchen nook, taking out a second bread machine, and collecting my recipes into a binder. Containers for my collection of flours, grains, add-ins, etc. are on the way in the mail. Now there’s space for them.

Those empty shelves are something I never thought I’d see. I thought I’d write romance about twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings forever. I think this was my way of making youth last.

Now, as I prepare to move into a new phase of my life, I’m aware that it’s the autumn of my life. As I take on this new adventure, it’s my intent to make the Dharma the activity of my life. I’ve found that doing this lends a feel of authenticity to whatever is done.

Specifically, when I sit down to work on a collaboration writing project with a Dharma friend, I will bring to my awareness that I am doing that project for the benefit of others. As my Dharma friend likes to say, the Dharma is meant to be shared. As I work on new recipes to perfect them, I will work knowing that I use my baking to bring benefit to others.

What does any of this have to do with Patrul Rinpoche’s line? Maybe nothing at all. But I believe if we live to be a hundred and the Dharma has not been the activity of our life, then not only will youth be gone, but we can be assured of one thing. As Dilgo Khyentse reminds us, “…if you have not practiced the Dharma, there is at least one thing you do not need to worry about—leaving samsara behind. There is no chance of that; you are in it now, and you will be in it for many lifetimes, like a bee trapped in a jar…”

I want out of the jar.

I think we all do.

And this very lifetime is an immeasurably precious chance to get out.

How are we going to use it?

March 24, 2014 by dharma pen

On one Dharma…

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 21 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Even if you die today, why be sad? It’s the way of samsara.

Even if you live to be a hundred, why be glad? Youth will have long since gone.

Whether you live or die right now, what does this life matter?

Just practice Dharma for the next life—that’s the point.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

It’s always been fashionable in the west to find some way to discover the meaning of life. In the sixties, it was the hippies and acid trips and smoking pot. With the seventies came the New Age movement. Now over four decades later, the New Age movement has borne fruit like retreats to take a journey to find the meaning of life, to find your purpose in being here.

Nowadays, this approach makes me scratch my head a little. It’s part of our make-up that we would search for the meaning of things. Our mind works like a mega-size engine that is in perpetual, eternal motion. I believe this ceaseless motion continues until enlightenment. Given a question that has no actual answer, the mind is off and running. It revs up like a Nascar engine and roars with questions. This seems to be the mind’s idea of fun. It’s just doing what it does.

As it searches for the answer to the meaning of life, I believe we perceive this perpetual motion of mind as a nagging “not quite there yet” restlessness. This manifests in our lives as a string of failed relationships in which no meaning was found; an endless go-round of jobs in which no true sense of ‘who we really are’ was found; a constant repetition of entertainment meant to escape the nagging dissatisfaction with our lives. Year after year, this leaves us feeling hollow and unsatisfied.

The problem isn’t so much that the question has no answer. The problem is our conviction that the answer lies outside us. This sends mind off on a wild goose chase to find meaning in a world that is dependent, insubstantial, and impermanent. It’s as though we were caught in a dream and we tried to figure out what the dream means, using only the distorted representations of the dream world.

The ‘meaning of life’ is enlightenment. That’s why we’re here. If we’re not going about the task of working on our own enlightenment in this lifetime, then we’re squandering our time in secondary practices. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “…to practice with the idea of gaining enlightenment solely in order to benefit others is to aspire to the most worthwhile goal of all. This is…the essence of all the paths, the one Dharma that accomplishes them all.” Seen from this perspective, if you haven’t been practicing the Dharma, what does this life matter?

***

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

When I first moved to Texas, I was convinced that the meaning of life was to find happiness. I even thought I knew how. It was easy. I’d shut everything and everyone out of my life, then I would go about the business of finding happiness. After all, I’d just escaped Relationship From Hell, hadn’t I? There wasn’t anyone around telling me they’d kill me if I left, was there? No. Time to get down to the very serious business of being happy.

What a disaster that turned out to be. I was a Happiness Zealot, a gladiator in the Happiness Games. But no matter what I did, I was lonely. I was scared, lest something disturb whatever scrap of happiness I managed to wrestle into my life. A strange brand of despair began to seep into my life. It was like storm clouds covering the brilliant sun of my newly found freedom.

Looking back on those years, I might have paused in my desperate chase after happiness, and I might have breathed. Had I done that, I may have noticed how my determination to keep all the ‘bad things’ out of my life was causing a lot of fear and hope and angst and anxiety. Had I been able to take another breath and take a half-step back from my life, I might have noticed that even though I was living pretty much the way I’d decided I needed to in order to be happy, I was miserable and lonely and worn down by constant anxiety.

Having seen this, I might have noticed that I needed to look for a different way to live my life because if I died as I had lived up until then, I would have died full of anxiety and oppressed by regret.

