mantra

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On the wind and a mountain…

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

This is my contemplation on the first two lines of verse 45 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“To recognize sounds as mantra is the crucial point of recitation practice;

Clinging to sound as pleasant or unpleasant is liberated into its own nature.

Free of grasping, the spontaneous sound of samsara and nirvana is the voice of the six syllables.

In the self-liberation of hearing, recite the six-syllable mantra.” 

 Full Disclosure:

Sounds have been seductive for me all my life, especially the sound of a good story.

Written Sunday, November 9, 5:00AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I grew up a city girl—Bronx, New York. For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived in a place where there was constant, loud noise. I rode home from school on noisy buses with squeaky brakes and noisy kids. I bought pizza from a shop window while the subway rumbled past behind me on its elevated track, brakes screeching, iron against iron. I fell asleep to the distant sound of ambulances and police cars screaming through the night. Then later, toward the very early end of my childhood, and the beginning of my parents’ long drawn out divorce, there was the screaming sound of human suffering as they yelled at each other and shouted unbearable truths into the night, every syllable a testament to their own suffering in samsara.

baby noiseIf we are born with the blessing of hearing, we all have our own very personal history with sound. When it comes to sound, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘neutral’. We either want to hear it, or we don’t. We even at some point designated our hands as stand-in listeners. Was it the nineties that brought in the famous “talk to the hand” gesture?

Whatever our relationship with sound, we accept it, as we do with all things in samsara, as though it had some external reality, independent of ourselves. This is so patently false, that we can literally become ‘deaf’ to sounds that we hear all the time. How many of us actually hear the ‘sound’ of our car when we’re driving? Unless there’s something wrong, the sounds of the engine just blend into our environment.

As we move through our very noisy, very distracting twenty-first century lives, we inundate ourselves with sound. Driving home from work with my windows down, I hear the radios in people’s cars. Wow. If it’s not a commercial yelling out the glamours and favors of the newest beer, it’s the DJ opining about a movie star’s latest faux paus, or it’s a song with a raging beat that can do nothing but inspire agitation in the listener. As I drive home, and I’m sitting at a traffic light listening, I often think to myself…what? You didn’t get enough agitation at work today? Come visit my job. I’ll fix you right up.

In our busily mad rush through samsara, we can forget completely the actual nature of sound. Like all things in samsara, sound is impermanent, insubstantial, and dependent. Once we realize this, it becomes clear that the perception of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sounds arises from an agitated, clinging mind. Mantra, on the other hand is that sound which protects the mind from clinging, from agitation, from afflicted emotions. A mind thus protected will be disturbed by no sound that can possibly arise in samsara. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “If you perceive all sounds as mantra, good or bad news will no more disturb you than the wind can disturb a mountain.”

That’s a pretty bold claim, isn’t? No news, no matter how disturbing, can agitate the mind protected by mantra? I haven’t experienced this, but I can imagine that any sound perceived by a mind free of clinging, would simply sound like mantra—the undisturbed resonance of empty luminosity.

***

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

I wrote my very first short story in second grade. It was three paragraphs long, written in pencil on a piece of loose leaf paper. It’s been a love affair with sound ever since. People ask me sometimes how I write stories. I usually say something glib like, “I get inspired, then I write it down.” This is very far from the truth, but it’s nearly impossible to explain what actually happens.

What really happened when I used to write stories is that I would hear a melody in my mind. The melody was made up words. In a sense the words were the music. The melody would go round and round in my mind and echo so beautifully, that I had to write it down so that others could hear the same beauty I was experiencing. What I wrote down ended up being a story.

Words and the sounds they make have always been a focus of my life. My mother, while not an extraordinarily cruel woman, could say extraordinarily cruel things. In a sense, it was from her that I learned the power of words. When I was in my twenties, my mother and I had an argument, and she started to cry. I remember saying, “I don’t care if I make you cry. You’ve made me cry enough times.”

arrow in heartWow. I suffered for years for saying that. Every time I thought of those words, I felt like the slimiest bit of slime on a pond laden with scum. The guilt over saying that has only recently dissolved as I’ve studied the Dharma. What I’ve been able to see is that it’s downright astonishing how a few syllables can cause such prolonged suffering.

Looking back on that Fateful Day in my life, I might notice that I spoke entirely out of afflicted emotions. I might notice that if I had had the capacity to take a step back and establish a moment of peace and clarity, I might have thought those syllables, but I wouldn’t have said them. I can notice that there were many thoughts going through my mind at that moment, and what I actually allowed to pass my lips was the least cruel of my thoughts.

If I had been able to take a step back, breathe, and listen to my rushing thoughts, I would have noticed that the wise thing to do was to end the encounter long before it reached the point of uttering those words. Had I been able to take a breath, I may have chosen to be silent rather than put causes for suffering into my future by using my power with words to inflict anguish on another being.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is the 125 Vow. Okay. A little bit of full disclosure here. Before I began studying the Dharma, you couldn’t have paid me to take a vow. Are you kidding? Have you read the Old Testament? I’ll be honest. I used to think nuns and priests were really, really brave people to be making promises to a god who made Don Corleoneangry god look like a nice, mellow old guy. I mean, who wants to make promises to a god who smites his enemies with plagues of locusts? What if He decides you’re His enemy? Then what? What if you made a promise (a vow, no less) to Jehovah, and then you broke it? He’d probably smite you so bad, your grandkids’ grandkids would be sorry. So my thinking went at the time.

But after studying the Dharma and making some experimental vows here and there (little one day vows, nothing too grand to start with), I began to understand how vows work in Buddhism. What, after all, is a vow? I think it can be simplified by saying it’s a string of meaningful syllables spoken with intent. One of the wonderful things I’ve found about taking a vow is that something happens in the mind. I’ve forgotten what the word is, but it means that the mind becomes focused on a purpose. In application, what happens is the mind begins to look for ways to fulfill the vow. I don’t mean that you sit puzzling over it, and stay up nights trying to figure things out. No. It’s not like that at all. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The mind begins to see the world in terms of the vow you’ve taken.

I’ve taken a vow to provide 125 hats and scarves to the Little Lamas by November 1, 2015. The day I made the vow, nothing really happened. But I know how this works now, so I didn’t really expect anything so soon.

