samsara

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On the truth of everything…

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

heart treasure

“To recognize as deity whatever forms appear is the crucial point of the development stage;

Clinging to appearance as beautiful or ugly is liberated into its own nature.

Free of clinging, mind as it appears is the body of Supreme Chenrezi;

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

 Full Disclosure:

This is my first contemplation written entirely on my laptop.

This is my first time thinking of thoughts as ‘appearances’.

Written Sunday, November 2, 5:45AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

rumpelstiltskinWhen I was a little girl, one of my favorite fairytales was Rumpelstiltskin. I was intrigued that this little man from another world could spin straw into gold. I was too young to know how spinning was really supposed to work, so I didn’t understand that straw couldn’t actually be spun into anything. I’d never seen a spinning wheel, so that wasn’t the ‘wow’ in the fairytale for me. That came from being able to change something into another thing that it wasn’t.

After Rumpelstiltskin came into my life, I watched my mother cook with different eyes. I wondered if her making dead bloody meat into something dark brown with gravy that we could eat was like spinning straw into gold? Or was it when a grown up put wood into the fireplace, and then hours later, only ashes were left? Most of all, I wondered if somewhere, hidden in some secret place, in some secret castle, was there a spinning wheel that could turn straw into gold? And if there wasn’t, why not? What was it about this world (outside the fairytale) that made things so…stuck-feeling?

After hearing that story, the world felt stuck to me, like a still-frame of a movie, as though there should be change, but something was working hard to keep it still. As a six year old, I didn’t have the vocabulary to say any of that, it was just a vague certainty that the fairytale was right somehow, and it was our world, where straw couldn’t be turned to gold, where something was very wrong.

Lo these many decades later, reading Patrul Rinpoche, I can put into words that vague certainty. Indeed, the world is not fixed in concrete. In fact, just a year later when I was introduced to the story of a man going up to the top of a mountain where a god wrote on a stone tablet, I was perfectly ready to believe it. I mean, why not? That’s how things should be. The world is not fixed, except in our own perception of it. Even in my seven year old mind I knew that sounded more right than my actual experience of things.

The mind, as imperceptible as space, is an almost magical sense organ that paints the world in literally any colors we can imagine. There is phenomena. There is mind. Everything else arises from our eons- old karmic formations that run in deep riverbeds (and millions of tributaries) of attachment, aversion, and indifference. These distortions shape all that we see. Don’t believe me? Try looking at a flower and simply perceiving it. Bet you can’t. Bet you start thinking something like…that’s a nice shade of yellow…wouldn’t put it on my walls or anything, and I sure wouldn’t wear it, but it makes a nice flower. Didn’t Mary Sue have that color roses at her funeral? Who sends yellow roses to a funeral?…oh yeah…it was her crazy aunt, the one who thought she could make shredded ice in the food processor and…

 And on and on. This is an exaggeration of elaboration, but it’s how our minds work. In fact, all phenomena is empty of true permanence and true self, and is utterly dependent on the perceiver for its existence. About this emptiness, or voidness, Dilgo Khyentse says, “The truth of voidness is the truth of everything …. everything, the whole universe and all sentient beings, is primordially void. Phenomena are neither spoiled by the idea of impurity nor improved by the idea of purity. The true nature is, simply, always itself.”

I think that for 99.5% of people on the face of the world, it’s impossible to simply perceive phenomena. We’ve come to rely too heavily on our elaborations to help us identify and shape our reality. But, what if started where we are? What if we started simply by remembering that all we see in the world is a direct result of what we believe and feel and what we’ve already experienced? If we could do that, we might be on our way to realizing the emptiness nature of all things. We might be on our way to recognizing that all we see is a shimmery reflection, like moonlight on water,  of some aspect of our Buddha Nature, our true self.

***

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

The mind is very seductive. I’m not sure if that’s part of what mind does, or if that’s a result of our need to believe our constant, femme fataleever-present distortion of what is. My mind has a peculiar ability that I wouldn’t dare impute to anyone else, so I’ll write this as though I’m the only person in the world, in the history of mankind that this has ever happened to. If you happen to know a ‘friend’ who’s had a similar experience, so much the better.

My mind’s peculiar ability is that it can make me believe anything. In the past this was one hundred percent true. These days, I’m not such a zealot. I question the One Truth of Mind a bit closely these days. But in my past, I was a total Zealot of the Mind. If mind put it out there, I believed it. Now, think about this. Recent studies show that we have approximately 50,000 thoughts on any given day. Sure, some of those are what I call ‘throwaways’ like…what’s for dinner? Should I do laundry tonight, or can I put it off one more day? I should really stop and get gas, but I’m too tired.

But then there are those thoughts that can really set us buzzing like …my god…I’m 35, and what have I done with my life? I should have married my high school sweetheart. He would have made me so happy. If we could just pay off the mortgage, everything would be great. If we got a smaller car, we’d spend less on gas, and I could go back to school and make more money, and we’d be happy. If I work two more fifty hour weeks, I’ll get that promotion and I’ll be so happy. These thoughts, depending on how often they repeat, can be like tornadoes or hurricanes in the mind, and they will drive us into probably foolish and definitely unsatisfying actions.

In my past, when I was a Zealot of the Mind, my One Truth of Mind was …if I could just fall in love, find someone to love me, I’d be happy. I’ll leave it at saying that I was so wrong, I could have predicted an ice storm inside an erupting volcano and been more right. In my past, I have been such a true Zealot of the Mind that my life became an unending series of actions that led only to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, guilt, and eventually a strong aversion to people. At one point, I believed my unhappiness was the fault of people, no one in particular, just people in general; and if they’d all leave me alone, I’d be happy.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that mind’s seduction was so effective with me because I was so desperately unhappy. I was willing to cling to anything, believe anything that promised a way out of that misery. If I could have taken a step back, I might have noticed that mind was simply doing what mind does: seducing me into believing what I wanted to believe. Once I’d noticed that the seduction relied on me acting based on my emotions, I may have been able to see through the appearance of the seduction, and see what mind was actually saying. Looking back now I can see that mind’s actual message was…this isn’t working. You need to do something else. At the time, that was absolutely true. If I’d been able to notice that, I may have been able to begin putting in place causes for happiness in my life, rather than causes for suffering.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is my job. For weeks now, I’ve been planning to get a new job. In fact, I had accepted a new job. I’d made all sorts of preparations to drastically reduce my income. Weeks of preparation, everything was set, then it came down to one email: the email to my manager letting her know that I would be resigning in three weeks. I sent the email.

I got back the expected, “can we talk about this?” request. Sure, I thought. You talk. I’ll listen. I’m done here. That phone call changed my life. I’ve been with the same company for just about twelve years. When you’re part of something for that long, you mold yourself to it. You come to believe that you have so much on the line. You come to believe there are things you simply can’t say, simply can’t do. You box yourself in. And after a very, very long while, that box starts to feel like a cage, and you come to wholly believe in its reality.

Talking to my manager on the phone, I completely realized all of this. The mind is so very fast. It took maybe two heartbeats for all of that to go through my mind. But the moment it did, my whole world shifted. It was so quick, it was almost disorienting. There was an actual physical sensation of the room tilting, then righting itself. In those few off-kilter seconds, I saw that I was free. I, in fact, had nothing at risk. I told her everything, all the reasons I was leaving. No it wasn’t the fact that I hadn’t gotten a raise in two years (that actually made me laugh), no it wasn’t that I wanted more advancement. It wasn’t any of that. It was the fact that I was working with someone who is wholly unqualified to do her job.

