Comfortable With Uncertainty (13 page)

You may be formally doing tonglen or just having your coffee, and here comes the object of your fury. You breathe that in. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion. The technique is that you do not blame the object; you also don’t blame yourself. Instead, there is just liberated fury—hot, dark, and heavy. Experience it as fully as you can.

Breathe the anger in; remove the object; stop thinking about him. In fact, he was just a useful catalyst. Now you own the anger completely. You drive all blames into yourself. It takes a lot of bravery, and it’s extremely insulting to ego. In fact, it destroys the whole mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.

Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of just a small, dark situation, you allow a lot of space for these feelings. Breathing out is like opening up your arms and just letting go. It’s fresh air. Then you breathe the rage in again—the dark, heavy hotness of it. Then you breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.

98

Four Methods for Holding Your Seat

W
HEN OUR INTENTION
is sincere but the going gets rough, most of us could use some help. We could use some fundamental instruction on how to lighten up and turn around our well-established habits of striking out and blaming.

The four methods for holding our seat provide just such support for developing the patience to stay open to what’s happening instead of acting on automatic pilot. These four methods are:

When we find ourselves captured by aggression, we can remember this: We don’t have to strike out, nor do we have to repress what we’re feeling. We don’t have to feel hatred or shame. We can at least begin to question our assumptions. Could it be that whether we are awake or asleep, we are simply moving from one dreamlike state to another?

99

Cultivating Forgiveness

F
ORGIVENESS IS
an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel—shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don’t have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we’ll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we’ll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness. This potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.

100

Containing the Paradox

L
IFE IS GLORIOUS
, but life is also wretched. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, and energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others. We make ourselves a big deal and want life to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness—life’s painful aspect—softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is an important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose—you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all be so depressed and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

Atisha said, “Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.” Whether it is glorious or wretched, delightful or hateful, be patient. Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with your habitual response to either pain or pleasure. The real happiness that underlies both gloriousness and wretchedness often gets shortcircuited by our jumping too fast into the same habitual pattern.

Patience is not learned in safety. It is not learned when everything is harmonious and going well. When everything is smooth sailing, who needs patience? If you stay in your room with the door locked and the curtains drawn, everything may seem harmonious, but the minute anything doesn’t go your way, you blow up. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than seek harmony.

101

The Sangha

T
AKING REFUGE
in the sangha—other people on the path of the bodhisattva-warrior—doesn’t mean that we join a club where we’re all good friends, talk about basic goodness together, nod sagely, and criticize the people who don’t believe the way we do. Taking refuge in the sangha means taking refuge in the brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are committed to taking off their armor.

If we live in a family where all the members are committed to taking off their armor, then one of the most powerful vehicles for learning how to do it is the feedback that we give one another, the kindness that we show to one another. Normally when somebody is feeling sorry for herself and beginning to wallow in it, people pat her on the back and say, “Oh, you poor thing,” or, “For Pete’s sake, get over it.” But if you yourself are committed to taking off your armor and you know that the other person is too, there is a way that you can actually give her the gift of dharma. With great kindness and love, out of your own experience of what’s possible, you give her the wisdom that somebody else probably gave you the day before when
you
were miserable. You encourage her not to buy into her self-pity but to realize that it’s an opportunity to grow, and that everybody goes through this experience.

In other words, the sangha are people committed to helping one another to take off their armor by not encouraging one another’s weaknesses or tendencies to keep their armor on. When we see each other collapsing or stubbornly saying, “No, I like this armor,” there’s an opportunity to say something about the fact that underneath all that armor are a lot of festering sores, and a little bit of sunlight wouldn’t hurt a bit. That’s the notion of taking refuge in the sangha.

102

Just Like Me (On-the-Spot Compassion)

A
S A RESULT
of compassion practice we start to have a deeper understanding of the roots of suffering. We aspire not only that the outer manifestations of suffering decrease but also that all of us could stop acting and thinking in ways that escalate ignorance and confusion. We aspire to be free of fixation and closed-mindedness. We aspire to dissolve the myth that we are separate.