Ideally, I would like to knit (with friends) to provide the hats and scarves. Sometimes it’s a bit hard finding the Jonang colors of gold and maroon. I buy yarn from a mill ends supplier on E-bay. The most economical way I’ve found to do that is to by mill ends yarn by the pound. The only catch is, you can’t choose the colors. You get five pounds of high end yarn in beautiful colors. In my last order, there wasn’t one maroon or gold skein of yarn to be found.

The day after I took the vow, I went to check out my E-Bay supplier’s online store, not really looking for anything in particular, and guess what? There were a couple of pounds of gold and maroon yarn for sale! Of course, I grabbed them. That’s how vows work. The vow becomes the activity of your life.

What I’ve found with taking vows in the past, is that a sort of side-effect is that they protect my mind. There are only so many hours in a day, so necessarily, if I take a vow to do something, there are going to be other things that I can’t do. When I’ve taken a vow to do something, I find that my mind eliminates those ‘other’ things which usually turn out to be pretty unnecessary anyway. Along with those activities being eliminated, the thoughts about the activities are also (effortlessly) let go. In other words, the mind’s activity of clinging decreases as a natural result of taking a vow. Interestingly, the mind won’t cling to the vow itself. I’m not sure I understand that, but that’s what I experience.

mountainIn applying Patrul Rinpoche’s lines to this experience, what I find is that the vow is a kind of ongoing mantra in my mind. In a very real sense, I’m beginning to see the world in terms of my vow to support the efforts of the Little Lamas so that they may go forth and uphold the Jonang Lineage. The ‘sound’ of the vow in my mind is a kind of mantra of constant peace. When afflicted emotions arise, it’s as though their power is robbed by the presence and constancy of that peace. I experience this peace as a state of non-clinging, and I find that afflicted emotions can’t co-exist with it. I think this is a mild experience of what Patrul Rinpoche means when he says, “Clinging to sound as pleasant or unpleasant is liberated into its own nature.” The nature of sound is impermanent, insubstantial, and dependent. The experiment of living with this vow is showing me the emptiness nature of sound, and although I’m not (by any means) a mountain that can’t be disturbed by wind, I can glimpse at times that it’s possible to live that way.

***

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

On Friday, an epoch in my life ended. When I first came to Texas all I had was a job with Big Brother, Inc. and an apartment. I have clung to that job with the tenacity of a zealot clinging to the One True Way. However, as a result of the company I work for being sold, I will no longer occupy a building owned by Big Brother, Inc.. On Friday, as I walked out of those doors for the last time, and got in my car and drove out of the parking lot for the last time, I breathed through my heart and put a smile on my face. There were many afflicted emotions of fear and anxiety arising. But no matter what came up, I calmly recited mantra…om mani peme hum.

I did it this way because I wanted to experience doing mantra in the face of something that could have been very frightening and very fraught with anxiety. What I found (which should perhaps have been self-evident) is that afflicted emotions can’t truly take hold of us without a crucial sound: thought. Thoughts after all, are simply syllables which haven’t been given shape by our vocal cords yet. But vocalized or not, they’re sounds. I also found on Friday, that two sounds cannot co-exist simultaneously in the mind. I’ve been working with this verse all week, and honestly, I didn’t really see the significance or importance of it. But it really hit me on Friday:it’s impossible for two sounds to coexist simultaneously in the mind.

Wow. That’s huge! This means that if you’re reciting mantra, the thoughts that green peace raygive shape to fear, anxiety, dread, worry cannot arise. That’s a pretty big deal. In an old time sci fi movie, mantra would have been the Ultimate Peace Ray. And just to be sure this was true, I tried it. Driving home, I actually tried to think a fearful thought and recite mantra simultaneously. Impossible. Cannot be done. Mind was able to switch back and forth very, very quickly and create the illusion of simultaneous thoughts, but it was an illusion.

Knowing that I have the Ultimate Peace Ray in my very own mind, what shall I do on Monday on the new job site. Well, let’s see. Sadly, most people in samsara don’t have their own personal UPR (Ultimate Peace Ray) in their minds. I certainly can’t give them mine. Or can I? Sort of. What I can do that will make a difference is to be the peace that I want to have. At work on Monday, there will be a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, a lot of frustration, a lot of confusion.

Fear, anxiety, frustration, confusion—those are all sounds. I have a better sound…om mani peme hum. On Monday, in the whirling storm of boxes put on the wrong desks, computer systems that will freeze, telephones that will go to the wrong extensions, and too few surge protectors for too many desks, I will recite the six syllable mantra. I will recall that all these sounds arise from the empty luminosity. I will recall that these sounds arise as mere echoes of the union of wisdom and compassion–the All Ground upon which the mirage of samsara rests. In recalling these things, I will recite the six syllable mantra…om mani padme hum.

praying stone buddha

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Looney Tunes…The New Adventure, Episode 4

entertainment3June 11, 2014

Day 8

Day 8 with Interplanetary Title and I find that nothing has significantly changed except the new electronic time clock which documents our time to the second. No one likes it. It makes our status as slaves on the corporate plantation more apparent than ever.

Today I find myself committed to 52 Loaves. I’ve been baking bread outside my bread machine for a little more than 6 months now. In a craft where five years is considered a good beginning, I’m a total newbie. I’ve decided to get Ken Forkish’s book Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza, and commit to his method of artisan bread making for 52 Loaves.

This morning before work, I ordered the book, and a couple of tools from Amazon. During the day at work, I started to get super-excited about beginning a new adventure in my baking craft, making a 52 Loaves commitment, getting to know a new teacher and . . . then I remembered something my Dharma friend Tashi said in his Dharma talk just this past Sunday…if you want your emotions to even out, begin with controlling the highs.

Wow. I didn’t want to control all that excitement. It felt really good.

Or did it?

Something else Tashi said, and that we see in our ordinary lives all the time came to me then…for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Who hasn’t heard that? What goes up must come down. The higher the high, the lower the low. If you find Heaven, you’ll surely find Hell.

I had a sudden hundred and eighty degree change in attitude because…well…I was getting really excited about my 52 Loaves commitment. And all my life, I’ve gone with those strong feelings. Let’s just say that the last time I was completely enraptured and swept away by my emotions, I ended up in a ten year relationship with an honest to God I’ll-kill-you-if-you-ever-leave-me-bitch sociopath. Not good.

So now, I was totally motivated to work with controlling the high. But I was stuck. I had no idea how.

Then I remembered something else Tashi said: Peace is the only emotion worth cultivating.