***

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

The Pilgrimage of 62 is the biggest ongoing situation in my life as I write this. At twenty-three days into the pilgrimage, this line is particularly significant for me. One of the things that’s coming out of a commitment to meditate and pray twice a day is a shift in my perspective.

Before the pilgrimage, when I would sit to meditate, I experienced it as a sort of waking, lucid dream. It was a calming break from the ‘real’ world. I listened to mind’s dream-like babble for a while, let go of thoughts, then went back to my ‘real’ life.

Now I’m finding that the opposite is happening. When I mediate now, I have very clear awareness that I am watching the mechanism of mind at work. I am aware that I am ‘back stage’ at the production show of Reality. In post meditation, I am more and more aware of the dream-like texture of samsara.

Having a growing awareness of the dream-like quality of my post-meditation world has made me completely realize that finding any ‘happiness’ let alone ‘meaning’ in samsara is a fantasy of a deluded mind. I am gradually coming to see that when we begin to experience the dependent, insubstantial, impermanent nature of samsara, at the same time we begin to have a ghostly experience of our inherent Buddha Nature. These are bare glimpses, but each time it is powerful enough to convince me, without doubt, that the aspiration to gain enlightenment solely for the benefit of others is the only worthwhile endeavor in the nightmare of samsara. Everything else dissolves into the dream that it really is.

I’m also beginning to see this lifetime as a chapter in a book. I think when Dilgo Khyentse says, “…what does this life matter?”, he’s encouraging us to look at our lifetime from the point of view of simply a moment in a continuum. Understanding this, we can ask ourselves a simple question. Where do we want to direct the continuous stream of our lifetimes—toward enlightenment, or toward suffering?

***

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

Bringing the one Dharma into my everyday life in the workplace is extremely difficult. Salem—my co-worker—triggers my habitual responses of aggression, resentment, and frustration. About eighty-five percent of the time now, I can defuse my afflicted emotions before they’re full blown and going off like a nuclear strike.

But then there’s that fifteen percent…oh boy. Sometimes I think to myself, this enlightenment thing about including everyone in your compassion can’t possibly apply to Salem. She’s the exception. She’s got to be. This really bothers me. Just as I think I’ve found a way to disentangle myself from her drama, she starts a new one, and I have to start all over again. It’s like that guy in Hell pushing the boulder uphill. When he finally gets it to the top, the boulder rolls right back down the hill.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do about that fifteen percent. But I do know this: if I were to die right this second, Salem would be my biggest regret. In the eight-five percent of the time when my afflicted emotions are not obscuring my view, I can so very clearly see Salem’s anxieties, her fears, her constant struggle to do a job for which she doesn’t have the skills. I can see how incredibly brave she is to even show up to work every day. I can see, in a word, her constant suffering.

But then there’s that nagging fifteen percent of the time when my afflicted emotions completely obscure that view. So maybe I’ll try this. The next time I recognize I’m caught in that fifteen percent, instead of getting mad at myself, and being pissed off at Salem for blowing my trip, I’ll recognize that I have the opportunity to make that fifteen percent into fourteen point five percent.

I don’t know if I can do this.

I don’t know if it will work.

But I do know that working toward enlightenment is the reason I’m here. It’s why we’re all here.

Even Salem.

March 18, 2014 by dharma pen

On making a precious investment…

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 line of verse 21 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Even if you die today, why be sad? It’s the way of samsara.

Even if you live to be a hundred, why be glad? Youth will have long since gone.

Whether you live or die right now, what does this life matter?

Just practice Dharma for the next life—that’s the point.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

“I’m really sad. The sun’s out right now, but later it’ll be sunset, then twilight, then night will fall.” If we heard someone say that, we’d think it was absurd. If it were said by a child, we’d explain how sunset is just part of how things are.

But don’t we kind of live our lives this way? Aren’t we in a constant race to outrun death? Even though we know it’s inevitable, we find it all but impossible to face the prospect of our own death with anything but anxiety, fear, and maybe even resentment. It’s not fair I should have to die and leave all this behind, we say; why does it have to be this way? Our laments over death are endless.

But none of this does us any good. If we wake up on any given day and say to ourselves, “Today before the sun goes down I’m going to help at least one person.” Or if we begin our day with the aspiration that whatever we do in the course of the day will bring benefit to others, then at night we could go to our rest knowing that we at least aspired to be of benefit.

What’s true of one day is also true of our lives. Dilgo Khyentse points out that once we start to practice the Dharma, then however long we live, we will know “…that there is nothing more worthwhile than the Dharma and that practicing it to perfect yourself is a precious investment…”.