In that moment of utter freedom, I told my manager that nothing had to change, because the only one unhappy with how things were was me, which meant I was the one who had to go. In the end, my manager said she would make changes, and asked that I would stay and give her a chance to do that. That was the last thing I’d expected. My world tilted again. Stay? No. That wasn’t part of the plan. But in this brave new world I’d entered, what exactly was the plan? And suddenly, for just a second, I had an instance of what I call ‘meditation mind’. In that instant, I realized that going or staying didn’t actually matter. This was karma. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I had to live my karma.

I wish I could explain how realizing that made it the right decision to stay, but I can’t. It was a realization that came from a place beyond language, beyond perception.

mind the gapI’ve been working with this verse all week. And I think one of the things I’m coming to see is that when we can realize that appearances are exactly that…appearances…mind will look for another way to display phenomena. What eventually happened for me, was that mind sort of ‘clicked’ back into conventional reality. But in those moments when mind was looking for another way to display phenomena, my experience was a gap, an experience of phenomena that was in some sense ‘pure’, free of attachment, aversion, or indifference. I think, in the conversation with my manager, this happened because what she said so shattered my perception of what I believed to be ‘reality’. It was a feeling of complete freedom, no restrictions, no limitations.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that I experienced the deity in the forms arising in my perception, but I definitely experienced the inherent unreality of my reality. The falling away of the incredible heaviness of all my imputations resulted in an actual feeling of being lighter, less tied down, like an air balloon that’s been unmoored.

I’m not sure, but I believe that we can learn to have these gaps in experience simply by reminding ourselves that what we take for ‘real’ is actually a host of appearances. I think the more often the mind is forced to look for another way to display appearances, the more often we’ll be able to ‘see’ through the gap. And again, I’m not sure, but I think that gap may widen from a sliver of a moment, to longer and longer moments in which we realize the nature of our true selves and the true nature of all that is.

***

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

In the past three weeks, my manager has made incredible changes to the way things work. She’s kept every promise she made on the phone when we talked. My conversation with her has resulted in radical changes to both departments that she runs. For the most part, people seem very satisfied with these changes. Except for Salem, because now there’s no way for her to cover up her incompetence.

Even though I get up each day and drive to the same place and do the same job, nothing is the same. The work place no longer feels like a prison for me. I no longer feel like a prisoner entering a dungeon. I no longer feel like a coward who knows what must be done but who lacks the courage to do it. Now when I go to work, I’m aware that no matter how ‘real’ a perception seems when it arises there, it’s just an appearance. I experienced that thoroughly in my conversation with my manager.

Dilgo Khyentse says, when we’re working with this, and something actually happens, don’t think too much of it, “When this experience arises, be careful not to hold on to it or feel proud of it. This vast purity is not the product of our meditation; it is the true nature of things.” Well, that deflated my bubble. I was feeling like I was all that.

This experience with the workplace has been incredibly powerful for me. The very nature of my job has changed, literally and figuratively. The type of product has changed, due to the takeover. But more importantly, I’m coming to see the workplace as a sliver of emptiness in my apprehension of reality. In that one place in my life, I have utter confidence that everything I see arising there is an appearance. All that I see there has no more substance than a shadow in sunlight, a  reflection on a mirror. All the beings there want to be happy. All the beings there want to avoid suffering. All the beings there are worthy of compassion.

As I go to work this coming week, I want to continue to work with this because so far, the workplace is the only place where I can clearly see appearances as appearances. The rest of my life seems pretty darn real! My intent is that by working with my experience in the workplace, I can make that sliver of emptiness bigger and bigger, so that it spreads into more and more of my life.

Seeking to exit this job has made me truly realize, beyond an intellectual level that I will one day be exiting samsara, exiting my body. To that end, I’ve begun to look at my life differently. If I had to say the greatest benefit that has come to me out of this experience with the workplace it is my realization of why I’m here, why we’re all here. We’re in samsara to become enlightened so that we may enlighten all those who suffer. If we can’t do that in this lifetime, then let us live this lifetime with grace. Let us do all within our capacity to ease the suffering we see around us.

Let us ask ourselves a question my Dharma friend Tashi brought up last week. All day, every day, let us ask ourselves…what can I do that will make a difference? I can’t be sure if living this way will ultimately lead to enlightenment, but I can be sure that it will lead to a graceful exit from samsara.

buddha statue lying down

 

by

On tomorrow’s laughter…

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

heart treasure

“Whatever appears is delusion and has no true existence;

Samsara and nirvana are just thoughts and nothing more.

If you can liberate thoughts as they arise, that includes all stages of the path;

Applying the essential instruction for liberating thoughts, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

”

 Full Disclosure:

It’s so easy to get taken in by ‘reality’ that it’s hard to write about the magic act without getting caught in it.

Written Tuesday, September 16th, 5 AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was very young, I saw a movie called ‘Finian’s Rainbow’. It was about a leprechaun who’d come to this side of the rainbow chasing after the pot of gold someone had stolen from him on his side of the rainbow. That movie used to come on a lot. I’d watch it over and over. I think I was intrigued by the idea that a rainbow was something you could travel like a road and then end up on the other side in a whole new world.

As we go about our ordinary lives in samsara, we carry this same sense of child-like wonder. Is there, we ask ourselves again and rainbow potagain, that one act, or maybe that one job, or that one person that will give me a life on the other side of the rainbow? But time passes, we age, and we’re still on the wrong side of the rainbow, and the pot of gold doesn’t materialize. This makes us bitterly angry, frustrated. We become more desparately driven with each passing year to find that perfect life that always seems to lie just on the other side of whatever rainbow we’re chasing after.

This doesn’t work because there is no thing in samsara that is not a delusion generated by a deluded mind. The nature of samsara is that appearances arise when conditions are favorable, they last a few fleeting moments, then they pass away; just like rainbows. Yet we spend our entire lives chasing after delusional rainbows. Dilgo Khyentse says, “However much we might prefer to believe that things are permanent, they are not. Yesterday’s happiness turns into today’s sadness, today’s tears into tomorrow’s laughter.”

We live our lives in a kind of deluded madness. In our delusion, we are like dreamers in a dream looking for one thing—just one thing—that is real. In the dreamlike existence of samsara, it is only the deluded mind that makes it possible to create the illusion that any appearance is substantial, permanent, and independent of the deluded mind from which it arises.

We live like magicians who’ve forgotten that  magic is only a trick, slight of hand. We’ve become deluded to a point where we believe a woman can be sawed in half, then put back together. This is no less absurd than believing that money will bring us happiness, or that our One True Love will come and it will last forever, till every star falls from the sky.

***

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

There are so many times in my past where I’ve been sucked in by the magic show of samsara. It’s hard to pick just one.

ladderThere was a time, about two and half decades ago, when I wanted to ‘make it’ in corporate America. I interviewed for an internal posting that I thought would be my dream job, and I got the position. It was everything I’d wanted. I was high profile in the marketing department of a managed dental care company. I managed my own projects. I had my own budget. I organized and put on meet and greets for clients from all over the country. I set my own hours.

I was miserable. I couldn’t bear all the pressure. I once missed a typo on a bulk mailing. It had already gone to the printer to be done on good paper in four color process—very expensive. It cost thousands to run new, corrected copies. I began to miss days at work. I couldn’t stand the thought of being there. My boss, who was totally caught up in the ‘climb the ladder and be a success’ delusion treated me with a mix of condescension and mild disgust. I was holding her back.

One day, something (I don’t remember exactly what) went horribly wrong. It was open enrollment and the pamphlets describing the different plans available had not been delivered to the client. This was in the days before the internet. No pamphlets meant that the entire open enrollment process came to a halt. I had the client calling and yelling at me. I had the client reps calling and yelling at me.