Right. Sounded good. Peace. I’d start with that. So I tried to be peaceful.

Didn’t work. I started getting excited that I’d made a choice to be peaceful and not go with the tug of my afflicted emotions.

I was ready to throw up my hands. But then I had a thought, no fanfare, no epiphany, just a thought…I see you, Mara.

That was pretty incredible. It was as though I had stopped ‘me’ in her tracks. Suddenly, I could experience the so-called ‘happiness’ and ‘excitement’ in a neutral space in my mind. In a flash I realized that it didn’t feel good at all. The actual energy lurking behind the labels had the same taste as anxiety, and fear, and hope. Without the saccharine sweetness of ‘excited’, I could taste how I was poisoning myself.

I silently did mantra (om mani peme hum), ten times. Doing mantra felt like uncovering something shining and clear and whole. Then I had the thought…peace has no components. To me that means that when you strip away, even for an instant, all the ‘pieces’ of your afflicted emotions, peace naturally arises.

It takes much longer to describe it than it did to experience it. This all happened in less than a minute, but it had the clarity of a sudden burst of unspeakably intense light going off in my mind.

My takeaway from this experience of working with my high is that peace is the only emotion worth cultivating because the main quality of peace seems to be an undeniable wholeness. Experiencing that wholeness, even for just a moment, gives us a glimpse of our true nature: true bliss, true purity, true self, true permanence.

Like dew on grass, the delights of the three worlds by their very nature evaporate in an instant. To strive for the supreme level of liberation that never changes is the practice of a Bodhisattva.

bugs bunny

 

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On the body, speech, and mind of compassion…

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 two lines of verse 25 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“The basis of the Mahayana path is the thought of enlightenment;

This sublime thought is the one path trodden by all the Buddhas.

Never leaving this noble path of the thought of enlightenment,

With compassion for all beings, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

Before I began to practice and learn about compassion, I’d look at some people and I’d think, Hell was built for a reason. I hope they’re stoking those fires and keeping them good and hot for you. It’s taken me quite a while, but gradually, I’m coming to see the futility of such thoughts.

poison bottleAfter I began to practice and I became more sensitized to my afflicted emotions, a funny thing happened. I began to notice how my afflicted emotions made me suffer. I saw how anger actually hurt in the body; how frustration made me tense up and get a headache; how resentment gave me indigestion. But the absolute worst was when I vented one of those poisons on another person. For a few short seconds, it felt so good, but then regret, guilt and resentment for feeling regret and guilt would set in, eating into me like a psychic cancer. It was a horrible, seemingly inescapable cycle.

Now that I’ve practiced for a couple of years, and taken Bodhisattva vows, I’m beginning to see that I was utterly blinded by my afflicted emotions. All I could see in my world was my own anger, frustration, and resentment reflected back at me. Today, things are different. I would like to be able to say that I go through my days in an ecstasy of compassion for all beings that I encounter. But that’s not even a shadow of the truth.

The truth is that these days, I feel far more compassion than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I’m not sure if it’s because I experience compassion more often or if I just recognize the incredible suffering of afflicted emotions. But whatever the cause, I’m now able to recognize the poisonous nature of afflicted emotions when they arise, as they still do. I no longer feel righteously angry or frustrated, or justly resentful. It’s more like…oh no…not with this again. And the moment I feel poisoned, I recognize my own power to let go of the emotion. Even when I can’t let go of the afflicted emotion, I recognize that letting go would be the most compassionate thing I could do for myself and all sentient beings.

Dilgo Khyentse says, “When your body, speech, and mind are completely saturated with the wish to help all sentient beings…even the smallest action…will swiftly and surely bring the fulfillment of your goal.” Although I have not yet found myself saturated with compassion, I have found that when my intent is to benefit other sentient beings, things just have a way of working out. I have found, to my utter delight, that compassion in action is pretty unstoppable. It may be the closest thing we have to perpetual motion in the manifest world.

***

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

In my past, I used to consign so many people to Hell, I probably kept Infernal Imp construction crews busy for decades. All the woes in my life were someone else’s fault, and if they’d just stop messing with my life—then it would all be good, and the perfection of which I was so richly deserving would descend upon me like manna from Heaven. And it better not fall on any of those Hell-bound ones either because it was my perfection.

When I first came to Texas, I was fleeing a situation of domestic violence. Imagine that. Here I was, hundreds of miles away from my former Special One, totally free, and what was I doing? Oh. My. Gosh. I was pouring almost every waking instant of my energy into wishing my former beloved to the very lowest depths of Hell where they keep the flames extra hot and a brisk day of torture begins with impalement on a red hot skewer. Such were my thoughts. And as surely as I created a vivid Hell of suffering for the other, I was right there with them, enduring every imagined torment.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice how even after I broke free of the prison of Domestic Abuse, I was stillprison guard brutally imprisoned by own my thoughts of vengeance. I can notice that I’d lugged my prison with me, embellished it lovingly, expanded upon it, and then taken up residence in it.

Perhaps if I could have taken a step back from my rage, and breathed just a half breath, I may have noticed that I was utterly free. I’d always been free. The prison had always been in my mind. I may have noticed that the person I was most angry with was me. Having noticed this, I may have begun my circle of compassion with myself.

Had I been able to do this in my early days here in Texas, I may have freed myself of my self-made prison much sooner. I may have realized that while it’s true that a sociopath I once shared my life with may one day show up and blow off my head, it’s also true that right up until the moment of my death, I can live a life of compassion with the intent to benefit all sentient beings. 

***

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

Friday May 30th was my last day of employment with the bank that employed me for nearly eleven years. Technically speaking, this weekend I’m unemployed, in freefall, in limbo. My first actual day of employment with Interplanetary Title, Inc. (the company that bought the division of the bank I formerly worked for) is tomorrow, June 2nd.

On Friday, it was as though agitation stalked among people, and believe me, its name was Legion. I had so many uncharitable thoughts. I wanted so badly to tell them to SHUT UP already. There was a desperate, brittle quality to the ongoing chatter. They were as noisy as a second grade class with a substitute teacher. Or maybe as noisy as a man’s thoughts the moment he’s laid down on a table to die, and he feels cool metal slide into his vein.

esmereldaOne person in particular, let’s call her Esmerelda, was the most agitated of all. She has the peculiar gift of spreading her agitation and stirring others into a fear-driven, agitated frenzy. What was interesting about Friday is that I was very in touch with the level of agitation in my own mind. I experienced it as a sea caught in the grip of a hurricane. Ten foot waves crashed constantly against the shores of mind. In a strange way, it felt good, almost exhilarating. I really experienced, up close and personal, that so-called ‘agitation’ is totally neutral. It’s just energy arising. It’s no more charged than the water that makes ten foot waves boom against a sandy shore. It’s our thoughts that give the energy a positive or negative charge. I really learned that on Friday.