Does this mean we should spend our lives in one long meditation in a cave someplace, making the investment? I don’t think so. Knowing that the road from birth to death is one way; knowing that our death is certain and the hour is unknown; knowing that at the moment of death we will be utterly alone—we ought to take each day as a precious chance to do no harm, do good, and purify our minds.

***

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

About fifteen years ago, something went horribly wrong with my thyroid. I’m not sure exactly what the thyroid does, but I’ve never been so conscious of my heart. I’d be sitting perfectly still, and it would race along. I once clocked my heart at 150 beats per minute. I wasn’t even standing up. I couldn’t sleep. I could barely stand to eat. I couldn’t stand the smell of food cooking. I lost weight so fast, I had no clothes that fit. I poured sweat. Even though the endocrinologist told me I wasn’t dying, only a tight rein on my temper kept me from calling her a liar to her face.

Then the treatment took hold. You go through…I don’t know—some kind of ‘tuning’ to get the hormone balance right. Oh god. That was worse. I was exhausted all the time. I had blinding headaches. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I still couldn’t sleep. All I could do was lie in a stupor and feel my heart pound so hard in my chest actually hurt. At those times, I was certain Death, with his cold scythe, was just one bare step behind me. If I turned, I was sure, I’d see his grinning skull-face.

I was terrified. I couldn’t die. Not now. Not yet. I’d wasted my whole freakin’ life!

Looking back on the whole thyroid episode (which lasted months), I can notice that not once did it occur to me to simply say, “Yes. I could die from this. What can I do to prepare for the moment of my death?” Had I noticed this was an option, I could have shifted my perspective. Instead of spending those long weeks of forced inactivity in mortal terror of dying, I could have worked with understanding that even if I survived the whole thyroid thing, I would eventually die.

The only options I had, I might have noticed, were to go to my death kicking and screaming…or not. I could have used those long hours and days in bed as a precious opportunity to examine the nature of mortality, to come face to face (as we so rarely do) with the simple fact of death as the inevitable outcome of birth. Had I been able to do that, a few harrowing weeks could have turned into a really cool chance to hang out on Death’s turf.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life as I write this is the Pilgrimage of 62. At eighteen days into it, I feel as though another dimension has been revealed in my life. It’s not that it wasn’t always there. It’s more like now my vision is clear enough to see it. It’s kind of like when you get an eye exam and they play with the lenses on that big machine. When they get to the right lens combination for both eyes, everything suddenly snaps into focus and you think to yourself, “Wow. Those are letters on the screen, not shapeless black squiggles.”

That’s how I’m starting to feel about my life. I’m starting to realize that countless things I’d thought were insignificant are actually important indicators, signs along my path. Tomorrow I turn fifty. My pending birthday was the driving reason behind the pilgrimage. I felt I needed to do something both to amplify my practice and to celebrate it in my life. I felt I needed to take a journey whose outcome I couldn’t possibly know.

What I didn’t realize eighteen days ago was that the pilgrimage is also a gradual, gentle way for me to come to terms with the inevitability of my own death. I’m finding that as I walk this road of pilgrimage, samsara’s illusions and delusions become more and more transparent. As that happens, I find that I can clearly see where the road of my life—everyone’s life—leads.

I never thought that death would be something I would want to know intimately. But as more clarity arises in my mind, I’m beginning to think that maybe the best way to live in samsara is to live cheek and jowl with the inevitability of your own mortality.

Eighteen days ago, I would have thought this a terrifying prospect. But today, having made the journey of this pilgrimage more than halfway now, I find the process of coming to terms with my own death very liberating.

It would be a lie to say my own death doesn’t frighten me. But, who wouldn’t be frightened knowing you have to take a journey to a far place, all by yourself, and that you could be thrust into that foreign land at any time without so much as a pocket translator? It would be insane not to be afraid.

Lately my perspective on death has changed. It’s almost as if I can say, “Yeah. I’m gonna die. I’ve lived longer than I have left. Yes. I’ll be scared. Yes. I’ll be alone at the moment of death. But I’m not dead yet. I’ve got things to do: do no harm, do good, purify my mind. That’s why I’m here. Let’s get to it.”

***

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

On Sunday I baked a test bread (Applesauce Oatmeal) and it came out pretty good for a bread with no bottom. It was so moist, most of the bottom stuck to the pan. I brought samples to work because the folks in my office are very willing taste testers.

When I got to work, I consciously offered Salem the very first piece. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was for me. I knew the best pieces were on top because I’d cut unevenly because of the bread falling apart. I made a conscious effort to offer her the best of what I had. After eight long months of working with what began as an extremely adversarial situation with Salem, to make that gesture of offering her my best felt incredibly good. I did it without resentment, without pushing myself. When the thought arose, I knew it was the right thing to do. And I wanted to do the right thing.

