The Lotus Still Blooms (25 page)

Read The Lotus Still Blooms Online

Authors: Joan Gattuso

Here is a formula using the Six Perfections to get to the other shore. The six are interdependent.
GENEROSITY, THE FIRST PERFECTION
If one is tight and stingy in one’s thoughts, money, time, attitudes, possessions, this First Perfection is telling you that you are not ready.
A most important step is to convey generosity of spirit, so that we become generous with supportive, kind, loving words. We are generous with our attitudes, being slow to judge or criticize. We become individuals who are quick to have compassion, to be kind, to express loyalty, to give of our time, talent and treasures when the offering baskets of life are passed. We are generous with our willingness to celebrate another’s good. We are genuinely delighted at another’s good fortune.
As we develop this First Perfection, what has to occur is that great good must flow into our lives. As stated in
A Course in Miracles
, “Into the hand that gives, the gift is given.”
A little boy of a very wealthy father was asked by the dad, “Honey, what do you want for your birthday?” The little fellow thought for a moment, then told his father, “Daddy, I want you.”
Giving is a vital part of Buddhist practice, as it is taught in Judeo-Christian spirituality, but not so often practiced. It still baffles me how resistant Westerners can be to the spiritual practice of tithing (giving back 10 percent of your income to your spiritual home or sangha). The successful and happy people I know live this principle. Those who struggle do not, yet they are fearful and resistant to personally engage in a practice that has worked and continues to work for so many through the ages.
A most prosperous and extremely generous friend of mine, Alice, always has sincere people coming up to her, wanting to meet with her and ask a question—always the same question. “What is your secret? What is the one thing you do that you can attribute your success to?”
Alice always responds, “Giving. It is and has always been through my giving that I have prospered.” She humorously relates that the folks who ask the question almost never accept her answer. They will summarily brush it aside and say, “Well, yes, but what else?” For Alice there is no other answer. She sums it up by saying, “People want another answer!” They want to get where Alice is, but they don’t want to give. Until they hear her message, they will never come close to where she is.
We give so that others may experience happiness. When others are mean, selfish or unkind, being generous with our love is an important antidote. When another’s behavior is unkind or harsh toward us, it is because that person is suffering. If we are very awake and aware, we quickly realize this individual is calling for our compassion, not our rejection. We offer compassion because we know he must be suffering deeply to behave so poorly. His suffering is spilling over. And when we are within his sphere, it spills over upon us.
When we are truly engaged with this First Perfection, then our spirit is generous with a person—generous with loving-kindness, with compassion, with tenderness, with kind words. We are generous instead of throwing him out of our hearts. He does not need punishment, he needs help and is asking for our love.
Thich Nhat Hanh gives this amazing suggestion: go shopping for that person, not as a manipulative move but rather as a magnanimous gesture. Purchase something that person would absolutely love, a kind response to their call for help. Now that is a generous act from a generous spirit.
Last Christmas I took this teaching to heart and purchased a beautiful scarlet cashmere sweater for a relative whom I love dearly, but who was suffering greatly. He had walked away from his family and friends with much anger and rage, leaving those in his wake very upset and confused as to what had happened.
I prayed and prayed with no outer reconciliation. With the holidays approaching, I then read Thich Nhat Hanh’s above message, purchased the sweater and sent a card that expressed my love along with a written invitation to Christmas dinner. We even set a place for him, thinking surely he’ll return for Christmas (how could he miss Christmas?), a holiday he has always loved.
He never came. It was sad. There was an empty place at the table and an empty place in our hearts that only he could fill. He still hasn’t returned to the family, but our prayers continue without ceasing, and we have received a message that he is seeking personal help. That is an answer to our prayers for his well-being.
The gift of the sweater and invitation didn’t bring him home for Christmas, but as I have heard the Dalai Lama teach many times: our prayers and spiritual practices for others may never show us a change in them, but they will always bring about a change in us.
Giving a gift to someone who has thrown you out of their heart cannot be done with any expectation of changed behavior on their part. It can only be done out of your own generous desire to show love, remembrance and caring.
MINDFULNESS, THE SECOND PERFECTION
This Perfection contains aspects that are medicine for the malaise of our times:
• Protecting all life—human, animal and plant. This means having a green consciousness and becoming aware of how all our actions impact Mother Earth, along with animals, pets and people.
• Preventing the exploitation of anyone. This means that when we see injustices, we do something about it.
• Protecting children and adults from sexual abuse. Again, action is required whenever we are made aware of such activity. During the holidays I was in a busy store waiting to be waited on when a mother across the counter completely lost her temper and began beating on her five- or six-year-old son, who obviously was annoying her. The other customers, the clerk and I stood in stunned silence. In such situations I am often at a loss as to what to do. Pray? Yes. Have compassion? Yes. But what about witnessing a child being abused? The next day I spoke with several professionals—a child advocacy attorney, a police officer and a social worker. They all gave the same advice. Do not approach the person, but immediately call for help. From that day to this, I carry the Child Protective Services telephone number in my wallet. Now I know what to do. You can do the same thing and get the number for the appropriate agency in your area.
• Deep listening and loving speech. While training for the ministry, we were taught how to listen on two levels: (a) what was being said; (b) what was not being said—the message beneath the words. When we listen deeply, we learn much about another person. It takes much practice, but we all can learn to “hear” the unspoken words behind the spoken ones and “hear” the truth of a given situation.
• Mindful consumption. Use what you use. Use what you need, but don’t abuse the generosity of the Universe. In other words, be mindful about everything you consume, from natural resources—water, gas, electricity, etc.—to paper and plastic bags. Begin to have less waste in your household.
INCLUSIVENESS, THE THIRD PERFECTION
In order to practice inclusiveness we must have a huge heart. Your heart is large enough to draw that person and his energy into your heart—receiving, embracing and transforming.
The way the Buddha illustrated this teaching was to imagine we have a heart as big as the ocean. And into that vastness all can enter. If we take a small handful of salt and put it in a bowl of water, the water would not be drinkable. But if we put the same amount of salt into a crystal clear river, the water still remains drinkable. If some salt from a troubled personcomes in, it will have no effect because we are as that clear river, or as big as the ocean.
One has to be most generous of spirit to practice inclusiveness.
ENTHUSIASM, THE FOURTH PERFECTION
We must put joyous effort into our spiritual practice. We don’t grow weary even when we don’t see the desired results. We continue to practice enthusiastically. We plant seeds of joy and happiness in our soul’s storehouse, and they gather there and are stored for future use. We continue to always water these seeds. This requires the power of spiritual strength to not grow weary—to faint not. I always keep on keeping on. It is a stellar spiritual quality for all of us.
In this store consciousness there are many seeds, seeds of agitation, seeds of negativity. On the other side are seeds of love, compassion, goodness, generosity. We all have both kinds of seeds within us from our past actions and past lives, but it is absolutely up to us what kind of seeds we are going to water. We always have a choice as to what seeds we water. Thich Nhat Hanh says that if we have people in our lives who just love to water those negative seeds—and we all do—they water those seeds of negativity even when we attempt not to let them affect us. He asks that we say to such an individual, “Dearest one, please refrain from watering those seeds.” Can you imagine saying that to another? You may choose to do so silently.
Then we water and nurture the wholesome seeds. We use our power of prayer and affirmation to release the negativity and water the positive. Then we cross over to “the other shore” of peace, happiness and liberation.
MEDITATION, THE FIFTH PERFECTION
This Perfection is a two-step process. First we stop the monkey mind within us by deep, slow breathing and centering ourselves. Second, we look deeply within our own mind and into the nature of things. We eventually do everything in our lives mindfully as a result of regular meditation. There are two types of meditative practices. One is learning to become still and centering the mind. The other is the conception process of reasoning. (See chapters on Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.)
WISDOM, THE SIXTH PERFECTION
Our insight and understanding carries us to the other shore. We look deeply and we have an insight. “This is it! This is what I’ve been doing, this is what I have not been doing, that keeps me on one shore or carries me to the other.” Wisdom can be equated with Right View from the Eight-fold Path.
Buddha taught that the ground of being of all waves, be they tiny or enormous, is the ocean. We, too, have a ground of being that can be called our divine nature. In the West we call it “God,” or “Christhood.” In the East it is called “Buddhahood” or “Nirvana.” This is our true nature, the ground of our being. We don’t have to go somewhere to find it. We don’t get it someday if we become very, very holy. It is there. It has always been there, and it will forever be there as the ground of your being in the ocean of divinity.
Remember that these precepts work together. They are interdependent. They move us from a state of separation to a state of liberation. They move us to wholeness, freedom and holiness.
At a Rigpa retreat I attended with Sogyal Rinpoche, he taught something I have found to be very helpful, since it fits so perfectly with this sixth Perfection. It is to keep what this master teacher calls an “Insight Journal.” You maintain a special little journal that you always have handy. And when you have a flash of insight, an “aha” moment, you immediately record it in your journal. I faithfully do this, and it is an enormous help in always coming up with fresh Sunday lesson ideas. The Insight Journal is something I truly appreciate.
We all have flashes of pure knowing, but we so often and so quickly forget them. Having an Insight Journal must have been an insight of Sogyal Rinpoche that has now benefited so many people. If you keep one, it will greatly benefit you and help carry you to the “other shore.”
In the limitless sea of samsara, in the midst of change, there is an island, a farther shore, a realm of being utterly beyond the transient world in which we live: Nirvana.
 