The instant I realized this, I was able to feel compassion for my co-workers. They were feeling the same thing, probably worse, but they were totally identifying with it. For them, as it used to be with me, they were the agitation, and it was driving them to nervous chatter punctuated with hysterical laughter.

I was really busy at work on Friday. I didn’t know what I could do for my co-workers. Except, I did know. I could give them the gift of not being caught up in extreme agitation. I could do hourly silent mantra and prayer with the intent that we would all benefit. This changed what could have been a pretty hellish day into the perfect practice ground for compassion. Every time I silently chanted mantra, I wanted us all to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

In between mantras, frustration would arise in mind—shut up, shut up, shut up…for the love of God…SHUT UP!  That was what my Dharma friend Tashi would probably call the Off Ramp.  But then my hourly reminder would pop up on my computer, and I’d do my hourly silent mantra and prayer, and there I’d be, walking the On Ramp to compassion, one breath, one mantra, one prayer, one step at a time.

***

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

Tomorrow Interplanetary Title has a welcome party planned for us to—ready for this?—welcome us to the Interplanetary family. I swear to you. That’s their phrase, not mine. All I did was change the name to protect the nefarious.

family manI have to give full disclosure here. I’ve seen way too many mafia movies and read way too many books about The Family to approach tomorrow with anything but trepidation and a healthy dose of cynicism. I might be a Bodhisattva in training and all, but if they ask me to prick my finger and burn a saint, I’m outta there!

Actually, Interplanetary has games planned. Breakfast is on offer, and they’ll be giving away branded office finery like mugs and mouse pads. The makeshift conference room that will be the swirling center stage of this high drama is literally in front of my desk. I’ll have the best seat in the house to watch the drama play out.

Tomorrow, while I’m becoming part of the Interplanetary family, I will make it my constant occupation to keep my feet firmly planted on the noble path of the thought of enlightenment. This sounds a little impossible, but I’ve done it before on a much smaller scale. Before coming across this text, if I had a meeting where I knew there was a potential for strong afflicted emotions to arise, I would write in the notebook that I use to take notes, What is the state of my mind?  Every time I felt like opening my mouth and firmly lodging my foot in it, I’d make myself look at that question. If the answer was not so good, then I’d keep my mouth shut.

Tomorrow I won’t have a notebook with me. But the truly wonderful thing about the Dharma is that you can carry around reams of prayers with just one tiny little six-syllable mantra. It’s like Dharma Kindle, only better! Tomorrow, in all of the Corleone-like festivities of welcoming me to the Family, I will recite the six-syllable mantra (om mani peme hum or om amideva rhih) and remind myself.

I will remind myself that compassion is the only way to live a worthwhile life. I will remind myself that the people who worked to make the transition happen are wonderfully positioned for when they awaken to the Dharma. They are hard workers, excellent problem solvers, and tenacious obstacle-movers. When the time comes, someone will be very glad to have them in their sangha. I will remind myself that I am surrounded by brilliantly budding Buddhas, each of whom is more than worthy of my compassion and my hard work toward enlightenment for us all.

In doing this, it is my prayer that I will begin to see my cynicism for what it is: the fear of letting go a phase of my life where was I the Freed Prisoner. It is my prayer that in setting my feet on the noble path of enlightenment tomorrow, I may be the lamp that reminds those around me, if only for a moment, of their own brilliantly radiant light of true self, true purity, true bliss, true permanence.

Will mind turn to uncharitable thoughts of waking up beside decapitated horse heads? I’m sure it will. But that’s okay, because as my Dharma friend Tashi said, if there’s an Off Ramp, there’s got to be an On laughing boysRamp. When those thoughts arise, I will set my feet on the Compassion On Ramp with the six-syllable mantra—om mani peme hum.

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On countless beings…

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

heart treasure

“The basis of the Mahayana path is the thought of enlightenment;

This sublime thought is the one path trodden by all the Buddhas.

Never leaving this noble path of the thought of enlightenment,

With compassion for all beings, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When you grow up Seventh Day Adventist, it’s a little like going to a Heaven Pep Rally every Saturday when you go to church. Believe me when I tell you, Hieronymus Bosch had nothing on those preachers when it came to picturing the torments of Hell. It was bad, they’d tell you. All your flesh would burn off, and you’d scream in agony; but it didn’t stop there. No, no. Hell was eternal, so your skin would magically grow back and the eternal flames of damnation would consume you again and again, for all eternity.

Hell mouthBut those of us at the weekly Heaven Pep Rally had nothing to worry about. Not for us were those infernal flames greedy for the flesh of sinners. No. We were the saved. We were the ones who had accepted Jesus Christ as our personal savior. Not only would we not spend eternity in lakes of brimstone and fire, we’d walk streets of gold, and maybe even lie down with a couple lions and lambs. And there’d be angels singing eternal Hosannas to God. This last bit worried me sometimes because…well…I didn’t like church music that much and it didn’t sound like Heaven was the kind of place that got FM reception. But, you know, it was better than Hell.

One night, after a particularly vivid fire and brimstone Pep Rally, I broke down in hysterics at home. You see, I went to church with my uncle. My parents never went. I suddenly realized my parents would be in those eternal flames because they weren’t saved like I was. They were sinners. I begged them to go to church so that they wouldn’t end up boiled in a lake of fire forever.

Boy, my dad got really mad at my uncle. They had a “grown up” talk. I wasn’t there. My uncle later told me that it was okay. My parents would get into Heaven because my ticket was good for three. I was about ten years old. I started wondering about my aunts and cousins, my friends at school, my teachers. None of them were Seventh Day Adventist. Was it the lakes of fire for them?

In reminding us to aspire for enlightenment with the sole purpose of freeing other beings, Dilgo Khyentse says, “Your living parents are only two of the vast infinity of living beings. . . . All sentient beings are the same in wishing to be happy and not to suffer. The great difference between oneself and others is in numbers—there is only one of me, but countless others.”