I had…the sudden urge to go shopping. I got my purse, went to Barnes & Noble, and went shopping for a couple of hours. This was in the days before cell phones. I was unreachable. After shopping, I went home. I went back to that job after this fiasco, but it was causing me terrible suffering. I felt like a sublime failure. I felt that I didn’t have it takes to be a ‘success’. I suffered for years after leaving that job, laboring under the delusion that I was just too stupid to ‘make it’.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that all of my suffering came from attachment to a delusion. At that time in my life I imputed reality to the idea that becoming a corporate Vice President (the next step in that position) would make me happy. I also believed that not being alble to do that meant I was dumb or lazy or both.

If I’d been able to take a step back and breathe, and let some peace and clarity arise, I may have noticed that I couldn’t be a ‘success’ because a part of me simply didn’t believe the corporate myth of ‘making it’. That part was desperately trying to wake me up. If I’d been able to bring my attention to nurturing that part of myself, I may have ended my suffering that much sooner.

***

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

Yesterday morning I sent the last bit of information needed to complete my background check. Yesterday afternoon the recruiter called to let me know that I’d be getting a ‘Final Offer’ via email in the next couple of days.

That’s it. One phone call that lasted maybe two minutes, and I was free of Interplanetary Title, Inc. I had the urge to go back to my desk and create an email with the subject line “Out of the Office…Forever!”, then send it to ‘All’. Thankfully, I resisted that urge. But it was tough.

An interesting thing has happened since the phone call. Nothing—and I do mean nothing at all—at Interplanetary Title has even a miniscule weight of reality in my mind. Being at work yesterday felt like being in a lucid dream. I took a look at my mind. I was really curious about how  my experience could suddenly be so different. After a bit, I realized that the three poisons (attachment, aversion, indifference) were nearly wholly absent from my experience of the workplace.

But this wonderful dreamlike experience would flip back and forth like an optical illusion…is it a wine glass or two faces? As soonwineglass as an afflicted emotion would arise, I’d be instantly sucked back into the ‘reality’ of Interplanetary Title. When I worked with letting the emotions pass, the dreamlike quality would return.

Wow. It amazed me that so-called ‘reality’ could flip from ‘real’ to ‘dream’ and back literally faster than you can snap your fingers. It was like a coin tossed high in the air and turning over and over—first heads, then tails, then heads. The day went on and I noticed that I was clinging to the dreamlike experience and not wanting it to change. I knew eventually this clinging would lead to attachment, so I worked with letting the dreamlike perception of reality rise and fall like waves on an ocean.

The sudden capacity to experience the dreamlike nature of work has made it so much easier to leave. I don’t feel like I’ll be giving up anything. That would be a little like being caught in a nightmare and saying…No, don’t wake me up. I’m enjoying my suffering.

Being able to experience the dreamlike quality of the workplace has been extraordinary. I always thought that experiencing waking reality as a dream would lead to a total lack of compassion, even though I’ve been told otherwise. Just the opposite is happening. Because I’m relatively free of my suffering under the terrible weight of that reality, I have more compassion for those still laboring under the full weight of the delusion. It’s not just an arising appearance to them, it’s ‘reality’. It’s ‘how things are’. And my real job there in these last few weeks will be to be an Agent of Compassion, to be the wakened dreamer helping those still caught in the nightmare.

***

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

Unless something goes horribly wrong with the new job offer, I have about twenty-five business days left at Interplanetary Title. I can use one of two exit strategies. I can show up each day with an ‘I don’t care because I’m leaving’ attitude, or I can go to work each day and look for ways to use to this new capacity to experience the workplace as dreamlike to help others.

This should be a no-brainer. It is, kind of, except for Salem, who is still unbelievably, and utterly incompetent. A part of me wants to have the ‘I don’t care’ attitude, just so her job gets harder. It’s scary that I still feel that way after all the work I’ve done with that situation…but…there it is.

But…and it’s a BIG but…every act becomes a seed, then a heavy seed, then an impression, then a karmic formation. To be honest, telling myself that including Salem in my compassion is the right thing to do doesn’t help. I know yaks don’t fly and ravens don’t till the earth…but good god almighty already.

All right. So the ‘I need to do the right thing’ approach won’t work to include Salem in my compassion. It’s time for a little enlightened self-interest to kick in. I’ve studied the Dharma long enough to know that the experience of work as illusory and dreamlike is like a pebble tossed into the waters of mind. Soon I’ll start experiencing the ripples. I’ll begin to notice the underlying dreamlike state of other aspects of my life.

Since the workplace is my first genunine experience of this, I have the chance to consciously shape the seed of behavior that will eventually become my karmic formation (my ‘default’) for directing my behavior when this experience arises again. Bearing in mind that I want to plant ‘good’ seeds of behavior in my mind stream, I will go to work today with the intent of bringing a measure of compassion to all of my interactions. After all, in most other areas of my life, I’m still nearly completely caught in the delusion of ‘reality’, just as the people at work are caught in the delusion of that reality.

When my Dharma friend Tashi talked about this verse, he said that it describes the origin of renunciation. At first, I didn’t really understand that. But after yesterday, I totally understand. All that arises in mind is a delusion, a distorted dream. Once we fully realize this, the natural response is to want to wake up from the nightmare world ruled by attachment, aversion, and indifference.

Renunciation is that all-important first step to coming awake to the deluded nature of samsara. Once we begin to awaken, we begin to see clearly that the true nature of samsara is ephemeral—a city of clouds in the mind of a dreamer who’s forgotten he’s asleep. This coming awake I regard as the root of renunciation, and I’m coming to believe that it’s the only way to free ourselves and others of the nightmare pangs of samsara’s thousand fold sufferings.

woman at shrine

 

 

by

On ending well…

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

heart treasure

“Cremate that old corpse of clinging to things as real in the fire of nonattachment;

Conduct the weekly funeral ceremonies of ordinary life by practicing the essence of Dharma;

As the smoke-offering to provide for the departed, dedicate your accumulated merit for all their future lives.

Consummating all positive actions done for the sake of the dead, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 Full Disclosure:

Really? I couldn’t resist a chance to write on a verse that talks about cremating old corpses!

Written Thursday, August 28th, 7 AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

Ever watch a disaster movie? If you’re old enough, you remember the airport movies and the earthquake movies. If you’re not, they were actually billed as exactly that, “disaster movie”. Believe me, when you walked into the theater, bought your popcorn, and settled down in the dark, you did not expect a happy ending. You knew that right after the opening credits, everyone onscreen was about to have a very, very bad day; a day so bad in fact, they’d wish they could crawl back between the sheets and take refuge in their worst nightmare.

When I was younger, maybe in about sixth or seventh grade, I used to love those movies. I’d sit in front of the screen spellbound, watching strangers work through disasters born in some (very warped) writer’s mind. Then I grew up. And honestly, I think for a while, my life outdid even the most warped among Hollywood’s writers.

Unfortunately for all of us in samsara, we’re living the ultimate disaster movie. If I had to give it a title, I’d borrow from my Dharma friend Tashi and call it, It Doesn’t End Well. Pessimistic? No. Realistic? Yes. alienThink about it. At least in Earthquake, or Towering Inferno, or The Titanic someone gets out alive. Not so in samsara. This realm is the perfect storm. Remember how the tag line for the movie Alien was ‘in space, no one can hear you scream’?  Well, the tag line for It Doesn’t End Well would be, ‘no one gets out alive’.

This realm has a one hundred percent mortality rate. The moment of your birth inevitably and relentlessly leads to the hour of your death. Isn’t that great news? Now that you know how the movie ends, no need to stress over it or obsess about it. In the end, you’re going to die. That’s a certainty. Knowing that, we can get on with the business of living a life that will lead to enlightenment, and the end of our encore performances on the stage of samsara.

Think of it. Here we are, caught in the ultimate disaster movie, and we’ve been in reruns for eons. Talk about your long lasting shows! But in this very lifetime we have a chance to escape the beginningless cycle of birth and death. How do we do that? It’s one of those things that’s hard and easy at the same time. Dilgo Khyentse puts it like this, “The tree of samsara is rooted in the belief that there is a self, in clinging to things as real, in ego-clinging; once this clinging is consumed by the fire of wisdom, the whole tree and all its branches of delusion, luxuriant with the foliage of attachment and hatred, are bound to be burned up too.”

