9

Transforming the Kleśas: The Main Work of Meditation

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN

RINGU TULKU

GUY ARMSTRONG

To start with, perhaps we could talk about what people expect will happen to their defilements when they start meditation practice.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: Most of the people I meet come to meditation because they are experiencing a lot of pain and confusion, which of course arises from their karmic activity. So in the beginning they need to see what’s happening before they can start to relinquish any of it. They need to see how completely unruly their mind is. It takes a while before they can effect any reduction in the disturbances.

RINGU TULKU: It helps to appreciate how difficult it is to uproot defilements, or kleśas, and just how long it could take. To totally uproot the kleśas takes a very long time, according to the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes it is said that to become totally enlightened takes countless eons. On the other hand, the main purpose of meditation is to uproot the defilements. If nothing happens to the kleśas, the practice isn’t working.

At the outset, perhaps it is best if we don’t think in terms of the defilements but more simply in terms of making our mind a little calmer. After all, when we first start to practice, we experience our mind like a waterfall, which can be overwhelming. We might feel we are worse off, but we are actually better off, because we are aware of the waterfall. For once, we know what’s going on.

GUY ARMSTRONG: Most people do come to meditation because of disturbances in the mind. Over the first few years of practice they feel a lot more confident working with those disturbances and perceive an actual reduction in them. Yet at other times in practice, they can feel the kleśas increase and get stronger. That seems to result from having greater awareness of the kleśas and paying more attention to them, because you see more clearly what was covered up.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: Suzuki Roshi used to call this “the instant age.” We expect instant everything. We come with all kinds of expectations, and one of the things we learn early is that with expectation comes disappointment. Some people, not finding instant results, or quick results, wander off and look somewhere else. But those who stick around for a while begin to notice some relief.

GUY ARMSTRONG: The true sense of equanimity is not that the emotions go away, but that when we meet any emotion, we find that we have the capability to be with it—without being afraid or running away, or without letting it force us to do foolish things.

RINGU TULKU: If at first we cultivate that kind of relaxation and refrain from creating too many negative situations, we get into less trouble. Then we can try to cultivate the opposites of the defilements a bit. The Buddha said do no evil and try to do positive things, and then tame the kleśas in your mind. Although the defilement is that which generates the negative actions, it has to be worked on gently, step by step.

It seems helpful to understand kleśa activity as a continuum, from the first moment a kleśa arises to full-blown action.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: The karmic results of a thought arising and of punching somebody in the nose are different. The resulting stress and the resulting disturbance are much greater if you act it out. It’s very important for us to notice there’s no way we can act without experiencing a result. When we become very clear about that, it helps temper our actions.

GUY ARMSTRONG: When kleśas are directly experienced, the energies that they bring up are quite frightening to the untrained person. To feel that we are is in the grip of anger, or in the grip of fear or strong desire, scares us. Our culture hasn’t trained us how to be with them, so we need a lot of guidance and support in opening and softening, in realizing that we can feel these energies without their actually damaging us. Little by little, we can become more comfortable with feeling the energies directly. Therefore, the mind can remain undisturbed even when the kleśa is present.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: Not buying into them is a very key point. In the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta it says, “When anger arises, the monk says, ‘Anger has arisen.’” Generally, that’s not our experience. Our experience, before practice, is that when anger arises, we erupt. To begin by being aware—“Oh, this is anger”—can give us space so we don’t erupt and cause all the karmic consequences that involves.

There’s a great bumper sticker, “Don’t believe everything you think,” which I pass on to all my students. We have a lot of thoughts that could get very destructive if we believe them to be true. If we can just see them as thoughts, they don’t cause as much distress.

RINGU TULKU: Looking at the three kleśas, ignorance is the ground of the other two. As long as ignorance persists, we cannot get rid of kleśas and get out of the samsaric state of mind. But while its effect is clearly negative, it is neither dramatic nor tragic. It is in the background. Therefore, it is something you work on slowly, step by step.

Attachment is like water. Our life is filled with attachment and it adapts itself to whatever situation we are in. It has negative aspects—it creates lots of suffering and pain—but it also has some positive aspects—it is associated with love and compassion. It will not dry out very quickly, but it doesn’t have the immediate and fearsome destructive energy of anger.