Ultimately, this is the thought of enlightenment: to live our lives as though our sole purpose were to free ourselves of suffering so that we may free all sentient beings from their suffering.

***

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

When I was in fourth grade, one of the things our teacher did as a reward for good behavior was to give out pretzel rods. She kept a box of them in her supply closet. I used to love to see that box come out. But I’d always have a selfish thought…I wish I didn’t have to share. I want all the pretzels.

About three decades later, I thought I had a chance to have all the pretzels. I thought I was so in love. I’d discovered a new fairytale castleparadise—no, a penthouse–in Paradise, the highest point. I was so high up and I had a love so much greater than any love anyone had ever known, my love was in the stratosphere of Paradise. And I wanted it all for myself. Every last bit, every moment, every syllable. I was committed to not letting a single crumb of love escape. This time, I had all the pretzels and was going to keep them. Forever.

Funny thing about that word—forever. The moment you utter it, or even give it a shape in your thoughts, it begins to crumble. I spent ten years of my life trying desperately to hoard love because, I believed, it was the only love, the deepest love I’d ever find.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that all my misery in the years of the Relationship From Hell arose from clinging to the idea that the most important thing in the world was my happiness. Had I been able to breathe, take a step back from the maelstrom of my life, I may have noticed a few things.

I may have noticed that my desperate clinging to my happiness above all other things had led to a life dominated by hope and fear: hope that today I’d find the magic formula and I’d be happy, and fear that I’d never be happy. I may have noticed that I was clinging to a delusion that demanded almost all my energy just to sustain it. I may have noticed that I was living in a total darkness of indifference to the suffering of others.

Having noticed these things, I may have been able to loosen my grip on the crumbs of my long-since crumbled pretzel and maybe spared a thought for others who were suffering just like me. I may have realized that there are far better things than suffering to share. 

***

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. In five days, the sale will be complete. On Thursday, I gave back the ID badge that gets me into the building and got a new one that still gets me into the building, but now I’m just a vendor instead of an employee of the bank. Now, I’m just sharing space until a new building is found for us to move to.

As of today, our workspace has been moved to another floor. Today, when I get to work, it’ll be a little chaotic with a strong undercurrent of fear.

As I’ve gone through this entire transition, I have really put compassion to the test. I’m like that. If you tell me something works, I want to try it for myself. I want to see it make a difference in my life. Otherwise, what’s the point?  Life’s short and the moment of my death will be a surprise. I really don’t have time for things that don’t work.

These last few weeks at work, there has been so much fear. The air almost crackles with the electric feel of it. Throughout my days, I’ve been reciting mantra and mind training prayers. My intent these last few weeks has been slightly different. I’ve been making it my intent that by doing mantra, compassionate action may arise from me specifically in response to all of the fear and angst I feel around me at work.

At first, I thought it wasn’t working. But then gradually, I started noticing that people walked away from interactions with me with a small smile, with slightly less tension in their body. I started noticing that I spontaneously knew what to say to evoke calm in whoever I was talking to. I knew how to inject humor appropriately to break up tension.

All of this sounds minor, but it feels like ripples in a pond. And oddly, I don’t feel as though I’m at the center of those ripples. It feels as though I am only another ripple calming the waters of fear and hope I feel all around me.

abandoned treeThis has been a tremendous experience in putting compassion to the test. Throughout this transition, I am more and more coming to see that no one can be excluded from our compassion. Because really, when we do that, aren’t we abandoning them to their personal Hell, where the flames of their own guilt, their own fear, their own hope, will consume them lifetime after lifetime? I can’t think of even one person who deserves that. Not one.

***

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

So, my Bodhisattva vow goes something like…there are limitless sentient beings suffering. I vow to free them all. That used to sound so daunting to me. There’s something about pairing “limitless” and “all” together like that which makes the mind want to shy away and say…No way. That’s too many.

I just finished reading Skull Mantra, and the one thing I noticed about the monk characters was that their own enlightenment didn’t seem all that important to them. They were always concerned with walking the path. If that meant a prison guard shooting them, then so much the better if their death could lead to that soldier one day awakening, maybe lifetimes from now.

The monks realized that, despite appearances, they were not the prisoners. The guards were the ones imprisoned in their own prejudices, their hatred, their anger, their aggression, their indifference. And it seemed to me that, paradoxically, the monks were always working to free the prison guards.

I do not mean in any way to compare my air-conditioned office with my ergonomic chair, and a vending machine just steps away, to a Tibetan gulag. But there are parallels. People at work want so much to be happy. I hear it when they talk about their children, their houses, their spouses. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking for me when I hear something like, “when we get the new carpet…” or whatever, “then…it’ll all be good.” I want so badly to say, “No. It won’t.” But that wouldn’t be a skillful means.

Today when I go to work, it will be the first day in our new office space. People will be unsettled, feeling uprooted, and they will be anxious about June 1st, our true transition to Interplanetary Title, Inc. What can I do to make a difference today?

I can realize that in a very real way every person I see today is a prisoner, beginning with the person in the mirror. We are imprisoned by afflicted emotions and wrong views. We are bound by chains of ignorance and fear in dungeons of indifference. We are, as Dilgo Khyentse puts it, “beings…sinking hopelessly in suffering like blind people lost in a vast desert…”.

What can I do? I can keep my Bodhisattva vow. I can go to work with the intent, the aspiration to use this great ship, this ship on seaprecious human life to carry others across the ocean of samsara. I might get a little lost sometimes. Some really huge waves might come, but my Buddha Nature will be right there, keeping me on course for compassion one thought, one breath, one word, one act at a time.

by

On the whirlpool of samsara…

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 two lines of verse 24 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“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)

The really cool thing about the beach in Fort Lauderdale at low tide is that you can walk out to sea. It’s a lot of fun. You can put your back to the shore, and walk in the soft sand, and the water never gets more than knee high. You feel like Christopher Columbus out there—nothing but blue ocean and sky as far as your eye can see.

I was doing my Christopher Columbus thing one day at low tide. I was with another person and I had my trusty King Size noodle with me. A noodle is a long, thick piece of flexible material, tube-like, that floats in water. I thought I was safe.

We were talking, our backs to the shore, and neither of us noticed the tide coming in. If you’ve never been in the ocean at high tide, know this: the tide comes in fast. They don’t call them ‘rushing tides’ for nothing. Before we knew it, the water was neck deep; a couple of minutes later, our feet didn’t touch the sand anymore. We hung onto the noodle, and screamed at the lifeguard for help. The noodle wasn’t buoyant enough to support us in the rough, rising water.