In other words, the only way out of samsara is to give up or ‘renounce’ our habit of clinging to phenomena as though it were substantial, permanent, and independent. It is not. The sooner we can bring ourselves to this path of renunciation, the sooner we can cremate the old corpses of our attachment to samsara’s delusions, the sooner we will stop suffering, the sooner we will bring down the final curtain.

***

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

About three years ago, I really wanted to quit my job. I mean really. I would come home some days and cry. Weekends were nightmarish because I knew that, come Monday, I’d have
to go back to the deepest circle of Hell, and I’d be trapped there for hour upon hour. It felt no different than a gulag to me: imprisoned, tortured, longing for freedom. Every time I thought of leaving, there were a thousand reasons I couldn’t. I needed the money. I didn’t want a long commute. What if I couldn’t do the new job?

in prisonThis cycle stretched into my personal life, leading me to unwholesome pursuits and the cultivation of unskillful habits of over spending, overeating, and other ways of overindulging; anyting to try and escape the dismal suffering of life as a prisoner in the Bank of America gulag. No nightmare was ever so unrelievedly full of dismay, melancholy, or despair. It was a very dark , very bleak time in my life. It was then that I ‘accidentally’ heard the Dharma for the first time: Pema Chodron’s “Getting Unstuck”. The Dharma showed me the path (which had been there all along) out of Hell.

Looking back on that time in my life, I could have taken a step back from my constantly overwrought emotions. I could have breathed. I could have done mantra. If I had been able to do that, I may have noticed that all of my suffering, every single moment, came from one thing: attachment. I was attached to ‘my’ job. I was attached to ‘my’ lifestyle. I was attached to ‘my’ reputation for being good at what I did. I was attached to ‘my’ short commute. I was even attached to hating ‘my’ boss and being right about him being a bully.

Had I been able to notice that all of my suffering had just one cause, I may have been able to work with a remedy to ease my extreme attachment. I believe if I had been able to work with my attachment, I would have decreased my suffering much sooner.

***

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

Fast forward about four years, five or six layoffs (I’ve lost count), and the sale of the company I formerly worked for to Interplanetary Title, Inc. During that time, I was desperate to hold on to my job. Then, with each layoff, when I wasn’t the one being walked out, I was ‘happy’, or least not morose.

With the shrinking of the department I work in from sixteen people to just two people, things changed. I had to train Salem, possibly the most untrainable sentient being on the face of the world. She is for certain (in my most humble opinion) the most self-pitying sentient being on the face of the world.

Here’s a funny thing about this job. Ever since I began studying the Dharma, I could feel more and more acutely the suffering of the work situation. I don’t know enough about
the Dharma to know if karma actually works like this, but since the beginning of this year in particular, it feels like karma is a strong wind at my back, blowing me out of this job, urging me on. I have been staunchly resisting. I’ve turned down three job offers since January. And with each offer that I turned down, the situation at work grew worse and worse. The suffering kicked up just enough to go from tenable to just shy of unbearable. I’ve had to hang on more and more grimly simply to have the patience to walk in there each day and avoid harm, do good, and purify my mind. That last bit has been quite the challenge just lately.girl on rope underwater

Now, today, I fully realize that the true source of my suffering isn’t Salem. Sure. She’s an irritant. If she were inside an oyster, it could make a pearl the size of Jupiter. The actual source of my suffering is my attachment. I’m attached to being right. I’m attached to the idea that someone (please god, anyone) will realize how incredibly incompetent Salem is and replace her with someone who (a) has critical thinking skills, (b) has written communication skills, and (c) actually does their job instead of coming up with wholly implausible excuses for not doing it. I’m attached to my ten minute commute. I’m attached to going on the King Arthur website and buying something just because I want it. I’m attached to the idea that I am right, Salem is wrong, and she needs to go.

No. Working with this verse the last few days has shown me beyond a doubt that I need to go. I have seen my attachment these last couple of days. My attachment is like a parasite, feeding on my afflicted emotions, paralyzing me with the delusions of fear and impotence. It’s time to purge these delusions and . . . let go.

***

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

This morning, in about an hour, I have a telephone interview with Big Sky, Inc. It’s a HUGE company. It’s building new national headquarters about five minutes from where I live. It’s a telephone representative position. Far from being a Mickey Mouse Wannabe, their benefits package is absolutely stellar. All I would have to give up to work there is twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of attachment. My salary would drop by that much.

Even knowing this, that wind of karma blows warmly and insistently at my back. At this point, I would say that the urge to move on from where I am now has become an irresistible compulsion. I’ve done the math. I can do it financially, but my lifestyle will be totally different—to the tune of twenty-two thousand dollars different.

I’ve known about this morning’s upcoming phone call since Sunday afternoon. All week I’ve worked with looking at Mara, at my attachment. Each day, as I’ve gone to work, I’ve observed my attachment in action. It’s a feeling of desperate clinging, as though I’d jumped off the sinking Titanic into icy waters and I were clinging to drifting debris, madly treading water just to stay afloat.

These past few days I’ve realized something that really hit me hard. That desperate feeling of clinging isn’t going to go away until I leave that job. I’ve made so many accommodations, worked with so much of the Dharma, but it’s as though the flames of a burning house were licking at me hotter and hotter. It’s literally become impossible to stay there. The very last straw was my manager’s decision to make me wait more than three weeks to go to the dentist for an ‘emergency’ appointment. I can’t bear anymore.

Today, when I have the phone interview, I will accept the job if it’s offered. I won’t do this because I think a job at Big Sky, Inc. will land me in nirvana. I’ll do it because the only thing keeping me at my current job is my attachment. Nothing—absolutely nothing—else keeps me there. With that being the only reason to stay, it surely cannot end well.

I will accept any offer made by Big Sky, Inc. because it’s my fervent desire that in moving my life toward nonattachment, toward renunciation, I will begin to truly see that only one thing keeps us on the “It Doesn’t End Well” movie set: attachment. In seeing this, and acting on it, my feet will be more firmly set on the path of renouncing suffering.

It doesn’t end well. No, not at all. We can’t get out alive. But what we can do, without a doubt, in this very lifetime is stop the reruns.

grace in sunlight

Postscript:

When I shared this contemplation with my Dharma friend Tashi, he called the situation at work, “the unbearable comfort of the known”. This is brilliant…yes…that’s exactly what it feels like.

 I’ve had the phone call. I’ve accepted a provisional job offer. After that, I had to find a way to pay bills on twenty-two thousand dollars less a year than I make now. I went to my bank, and it took me a little more than an hour to get a loan that will consolidate my bills into one low monthly payment. This will let me barely squeeze by on my new salary. As an aside, the loan officer who assisted me ‘just happened’ to be a home baker. We exchanged baking stories. It’s incredible how easy karma makes things when you sail with the wind, instead of trying to go against it. As my Dharma friend Tashi says quite a bit, if you support the Dharma, it will support you.

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On a single atom…

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

heart treasure

“Samsara is nothing other than how things appear to you;

If you recognize everything as the deity, the good of others is consummated.

Seeing the purity of everything confers the four empowerments on all beings at once;

Dredging the depths of samsara, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 Full Disclosure:

When I began this contemplation, it was my intent to do the first two lines. But as I started writing, I realized how much of our lives is dominated by appearances, so the contemplation turned out to be only on the first line. 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was in my twenties, reality became wholly unconvincing. Something happened in my mind, some indefinable shift that made this world seem utterly insubstantial. It was an awareness that if I walked in front of a speeding car, it would surely hit me, but it shouldn’t because neither me nor the car were anything more than insubstantial ghosts.

morpheusBack then, living with this certainty day to day was pretty harrowing. I was afraid to tell anyone because it sounded so crazy. But crazy or not, I knew that the way I was perceiving things—insubstantial, ghostly apparitions—was how things truly were. After months of living with it, I finally had to ‘teach’ myself to believe and behave as though reality had a substantiality I knew it lacked. It didn’t really take. I never saw reality as completely solid ever again.

