Into the Heart of Life (5 page)

One time, I was staying with my aunt. When I think of the “man in the street,” the ordinary person, I have to think about my family because normally I don’t really meet “ordinary” people. I meet with people who are interested in spiritual matters. Actually, I think that an interest in spirituality is normal, but apparently it isn’t!

In any case, my middle-aged aunt once gave a dinner party to which she invited a number of very old friends. They owned shops, or they were doctors, and so on. Just ordinary nice people. During this dinner with old friends whom she had known since adolescence, one of the men said, “I think in one of my former lifetimes I must have been Spanish, because when I went to Spain I felt this tremendous empathy with the land. I felt like I was going home even though outwardly it was a very different and alien environment.” And somebody else said, “Well, that’s funny, because I feel like that about Scotland. I really felt when I went there that I must have been Scottish at some time during my past lives.” Soon everybody at the table began to talk about who they thought they were in their past lives, and my aunt was aghast! She’d never realized that her friends had had any thoughts of this nature.

Finally one of them turned to me and said, “Ah, but Ani-la, the question is not who we were in our past lives, is it? It’s how we use
this
lifetime properly so that our future lifetimes will go well!”

That’s the point. Our past lifetimes are gone, so let them go. The point is
this
lifetime—what do we do with what we have now? How do we use this life skillfully to set ourselves in the right direction, so that in future lifetimes, having planted so many good seeds in this lifetime, we can go up and up and up? That’s the point.

If we see things in this way, then the adverse situations which we encounter in our life are really not problems—they are the way we learn. Of course we say this again and again, but it is so true that a nice comfortable life is very pleasant, and is obviously the result of having planted good seeds in the past. If we plant a parsnip, we get a parsnip, and if we plant a rose, we get a rose. If we plant poison ivy, we get poison ivy.

And when we reach a stretch in which everything is going very nicely—we’re born in fine circumstances, things go very well for us, most of our friends are really good, we don’t have too many horrible sicknesses, our families are well—that’s wonderful, and very nice. But if we just stay at that level of complacency, what have we learned? How will we cope if someone close and whom we love suddenly dies, or if we contract some terrible disease? It’s not that we have to go out looking for pain and problems—we’re not masochists. But when problems and difficulties arise, when adverse circumstances arise, we do not try to avoid them. We take them as the path. We use them, and we realize that this is how we learn. These are the weights with which we develop our spiritual muscles.

Some people have lots and lots to learn in this lifetime. Other people seem to glide right through it. But sometimes, the people who have all the difficulties are the ones in the end who really surmount—they’re the real conquerors.

It’s not a matter of always trying to avoid difficulties to live in this world comfortably and nicely—that is not the objective. Animals want to be comfortable. Animals want to have food and shelter and a nice soft place to stay. Animals think mostly about food, warmth, and sex. If that’s usually all that we think of, too, then we are no better than animals and that’s the kind of birth we might encounter next time.

We humans share features with the animal kingdom, such as our physical body and a large part of our brain structure. But we have other qualities that animals lack. If we just let those qualities atrophy, if we let them lie in abeyance, then we’re no different from animals, and this human life is wasted. We have intelligence, we have self-awareness, we have the ability to look within, we have the ability to develop genuine compassion and empathy for others. These qualities, as we develop them and as they become of paramount importance in our lives, sow so many seeds and result in so much good karma. With that, we will continue to make contact with the spiritual path and meet with spiritual masters in future lifetimes.

There are billions of people in this world. How many of them are genuinely interested in any kind of spiritual path at this point? So few. Many of them are born in countries where they are not allowed to be interested in spiritual paths. Many of them are born in countries where there are very few spiritual paths left anymore. And some of them are born in countries where there are spiritual paths and encouragement, but they have no interest.

So you are all very fortunate to be here. You are completely free, and you can believe what you like. If you want to come to a Dharma talk, you come to a Dharma talk; if you don’t want to come to a Dharma talk, you don’t have to come. It’s up to you—it’s your choice. In the West we are very lucky because although there is enormous indoctrination from the media, we don’t have to buy into it.

Recently, I started to read a particular book. It concerned two visions of the future: one was the Orwellian vision, in which the whole world becomes a totalitarian state and people are subdued into conformity through fear and intimidation. The other paradigm was that of Aldous Huxley, who saw that we could be seduced by pleasure and the comfort of having everything that we want. However, when we have everything that we want and when the pleasure principle becomes paramount—that is the belief that we’re in this world to be comfortable and have a nice time—then we are led into becoming like sheep, as in
Brave New World
. The author said that that is actually what is happening. People are being enticed into this whole consumer philosophy that insists that comfort and pleasure and acquisitions are the highway to eternal happiness. People buy into this ideology more and more. And that is what is helping to make us so completely soulless and spiritually flabby.

We have a choice—we can go along with that viewpoint. We can say to ourselves, “Okay. This is a good thing, so I’m going to buy more and more: a bigger house, another car, a better television, the latest computer model. That will make me happy!” We can believe that. Or we can think, “Well, I know lots of people who own those things and they’re not happy. And the last time I got a better car, I was happy for two weeks but after that I wanted something else.”

