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

“

“As thoughts and the two obscurations are pacified,

Experience and realization increase;

As your perceptions come under control, enemies and

Obstructing influences are subjugated.

It is Chenrezi who bestows in this very life the supreme

And common siddhis;

As the four activities are accomplished by themselves,

Recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 

 Full Disclosure:

I found it hard to contemplate something that doesn’t actually exist without slipping into treating it and speaking of it as though it does exist.

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I think of controlling the mind, the first thought that comes up is a man strapped into a chair wearing a metal helmet with lots of wires coming out of it going to huge machines with blinking lights on them, like in a 1950’s sci-fi movie complete with spooky music, and a Vincent Price mad scientist type saying, “…I now control your mind, Mr. Smith, your very mind! You will do as I command…”

In real life, it’s not that easy. The ‘machine’ we have for controlling our minds is Mind Training. No blinking lights. No mad scientist. But you can supply your own spooky music if you want. When I first started mind training, I thought…how hard can this be? Memorize a few prayers, learn a few remedies and—voila!—a well-trained mind. Now, some two years into it, I’m starting to realize a few hard truths.

First among them and perhaps most startling is that the ‘mind’ as such doesn’t exist. Except that it does. But it doesn’t. And once you realize space and time are merely concepts made up by the mind, which itself doesn’t exist, you come to see that the ‘mind’ can both exist and not exist in the same moment. At first, this confused the heck out of me. I mean, come on, we live in a world of zeroes and ones, don’t we? The question is always is you is, or is you ain’t, isn’t it? It’s either a zero or a one, right? It’s got to be negative or positive, doesn’t it? It can’t be both, can it?

The answer is yes…and no. Dilgo Khyentse describes mind like this, “What we normally call the mind is the deluded mind, a turbulent vortex of thoughts whipped up by attachment, anger, and ignorance.” Well, that made me feel all kinds of better. When I think my mind exists, I’m deluded. But then I thought about it. That’s how things really are, isn’t it? Our eyes merely transmit information. They don’t ‘see’ anything. We see the world through our mind. And our mind is a little bit like that hundred years storm on Jupiter. Myriads of thoughts spin through our mind all the time, and anything we ‘see’ or perceive is being seen through the distorting and constant storm of afflicted emotions.

For something that doesn’t exist, the mind is pretty powerful, isn’t it? Or is it? What if we could calm that storm? What if we could recognize the absolute emptiness of all thought? Where would that leave us? I think it would leave us completely awakened, like a sleeper who wakes from a nightmare.

***

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

Is romance an emotion? I don’t think so. I think it’s a whole lot of emotions packaged into a single concept, and attachment is the glue that holds it all together. After all, who wants a thirty day romance? How about ninety days? No. It’s more like my sister used to say, “I mate for life. His or mine. He leaves me, he’s a dead man.” She was only half-joking.

As I went about life in my past, I was constantly seeking that ‘Forever Romance’. Of course, it never even occurred to me to question what kind of person would offer a guarantee of forever. I wanted that Forever Romance because I labored under the delusion that having it would make me ‘happy’. By happiness, I meant I wanted to stop the constant spinning tornadoes of thought that whirled ceaselessly through my mind. What ended up happening was the tornadoes I’d carried around up until then were absolutely blown away by the hurricane of emotions that comes with living with a sociopath.

Boy, howdy. It wasn’t no joke.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that I had so little control over my perceptions, I didn’t even realize they were perceptions. I wholly believed whatever my mind spewed out. Whatever the delusion, I bought into it. And all the time, I was miserable because happiness constantly eluded me.

If I could have stopped for just a moment, and breathed, and had just a moment of peace and clarity, I would have seen that I was on the Titanic and the iceberg was dead ahead. If I could have noticed that much, even for just a moment, I might have been able to change the course of my life. Or at the very least, I may have noticed that I was the only one who could change the course of my life. I might have noticed that there were lifeboats all around. All I had to do was jump.

***

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

The biggest thing going on in my life right now is anxiety.

Our lives go through cycles. There are good times and…not so good times, right? The cycles in my life are very pronounced. I’m not sure why that is. It could be because I’ve always been an introspective, introverted person. Most of the time, my anxiety is there and I don’t really care that much. It’s like an annoying, buzzing fluorescent light—just loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to really bother about. With pharmaceutical assistance, the buzz has gotten even softer.

But then there are times like the past couple of weeks. How to explain anxiety at this level?

Okay. Imagine this.

