Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (19 page)

There’s a traditional teaching about regarding all sentient beings as your mother. Everyone has been your mother; they’ve been kind to you and you’ve had an intimate relationship with them. This teaching always seemed old-fashioned to me. Then I read a book by Joanna Macy in which she recounted being in India and hearing a Tibetan teach on this subject. It was so boring that she went outside to get some air. As she was walking along a path, toward her came an old woman, bent under a load of wood that she was carrying on her back. Suddenly she thought, “This woman was once my mother.” Even though she had walked past lots of men and women like this in India, people carrying heavy loads and all bent over so that you couldn’t even see their faces, she wanted to see the face of this woman. She wanted to know who this woman was, because all she could think about was how this woman had been her mother.

I learned something from Joanna Macy’s story: this teaching that all sentient beings have been our mothers is about taking an interest in other people, about being curious, and about being kind. All those nameless people in the street, they’ve been your lovers, your brothers and sisters, your fathers and mothers, your children, your friends. Even if you don’t buy that, you can just wonder who they are and begin to look at them with some interest and curiosity. Everyone is just like us. We all have our lives; we think that we’re the center of the universe, and none of us is paying too much attention to anyone else unless things get very passionate or very aggressive.

* * *

Today’s slogan is “Take on the three principal causes.” The three principal causes are what help us to keep our heart open, to remember to exchange ourselves for others, and to communicate. They are the teacher, the teachings, and a precious human birth.

The teacher.
First we’ll consider the teacher. In the lojong teachings the teacher is referred to as the spiritual friend, the
kalyanamitra.
The teacher is like a senior warrior, or a student warrior who’s further along the path. It’s somebody who inspires you to walk the path of warriorship yourself. Looking at them reminds you of your own softness, your own clarity of mind, and your own ability to continually step out and open. Something about them speaks to your heart; you want to have a friendship with this person as a teacher. Trust is an essential ingredient: if you enter into a serious relationship with a teacher, you make a commitment to stick with them and they make a commitment to stick with you, so you’re stuck together.

Lest one romanticize this relationship, I’d like to repeat something that Trungpa Rinpoche once said: “The role of the spiritual friend is to insult you.” This is true. It isn’t that the spiritual friend phones you up and calls you names or sends you letters about what a jerk you are. It’s more that the spiritual friend is the ultimate Juan. All your blind spots are going to come out with the spiritual friend. The only difference between the spiritual friend and everybody else in your life is that you’ve made a commitment to stick with him or her through thick or thin, better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in death. We’re not too good at keeping commitments these days; this isn’t an age where commitment is honored very widely. If you enter into a relationship with a spiritual friend, you’re really asking for it. Rather than the cozy, nurturing situation you might have imagined in the beginning—that the teacher is always kind and will replace the mother or father who never loved you or is finally the friend who has unconditional love for you—you find that in this relationship you begin to see the pimples on your nose, and the mirror on the wall isn’t telling you that you’re the fairest of them all. To the degree that anything is hidden in this relationship, you begin to see it.

Spending time with Trungpa Rinpoche felt like the great exposé. Often he would say very little. You’d have some seemingly enormous problem. When you finally got to talk with him, it didn’t seem so important anymore. Nevertheless, you’d start to crank up the emotion, and he would just sit there and maybe even look out the window or yawn. But even if he sat there just looking and listening, you still felt exposed to yourself. Even if you were with a group and it didn’t seem like you were being noticed, you felt all your awkwardness.

With a teacher you feel all the ways in which you try to con the situation, you feel all the ways in which you try to make yourself look good. You’re seeing clearly what you do all the time. But you’ve made this commitment—one you’re not going to run away from, you’re not going to write off. This time you’re going to stick with it. Staying there becomes like the three difficulties. When you’re with the spiritual friend or even thinking about him or her, you begin to see neurosis as neurosis. That encourages you to practice the second difficulty, which is to begin to apply the teachings. And finally, you long to make that a way of life. The spiritual friend does not confirm your existence but serves as a mirror for you to see where you’re stuck. The relationship encourages you to wake up.

The most important thing about the relationship with the spiritual friend is that it’s basic training for how you relate to every situation in your life. It’s all training for you to be grateful to every Juan, and not just the Juan or Juanita that you call your spiritual friend. So when your buttons get pushed, you begin to see that what’s happening is your teacher. When your cover has been blown, you begin to see that situation as your teacher. You realize that you know what to do and can begin to relate directly with that pain and use it to relate with the pain of all sentient beings. When you feel inspired and joyful, you can share that with others and develop a sense of kinship.

* * *

The teachings and practices.
The second principal cause is the teachings and practices. You have a lot of support when you see what you do rather than turn it against yourself or try to run away from it. You have a lot of encouragement from the teachings and practices to open your heart further, to feel what’s going on and not shut down, extending your openness to other sentient beings. When the mirror has just told you that you’re not the fairest of them all, and you’re feeling embarrassed and awkward, it begins to occur to you that there are many other people at this very moment feeling the same way. You can breathe it in for all of you. When you’re feeling happy, it begins to occur to you to think of others and wish for all beings to be happy.

Precious human birth.
So the first principal cause is the teacher, who serves as an example and represents life itself, and who also serves as a pointed reminder to let go of holding on to yourself. The second is the teachings and the practices that actually give you tools for opening your heart. And the third cause is this precious human birth. All of us have this precious human birth. We’re fortunate enough not to be starving; we’re fortunate enough to have food and shelter; we’re fortunate enough to hear the teachings and be given methods to wake up; we’re fortunate enough to have good intelligence and the luxury to explore and question why we and others suffer.