Ever since then, I’ve been wondering if doing the right thing is the best way to prepare for our death. I think it might be. Even if I do die today, it wouldn’t be an occasion for sadness if I knew that right up until the moment of my death, I had done the right thing.

In my early years in Texas, after escaping a fiasco of a relationship, I did what most women do. I started what was basically the same relationship with a different person. Of course, it ended up being a total and complete disaster in my life. After that, I went through a time when I believed I had no chance of ever doing the right thing. I believed I’d messed up my life so badly, it would be better to get a sharp knife and slash my wrists vertically. At least, I thought, I’d get that right. In fact, there was a time when I was steps away from doing that. I didn’t have a sharp enough knife, but I had a whole bottle of heavy duty sleeping pills. I was overwhelmed at the prospect of ever getting anything right in my life again.

I think that happens to a lot of us. We may not go so far as picking out the right knife or hoarding the sleeping pills, but we sort of sit back in the mess of our lives and say, “Oh well. It’s too late. I’m too stupid. I’m too old. I’m too ____[whatever] to do the right thing.”

We are so wrong about that. Our Buddha Nature is always right there, just dying to come out, if we’d only give it a chance. Keeping this in mind, knowing I can’t be Mother Teresa in every single moment of my life, it is my intent today to look for the opportunity to do the right thing. Even if it’s only once. Even if it’s only offering a smile to someone who looks weighed down by samsara.

In doing this, it is my intent to prepare myself for the moment of my death so that when that moment comes, I’ll know that I did the right thing, at least today.

And perhaps tomorrow, perhaps on the rest of my pilgrimage through life toward death’s territories, I can live each day as a precious investment in doing the right thing.

March 16, 2014 by dharma pen

On running to find the end of the rainbow..

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

This is my contemplation on the third 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)

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s the question most of us in the west first learn to answer as we move toward maturity. When we’re grown up and we go for a job interview, the question becomes, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” And then, let’s say your five year plan for world domination is well under way, the question becomes, “What are your plans for retirement?” Then, after you’ve conquered the world and you’ve retired, the question is, “Have you planned to provide for your loved ones when you pass on?” Essentially this question is, “What are your plans after you die?”

From birth, literally up through death, we are taught to put long-range, long-term plans in place. Where does this get us? What exactly is a plan? It’s disguised hope, isn’t it? If I plan to be Vice President of Corporate Central in five years, then I better hope I don’t make any enemies who are more powerful than me. I better hope I make every deadline. I better hope my family doesn’t mind me working 55 hour weeks. I better hope I don’t die.

That’s a lot of hoping. What’s the flipside of hope? Fear. What my five year plan really says is, I’m afraid I won’t be Vice President in five years. I’m afraid I’ll make a powerful enemy. I’m afraid my husband (wife) will leave me. I’m afraid I’ll die before I’m Vice President.

That’s a lot of fear to live with. Fear in the mind is like the agitator in a washing machine. It churns our thoughts constantly, uselessly. It saps our energy. It mires us in the quicksand of the suffering of samsara.

What is the way out of the cycle of hope and fear? The answer is deceptively simple. Our only ambition, the only thing worth doing, should be to do the right thing. When we do the right thing, we put causes for happiness and peace and clarity into our karma stream. Our five year plan should be to take Dilgo Khyentse’s advice to heart and stop exhausting ourselves uselessly with five year plans “…like a child running to find the end of the rainbow…”.

***

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

I wanted to write a bestseller. I don’t just mean I wanted to write a good book. I mean I wanted to write a bestseller that would make Twilight look like a flash in the pan; a bestseller that would put Harry Potter in the shade of my brilliance.

Writing a bestseller is different than writing a mere book. For one thing, you have to read until you’re cross-eyed, so you can see what the competition is doing. You have to write to a trend. Got your own story to tell? Too bad. You’ve got a bestseller to write. But most important of all, you have to have The Plan. It’s so important, it gets capital letters.

The Plan consists of your daily writing schedule, your daily reading schedule, your daily writing exercise, and your daily review of where you are on The Plan. I was so caught up in writing a bestseller that my entire life was one long cycle of hope and fear. I’d wake some mornings entirely convinced I’d hit on the right story. And I’d hope that feeling would last, because I knew what came next. A few weeks later, I’d up convinced I’d wasted the last year of my life, and that I needed a new Plan because all the trends said the market was glutted with vampire paranormal romance.

I spent nearly a year and a half of my life like that. As it turned out, I finished the book, sold it, and…it’s not a bestseller. So much for The Plan.