Neither of us knew how to swim. We were drowning. The lifeguard seemed to be onshore one moment, then swimming high tide3beside us the next. He had to literally pry my fingers from the noodle and force me to hold onto his lifeguard buoy-thing. It was much more buoyant. I didn’t drown that day thanks to a very skilled young man.

In samsara, we find ourselves neck-deep in constantly rushing tides. We desperately tread the rough waters of our lives, grasping at our own versions of noodles that ultimately, will sink under the weight of our hopes and fears. In this ocean of fear, disappointment, aging, death, and disease, there are no magic panaceas. There is no friend, no promotion, no car, no fame, no fortune great enough to rescue us from the ocean of samsara.

Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “To be able to free us from the whirlpool of samsara, the basis of the refuge we seek must be something itself already totally free.” If we want to be free of the storm-tossed waters of samsara, so that we may free others, we must look beyond samsara to the Buddhas who, like my lifeguard, stand on the shore waiting their chance to plunge in and offer us a sure way to lasting, permanent freedom from the cycle of birth and death.

***

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

whirlpoolThere was a time in my life when I was so caught up in the never-ending storm of my emotions that it was like living at the center of a whirlpool. My constant effort was to outrun the emotions that threatened to drown me. To that end, I filled my life with activity. I worked; I sewed; I dated; I baked in my Breadman bread machine; I read voraciously. When I finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion, I fell asleep to the drone of melodrama on TV. Then I’d get up the next day and start all over. It was grueling.

This period of my life lasted from about my late twenties to my mid-thirties. I can say, without exaggeration, that every decision I made in that time was aimed at one thing: grasping for something—anything—that would give me a few moments reprieve from the unceasing, raging storm of my life. In those days, I thought the storm was happening outside of me. I thought…if life would just settle down, I’d be fine. This epoch in my life culminated in what was perhaps this lifetime’s most unskillful decision: I began the Relationship From Hell. Sure. Yeah. It was a learning experience. But I’m here to tell you, sociopaths are not the most patient teachers in the world.

Looking back on that tumultuous time in my life, I can notice that the storm was inside me. I can notice that if I’d been able to take just a half-step back from my life, I might have seen that I was like a shipwreck survivor grasping debris that was only dragging me deeper into the whirlpool of the sinking ship.

Had I been able to take a breath, recite mantra, I might have noticed that nothing and no one in my life offered a permanent, lasting way to a shelter beyond the storm. Had I been able to notice just that much, I may have begun to see the futility of my own struggle. Had I seen this, I may have been able to see that my path to lasting freedom lay beyond the whirlpool, and maybe—just maybe—I  might have headed for shore sooner.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is that the company I work for has been sold to Interplanetary Title, Inc. This has been a monumentally good time to practice. The atmosphere at work is truly a furiously spinning whirlpool of fear, hope, resentment, frustration, aggression, and just plain oh-my-freaking-god-the-company-is-shutting-down!

Despite all of Interplanetary Title’s efforts to calm fears, the people at work all have the slightly dazed look of survivors ofThe Shipwreck exhibited 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 some horrible disaster—a Tsunami, an earthquake, a category ten hurricane that leaves corpses floating through the streets. Although we all know that there are true disasters happening across the globe, with typically American egocentricity, we insist to ourselves that this is different. This is our personal disaster, our shipwreck.

At this point in my life, I’ve been studying the Dharma for a little more than two years. In that time, I’ve learned a lot of concepts, memorized a few prayers and aspirations, and I’ve seen some seriously cool sparkly blue things in sitting meditation. But in the sucking whirlpool of the transition at work, none of that matters; not one syllable.

What I am finding is that with the help of the teachings transmitted by my Dharma friend Tashi, and my own devotion to practice, I have gradually built a “total, unshakeable trust” in the wisdom and compassion of my own Buddha Nature. When I am at work, I can feel the storm surging all around me. I can feel the strongly surging tides of afflicted emotions rising inside me. And…I let it rise. I have utter trust that no matter what storm rises, my Buddha Nature will be right there, untouched, steady, utterly clear, utterly residing in peace.

This experience of an abiding peace and clarity in the midst of the raging storm’s fury is what makes it possible for me to recite the six-syllable mantra at work, “convinced and decisive”, knowing with utter conviction that my Buddha Nature is perfectly established. This allows me to resonate with the Buddha Nature I know is in those beings all around me. I don’t know that I can offer comfort at work, but I do know that I don’t contribute to the storm.

***

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

In a little more than an hour, I’ll head out for work. Before I go, I’ll check the mail to see if the Offer Letter (of employment) from Interplanetary Title is here yet. They said the letters would be sent out this week. Until I get that letter, everything so far that Interplanetary has said about me keeping my job during the ‘transition’ amounts to a whistle and a prayer.

I’m sure everyone at work feels this way. In some way, we’re all thinking…You’ve talked a good game so far, Interplanetary. But I’m eighteen days away from being unemployed. Show me words on paper. Make a commitment. Knowing this, I’m not really sure what I can do at work today that will make a difference for all of us. But writing this, I do realize something. Let’s say that I was the only one who received an Offer Letter from Interplanetary Title. This would mean that in eighteen days, everyone at work, except for me, would be unemployed.

Wow. That would be horrible. The letter would bring me no joy.

Experiencing this in my ordinary life is helping me to see why it’s so important to work for your own enlightenment with the sole goal being that you may bring enlightenment to others. I’m not sure why waiting for the Offer Letter has brought that home to me, but it has. I even want Salem to get an Offer Letter. I want absolutely everyone to get a letter.

envelopeSo I guess I know what I can do at work today. As I go through my day and encounter people, I can look at them and silently say to myself—may you get an Offer Letter. Even if I don’t like them. Even if they irritate me. Even if I feel that they’re puffed up with a sense of their own self-importance. I will do this because today, for the first time, I truly realize that if my enlightenment is done solely for my own good, it’s worthless. I might as well stay in samsara.

Today, with “total, unshakeable trust”, I will be “convinced and decisive”, beyond doubt, as I go through my workday with the prayer that we may all receive Offer Letters of Enlightenment from our Buddha Nature.

Well…except that one person who I really, really don’t get along with.

Kidding.

Him, too.