* * *

Another slogan says, “This time, practice the main points.” What that’s saying is that for all of us it’s a crucial time. We have everything we need to open our hearts, and to work with others in a genuine way. We have a precious human birth; we’re not starving in Somalia. We’re not living in a country where we grow up being taught to shoot anybody who’s on the other side. We have a tremendous amount going for us, so this is the crucial time to practice the main points.

In the slogan “Pay heed that the three never wane,” the three are gratitude to your teacher, gratitude to the teachings and the practices, and a commitment to keep the basic vows that you’ve taken. Gratitude to the teacher starts with making a commitment never to give up on that one person, who has also made a commitment never to give up on you. When I think of my own teacher I feel enormous gratitude continually, practically every moment of my life. It’s gratitude that there was somebody who was brave enough and fierce enough and humorous enough and compassionate enough to get it through my thick skull that there’s no place to hide. I feel gratitude to the teachings and the practices because they’re good medicine and they help us to uncover that soft spot that’s been covered over for a very long time.

Finally, we pay heed that the refuge vow and bodhisattva vows never wane. The refuge vow is a commitment not to seek islands of safety any longer but to learn how to leap, how to fly, how to leave the nest and go into uncharted territory, no longer hampered by tiny, self-centered views and opinions. The bodhisattva vow is highstakes practice because it’s about giving up privacy and the comfort orientation altogether as a way of awakening your heart further to yourself and to all sentient beings.

In general, we should pay heed that gratitude and appreciation for everything that happens to us never wane. Whether we consider what happens to us good fortune or ill fortune, appreciation for this life can wake us up and give us the courage we need to stay right there with whatever comes through the door.

22

Train Wholeheartedly

N
OW IT’S TIME
for us to continue our journey and “walk it like we talk it.” One of the final slogans is “Observe these two, even at the risk of your life.” It refers once again to the refuge and bodhisattva vows. It has a sense of urgency—“even at the risk of your life”—that’s telling us not to be afraid to leave the nest. Don’t be afraid of losing ground or of things falling apart or of not having it all together.

The meaning of observing the essence of the refuge vow even at the risk of your life is “no escape, no problem.” To observe the bodhisattva vow is to exchange ourselves for others and develop compassion for ourselves and others. So even at the risk of our own lives, if it’s painful, breathe it in and think about all of the other people who are experiencing pain. If it’s delightful, give it away and wish for all people to have that delight. That’s the essence of this slogan; it’s a revolutionary idea.

Here is one last story about exchanging self for others. I met a young man who had been on a spiritual journey most of his life. He was awake but smug. He suffered from what’s called spiritual pride. He was complaining about his girlfriend, who was having a hard time giving up smoking; the anxiety was triggering an old eating disorder. The young man said he just kept telling her to be strong, not to be so fearful, to be disciplined. And she would tell him, “I’m trying. I’m really trying. I’m doing the best I can.” He was angry because it didn’t seem to him that she was trying. He said, “I know I shouldn’t be getting so angry about this. I know I should be more compassionate. But I just can’t help it. It gets under my skin. I want to be more understanding, but she’s so stuck.” Then he heard himself say, “I’m trying. I’m really trying. I’m doing the best I can.” When he heard himself saying
her
words, he got the message. He understood what she was up against, and it humbled him.

I think that all of us are like eagles who have forgotten that we know how to fly. The teachings are reminding us who we are and what we can do. They help us notice that we’re in a nest with a lot of old food and old diaries, excrement and stale air. From when we were very young we’ve had this longing to see those mountains in the distance and experience that big sky and the vast ocean, but somehow we got trapped in that nest, just because we forgot that we knew how to fly. We are like eagles, but we have on underwear and pants and shirt and socks and shoes and a hat and coat and boots and mittens and a Walkman and dark glasses, and it occurs to us that we could experience that vast sky, but we’d better start taking off some of this stuff. So we take off the coat and the hat and it’s cold, but we know that we have to do it, and we teeter on the edge of the nest and we take off. Then we find out for ourselves that everything has to go. You just can’t fly when you are wearing socks and shoes and coats and pants and underwear. Everything has to go.

Marpa the Translator was Milarepa’s teacher. He walked all the way from Tibet to India three times in order to get the teachings. Once when he was returning from India, he was with a companion whom he met every so often to compare who was getting the most teachings. His companion became jealous because he felt that Marpa was getting more. When they were in a boat in the middle of a turbulent river, his friend took all of the texts that Marpa had collected and threw them overboard. Talk about an opportunity for tonglen! Marpa didn’t exactly feel friendly toward this man. But he realized when he got back to Tibet that he had understood something about all of those teachings in all of those books. He really didn’t need it all written down. He had understood something; he had digested something. The teachings and himself had become one.

Each of us has also understood something, and that’s what we’ll take away from our study and practice of these teachings. These are things that are going to be part of our being now, part of the way that we see things and hear things and smell things.

We try so hard to hang on to the teachings and “get it,” but actually the truth sinks in like rain into very hard earth. The rain is very gentle, and we soften up slowly at our own speed. But when that happens, something has fundamentally changed in us. That hard earth has softened. It doesn’t seem to happen by trying to get it or capture it. It happens by letting go; it happens by relaxing your mind, and it happens by the aspiration and the longing to want to communicate with yourself and others. Each of us finds our own way.

The very last slogan is “Train wholeheartedly.” You could say, “Live wholeheartedly.” Let everything stop your mind and let everything open your heart. And you could say, “Die wholeheartedly, moment after moment.” Moment after moment, let yourself die wholeheartedly.

I have a friend who is extremely ill, in the final stages of cancer. The other night Dzongzar Khyentse Rinpoche telephoned her, and the very first words he said were, “Don’t even think for a moment that you’re not going to die.” That’s good advice for all of us; it will help us to live and train wholeheartedly.