Looking back on that situation, I might have noticed that I could have freed myself of the suffering of hope/fear at any time simply by breathing and taking a step back from my life. If I’d done that, I might have noticed that I spent more time dreading the prospect of writing than I did enjoying it. I might have noticed that I’d become a slave to the tyranny of The Plan. I might have noticed that I was using The Plan to cling to something that no longer spoke to my interests in life.

Had I done this, I might have noticed that letting go of The Plan was the right thing to do.

***

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. When I began the pilgrimage, I like to think I didn’t have any grandiose plans. I like to think I wanted to do it in the ongoing quest to be a more skilled practitioner, to develop my skillful means.

But now, sixteen days into it, I think maybe there was a plan. Actually, I’m sure of it. My unspoken plan was to become ‘more holy’. This is a hard thing to describe. It doesn’t have anything to do with peace or clarity or skillful means, or even decreasing my suffering in samsara.

I grew up Christian. I’ve been reading about pilgrimages since I was a little girl. I thought it was amazing that Jesus went on his pilgrimage way out into the desert all by himself, and he got to talk to Lucifer in person. Sure he was a fallen angel, but he was an angel. How cool was that? Of course, back then, I didn’t dare say I thought talking to the Devil in person was cool.

Now, lo these many decades later, taking my own pilgrimage, I’m starting to think my unspoken plan was to meet my dark angel. It’s difficult to escape the Christian idea of epiphany. I keep vaguely thinking that if I pray enough and meditate enough, the true source of the error of my ways will be revealed unto me. When that happens (according to my plan), I’ll be completely free of afflicted emotions. I won’t be enlightened, but I won’t get angry anymore, or resentful, or envious, or frustrated, or anxious.

What’s actually happening on the pilgrimage is that I can see my afflicted emotions with far more clarity than I ever have. Many of them are not pleasant, but—and this was so unexpected—they’re not frightening either.

From this I’m experiencing how it feels when we do the right thing. I began the idea of the pilgrimage because I felt it was the right time in my life to do something like this. The unspoken plan came later. What I’m experiencing is that when we do the right thing in our lives, we have more clarity, therefore we’re able to do more of the right thing which leads to more clarity. This has nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with the Dharma.

When we do the right thing, we gain the clarity to see the utter futility of the five year plan in the chaos of samsara. We begin to develop a mind of renunciation toward hope/fear. We begin to have the capacity to free ourselves of the suffering of the cycle of hope/fear.

***

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

Currently I’m working on a writing project that is a collaboration with a Dharma friend. I’ve resisted writing non-fiction for a while now. There are few things more intimidating to a fiction writer than stepping into the world of writing non-fiction. I took on the project with much fear and trembling, not to mention trepidation. A month or so ago, when I sat down to begin, I thought—What am I doing? I don’t know how to do this.

What actually happened was, not only did I know how to do it, it’s like rekindling a romance. Writing is like anything else in our lives. It’s a relationship. For me, it was a relationship that had gone bad. I was the injured, betrayed party. Now, working on this project, it’s like rediscovering the romance I once had with writing. Even more than that, it feels that it’s what I’ve been waiting all my life to write. It’s an incredible feeling of freedom to write without a Plan. That’s one thing I hadn’t counted on.

Another thing I hadn’t counted on happening is this almost irresistible urge to put a Plan in place. As I move forward with this project, it is my intent to keep it as free from a Plan as it’s possible to keep any writing project. Right now, when I sit down to write, there’s such an incredible feeling of doing the right thing. It is my intent as this project continues to let that be the working plan: do the right thing.

This project is really teaching me the difference between skillful means and futile planning. My skillful means is to work with 500 words of the source text at a time. My plan is…do the right thing.

Post Script:

When I shared this contemplation with my Dharma friend Tashi, he offered this about my take on Lucifer and meeting my ‘dark angel’:

What if ‘Jesus speaking face to face with Lucifer’ is a way of saying that he saw his afflicted emotions (more) clearly?

When the Buddha says “Mara, I see you”, that is what he/you is saying.

This has really helped to see my ‘dark angel’ from a different perspective.

March 11, 2014 by dharma pen

On ambrosia of the gods…

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?”

March 9, 2014 by dharma pen

Give karma a chance…

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 19 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“There’s no time to be happy; happiness is over just like that;

You don’t want to suffer, so eradicate suffering with Dharma.

Whatever happiness or suffering comes, recognize it as the power of your past actions,

And from now on have no hopes or doubts regarding anyone at all.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was a little girl I had a book about dinosaurs. It was beautifully illustrated. It talked about how big they were, how it would have felt like an earthquake if a herd of them ran past your house, and how some of them could fly. This fascinated me. I would spend hours looking out my bedroom window, sort of wishing a T-Rex would rumble past. I’d go to sleep and dream of dinosaurs, then I’d wake up mildly disappointed because there weren’t any in my waking world.