When I discovered (re-discovered?) Buddhism, it was a great relief. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I’d been right all along. Samsara is a realm of continually generated reality that we have been generating for innumerable lifetimes. It may be the ultimate Dungeons and Dragons game. The only drawback is we’ve been playing the game for so many eons, we’ve forgotten it’s a game. We’ve forgotten we’re the Dungeon Masters.

Patrul Rinpoche puts it like this, “…not even a single atom has a verifiable existence….nothing that arises from causes and conditions has any true existence whatsoever….to see things otherwise, as truly existing, is the deluded perception underlying samsara…”. As we go through our ordinary lives, we accept reality without question. We accept that what we see is how things really are, and then we try to make things better. This is like a child building an elaborate sand castle on the sea shore. The tides are inevitable. They will come and wash away all that has been built. The tides of samsara—birth, age, disease, death—are no less inevitable. Anything we build here in samsara will soon be washed away by the unrelenting tides of this realm.

***

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

I think I was born a perfectionist. It’s certainly a karmic formation I came into this lifetime with. Until very recently in my life, I always wanted things to be…just so. It encompassed everything in my life, from my body to academics to relationships.

It was in the area of relationships that my drive for perfection caused the most suffering for me and those around me. Simply put, I wanted the perfect mother. I wanted Caroline from Little House on the Prairie. I wanted the mom on the Waltons. I wanted the mom on the Hallmark greeting cards, the one in all those sentimental paintings with such a look of beatific compassion, a faint halo practically shined over her head.mother

To put it succinctly, I never quite found the perfect relationship with my mother. After all these years, I’m finally coming to see that what I wanted, the relationship I thought would be ‘perfect’ was only an appearance in my mind. And even worse, it was someone else’s appearance, absorbed from screenplay writers and Hallmark hacks.

If I could have taken a step back from my angsty emotions around my mother, taken a few breaths to let peace and clarity arise, I might have noticed a few things. I may have noticed that the woman I always thought of as ‘my mother’ wasn’t my anything. She was a woman who’d given birth to the body my karmic formations were drawn into for this lifetime. If I could have noticed just that much, then my suffering would have decreased by orders of magnitude. I would have been able to see that my mother’s actions (or lack thereof) had absolutely nothing to do with me. She was hopelessly caught in the bindings of her own karmic formations, struggling to free herself, but only managing to become more and more entangled.

Having noticed this, I may have seen that the best thing for both of us would be to let go the appearances of ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’, and let go the incredible suffering it brought to hold on to appearances with a death grip.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is silence. I know. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? A couple of weeks ago in his Dharma talk, my Dharma friend Tashi brought up silence and how we always have something on in the background. I immediately thought…yes, but it’s only Mozart or Beethoven. Someone else present brought up what I’d been thinking, and Tashi’s response really struck me. He said something like, “Yes. But silence is better.”

No, I thought to myself. That’s silly. That can’t be. But then I started really thinking about how little silence there was in my life. So I decided to take silence for a test drive through my life.
Wow! I lived in a noisy world. The first thing I used to do when I got home from work was turn on ocean sounds or tinkling silencebells or an audio book. At work, I’d listen to music with lyrics. At night while I slept, ocean sounds had to be playing. Although I hadn’t done it in a while, I used to like ‘immersion reading’, meaning I’d listen to an audio book and read along. When I’d bake all day on Saturday, there would be a movie playing or a book or a Dharma talk.

So, these last two weeks I’ve experimented with silence. In that short time I’ve noticed so much in my life that I was doing based on appearances from almost a decade ago when I first got to Texas. Back then, I couldn’t bear to hear my own thoughts. There always had to be something drowning them out. I used New Age music, ocean sounds—whatever—anything so that I didn’t have to pay attention to my thoughts.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I thought I dreaded cleaning. I’d always turn on music or a book, to make it go by fast. But these last two weeks, I’ve discovered that I enjoy cleaning. I enjoy bringing order to my apartment. I especially enjoy cleaning the kitchen, and getting ready for weekend baking. There have been so many things in my life like that.

What I’m finding is that in the silence, the appearances of samsara take on a certain transparence. It’s not that things appear ‘ghostly’ like what happened when I was in my twenties, it’s just that things don’t appear wholly, convincingly solid. In a sense, all this silence lets me hear the churning gears of the clockwork of mind as it busily generates the appearances of samsara.

This has led to tangible changes in my life. I ended my subscription to Rhapsody, a digital music service. I suspended my Audible account. I have, in short, eliminated the two biggest noise engines in my life. As I continue this journey into silence, it feels like a fog is lifting from my mind and continually revealing, little by little, a perfect clarity that’s been there all along.

***

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

Yesterday at work Interplanetary Title laid off three people. It turns out they have their own people who play with numbers, and so those three people had become suddenly expendable.

Ever since Interplanetary revealed their plan of conquest, their watchwords have been ‘growth’ and ‘expansion’. Without ever saying it, they implied that after years of surviving layoffs with the bank, our jobs were safe. Then this.

Yesterday at work there was a feeling of betrayal in the air. Although I didn’t hear anyone say it, I’m sure we were all, one way or another, thinking, “So…this is your idea of growth and expansion. Liars.” At work, as I thought about it back at my desk after the ‘re-organization meeting’, I experienced something that I’ve been taught again and again as I study the path. In samsara whenever you try to put your fears to rest based on phenomena, like a corporate takeover, you’re setting yourself up for suffering. It’s one thing to hear the teaching, but as always, another thing entirely to experience it in your life with clarity and attention.

I thought I had it all together with this whole transition thing. It’s samsara, I told myself, things won’t get better. They’ll for sure get worse. But ‘getting worse’ didn’t include not having a job. How could it after all that talk of growth and expansion? So, yesterday I experienced a sense of betrayal, of being lied to. I didn’t really start working with it until resentment began to creep in. I know how damaging that can be, so I started mantra, and I looked right at Mara until she slowly dissolved. It took hours of doing it again and again.

Today when I go to work, I will work with being a child of illusion. I will work with vigilantly reminding myself that whatever reality I encounter at work today is of my own making. Will there be desks and chairs and emails and a/c set to Arctic? Of course there will be. But more and more I’m coming to view those things as props on a stage. The play, the appearance that arises on the stage is entirely my choice. After all, it’s arising in my mind, created and given life by my karmic formations.

Today, I can choose to decrease my own suffering and that of others by not contributing to the fearful conversations that will come up. I can choose to act from a place of compassion rather than from a place of fear or resentment or anger.

boys on the stepsI’m not sure what that looks like exactly, but I know that, just like me, every single being I encounter today will have Buddha Nature. And just like me, when someone resonates with who they truly are, the suffering will fall away, if only for a moment. So today I’ll go to the workplace looking for the light that shines in all sentient beings. In most, I probably won’t find it. We’re so good at hiding it, aren’t we? But I’ll sure have some interesting times looking for it.

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On a shimmer of water…

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

This is my contemplation on verse 29 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“Purifying the obscurations, initiating the practice

of the path and actualizing the four kayas,

The essence of the four empowerments is the

teacher Chenrezi;

If you recognize your own mind as the teacher,

all four empowerments are complete;

Receiving innate empowerment by yourself,

recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 

Full disclosure:

I found the whole idea of empowerment nearly impossible to work with. So today’s writing is about impressions I got from working with the verse as a whole, combined with Patrul Rinpoche’s commentary and Tashi’s Dharma talk. I invite you to think of this as a Monet Dharma painting.