It’s particularly helpful to take these compassionate aspirations into the marketplace. You can do these practices right in the midst of this paradoxical, unpredictable world. In this way, you can work with your intention and also begin to act. In traditional terms, this is cultivating both levels of bodhichitta: the aspiration and the action. Sometimes this is the only way to make this practice feel relevant to the suffering we continually witness.

I do this sort of thing in all kinds of situations—at the breakfast table, in the meditation hall, at the dentist’s office. Standing in the checkout line at the market, I might notice the defiant teenager in front of me and make the aspiration, “May he be free of suffering and its causes.” In the elevator with a stranger, I might notice her shoes, her hands, the expression on her face. I contemplate that just like me she doesn’t want stress in her life. Just like me she has worries. Through our hopes and fears, our pleasures and pains, we are deeply interconnected.

103

Slogan: “Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions”

T
HERE ARE FIVE
strengths we can utilize in our practice of awakening bodhichitta. These are five ways that a warrior increases confidence and inspiration:

1. Cultivating
   strong determination
   and commitment to relate openly with whatever life presents, including our emotional distress. As warriors-in-training we develop wholehearted determination to use discomfort as an opportunity for awakening, rather than trying to make it disappear. This determination generates strength.
   
2. Building
   familiarization
   with the bodhichitta practices by utilizing them in formal practice and on the spot. Whatever happens, our commitment is to use it to awaken our heart.
   
3. Watering the
   seed of bodhichitta
   in both delightful and miserable situations so that our confidence in this positive seed can grow. Sometimes it helps to find little ways that the seed of goodness manifests in our life.
   
4. Using
   reproach
   —with kindness and humor—as a way of catching ourselves before we cause harm to self or other. The gentlest method of reproach is asking ourselves, “Have I ever done this before?”
   
5. Nurturing the habit of
   aspiring
   for all of us that suffering and its seeds diminish and that wisdom and compassion increase; nurturing the habit of always cultivating our kind heart and open mind. Even when we can’t act, we can aspire to find the warrior’s strength and ability to love.
   

104

Reversing the Wheel of Samsara

E
VERY ACT COUNTS
. Every thought and emotion counts too. This moment is all the path we have. This moment is where we apply the teachings. Life is short. Even if we live to be 108, life will still be too short for witnessing all its wonders. The dharma is each act, each thought, each word we speak. Are we at least willing to catch ourselves spinning off and to do that without embarrassment? Do we at least aspire to not consider ourselves a problem, but simply a pretty typical human being who could at that moment give him- or herself a break and stop being so predictable?

The dharma can heal our wounds, our very ancient wounds that come not from original sin but from a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it. The instruction is to relate compassionately with where we find ourselves and to begin to see our predicament as workable. We are stuck in patterns of grasping and fixating, which cause the same thoughts and reactions to occur again and again. This is how we project our world. When we see that, even if it’s only for one second every three weeks, then we naturally discover the knack of reversing this process of making things solid, the knack of stopping the claustrophobic world as we know it, of putting down our centuries of baggage and stepping into new territory.

How in the world can we do this? The answer is simple. Make the dharma personal, explore it whole-heartedly, and relax.

105

The Path Is the Goal

W
HAT DOES IT TAKE
to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck? What is the source of wisdom at a personal, individual level?

The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally has a ground, path, and fruition. This is like saying that everything has a beginning, middle, and end. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal.

This path has one very distinct characteristic: it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by-moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us.

When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable.

106

Heightened Neurosis

W
E MIGHT ASSUME
that as we train in bodhichitta our habitual patterns will start to unwind—that day by day, month by month, we’ll be more open-minded, more flexible, more of a warrior. But what actually happens with ongoing practice is that our patterns intensify. This is called “heightened neurosis.” It just happens. We catch the scent of groundlessness, and despite our wishes to remain steady, open, and flexible, we hold on tight in very habitual ways.

For example, we may develop a new self-critical story line based on spiritual ideals. The warrior training becomes just one more way to feel that we never measure up. Or we use our training to increase our sense of being special, to build up our self-image and increase our arrogance and pride. Or perhaps we sincerely wish to surrender our useless baggage, but in the process, we use the teachings themselves to distance ourselves from the chaotic, unsettling quality of our lives. We try to use our spiritual training to avoid the queasy feeling in our gut.