Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change (9 page)

The truth is that we’re always in some kind of in-between state, always in process. We never fully arrive. When we’re present with the dynamic quality of our lives, we’re also present with impermanence, uncertainty, and change. If we can stay present, then we might finally get that there’s no security or certainty in the objects of our pleasure or the objects of our pain, no security or certainty in winning or losing, in compliments or criticism, in good reputation or bad—no security or certainty ever in anything that’s fleeting, that’s subject to change.

The commitment to not cause harm is very clear-cut. The only way to break it is to speak or act out of a confused mind. The simplicity and clarity of this commitment helps us build an unshakable foundation of inner strength. This manifests as the courage to take a chance, the courage not to act in the same old ways. It builds confidence in our ability to cultivate renunciation at the deepest level and in our ability to see shenpa when it arises and realize when we’re once again caught in the eight worldly concerns. It builds confidence in our ability to live without a game plan, to live unfettered by hope and fear. When people make this commitment, they begin to change. You might run into them after a year or two and find that something in them has
softened. They seem more at home with themselves and the world, more flexible and easier to get along with.

At some point, if you’re fortunate, you’ll hit a wall of truth and wonder what you’ve been doing with your life. At that point you’ll feel highly motivated to find out what frees you and helps you to be kinder and more loving, less klesha driven and confused. At that point you’ll actually want to be present—present as you go through a door, present as you take a step, present as you wash your hands or wash a dish, present to being triggered, present to simmering, present to the ebb and flow of your emotions and thoughts. Day in and day out, you’ll find that you notice sooner when you’re hooked, and it will be easier to refrain. If you continue to do this, a kind of shedding happens—a shedding of old habits, a shedding of being run around by pleasure and pain, a shedding of being held hostage by the eight worldly concerns.

Awakening is not a process of building ourselves up but a process of letting go. It’s a process of relaxing in the middle—the paradoxical, ambiguous middle, full of potential, full of new ways of thinking and seeing—with absolutely no money-back guarantee of what will happen next.

The Second Commitment

Committing to Take Care of One Another

6

Beyond Our Comfort Zone

C
OMPASSION IS THREATENING
to the ego. We might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it’s very raw. When we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of “life not on my terms.” The second commitment, traditionally known as the Bodhisattva Vow, or warrior vow, challenges us to dive into these noncozy waters and swim out beyond our comfort zone.

Our willingness to make the first commitment is our initial step toward relaxing completely with uncertainty and change. The commitment is to refrain from speech and action that would be harmful to ourselves and others and then to make friends with the underlying feelings that motivate us to do harm in the first place. The second commitment builds on this foundation: we vow to move consciously into the pain of the world in order to help alleviate it. It is, in essence, a vow to take care of one another, even if it sometimes means not liking how that feels.

The second commitment is connected deeply and unshakably with
bodhicitta,
traditionally defined as a longing to awaken so that we can help others do the same, a longing to go beyond the limits of conventional happiness, beyond enslavement to success and failure, praise and blame.
Bodhicitta is also a trust in our innate ability to go beyond bias, beyond prejudice and fixed opinions, and open our hearts to everyone: those we like, those we don’t like, those we don’t even notice, those we may never meet. Bodhicitta counteracts our tendency to stay stuck in very narrow thinking. It counteracts our resistance to change.

This degree of openness arises from the trust that we all have basic goodness and that we can interact with one another in ways that bring that out. Instead of reacting aggressively when we’re provoked, endlessly perpetuating the cycle of pain, we trust that we can engage with others from a place of curiosity and caring and in that way contact their innate decency and wisdom.

A friend who works in a department store decided some years ago that she would test her belief that everyone is basically good. She wanted to see if she could find anyone she felt was not a candidate. Every day she encountered friendly people, for sure, but also plenty of rude people, arrogant people, manipulative people, and downright meanspirited people. In each case, she experimented with ways to go beneath their facades, to go past their defenses and contact their good sense, their humor, and their kindness. When we last talked, she hadn’t yet met anyone she felt lacked basic goodness, and she’s been working at that store for fifteen years.

With the first commitment we begin to build confidence in our ability to embrace the raw, edgy, unpredictable energy of life. With the second commitment we step further into groundlessness as a source of awakening rather than a source of dread, as a path to fearlessness rather than a threat to our survival. If we haven’t already been training in relaxing with fundamental uneasiness, then making the
second commitment can be terrifying, because we’re moving deeper into this open-ended, undefined territory called benefiting others.

Committing to benefit others is traditionally called the path of the bodhisattva, the path of the hero and heroine, the path of the spiritual warrior whose weapons are gentleness, clarity of mind, and an open heart. The Tibetan word for warrior,
pawo
for a male warrior or
pawmo
for a female warrior, means “the one who cultivates bravery.” As warriors in training, we cultivate the courage and flexibility to live with uncertainty—with the shaky, tender feeling of anxiety, of nothing to hold on to—and to dedicate our lives to making ourselves available to every person, in every situation.

The commitment to take care of one another is often described as a vow to invite all sentient beings to be our guest. The prospect can be daunting. It means that everyone will be coming to our house. It means opening our door to everyone, not just to the people we like or the ones who smell good or the ones we consider “proper” but also to the violent ones and the confused ones—to people of all shapes, sizes, and colors, to people speaking all different languages, to people with all different points of view. Making the second commitment means holding a diversity party in our living room, all day every day, until the end of time.