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

monetMy mind gets in the way a lot. It really does. This morning for instance, my mind’s take on this stanza is…who needs all this empowerment stuff? That’s a Tibetan thing, isn’t it? How about that new chocolate chip cookie recipe? It’s just begging for some coconut and walnuts.

Mind is like that, isn’t it? You schedule time, you get all ready, get all the tools, and your mind decides it’s a good time to catalog all the stuff you put off doing over the weekend. Ninety-nine percent of the time, this frustrates us. The other one percent, we just give in and do what mind wants.

If we could take a step back from the afflicted emotions which cause us to so strongly identify with our mind, we would see the deluded nature of our lives. We are not our mind or our thoughts. If we are able to take that step back, we can begin to recognize the inherent quality of our mind as empty and luminous. How does this help us in samsara?

Patrul Rinpoche says, “Primordial purity really is the true state of all phenomena, and our usual impure perceptions are totally false, delusions without the slightest grain of truth—like mistaking a piece of rope for a snake or thinking a mirage is really a shimmer of water in the distance.”

Think about this: according to the latest studies, the average person has fifty thousand thoughts a day. Imagine having a teacher who was inseparable from you, and who had fifty thousand nuggets of wisdom to share with you each and every day of your life. Welcome to your mind without the obscurations of wrong view and afflicted emotions.

I think my mind has way too much of a western bent to completely understand the idea of receiving empowerments, but I understand this much. Our Buddha Nature is inherent in us. It is primordial, perfect, unchanging. Once we come to fully understand this, we will begin to see that our mind could not possibly be any other than the mind of the teacher Chenrezi. When we come to recognize this, can we merge our mind with that of the teacher? I don’t think so. Not right away. But we can begin to see with clarity that it can be done—one thought, one moment at a time.

***

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

I like to read. A lot. A whole lot. I had an account on Goodreads and every year I’d take the Reading Challenge and my goal would be sixty books. That’s five books a month for a year. I’d hit my goal every year, but…I would read some real honest to god who-did-you-pay-to-publish-this trash. It was bad, but hey, it was number forty-seven in the challenge and I had to move on.library

This year, I’ve decided to do things differently. I have a brand new account. My challenge this year? One book. That’s right—one. I’m currently at 800%. I’ve read eight out of one books according to Goodreads. Whew! No more challenge. Now I’m exploring genres, meeting new authors, and reading for the sheer pleasure of it, not to ‘make the list’. I took this radical step because the whole sixty books a year thing made me take a look at my life.

I was kind of approaching spiritual cultivation the same way. Well, I’d think, I’ve done the Mind Training prayers—check it off the list. What’s next? If I’d been able to take a step back from my life sooner, I would have seen that I was like a farmer tossing seeds into dirt, then never coming back to the field. [I know it’s not really called ‘dirt’. Sorry. City girl thing.]

I may have noticed that rather than initiating any kind of practice or cultivation that might have made those seeds take root, I was simply leaving them on the surface of my mind, where they quickly blew away. Having noticed this, I may have thought about what it means to have a spiritual practice. I may have let go of the list of things to be learned and turned to my own mind. In doing this, I may have recognized my ordinary mind—everyone’s mind—for what it is: a set of patterns of habitual delusion. Having recognized this, I may have begun to seek a spiritual practice that would gradually dissolve the obscurations veiling the mind’s true luminous nature.

***

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

The biggest thing going on in my life right now is learning a new method to bake bread. I noticed over the weekend that one of my bread machines is making a funny noise. A couple of weeks ago, I would have been cringing at the thought of investing in another machine. But when I heard that strange little noise, I thought…better learn this Ken Forkish thing faster.

With the Ken  Forkish method, I don’t need the bread machine. In fact, with that method, the baker is so in touch with the dough that the only machine that needs to be really fine-tuned is the mind. After baking just twice with this method, I’m coming to completely understand how important it is to get to know your dough.Saturday White Bread 06 21 14

In working with the spiritual path, I find that the ‘dough’ of spirituality is the mind. If we are to cultivate spirituality, we have to come to know the nature of our mind intimately. We have to recognize that our mind constantly creates a world of delusion which we accept without question. But, if you “recognize your own mind as the teacher”, then you realize that enlightenment isn’t some hidden treasure to be unearthed in some distant foreign place. No. It’s right here, right now. It’s what you truly are. Your mind is no different than that of Chenrezi or any of the Buddhas. You are working with the same primordial ‘dough’ so to speak.

A couple of times when I’ve been baking a Ken Forkish loaf, and working with the dough, I’ve thought to myself…he must be working with something different in those pictures. This dough is impossible to work with! Then I remind myself that I’m working with flour, water, salt, and yeast—just like Ken Forkish does. The only difference is he’s got decades of practice, and I’ve only put in two weeks’ worth so far.

Just so on the spiritual path. We all have Buddha Nature. We all have moments when our compassion shines through. In working with recognizing our mind as no different than that of the teacher, we are practicing to resonate with our inherent qualities of true purity, true bliss, true permanence, true self.

***

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

Sitting here, in the early dawn solitude of my air-conditioned apartment, birdsong and the mellow sounds of slow traffic just past my window, the possibilities for bringing this into my life seem endless. But soon, I’ll get up from here, I’ll take a shower, I’ll step out into the heat of late June in Dallas, and I’ll drive to work in my un-air conditioned car. Then I’ll get to work and…well…the possibilities won’t seem so endless.

One of the wonderful things about spiritual cultivation on the Buddhist path is that you can travel light. It’s even better than baking! The only tools you need are your mind and the Dharma. You know what’s really awesome about that? Wherever you are, they’re always with you. We can’t go anywhere without our mind tagging along. And since the Dharma is reality as it truly is without elaboration, we can never step beyond it or outside of it.

Lately at work, I’ve been extraordinarily…what? Restless, I think. The problem is it’s been very slow, so there’s been plenty of time for me to reflect on how many other things I want to do with my life, but how unwilling I am to risk being homeless and hungry.

Today will be no different. I can depend on mind to be restless and vaguely dissatisfied. Except…it will be different. Today, even though I’ll be starting out with the same ingredients of mind and Dharma, I’m going to try a new recipe. Today at work I will try seeing how all that arises in mind is inseparable from the empty luminosity of mind. I will try seeing that my suffering is my path to the union of wisdom and compassion, through compassion. I will try seeing that when we recognize our mind as the teacher, all the conflict and suffering and drama of mind becomes a beautiful friction* that is constantly scrubbing away our obscurations.

monk and catI don’t know if I can do this, but just the thought that I could makes me feel one step closer to recovering the naturally splendid all-ground of who I truly am, who we all truly are.

 

 

 

* Thank you to my Dharma friend Rinchen for the idea of a beautiful friction.

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On the sun 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 first two lines of verse 28 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“The noble teacher has the nature of all Buddhas,

And of all Buddhas, it is he who is the kindest.

Seeing the teacher as inseparable from Chenrezi,

With fervent devotion, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I work with a teacher who’s more than five thousand years old. Well, I haven’t actually met him, but I’m pretty sure about the five thousand years. We’ve been making bread, as a source of food, for at least that long. Although he’s new to me, Ken Forkish, the author of Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza, is part of the lineage of baking that stretches way back to when bread was unleavened flour and water.water flour salt yeast

The wonderful thing about studying with someone who’s part of a disciplic succession is that, once you begin learning from them, you’re now practicing a technique that’s a few thousand years old. Now, you’re part of the lineage, and it will pass through you to others. For me right now, being part of the lineage means folks I know get homemade bread, and muffins, and the occasional scone.