We may wish to consider how it is that we have this inner emptiness. Maybe trying to fill it with consumer goods and relationships isn’t the answer. Perhaps there is another way in which we may genuinely fulfill and complete ourselves. So we start to look in a different direction. But that is our choice. This is our life—we do have a choice. It is up to us whether we waste this lifetime or use it in a meaningful way that can benefit ourselves and others. Basically this is what karma is all about. Events are going to happen to us on account of actions of body, speech, and mind committed in the past. But the good news is that through our present responses, we mold our future—constantly, moment to moment to moment. We can be half-asleep or completely asleep in this moment, or we can be awake in this moment—awake, conscious, aware. The choice is ours.

Most of us actually go around half asleep. We’re very busy; we’re very occupied; we always have things to do. But inwardly, we’re zombies. Programmed zombies—you push a button, and you get a response. Sometimes the responses are nice and sometimes they are hostile, but they’re not conscious responses. That element of inner awareness, of really knowing the moment in the moment is usually not there. We’re half-asleep and totally distracted.

The Buddha described three kinds of laziness. First, there is the kind of laziness we all know: we don’t want to do anything, and we’d rather stay in bed half an hour later than get up and meditate. Second, there is the laziness of feeling ourselves unworthy, the laziness of thinking, “I can’t do this. Other people can meditate, other people can be mindful, other people can be kind and generous in difficult situations, but I can’t, because I’m too stupid.” Or, alternatively, “I’m always an angry person”; “I’ve never been able to do anything in my life”; “I’ve always failed, and I’m bound to fail.” This is laziness.

The third kind of laziness is being busy with worldly things. We can always fill up the vacuum of our time by keeping ever so busy. Being occupied may even make us feel virtuous. But usually it’s just a way of escape. When I came out of the cave, some people said, “Don’t you think that solitude was an escape?” And I said, “An escape from what?” There I was—no radio, no newspapers, no one to talk to. Where was I going to escape to? When things came up, I couldn’t even telephone a friend. I was face-to-face with who I was and with who I was not. There was no escape.

Our ordinary lives are so busy, our days are so full, but we never have any space even to sit for a minute and just be. That’s escape. The same aunt that I mentioned earlier always kept the radio on, or the television. She didn’t like silence. Silence worried her. Background noise rang out at all times. And we’re all like that. We are afraid of silence—outer silence, inner silence. When there’s no noise going on outside we talk to ourselves—opinions and ideas and judgments and rehashes of what happened yesterday or during our childhood; what he said to me; what I said to him. Our fantasies, our day-dreams, our hopes, our worries, our fears. There is no silence. Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something.

Recently I was talking with a very nice Australian monk who was once occupied with doing so many wonderful Dharma activities that he became a workaholic. He would be up until two or three in the morning. Eventually he collapsed totally. His whole system fell apart and now he can’t do anything. His mind is also slightly impaired in that he doesn’t have very good concentration. Of course he can talk and walk, but he can’t do anything sustained in time. His problem is that his identity was connected with doing. He was really a workaholic, and as his work was for the Dharma it looked very virtuous. It looked like he was doing really good things. He was benefiting many people and carrying out the instructions of his teacher, but now that he can’t do anything, who is he? And so he is going through a tremendous crisis because he always identified himself with what he did and with being able to succeed. Now he is not able to do anything and is dependent on others. So I said to him, “But this is a wonderful opportunity. Now, you don’t have to do anything, you can just be.” He said he was trying to come to that, but he found it very threatening not to do anything, to just sit there and be with who he is, not with what he does.

This is the point—we fill our lives with activities. Many of them are really very good activities but if we are not careful, they can just be an escape. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do good and necessary things, but there has to be breathing in as well as a breathing out. We need to have both the active and the contemplative. We need time to just be with ourselves, and to become genuinely centered, when the mind can just be quiet. Usually it’s better if this is done in the early morning, because if we get up very early in the morning, provided that we haven’t gone to bed too late at night, we should be fresh and bright. Usually if we get up before the rest of the household, it’s more quiet. Obviously it’s no good getting up to meditate when everybody else is also getting up. We have to be up before everyone else, unless others in the household are getting up and meditating too!

We know we have to make the effort. When we consider people who are dedicated to some worldly goal—athletes, artists, musicians, or whoever—anyone who is very dedicated to their particular talents works to develop their qualities with great assiduity. They give up so much time, they devote so much attention, they change their diets, they change their social habits, they give up smoking and drinking, they even sometimes give up sex, for a while at least, in order to channel all their energies into their chosen field. They dedicate themselves totally, and with total concentration, and because of that, they can hope to accomplish something.

If we seriously want to integrate the spiritual dimension with our everyday life, we have to make some sacrifices. These include getting up early so that we can have at least one half-hour or an hour of just being with ourselves and doing a serious practice, with maybe five minutes or so of generating loving-kindness for all beings at the end. Then it really changes the whole quality of the day.

As one gets used to meditation, time spontaneously begins to expand and the practice begins to influence the day. We’re trying to create the circumstances through which our whole day can be used as our spiritual path. Everything we do, everybody we meet is part of practice. This is how we learn to open up our heart; this is how we open to being generous and kind, thoughtful and tolerant and patient. Understanding. More and more we become present in the moment, here and now, instead of away in cloud cuckoo land.

At the beginning we try to quiet down the tumult inside, become centered, and give ourselves some inner space so that our spiritual life and our daily life become the same thing. Outwardly, nothing has changed. But inwardly, everything has transformed.