How to Meditate (14 page)

When we refrain from pushing against our experiences, we move away from the labels of “yes” and “no,” “good” and “bad,” “acceptable” and “nonacceptable.” This is a very important point. This is what allows us to become fully engaged in life. You can’t leave out what you label “bad” and still expect to feel the full range of what you might label “good.” In other words, if you wall yourself off from some experiences, you will inevitably be building walls against what might be good. Meditation training reminds us to always come back to our direct experience, just as it is.

Life, or postmeditation, has a tendency to introduce many things and many obstacles that can tie us up in a knot. As your meditation closes, when the timer goes off and you rest in open awareness, let things be as they are. And then, usually very quickly, you can rest. But often at this moment the thoughts come in; sometimes they even rush back in. Before you know it, you’re getting all tied up in a knot. When something happens, you don’t have to lay on top of it the label “wrong” or “terrible” or anything like that—you could just use whatever is arising as the object of meditation. Meditation is total nonstruggle with what arises. Thoughts just as they are, emotions just as they are, sights just as they are, sounds just as they are—everything just as it is without anything added.

I was watching a video of Mingyur Rinpoche recently, and he said that mind is like space—vast, limitless space—and in that space anything and everything arises: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, thoughts, emotions, body pain, body pleasure. Everything arises in that space, and it’s no different than galaxies and planets and stars arising in space. And he said, “Space doesn’t say, ‘I like this galaxy, but I don’t like that galaxy.’” All stars, all thoughts, pass on at some point. Let your experiences pass through like stars in the vast sky of your mind. Nothing has to be too big of a problem.

Not struggling against what arises in your life is an act of friendliness. It allows you to fully engage in your life. It allows you to live wholeheartedly.

exercise

ATTENTION TO A SIMPLE ACTIVITY AS MEDITATION

Life presents all kinds of experiences that introduce potential struggle into our life. One way that you can train in meeting experiences with full presence, wholeheartedly, is by using a simple activity as the object of your meditation. We’re training in the process of waking up. We can place the mind on a simple activity and choose to stay with it rather than struggle against it by letting our minds wander elsewhere.

We are offered many simple activities every day—repetitive and simple. Select one that feels pretty routine and basic for you. Eating is a good one. Every day you put food on your fork or spoon, bring the food into your mouth, chew it, and put the fork or spoon down. Choose any activity that doesn’t require any thinking, or very little thinking, and choose something that you do over and over again. It could be touching computer keys, folding your clothes, making your child’s lunch for school. Our days are filled with such activities. Meditation includes training yourself in being fully present with brushing your teeth or washing the dishes or eating breakfast or breathing or walking. We’re training in the process of waking up.

For a series of days, focus on being more present when you partake in the activity you selected. When your attention lapses, simply bring it back to the felt experience of the activity. Coming back to the breath is no more of a big deal than coming back to your toothbrush. When you’re brushing your teeth, decide as you’re about to put the toothpaste on the brush that this is a meditation. Make brushing your teeth a little bit of a ritual. It’s an activity that has a beginning and an end, so say to yourself: “This is going to be a meditation period, and my intention is to stay present as I’m brushing my teeth. When my attention wanders, I’m going to bring it back to brushing my teeth.”

Needless to say, one doesn’t need to be so hard on oneself when one’s mind wanders off from brushing the teeth. Don’t struggle too much. Just come back. Brush your teeth with a sense of humor, or a sense of lightness. Just come back.

With meditation practice, slowly over time we find that we are more and more able to stay present in everything we do. We can even do it when we’re having a conversation: we stay mindful and present to the person speaking to us, rather than wandering off to what we need to add to our shopping list.

After a while, you don’t even think about an object of meditation. There’s just the continual coming back, and a more and more continuous sense of presence. And when that happens, you know that it’s happened. Usually it happens in little blips and blurps, but it’s quite dramatic when you realize that you’ve never been present in your whole life before, and suddenly there’s this simple experience of being fully here. It can happen out of the blue one day when you’re meditating, or it can happen when you’re washing a dish. The sense that you are just being present is so simple and so gorgeously alive. It is a big breakthrough.

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THE SEVEN DELIGHTS

A
s people who wish to attain enlightenment, or simply feel more settled in our life, we must be willing to work with even the most difficult circumstances. I’ve seen people meditating wholeheartedly for years and years and years—people who have experienced the nature of their mind, people who have experienced stillness and calm—but as soon as a relationship goes bad or they get fired from a job or they find out they have a serious illness or that someone they love is sick, they collapse. It’s as if they never meditated a day in their life, and they are completely taken away into anger or despair or a dark depression.