When it comes to baking, it’s easy to realize that there’s no way you’re going to buy a book and invest in tools and equipment if the author’s introduction says something like, “I’ve never studied with anyone. I baked my first loaf yesterday. It came out good, and now I’m writing a book.” In our ordinary life we recognize the need for a lineage. Madison Avenue uses this in advertising with catch phrases like, “Trusted to Deliver Since 1919”. In the west, time equals lineage, which equals trust, which equals consuming whatever is being delivered.

Yet there is a part of our lives where we rarely think of lineage or its importance. When it comes to spirituality, we give our afflicted emotions credence and go with “what feels good”. Well gosh, isn’t that how we ended up in samsara, lifetime after lifetime—by going with what feels good? Wouldn’t it be better to rely on and become part of a lineage whose foundation is primordial?

Patrul Rinpoche tells us we can do this by devoting ourselves to the noble teacher. The noble teacher is one through whom the unbroken disciplic succession of the teachings of the Buddhas flows. When we devote ourselves to such a teacher, we are becoming part of that lineage, and it will eventually flow through us to others.

In my mind, the noble teacher is a necessary companion on the path to becoming a bodhisattva. If it’s my aspiration to bake the perfect artisan bread, then I rely on a teacher who’s part of a lineage that goes back five thousand years. If it’s my aspiration to become a bodhisattva, then doesn’t it make sense to rely on a teacher whose lineage goes back to the primordial Buddhas who exist before beginningless time?

Dilgo Khyentse says of the noble teacher, “Practice in accordance with his instructions, and, as all the clouds of doubt and hesitation are cleared away, the sun of his compassion will shine through, warming you with happiness.” When we rely on a noble teacher as a companion on our path, we are relying on a lineage, on all the Buddhas who came before him, and ultimately, we are relying on our own Buddha Nature, of which the noble teacher is a reflection.

***

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

I began baking bread sometime in the nineties. I think the first Breadman bread machine had just come out. A bread machine can make either bread or dough. On the dough cycle, you take out the dough, and finish baking it in the oven. When I got my first bread machine all those years ago, I wouldn’t even look at the dough cycle recipes that came with the recipe booklet.

breadmanBut the funny thing was, I’d look at the pictures of breads made outside the machine all the time. I had lots of reasons for sticking with my bullet-shaped, soft-crust bread. It was easy: measure carefully, press a couple buttons, come back four hours later and voila! Bread. I didn’t need special equipment to bake in the machine. It even came with its own measuring cup. The biggest reason though, was fear. If I used the dough cycle, what the heck would I do with that glob of flour, water, salt, and yeast? It would NEVER come out looking like the pretty pictures. I baked for years in that machine, never venturing beyond the constricting boundaries of the machine’s pan, and always mildly dissatisfied with even the most perfect loaf.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that the source of my fear was that I’d have to venture beyond the boundaries of the Breadman alone. That was terrifying. It was pretty much this thought that kept me locked in my Breadman prison.

Had I been able to take a step back from my fear, I may have noticed that the library had a plethora of books on baking. I could have noticed that rather than venturing out into the dark unknown alone and unprepared, I had the opportunity to get to know a lineage that went back thousands of years. Had I been able to notice this, it may have taken me less than two decades to begin the adventure of baking outside my machine.

***

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

I took about fifteen years off from baking bread. Then, I bought a Cuisinart bread machine. Then, about six months ago, I took my first steps outside my Cuisinart. They were tottering, uncertain steps, but by then, I’d become part of a lineage. I had a wonderful bread machine cookbook that included recipes for dough to be baked outside the machine, and which I dutifully ignored.

In the beginning, the bread machine recipes in that book were enough. But then I got tired of all my breads having the same uninteresting shape, and pretty much the same uninteresting crust. I wanted more control over how my bread looked and tasted. Gradually—and it was a very gradual process—I stepped outside of the constricting boundaries of the machine. I was only able to do that because the baking world has a wealth of teachers whose lineage goes back thousands of years, and who selflessly share what they know.burned

I think we come to the Dharma for pretty much the same reasons I started my journey toward baking artisan bread. We begin to become sick of the sameness of our suffering. We begin to chafe against the perceived boundaries of our lives. We begin to think…there’s got to be a better way.

Happily the Dharma offers a much better way than the constrictions of samsara, the infinitely churning machine of birth, age, disease, and death. We find this in a noble teacher through whom will flow the unbroken disciplic succession of the teachings of the Buddhas. When we find such a companion on the path, their kindness, their compassion will begin to resonate with our own compassion. Before studying the Dharma, I believed a ‘good teacher’ was someone with volumes of knowledge on their given subject—Shakespeare, quantum physics, artificial intelligence—whatever.

But now, studying the Dharma, I’m coming to see that the only kind of teacher worth studying with is the noble teacher. Pema Chodron says that the idea of a teacher isn’t that they’re a burning log, and you get really close so that you can get a little warmth. The idea is that the teacher’s flame will inspire you to burn as well. In my own experience, I find this to be true. The noble teacher will inspire those devoted to them. Inspiration isn’t imitation. Inspiration is awakening to the inherent wisdom we all have, finding your own fire, to use Pema Chodron’s metaphor. The noble teacher is able to inspire others with their teachings, their lives, and their incredible act of compassion in pointing you to your path to awakening.

***

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

Bake #1 June 15Last weekend I made my first Ken Forkish loaves. With his recipes you make a BIG dough, then bake two loaves. The recipe I chose went so wrong that I ended up with a splat of very sticky dough on my kitchen floor. When I was baking the loaves in the oven, I was so anxious I wanted to cry. The loaf was getting too dark! I never go that dark! That’s two days of work in there!

This weekend, I’ll be making the same loaf. I know I’ll have the same fears but they’ll be far less gripping this weekend. Why? Because I’ve tasted my ‘disaster’ bread. It sure is good bread, and its got those pretty holes I’ve always wanted in my bread.

Until now, my bread machine has been a part of my baking process. I’ve always let the machine make the dough. But now, that’s not enough. I don’t like the dough being locked away in that machine for two hours until it beeps, then I get what I get. In choosing Ken Forkish, I purposely chose a technique that lets me make the dough myself.

Making dough is messy. You get flour everywhere. You have to get your hands into that sticky mass and stretch and fold, and all the time you’re thinking…no way will this sticky gloopy mess ever be a loaf of bread. But I’ve chosen the Ken Forkish technique because I believe that after diligent practice, I will be free to use Baker’s Percentages to create my own formulae (recipes), and introduce the world to my interpretation of artisan bread. I can only do this because I am relying on a lineage of bakers who have shared their knowledge, their passion, and their mistakes.

The Dharma is no different. We come into this and we’re thinking…there’s no way I’ll ever get enlightened…not with the mess I’ve made of my life. We’re so very wrong about that. There are eighty four thousand gates to the Dharma. The Dharma is reality as it truly is, without elaboration. Sooner or later, our own Buddha Nature will grow tired of the illusions of samsara and we will be drawn to one of those gates. I used to think of the gates of the Dharma as entrances. But now I’m starting to see them as exits. In the same way that I left behind the confines of my Breadman, we can leave behind the confines of birth, disease, age, and death by stepping through a gate of the Dharma. I believe that when we do this wholeheartedly, there will always be a noble teacher there welcoming us, ready to shine the sun of their compassion on our path.

teacher

 

 

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On writing our own ticket…

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

heart treasure

“Wandering in samsara from beginningless time until now,

Whatever you’ve done was wrong and will lead to further wandering.