We all have dinosaur-dreams. We all spend a lot of energy and time wishing for the impossible. Then when we don’t get it, we feel betrayed, disappointed, angry, even disillusioned. We wish for the perfect marriage, then when the other person doesn’t fulfill our dreams of perfect love and happiness, we feel they have betrayed us. We look for the perfect job, only to find that the same annoyingly petty nonsense is in the new workplace and the only change is cosmetic.

We go on and on like this without ever paying attention to the causes for happiness or suffering we’re bringing into our lives. If we change workplaces, but have the same mental habits of aggression, jealousy, and envy, then the new workplace will be the same (or worse). If we are unhappy with ourselves, and we get married, then we’ll be even more unhappy because the other person will simply mirror our unhappiness.

Karma is inescapable cause and effect. It is inevitable activity. This sounds like doom and gloom, but it’s actually the key to freeing ourselves of the cycle of hope and fear that is such a constant in the suffering of samsara. In the sixties, the chant to end a war was “Give peace a chance”. To this I say, let’s end our constant battle with hope and fear and give karma a chance.

***

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

Like most people, my entire life has been a drama defined by the supporting players of hope and fear. But if I had to point to just one situation, I’d say it was when I wanted to start my own business selling handmade children’s clothes. When I left school, I was disillusioned with academia. I decided to leave it behind and go into business for myself. The product was upscale dresses for little girls about aged three to ten. I was very good at sewing. The dresses I made were gorgeous. I chose good fabric. I followed the patterns. I had a good product.

At the time I believed that just by wanting something badly enough, it would happen. I wasn’t into crystals or beads, but I was definitely influenced by New Age thinking. I might have even considered making a vision board. I knew nothing about marketing. I had no investors. I had no overall plan for my ‘business’. But I figured if I stuck with it, good things would happen. After about six months, I gave it up. I’d only sold a few dresses. And lost money. I felt stupid. I wanted to throw away my sewing machine.

Looking back at that situation, I can notice that I had put no causes in place for a business to flourish. I didn’t network with any local business people. I didn’t do any market research. I didn’t take actions that would lead to a business coming into being. Had I noticed that, I could have taken a step back and asked myself what ‘starting a business’ was really all about. If I’d been honest with myself, I would have seen that the business was a way of escaping the discomfort of leaving school before I finished my PhD studies.

Having noticed this, I might have breathed with that discomfort, gotten to know it well, and eventually, I would have been able to free myself from it. Had I done this, the epic drama of hope and fear, driven by the attempt to escape that deeply painful discomfort of leaving school with ‘only’ a Masters would have had less power in my life. I would have had more peace and clarity. More peace and clarity would have led to more skillful acts. More skillful acts would have led to more causes for my future happiness.

***

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. At nine days into it, there is much greater clarity of the connection between what I do now, and what “happens” to me tomorrow or an hour from now. What I’m really learning these past few days is that there are no exceptions to karma. That should be self-evident. But in a way, before the pilgrimage, I’d sort of disregard ‘little’ things. Recently I left the pen that I use to write in my journal on a different table, and I thought, “I don’t feel like putting it back. I’ll forget I left here, but that’s okay.” But the consequence was bigger than I thought it would be. What actually happened was that I finished meditating, I was ready to write, and…no pen. It took me a minute to remember where it was. I got agitated, and I forgot what I’d originally started out to write.

This sounds very mundane, but I think our whole lives are like this. Most times we don’t even notice the tiny causes for suffering that we put in place. This lack of clarity leads us to have hopes and fears regarding everyone. We become sort of professionally paranoid. We hold others responsible for the outcome of our own past actions.

On the flip side, by scrutinizing my actions, I have been able to put in place small causes for happiness. This doesn’t lead to a fairytale life of ongoing ecstasy, but it does lead to fewer struggles in my ordinary life. I’m tempted to say things fall into place. But I think what’s actually happening is that the causes for happiness I put in place are constantly manifesting. Ordinary life feels like less work.

When something unpleasant does happen, I’m able to pause for a moment and recognize that the unpleasantness is a result of my past action. And this is where the Dharma really supports us. If we come to see the Dharma—which is to say, see the world as it truly is—we gain the power to free ourselves of the entanglements of hope and fear in samsara.

***

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

On Friday in a meeting at work a topic was brought up by our manager. I pointed out that it was a non-issue because it was standard procedure to do what she was telling us to do. I asked why it was being brought up. After much hemming and hawing, it turned out that Salem [my co-worker] had made a very basic mistake in handling a whole slew of emails. This is something I went over with her constantly in the beginning. She blew it off. Then I decided to let go, and just let what happened, happen. Her mishandling of the emails resulted in double-billing for a whole bunch of products to the client.