When something strong and scary comes up, we don’t want to “go there.” We go into automatic pilot and we do everything we can to struggle against what is happening. Then we tend to fixate on the despair and the anger. It’s like we’ve lost the meditation bandwidth completely; we’ve lost our way on the path. There’s a path quality to your meditation practice, and the way becomes much less clear when you hit the toughest points.

I call these moments the “seven delights.” Believe it or not, sometimes these tough moments are the very things that teach us the most; sometimes they are the very things that open us up to life and to connection with others.

On retreats, sometimes we read through a text about the seven delights that reminds us how aching emotions and harsh thoughts can be the perfect teacher for us on our path. In this wonderful song about using difficult circumstances as path, which was written by Gotsampa, there is a number that refers to one of the difficulties in life that can be viewed as a delight in our awakening. The term
kleshas
in the song refers to the emotional states that tend to hook us or disturb us the most.

When thoughts that there is something, perceived and a perceiver,

Lure my mind away and distract,

I don’t close my senses’ gateways to meditate without them

But plunge straight into their essential point.

They’re like clouds in the sky; there’s this shimmer where they fly.

Thoughts that rise (1), for me sheer delight!

When kleshas get me going, and their heat has got me burning,

I try no antidote to set them right.

Like an alchemistic potion turning metal into gold,

What lies in kleshas’ power to bestow

Is bliss without contagion, completely undefiled.

Kleshas coming up (2), sheer delight!

When I’m plagued by godlike forces or demonic interference,

I do not drive them out with rites and spells.

The thing to chase away is egoistic thinking,

Built up on the idea of a self.

This will turn the ranks of
maras
into your own special forces.

When obstacles arise (3), sheer delight!

When
samsara
with its anguish has me writhing in its torments,

Instead of wallowing in misery,

I take the greater burden down the greater path to travel

And let compassion set me up

To take upon myself the sufferings of others.

When karmic consequences bloom (4), delight!

When my body has succumbed to the attacks of painful illness,

I do not count on medical relief,

But take that very illness as a path and by its power

Remove the obscurations blocking me,

And use it to encourage the qualities worthwhile.

When illness rears its head (5), sheer delight!

When it’s time to leave this body, this illusionary tangle,

Don’t cause yourself anxiety and grief.

The thing that you should train in and clear up for yourself—

There’s no such thing as dying to be done.

It’s just clear light, the mother and child clear light uniting,

When mind forsakes the body (6), sheer delight!

When the whole thing’s just not working, everything’s lined up against you,

Don’t try to find some way to change it all.

Here the point to make your practice is reverse the way you see it.

Don’t try to make it stop or to improve.

Adverse conditions happen (7); when they do it’s so delightful.

They make a little song of sheer delight!

Everything in your life—every moment, every struggle—is the path. Everything is an opportunity for awakening. Without practicing this way, you lose the extraordinary opportunity to learn from your very own being. This is why I call these gigantic hiccups in life “delights.”

We all have difficult emotions and difficult events in our life, both now and in the past. For instance, no matter how many retreats I do, no matter how many sitting periods I take part in, I have a reoccurring pattern that happens: I always have to go through a period of painful memories about things I regret from the period when my children were young. This always comes up, and it’s always accompanied by deep sadness. Certain things carry a great deal of energy along with them. And so, when we say “including” or “experiencing” our emotional distress, I mean we include
all
of it.

Sometimes we’re sitting with a lot of energy. From the outsider’s perspective, you are just sitting there. Nothing is happening. But so much is happening! It’s just nonverbal. Behind the words and stories of what is happening in our lives there’s this very powerful energy—the energy of sadness; the energy of anger; the energy of craving, lusting, needing; the energy of loneliness; the energy of being left out. It feels as though it is going to completely bowl you over. And when it is really hard, like the loss of a loved one, it might feel like it could even kill you.

In Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s text
The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones,
there’s a beautiful instruction that says: “Don’t follow after the object of hatred, look at the angry mind. Anger liberated by itself as it arises is mirrorlike wisdom.” And then: “Don’t chase after the object of pride, look at the grasping mind. Self-importance liberated by itself as it arises is the wisdom of equanimity.” And: “Don’t hanker after the object of desire, look at the craving mind.” He goes through all the mental states that cloud the mind in this way, and he’s basically saying, “They’re not a problem if you will give these tendencies your attention.”

The first line of the seven delights text says: “When thoughts that there is something, perceived and a perceiver.” Here Gotsampa means that with all thoughts, we are forced to see the world, or the situation, in terms of self and other. This is basically what all thoughts are about, right?
I
am thinking about
that;
“me” and “it.” It’s hard to have a thought that isn’t based on that. See if you can have a thought that doesn’t have a perceived and a perceiver. It is virtually impossible!