From your heart acknowledge all wrongdoing and downfalls, and, confessing them,

With the four powers complete, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

I bake a lot, at least five or six projects a week. When I began baking regularly, I learned to keep a notebook and record what I’d done in each recipe. Baking is essentially about two things: precise measurements and precise timing. If there’s too much water in your dough, your bread will fall. If you mix your muffins for too long, they’ll come out like tough little paperweights. If you let your dough rise too long, it will drop in the oven.

writing in kitchenIn the kitchen, at any given moment, you’re caught up in the actual doing of the recipe, focused on getting your timing, measurements, and ingredients right. When you take that nice looking bread out of the oven, then cool it and cut into it only to find that it’s rock hard and bone dry, that’s bad. Not being able to back track and see where you probably went wrong is far, far worse because you’re bound to repeat the same mistake. That’s why I keep a notebook in the kitchen. When a recipe goes wrong, I can easily go back and retrace my steps and at the very least, do it differently next time. If I want to do better next time, I certainly have to acknowledge that, since I don’t want my bread to be dense enough to be a doorstop, I did something wrong somewhere along the way.

I think all of us would benefit from keeping a notebook of the recipes (we call them ‘habits’) we use to run our lives. Or should I say ruin our lives? This way, if we kept a notebook, whenever something went wrong, we could pull it out, see the note from two years ago that said, “Bloody axe under bed”. This might clue us in to how we ended up married to an axe murderer.

Most of the time our mistakes in our lives are not this dramatic, but they are repetitive. And unless we have some way of seeing how our habitual actions led us to where we are in our lives, we are doomed to go on repeating the same habitual patterns. At some point, we have to take a step back and say to ourselves…Hey, what I’m doing isn’t working. If I want happiness in my life, I need to start doing things differently.

Just a moment of taking responsibility this way frees us to begin changing our habitual patterns. Dilgo Khyentse says, “…as the Buddha said, there can be no fault so serious that it cannot be purified…”. Isn’t that great news?

***

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

The Titanic was a great ship, but notice how there’s never been another one? I’ve never heard of a Princess Ocean Liner Titanic. And we never will. You know why? Because everyone acknowledges it was a mistake, and we don’t want it to happen again. Yeah. Sure. There was an iceberg involved, but it was the ship, not the iceberg that was billed as ‘unsinkable.’

A funny thing about my life is that I had an all-expenses paid ticket for my personal Titanic, and no matter how often it sank, I’d dredge it up and get right back on. My Titanic was losing weight. For most of my life I’ve been overweight. For periods of my life I was downright obese, topping out at just under three hundred pounds. I have tried diet pills, speed, low-carb diets, high-meat diets, diet cookies, two hundred dollar a week diet food plans, starvation, and water diets, just to name a few. For decades, if it was a diet, I tried it.titanic ticket

I always lost weight. And I always gained back more than I’d lost. It was miserable. I couldn’t keep weight off no matter what I did. And honestly, I tried really hard, but I’d always gravitate back to that chocolate cake, those potato chips, those seasoned fries, and there I’d be, stepping onto the Titanic again.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice how my mind was extremely agitated twenty-four hours a day. It was like living inside a snow globe trapped on a paint-shaker machine. It never stopped. There was a lot of pain coming from my extremely afflicted emotions. There was a lot of loneliness because I believed I need to find my One True Love. The outcome of all this was that I ate to escape the pain of my life. After all, the Titanic didn’t sink right way. That first slice of chocolate cake was paradise.

If I’d been able to breathe and take a step back from the constant agitation of my life, I may have noticed that eating wasn’t actually the issue. The real issue was that I wanted to eat so I could escape feeling lonely, feeling trapped in my life, feeling like a failure.

Had I been able to notice this, I may have noticed that in order to lose weight and keep it off, I had to take responsibility for the habitual patterns of blame and guilt (and so many others) that were leading to unskillful choices about eating. Had I been able to do this, I may have been able to let the Titanic sail by and throw my ticket after it.

***

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

I started a new job yesterday. More accurately, the company I work for has been sold to a new company—Interplanetary Title, Inc. I find myself in an ideal situation to work with these two lines. On every job that I have begun (until now), the habitual pattern has been the same. I start out like an Olympic sprinter from the starting block. I’m going to be the best! I’m going to get it all right! I’m going to love this job! Talk about leading to disappointment. I wasn’t the best, I didn’t get it all right, and do I really have to say I didn’t love the job?

you are hereThis time, I have a chance to do a conscious rebirth. What I’ve done so far, wandering from job to job, hasn’t worked. In the past, I’ve gone to jobs seeking happiness, as though it were outside of me waiting to be discovered. Not so this time. With Interplanetary, I know what I’ve done in the past didn’t work. I have the incredible opportunity to see where I am and begin from there.

So, where am I? I’m in the autumn of my life. I surely have less years to live than I’ve already lived. I am a student of the Dharma who has already learned that taking responsibility for my actions is the only way to change the consequences (karma) that arise in my life.

Understanding this, I can use Interplanetary Title as an exercise in cause and effect. That sounds basic, maybe even a little obvious, but it’s embarrassing to even say how long it took me to realize I needed to have a notebook in the kitchen if I didn’t want to keep repeating the same mistakes. At this new workplace, I have the chance to consciously put in place consequences that I believe will lead to positive outcomes. I have the chance to observe myself and honestly ask myself…that didn’t have a positive outcome. What could I have done differently?

And while doing this, I will keep in mind that my ultimate goal is enlightenment—to gain the capacity to free myself and limitless sentient beings from wandering in samsara.

***

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

As I study the Dharma more and more, I begin to feel an incredible yearning to be free of samsara. At first I thought it was new. But gradually I’m realizing that this yearning has been there all my life, maybe for all my lifetimes.

This transition to Interplanetary Title has made me reflect a lot on my eventual transition into death. At first this really scared me. I thought I was suicidal. Again. But that’s not it. It isn’t that I want to die so much as I want to be prepared for that transition when it comes, as it inevitably must. If I’m not ready for it, I am doomed to return to samsara and continue wandering, lifetime after lifetime.

To that end, today when I go to work, I want to do just one thing that prepares me to continue the process of transition that began with my birth. I have no idea what that one thing will be, but my experience with the Dharma has taught me that if I look, I’ll find it.

I’m looking at things this way. Since the moment of my birth, I’ve been in transition from life to death. In between there’s disease and old age. I boarded the Samsara Titanic five decades ago when I was born. The wonderful thing about these two lines from Patrul Rinpoche is his encouragement for us all to acknowledge that we bought and paid for our own tickets for this doomed voyage. And if our actions in previous lifetimes wrote our tickets for the Samsara Titanic, then surely our actions in this very lifetime can write our ticket for enlightenment. Today I’ll be writing a new ticket, both at Interplanetary Title, and on my path. Today, it’s my prayer that we may all begin to see that we can give up our berth on the Titanic.

birds over ocean

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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.

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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.

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On the never-failing refuge…

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

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

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)

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

What??gps2

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

entertainment3Taking refuge in the Dharma—what is—works the same way. We get so caught up in chasing after refuge in samsara with the 210 channel satellite TV packages, the car with the You Never Die Anti-Death brakes, the house in the You’re A Success neighborhood, the vitamins from You’ll Live Forever, Inc., that we forget. We are so caught up in turning to samsara for refuge from our anxieties that we forget there’s no reason for anxiety over what the future holds. The Dharma tells us exactly how things are in samsara, how they have always been, and how they always will be. There is birth; there is aging; there is disease; there is death. Everything else, as my Dharma friend Tashi enjoys saying, is…entertainment. The burning house of samsara is blazing, the Dharma tells us again and again. Get out.

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

3 jewels2We can all do this. Taking refuge in the Dharma is as simple as turning our attention to what is. It’s no different than changing a channel on TV, or tuning in a different radio station. We can take refuge in the Dharma by texting to our true selves. Instead of ‘i♥u’, to our Buddha Nature we say the six-syllable mantra and then wait in the silence that arises. If we wait long enough, we will begin to experience the resonance with our true self that is always there, the text from our Buddha Nature which speaks without words.