Wow.

Sitting in the meeting, ego was on it. How dare you point this out to me? When did I ever do something so idiotic as not check dates? When did I ever open orders that didn’t need to be opened? How many mistakes will it take before you notice Salem’s utter incompetence? And on and on and on.

Then I noticed something.

The meeting was still going on. Salem was doing her usual smoke and mirror “it’s not my fault” routine. My manager was doing her usual routine of buying into it. The only one suffering intensely with thoughts of aggression and frustration and resentment was…me.

Hmmmmm…this ain’t right, I thought. And right then and there I realized I could go on thinking those thoughts for years, eons, and all that would change was the degree to which I would suffer. Those same thoughts came up all day long. Each time they came up I worked with them by breathing and doing mantra. Sometimes I had to escalate the situation to the Dharma Brigade and recite a verse of prayer.

My normal reaction to an incident like that would be to go to work tomorrow morning with a demeanor of rejoicing in Salem’s mistake, and hoping she makes an even bigger mistake that makes the client complain all the way to the top. But, especially after working with this stanza, I can see how that would be putting in place causes for my own future suffering.

So I’ve decided that tomorrow I’m going to be like a farmer clearing rocky ground for planting. Tomorrow when I go to work, I am going to genuinely look for three things to do that will help Salem. My only guideline is that it has to be of genuine help (not a smarmy…here, looks like you need this), and that I offer these three things with the intent to help. I’ve already thought of one thing, possibly two.

I am going to do this for purely selfish reasons. I am coming to see very, very clearly that the only way to decrease my suffering in samsara is to offer my help to the Salems who manifest in my life due to my past actions. I didn’t get it right before, but now karma is giving me a second chance.

I don’t know if karma can be healed, but just the genuine intent, the desire to help Salem feels very healing.

Post Script:

I went to work with the intent to do three helpful things, but before I knew it, mind was on the job! It was subtle at first, but by the end of the day, mind was like an enthusiastic child…’this would be helpful…and this..and this…how about this?’ I actually did five things.

The same mind that had unleashed fury the day before became a torrent of helpful, right in line with my intent. There were so many things, I couldn’t do them all in a day. And what really surprised me was that they weren’t out of left field. Every ‘suggestion’ was right on.

I’m glad I gave karma a chance…

March 4, 2014 by dharma pen

On happiness and suffering and our past actions…

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

This is my contemplation on the third line of verse 19 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“There’s no time to be happy; happiness is over just like that;

You don’t want to suffer, so eradicate suffering with Dharma.

Whatever happiness or suffering comes, recognize it as the power of your past actions,

And from now on have no hopes or doubts regarding anyone at all.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was a little kid, I thought things just kind of happened. Actually, what I thought was, things happen, but if I really want something, I mostly can’t make it happen. My world—full of the constant upheaval of bickering parents—seemed to be a stormy sea that tossed me to and fro like a rudderless, leaky boat.

My parents mercifully got a divorce, and of course went right on being miserable with two other unfortunates.

I grew up.

For many decades I still believed things just sort of happened randomly. I made absolutely no connection between what came into my life and what I’d done.

Well, sometimes I did.

When I was in school, I understood that if I studied, I’d get a good grade. Later, when I entered the corporate scheme of things, I understood that if I did my job, got to work on time, and met deadlines, I’d get the (dubious) privilege of keeping my job.

But in my personal life, I kept engaging in the same negative acts again and again. Then I’d cry and wonder…why does this keep happening to me?

I’ve told my mother to stay out of my life, but there she is—interfering. Again.

I’ve told my boyfriend (du jour) to stop pissing me off, but there he goes. Again.

It was a very bewildering and frightening world in which I was agent of absolutely nothing. Suffering came at me constantly. It was everyone else’s fault. My mantra in those years was…if he (or she) would just [fill in the blank], then everything would be okay.

It never occurred to me, even as a passing thought, that I was the agent of my own suffering. I never paused to look at my own actions and how they were clearly linked to the consequences I experienced. My mind was a constant whirlwind of afflicted emotions—anger, frustration, resentment, aggression. There was no end to it.

Without pausing to look at how we cause all the suffering in our lives, we are doomed to wander samsara lifetime after lifetime, suffering terribly.

***

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

Where do I start?

There have been so many times in my life when, if I’d just paused and noticed the connection between the causes of suffering I was putting in place and the consequences that were manifesting, I could have freed myself of that particular suffering.

I guess the time in my life just before I came to Texas is a place to look at.

I was about two weeks from leaving (fleeing, actually) a scarily bad relationship. It was a kind of caesura in my life. Everything was on hold. I was simply counting down the clock to my booked airplane flight to Dallas. I was participating in the relationship only in the most superficial ways. In my mind, it was over, like a corpse ready for burial.