Anger is like fire. It burns you and it burns other people. It has the most negative effect of all. At the same time, it flares up quickly and can quickly die. Therefore, it can be a little easier to deal with, but because of its strong negative effects, it is also the most emergent of the defilements. Therefore, the sutras say anger is the first and most important thing we need to work on. So if we work with anger right from the outset, we can have an immediate effect for the good.

GUY ARMSTRONG: From the Theravādin point of view, the practice of discipline (sīla) is a way to safeguard our actions. By exercising restraint through the precepts, right speech, and so forth, we inhibit the action of the kleśa, and we stop spreading suffering around so much. That limits the karmic impact on ourselves and others.

At the same time, it can be very humbling to see that as much as we try to meditate and keep our good intentions, our words and actions do get away from us. In that case, we simply have to make space to realize we’re human. Learning in meditation how to relate with these states inwardly gives us a little more space when they arise in daily life. We start to develop the fine art of letting go inwardly while being restrained outwardly. It’s quite a dance to do both of those at the same time, but that’s how the inner silent work and the work on the outer relationship operate together.

What about the chain reactions you set off when your kleśa activity manifests? Suddenly you have people responding with their own kleśa activity.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: That’s how you learn it’s not a free ride. If you relieve tension by blowing off steam, you’re going to get burned too. It’s going to bounce back. That’s why Zen training occurs in a close group situation, where you live, sit, chant, and work together. You’re always bumping into each other and that brings up stuff that could stay buried for a while if you didn’t have constant interaction.

Suzuki Roshi’s son used to call it “potato practice.” You dig up some potatoes and they’ve all got dirt on them. But you don’t have to pick up each one and scrub them. You put them in a bucket with some water and you stir it, and they bump into each other and clean each other up. Bumping into each other really helps you to deal with things in your everyday life.

RINGU TULKU: Once we see the kleśas, it is very important that we stop thinking they are good for us. Usually we think a kleśa is something useful. For example, if we get angry, we think we are being righteous and protecting ourselves. We need to see very, very clearly that that’s not the case. If I am angry, it’s neither good for me or for others. If we don’t have this basic understanding, we will not have the incentive to really work on the defilements.

So far we have been talking about kleśas as something to get rid of. Can they also be seen as an opportunity?

GUY ARMSTRONG: When we look honestly at the impact of the kleśas, we feel them as a burden. We sincerely wish it were otherwise, but for the time being they are definitely there. Given that situation, how can we keep a right attitude toward ourselves and toward these states as they arise?

It’s helpful to realize they can actually strengthen our Dharma practice. By working with the kleśas, we develop lots of beautiful qualities, like humility and patience. The forbearance we practice to be with a kleśa without doing anything with it strengthens our compassion. We see how the kleśas make us suffer, and therefore we understand the impact they have on others, which strengthens our determination to purify our hearts further. As we have success in doing that, it gives rise to faith and confidence as well.

RINGU TULKU: The kleśas can never be seen as something good from the Buddhist point of view, because they create trouble. Nonetheless, they do present an opportunity. A kleśa can be transformed, and from the Vajrayāna point of view, they are in essence wisdom. But that does not mean that the kleśas are good.

Our basic nature is the enlightened state of our mind, and its natural quality is wisdom. Kleśas occur when we are not able to express that natural quality. They are a reflection of not being able to understand or express our pure wisdom mind. Yet they are not other than that wisdom mind. There is merely an obstruction, and when we clear that obstruction, the kleśas arise as wisdom. In Vajrayāna, we talk about three methods for dealing with kleśas: abandoning, transforming, and transmuting. In the end, they are not something we “get rid of.”

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: Suzuki Roshi often said a bodhisattva should be very happy about having difficulties, because difficulties give you a way to practice. Whenever you have a problem, there is where your practice is. When you see yourself getting caught by a kleśa, there is where your practice is.

RINGU TULKU: Seeing the problems caused by the kleśas also helps to generate compassion. If we don’t see problems, we find no reason to have compassion.

If we measure success in working with defilements in terms of outward behavior, do you think there is much difference between people in Buddhist communities and the average person on the street?