Will I forget during my workday? Yeah. Probably. But I have utter trust that my Buddha Nature will be on the job, reminding me of why I’m here, why we’re all here.

by

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.

heart treasure

“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 housethey 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 abandonedfrom 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 death cardslately 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 1st, 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.

victorian houseThe 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?

by

On myriads of thoughts…

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

heart treasure

“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, I wanted to run away. It’s not that things were horrible at home, but it was just a house. Cinderella lived in a real castle, and she wore glass slippers. She was married to a prince, and she wore pretty clothes all the time. And if I couldn’t make it to the castle, maybe I could stop by Heaven and walk on those streets of gold. If I got there on a good day, I might see lions lying down with lambs. I wanted to pet a lion and see what all that hair around its head felt like.

fairy tale bookAs a little girl, I was exposed to fairy tales and biblical stories at the same time. My cousin would read to me from my fairy tale collection just about whenever I asked. My uncle, who’d just converted to being Seventh Day Adventist, would read to me fanatically from The Bible. He had one of those bibles that had gorgeous color plates of what I later learned were great works of art. To me, they were very pretty pictures. There was no difference in my five-year old mind between fairies and angels. I thought angels were grown up fairies. I thought God was a king who lived in Heaven, his kingdom, and if I knew how to get there, I could go visit. I didn’t understand the idea of ‘fiction’.

We tend to believe that we outgrow such naïve styles of thinking. Yet we find ourselves constantly caught up in the stories of our own lives. We constantly seek happiness based on what we think we see around us. We look for the next job, the next spouse, the next house, the next car—always chasing the elusive goal of ‘happiness’. We end most of our days exhausted and horribly dissatisfied, but with the hope that tomorrow we’ll find true happiness.

We live our lives in a state of utter delusion, imprisoned inside a mind that is incapable of perceiving reality. We believe our thoughts as surely as I believed I could hitchhike to Cinderella’s castle. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “Myriads of thoughts have run through our minds, each one giving birth to many more, but all they have done is to increase our confusion and dissatisfaction.”

We are like children, constantly disappointed that no fairy godmother has come to rescue us from the mundane suffering of our lives.

***

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

“I’ll be dead tomorrow, so it doesn’t matter.” For years, I lived with that thought. I had elaborate plans of suicide. Back then I didn’t have access to pharmaceutical exit plans, but when you live a scant ten minute drive from the ocean, you don’t need pharmaceutical assistance. I wanted to die (anhelld honestly the method wasn’t important to me), because my mind had created a world that was so insufferable. I was convinced that death was the only alternative.

I was in a relationship that has the politically correct (and woefully understated) designation of “Domestic Abuse”; sounds so much nicer than it is to live it day in and day out. It was a sojourn through Hell. I’m here to tell you, Hell is state of mind, not a place with bubbling lakes of brimstone. In the final two years of that relationship, I craved death the way an addict craves their next fix. The one thing that stopped me was that I was afraid I’d get it wrong.

For a long time, I wholly believed my mind’s take on the situation. No religious zealot ever believed their creed more fervently than I believed the thoughts arising in my confused mind. Death, mind would whisper to me, a long peaceful sleep.

In the end of things, it was constant threats of death that finally drove me to leave. Toward the end, I was told constantly that if I left, I’d be killed. I thought—you’ll kill me? Really? Sweet. I’m outta here. It wasn’t quite so easy as I make it sound, but my preference for death over the life I was living was the final impetus that drove me to leave.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice how mind zoomed in on death until it seemed like the only way out. Had I been able to take even a baby-step back from the Greek tragedy of my life, I may have noticed that there is never only one anything. Had I done that, I may have noticed that death’s appeal came mainly from my fear that whatever lay ahead, beyond the gates of Hell, was just too terrifying to face. Had I been able to notice this, I might have seen that death’s looming stature in my thoughts was like a ten foot shadow of an ant, cast by the blaring spotlight of my confused mind. Having seen this, I may have ended the suffering of both my partner and myself a whole lot sooner.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life is that the company I work for is being sold to Interplanetary Title, Inc.  This has been a smorgasbord of fear and anxiety for mind. When this was first announced on April 11, there was this plummeting feeling in my stomach. Not only was I falling, my parachute wouldn’t open.

Mind went right to work, zooming in on all the things that could go wrong. Oddly enough, my sojourn in Hell has been pretty helpful. I’m on to mind; not all ten foot shadows are giants.

ecuSince April 11, I’ve had countless opportunities to work with anxiety. The one thing that all anxiety thoughts have in common is mind’s peculiar ability to zoom in, narrow a view until it simply blots out everything else.  I’m noticing that mind can only do this by ascribing a single cause and magnifying it beyond all meaningful proportion.

With the situation at work, there are days when mind insists that it’s all an elaborate ruse, and that on May 31st (the day the deal is signed), we’ll all be fired and ineligible for unemployment. This is just one scenario. Mind plays these fictions out hourly, with more variations than Bach could have ever dreamed up.

But thanks to my Dharma study, there are many times when I’m able to experience these thoughts as activities of mind, wholly unrelated to any reality, let alone ultimate reality. Thanks to this event arising at this time on my spiritual path, I am able to observe mind at work busily manufacturing what my Dharma friend Tashi calls ‘fictional truth’. Most of the time, I am able to see correct fictional truth—I know mind is deluded and confused and is offering up a skewed set of perceptions based on limited input.

I vigorously practice mantra now, but with a different emphasis. I no longer ask to be free of anxiety. When I recite mantra now, I understand that my true self is free of anxiety. I use mantra to establish a resonance with that true self. This dissolves the illusion of reality that can arise from the confused mind.

This does not take away the anxiety or fear, but it does give a comfortable distance from it. In practicing this way, I realize the power of mantra to free any of us at any time, no matter how entangled we are in the delusions of the confused mind.

***

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

In about an hour, I’ll be on my way to work. Before I began studying the Dharma, getting ready for work in these days leading up to May 31 would have been drama worthy of Shakespeare. I would have desperately hoped that the anxiety wouldn’t be too unbearable and that I could grit my teeth and bear it.

Today, no need to wear my teeth to nubs. You know what? The truth is, anxiety is already arising at the thought of going to work. And that’s okay. It isn’t pleasant. It isn’t fun, and it certainly isn’t my first choice for how to start my day.