Initially, most of us are in no way ready to commit to all of that—we are in no way ready to leap into that much groundlessness without reservation. But if we have a longing to alleviate suffering, what can we do? For one thing, we can invite everybody and open the door to them all, but open the door only briefly at first. We open it only for as long as we’re currently able to and give ourselves permission to close it when
we become too uncomfortable. However, our aspiration is always to open the door again and to keep it open for a few seconds longer than the time before.

When we practice this way, the results may be surprising. In opening the door gradually, not trying to throw it open all at once, we get used to the shaky feeling we experience when people we can’t quite handle start coming to the party. Rather than thinking,
I have to open the door completely or I’m not doing it right,
we start with the strong intention to keep opening that door, and bit by bit, we tap into a reservoir of inner strength and courage that we never knew we had.

Opening the door reflects our intention to remove our armor, to take off our mask, to face our fears. It is only to the degree that we become willing to face our own feelings that we can really help others. So we make a commitment that for the rest of our lives, we’ll train in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of our own reactivity, our own survival mechanisms, our own propensities to be hooked.

It’s not that we won’t ever experience those feelings again. Fundamental uneasiness will continue to arise over and over, but when it does, we won’t overreact to it, we won’t let it rule our life. I once asked Dzigar Kongtrül about this, and he said, “Yes, I still have those feelings, but they don’t catch me.” He is, it seems, no longer afraid of fear.

Those raw feelings can even inspire us to action. When an interviewer asked the Dalai Lama if he had any regrets, he replied that yes, he did: he felt responsible for the death of an elderly monk who had come to him for guidance. When the interviewer asked how he had dealt with that feeling of regret, how he had gotten rid of it, His Holiness replied, “I didn’t get rid of it. It’s still there.” But it no longer
drags him down. It has motivated him to keep working to benefit people in every way he can.

The commitment to take care of one another is a vow to awaken so we can help other beings awaken. A vow to awaken so we can alleviate the suffering in the world. A vow to continue on this journey for as long as it takes, even if that’s forever. Shantideva captures the essence of this commitment in a verse that’s said to be a favorite of the Dalai Lama’s:

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found,

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorrows of the world.

Given the vast scope of this second commitment, keeping it is like mission impossible. One way we break it is by closing our heart or mind to someone for even a few seconds. I’ve never known anyone who could avoid this altogether, but still we pledge to move toward keeping the door open to everyone. Another way we break the vow is through self-denigration—believing our own faults are intrinsic and impossible to remove and sending ourselves messages like “I’m a hopeless case; I’ll never get it.” We also break the vow when we denigrate others, criticizing their culture or customs or traditions or beliefs. Bias or bigotry of any sort breaks the vow.

When we break the first commitment, when we cause harm at the level of speech or action, it’s very clear. If, for example, we kill or lie or steal, there’s no question that we’ve broken the vow. But when it comes to the commitment to take care of one another, breaking the vow is not so
straightforward. There is a traditional Buddhist tale that illustrates this point. A sea captain known as Captain Courage was piloting a ship carrying five hundred men when a pirate boarded the boat and threatened to kill them all. The captain realized that if the pirate carried out his plan, he would not only kill all the passengers but also sow the seeds of his own intense suffering. So, out of compassion for the pirate as well as to save the five hundred men, the captain killed the pirate. In killing one to save many, Captain Courage was willing to take the consequences of his actions, whatever they might be, in order to prevent the suffering of others. This is why the second commitment requires bravery—the bravery to do whatever we think will bring the greatest benefit, the bravery to face the fact that we never know for sure what will really benefit and what, in fact, will only make matters worse.

Few of us will ever be confronted with a predicament like Captain Courage’s, of course, but we can easily find ourselves in situations in which we try to rationalize our questionable behavior with some perfectly plausible justification. It’s amazing the levels of self-deception we can reach. But that’s where the commitments are such a support. They help us to acknowledge our state of mind and pull ourselves out of a downward slide.

We don’t graduate from one commitment to the next. The commitment to not cause harm stays in place as the foundation for the commitment to take care of one another. The training in not acting or speaking in a way that escalates suffering, the training in acknowledging our triggers and staying present with discomfort, is essential if we wish to go further. The commitment to not cause harm helps us cut through self-deception and develop a friendship with
ourselves, a friendship that deepens as we begin to look closely at ourselves and lay aside the habits that cause us continued suffering. The warrior commitment rests on that base of self-honesty. When we meet our edge, when life triggers our habitual responses, we train in catching them, knowing that if we speak or act out of shenpa, we won’t be able to respond appropriately and support others.

Fortunately, when we break the commitment to take care of one another, it’s easy to mend. We start by acknowledging that we broke it, that we hardened our heart and closed our mind, that we shut someone out. And then we can retake our vow. On the spot—or as a daily practice—we can reaffirm our intention to keep the door open to all sentient beings for the rest of our life. That’s the training of the spiritual warrior, the training of cultivating courage and empathy, the training of cultivating love. It would be impossible to count the number of beings in the world who are hurting, but still we aspire to not give up on any of them and to do whatever we can to alleviate their pain.