You’re a time traveler. You know exactly what’s going to happen on the Titanic. And in some magical way you time travel back to the Titanic’s last night on the sea. You’re on board, and you know that in five minutes, the ship is going to hit the iceberg. Five minutes. There’s nothing you can do. You may survive the icy water, you may not. How would you know? You’re a time traveler, not a fortune teller. Five minutes to a watery death in frigid waters. Would you be anxious, or what?

That’s what it’s like for me to live with anxiety when it cycles up, like it is now. There’s this constant feeling of OH MY GOD! DOOM! DOOM! Imagine those last five minutes on the Titanic stretched out over days and days on end. Welcome to my world.

In dealing with anxiety at this heightened level, my practice is invaluable. It is such a tremendous sense of power to realize that just because it took me four hours to get out of bed (talk about not being a morning person!), the thought that I’m going to have a disaster of a day is exactly that—a thought.

In working with the latest cycle of anxiety, it’s a great relief to remind myself over and over of the emptiness of thoughts. In fact, the thoughts are so outrageously exaggerated, that it’s easy to see their emptiness. When I get caught up in the storms of anxiety, it’s easy to use mind training to clearly see that the obscurations arising are coming from my own mind.

In a sense, heightened levels of anxiety make it easy to experience perceptions as perceptions because my world becomes so distorted. Before I began studying the Dharma, the distortions were frightening. With the help of mind training and practice, I see the distortions as manifestations of what I’m learning about the mind. It’s kind of cool, because sometimes I feel like…will you look at that crazy thought? At those moments, I am entirely aware of the emptiness nature of thoughts in a way that’s impossible when my thoughts are more ‘normal’.

In a very real way, the anxiety-fueled storms that rage through my mind make the workings of mind nearly transparent to me. That transparency makes it easy to remember that I’m a child of illusion. It makes it easy to watch Tsunamis of emotion rise and fall, and feel them crash down around me. Does it still feel like I get knocked over and drown in all that emotion? You bet. But there’s something very powerful in being knocked over by a make-believe Tsunami. When you know it’s make-believe, you can’t drown in it. Once you’ve seen the transparency of thought, you can bring your perceptions under control and ride waves of anxiety on the surf board of the Dharma. And if you wipe out, so what? You’re not gonna drown. You just get right back on and ride the waves.

***

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

Yesterday, one of my dental bridges came out. If you’ve never had a bridge, imagine removing a Band Aid from a deep cut that’s almost healed. The skin’s real tender to the touch. My mouth feels like that where the bridge was. It’s not horrific pain, but it’s uncomfortable.

I made an appointment with the dentist, who can’t see me for another week and half. Don’t chew on that side, the dentist’s office told me, you could crack off the tooth that’s left, then you’d need an implant. Imagine hearing that in my Five Minutes on the Titanic state of mind.

I emailed my manager and let her know what day I needed to go to the dentist and why. She emails back and asks if I can push the appointment out further past September 2 because she’s going to be out, and Salem’s going to be out.

I read that and I wanted to throttle her. Seriously. I really did. Before I could stop myself, I emailed an unskillful response about it being an emergency appointment. Then I sent a second (more skillful) email saying that I’d check with the dentist for a new appointment.

I’ve already called and pushed the appointment back to early September. But this whole thing pissed me off. Staffing issues are not my problem. They made a decision to have a department with two people in it, but they don’t want to live with the consequences of a very unskillful decision.

I was able to get enough distance between me and my afflicted emotions to realize that what’s manifesting as irritation and resentment has nothing to do with Salem, the manager of that department, or my too-soon departed dental bridge. It has to do with me, and how much I truly, truly suffer each and every day at work.

So, having realized that, I know what to expect when I go to work in just a little bit. As soon as I pull into the garage I’ll experience aggression, resentment, and frustration. I’ll more likely than not feel like spitting on the manager if she gets within spitting distance.

When these afflicted emotions arise, I will remind myself that I am perceiving the world through the distorted lens of my afflicted emotions. I will make every effort to be aware of the afflicted emotions arising, instead of just getting caught up in them. I will be aware that what I’m experiencing is agitation in the mind. I will be aware that the ‘enemies’ I perceive are my own thoughts.

I will also be very quiet. Being in silence brings a tremendous amount of clarity. And since it’s quite uncomfortable to talk (cool air on exposed gum—not good), I’ll have the perfect reason to withdraw into silence. I will own my perceptions without buying into them.

As always with any mind training technique, I can’t know if this will work. But I do know that the Dharma is ever-constant and never-failing…even on the Titanic.