Although there is nothing magical about the Dharma, for me it has a certain miraculous quality. This quality is what my Dharma friend Tashi calls “Serene Trust” or “Serene Confidence”. With training my mind, and with reliance on the Dharma, I am able to simply rest in the arising deluded confusion that I label ‘anxiety’. This doesn’t sound like a big deal. But for someone who’s ended up in the emergency room because of an anxiety attack so bad I couldn’t breathe, it’s pretty awesome.swing woman

Before, I used to try and ‘fix’ anxiety, try to make it go away. Now, I work with letting it arise, then resting with whatever arises. Today, when anxiety arises, I will recite mantra, and understand that what I am experiencing is a phenomenon in the deluded mind. I will remember that all phenomena are impermanent, dependent, and insubstantial. I will give impermanence a chance to prove itself. In this way, I will resonate with my true self. I will resonate with my Buddha Nature of true bliss, true permanence, true self, true purity.

Each time I do this during the day, I will turn my attention outward and know that every being I lay eyes on has the same Buddha Nature, and they are suffering far more than I am. I will work throughout my day, with compassion, to ease their fears, which are no different than mine. If I can bring a genuine smile to just one person’s face today, it will have been a day well spent.

 

PS: Thanks to my Dharma friend Elizabet for the awesome woman on the swing image…

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On all the forests made into paper…

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

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

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

You are my only protector!

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

From now on I have no hope but you!”

 

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

Finish the novel I started a couple years ago

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

Try out a new sourdough starter (this takes hours)

Re-decorate my apartment

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

Make banana bread

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

Re-organize the kitchen cupboards

Do my nails

Finish my latest assassin novella

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lost In Space: The Undiscovered Country, Episode 3

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will…


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April 23, 2014

Anxiety feels like this: you’re on a roller coaster and you’re all the way at the very top, then suddenly you go careening down. Except this is a Monster Coaster. You’re so high up, cities on the globe are pinpoints. You’re falling so fast, there’s no breath in your lungs. There’s no ground under you and you’re sure you’ll violate the law of perpetual motion and fall for-freakin’-ever. That’s what anxiety feels like.

Just lately, I’ve had the chance to get very up close and personal with that feeling. It’s been interesting.

Today, I thought very much on something my Dharma friend Tashi shared yesterday,

Serene Trust is the gift of the Buddhas,

the shower of Their compassion.

When we invoke the Buddhas through prayer and mantra,

it is not to ask, beg, cajole, or barter.

We express our gratitude for Their blessings of peace and clarity.

Until then, I’d never realized how Christianity has ingrained in me that ‘prayer’ is always to an outside entity.

I tried today being grateful for blessings of peace and clarity. I really did. But I didn’t feel serene or trusting. I felt like an idiot. I just couldn’t be grateful for something I wasn’t experiencing and…I don’t know. It didn’t work for me.

I silently recite mantra at work about once an hour. I have a pop-up on my MS Outlook calendar that comes up every hour and says “…breathe…”. Today, each time it came up, I recited mantra and made a conscious effort to ‘suspend my belief’ in prayer and just say the words. By doing this, I was somehow able to find a way to resonate with the actual sound of the words. It was sort of like humming harmony to a melody. With om amideva rhih, nothing really happened. They sounded like pretty words, but that’s about it. But, with om mani peme hum–wow!

I felt like a tuning fork vibrating to just the right note. I’m not kidding here. I could feel a powerful vibration through the center of my body. For whole seconds at a time, my mind reverberated with it. I’ve never experienced my entire mind turning to something. When that happens, you get a real sense of how incredibly vast mind truly is.

I think part of the reason it was easier for me to let go of the concept of ‘prayer’ with om mani peme hum is because I don’t have a visual for that. It’s a string of words often repeated after prayers. But for om amideva rhih, I have a pretty strong visual of Amideva. This seems to lend itself to ‘prayer’ rather than mantra recitation.

With om mani peme hum, it was as if for a moment, there was absolutely no separation between me and . . . well . . . anything.

I’m not sure if this is what Tashi meant, but…it felt different than ‘prayer’. It was a whole lot more powerful.

You have got to try this!

Bless me to recognize that this experience 

is insubstantial, dependent, and impermanent.

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April 22, 2014

Today, the new company that’s buying my company had an HR rep onsite to talk about benefits. Sitting there listening to him talk about how much it would cost me to stay ‘healthy, I thought about being lost and whether or not you can ever find your way back. I don’t think so.

In the same vein as the philosophical understanding that you can’t bathe in the same river twice, the same person can’t get lost and return. If you find your way back, then you are now a person with the skillful means not to get lost the same way again. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz comes to mind. I bet next time there’s a tornado, she takes Toto and hides underground, rather than being swept away again.

I think sometimes being lost feels worse than it is. After all, in this whole transition thing, being ‘lost’ means that no possibilities are closed to me. Intellectually, I know that’s true. But still, having the new company rep come and talk to us today felt a little like an undertaker taking my measurements for my coffin.

Bless me to neither be proud nor despair, 

but to abide in peace, free from self-grasping…

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April 21, 2014

When I was a kid, it was a real toss-up between Lost in Space and Star Trek. Dr. Smith’s trouble-making ways really tickled me. Looking back, I think it’s because, of the entire cast, Dr. Smith seemed to mind the least being lost in space. I wanted to be like that.

I felt so lost in the terrible screaming matches between my parents that finally culminated in their divorce. I guess I wanted to be like Dr. Smith–to not mind so much feeling lost.

As a woman, in the maturity of my years, I think I want the same thing–to not mind so much this feeling of being lost, of being un-moored.

On Friday, April 11th, it was announced that the company I work for is shutting down. It’s being bought by another company. They’re labeling it ‘a transition’. Talk about marketing. Everyone’s scared. Everyone’s feeling lost. Nobody believes their promises. Nobody knows what comes next.

I know that life is always like that, but this really puts me in touch with vulnerability and my own fear of letting go. When I first came to Texas, in flight from Relationship From Hell, my job was the only constant in my life. I have clung to my job for nearly nine years, not coincidentally (I’m sure), the same number of years I spent in Hell. I have been determined not to let go of my job. When I have made efforts to leave, they were in truth, half-hearted.

And now this.

The sale will be finalized on May 31st. I’ve taken a vow to meditate and pray between now and May 31st, and bring this to my path. For the next forty days, I’ll be exploring what I call the Dharma of being lost.

I hope you’ll come along for what promises to be an interesting ride.

I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

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