RINGU TULKU: Many people come to a Buddhist center with very big expectations. They hear Buddhists talk about compassion, understanding, loving-kindness, peace, and things like that. So they expect that everyone there will fully embody all those virtues, and when they walk in, they get the shock of their lives. Yet this is a little bit like going to a hospital and being surprised that there are so many sick people. Those who come to Buddhist centers are not people who are already perfect. They are people who feel there is a big need for them to work on the negative things.

We find it very hard to work on our deep-seated attachments, and yet I see students who make lots of progress, and there are even some extraordinary stories. A woman I know who was dying of cancer practiced very intently until she was too weak to do formal practice anymore. In the hospital, in the presence of her mother and friends, even though she was very weak, she was lighthearted and cheerful. She said, “I am not afraid. I have complete confidence in the practice,” and she died with a clear smile on her face. Everybody was impressed, including her mother, who was not a Buddhist. I see many such incidents that demonstrate the effects of practice.

GUY ARMSTRONG: There are beautiful people in many walks of life. But rather than compare myself to them, I would rather ask the question, where would I be today if I hadn’t taken up this practice thirty years ago? I think I’d be a cynical person working in the computer industry somewhere. Looking at who we are and where we might have been is maybe a better comparison.

It’s also true that some of the fruits of practice may not be visible for years, or possibly lifetimes.

Many renowned Buddhist teachers have exhibited bursts of anger or passion, or had habits that seemed on the surface like kles´a activity. How do we account for this?

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: On a couple of occasions, I recall Suzuki Roshi getting angry. It seemed to me to be frustration at how slow we were to catch on and how little time he had.

I recall one sesshin when someone rang the bell one hour early. He realized his mistake and went running, saying, “Go back to bed! I rang it an hour early. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I did it an hour early.”

Only two students and Suzuki Roshi came down to the zendo. When everybody else finally came down, he said in this terrible voice, “You’re all badgers and foxes sleeping in your zazen caves.” And he jumped down and started hitting everybody, going around the zendo saying, “When the bell rings, come to the zendo,” and a variety of other things, while he was going whack, whack, whack, all the way around the zendo.

It sure looked like anger to me, but it was actually a very effective teaching as well. I think the anger came first and the teaching came second. There were certainly other occasions when he had strong reactions like that. I think we could be pretty frustrating.

GUY ARMSTRONG: I think it’s true that people are able to share Dharma teachings effectively well before all their kleśas have been removed. Occasionally, the teacher’s kleśas will break out just as much as they would with an ordinary person. Part of the problem is that the role of the teacher makes it difficult for them to speak honestly about their own level of development. It may not seem appropriate to reveal to students the areas in which they’re not fully developed yet.

That’s why I think it’s very important that teachers have a peer group within which they can talk honestly about their own practice and the things they’re working with. In the absence of their peer group, where they can share honestly, teachers can get too identified with their role and what they are teaching. As a result, they can believe they’re farther along the path than they really are. That’s when it gets dangerous. Some degree of honesty and sharing about one’s own imperfections is necessary to keep teachers on an even keel.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN: Whether we share them or not, our students see them. So we may as well share them.

RINGU TULKU: It’s also true that the exercise of compassion is not always so soft and nice. It can be expressed in a very rough-and-tough fashion. Out of compassion, the teacher may have to be a disciplinarian, be stern, offer punishment, and even show anger toward students. It’s not necessary that the teacher actually be angry but that the teacher shows the anger.

Not every teacher is at the same level. I have had the opportunity to train with very great masters. You could really see and feel how realized they were, but all teachers are not at that level. This has to be understood very clearly. Students might assume that whatever problems the teacher has are being handled. They might project that the teacher is highly realized, beyond their actual ability.

You cannot be a perfect teacher unless you are completely enlightened. But when you have something to share—and there are not many people who can share this kind of thing—you should teach. Even though some of my students are not very advanced, I encourage them to share whatever they understand with people who understand less. A problem only arises if you become too proud and start to think of yourself as a teacher, not a student. I never think of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a student who is sharing my little bit of understanding.

So you experience the occasional kleśa, would you say?

RINGU TULKU: Of course. Why not? Constantly.