-THE BUDDHA
THE OTHER SHORE
EKNATH EASWARAN writes that the Buddha became “a kind of cos-mic ferryman.” He is represented as always calling: “Koi paraga?” (Anyone for the other shore?) So how do we, as women and men of the twenty-first century, get to the other shore? And, exactly what is “the other shore”?
One could say that it is arriving, not at a physical place, but rather at a mental place that is free of suffering, attachments and fears of any form. On “the other shore” we live in our Buddha mind. We experience literal liberation. We are awake to our Buddhahood, our Christhood. We know what it is like to live on the gross, common shore, and we have done lifetimes of spiritual work and practice. We now desire to cross over into living a more awake, godly, aware life, free of the traps and pitfalls of mundane existence.
Perhaps we have glanced at the other beings who seem to be more peaceful, more tuned into the flow of life, more luminous. And we, too, desire more than anything else what they are demonstrating. It means leaving the familiar shore of suffering and drama behind, leaving behind all that’s familiar. Few are willing to do that.
There is a quite revealing opening line in
A Course in Miracles
that has brought such insight and clarity to my mind. It is: “All are called, but few answer.” Consider that for a moment. “All are called” rather than the old thought and belief, “Few are called.” You have been called to the other shore. “Koi paraga?” Are you willing to answer the call, to do what is necessary to make this life-altering and life-affirming journey?

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