This meant I was no longer caught up in the emotional dynamics such a relationship exhaustingly demands. I really didn’t care what the other person said or what they did, because I was on a countdown to freedom.

In those two weeks, I unintentionally gained an analytical distance from a very entangled situation. I was able to see with almost perfect clarity how my own actions had led to exactly where I was. It was like seeing a map that I had drawn and then navigated with precision. At the time, this insight came with a lot of shame and blame and guilt and feelings of worthlessness.

Looking back on those two weeks, I might have noticed how the connections I’d seen weren’t just true of the last ten years. It was true of my entire life. Having noticed this, I might have breathed, and taken another small step back. Had I taken a step back from the afflicted emotions that arose, I may have noticed that I’d just discovered the key to my true freedom. I may have noticed that since my actions had brought me to the misery I was experiencing, I could choose different acts that would lead to different consequences.

I might have noticed that I wasn’t Dorothy helplessly caught up in the tornado of my life. Rather, I was a pilgrim setting out on a brand new road.

***

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

The ongoing situation in my life right now is the Pilgrimage of 62. Wow. It’s nothing like I thought it would be. I had so many doubts when I started with this idea. The biggest (and perhaps silliest) was…what if I’m not holy enough? Now, on day four of the pilgrimage, that makes me laugh. How could I not be holy enough (and what I really meant was good enough) to take time twice a day to touch in with my true nature?

When I began this a scant three days ago, I was focused on my twice daily mediation and prayer activities—the 62. In the beginning, a couple of weeks ago, I had to readjust my schedule and condition my life to the pilgrimage. What I’m finding now is that the pilgrimage is conditioning my life to it. It is in fact becoming the action of my ordinary life. I didn’t foresee that.

As I go about my ordinary life, there is so much clarity about what will put in place causes for suffering, and what will put in place causes for happiness. And it’s nothing like I thought. I can’t say that enough.

Last night I was very tired so I decided not to do the dishes. Now, there’s nothing that bothers me more than walking into the kitchen in the morning and seeing even one dish in the sink, let alone the mess that’s in there now. In choosing to leave the dishes in the sink last night, I knew I was putting in place a cause for suffering this morning.

In seeing that, I was able to go back to the choices that had led to so many dishes in the sink so late. I was able to clearly see how I’d started baking late, then chosen to do other things instead of cleaning up as I went along.

This is a very mundane example of how our choices bring suffering into our lives. But I think suffering is always mundane. No choice is made in a vacuum. We are surrounded by conditions at every moment. And those conditions are a culmination of our smallest choices. From this, I am absolutely coming to see that whatever happiness or suffering comes, it is the power of my past actions bringing it to manifest. We all have an incredible power for happiness or suffering. The choice is always ours.

Isn’t that awesome?

***

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

A funny thing’s happening on the pilgrimage. I’m getting to know my ego very well. The catalyst for this is none other than my cubicle-mate Salem. She knows how to push all my buttons, even the ones I didn’t know I had. At the end of the pilgrimage, I should really get her a gift because she is turning out to be an invaluable traveling companion.

At least once a day, Salem will do or say something that ticks me off. Well, that’s what used to happen. These days, I can usually the catch the afflicted emotion before it’s full blown and giving rise to discursive thoughts.

Yesterday was my first day at work and on the pilgrimage. The day before, on Sunday, I took Bodhisattva vows for the first time. The two together are very powerful agents in my ordinary life.

At work yesterday, Salem did her usual awesome job of pushing my “Are you ever going to take responsibility for what you do?” button. I was almost off and running. The fuse was lit and sizzling, burning its way toward a tightly packed bundle of Self Righteousness TNT. But these days it’s a pretty long, pretty slow-burning fuse with Salem. She’s given me so much practice that I was able to pause and ask myself—did I really want to plant seeds of frustration and resentment with my thoughts? Did I want to put in place causes of my own suffering? Did I have so little suffering in my life that I wanted to add to it? And finally, did I want to add to Salem’s suffering? [that was a first]

There was a moment when ego flashed a thought, “Damn right I do! She deserves it.” Ouch.

Then I remembered the pilgrimage, my Bodhisattva vows, and I realized that no, she didn’t deserve it. None of us do. Even ego piped up (grudgingly) with, “I guess not”.

Today as I go to work, I will work with having gratitude for Salem. Without her presence in my life, I wouldn’t have learned nearly so quickly the intimate connection between the causes I put in place in my life, and the consequences that manifest.

I know there’ll be moments like what happened yesterday, but when they arise, it is my intent to use those moments to train my mind to make choices that lead to peace and clarity rather than to suffering and confusion.

Can I actually do that?

We’ll see.

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