Beginning Practice
Q: What is the ultimate objective of a Buddhist?
A: To respond to the world like a Buddha.
Q: And how is that?
A: With affectionate and intelligent understanding—a sympathetic understanding of the struggle required to disentangle ourselves, the kind of all-embracing compassion that a mother holds for her only child.
Q: How does one come to that state?
A: By becoming disenchanted with the things that wise people become disenchanted with. Or, we can say, by becoming one who has become unstuck from everything sticky in the world; from everything the mind and body can get stuck into.
Q: Isn’t that just about everything?
A: Now you get the point.
Q: (Three days later, the same person . . .) I have been thinking about all the things in our culture that I “get stuck into,” to use your expression. It is a long list, but not so long that it covers everything, as you imply. I wonder if I’m still missing the point.
A: It’s good that you followed up our conversation with contemplation. I don’t know what items you noted on your list, but I strongly suspect that they include sensual items like food, music, sex, entertainment, computer games, pleasant aromas, and things of that kind. The influence of these sense-pleasing items is very apparent. But there is a deeper, more subtle level of stickiness that is usually hidden from our understanding.
Q: Such as ... ?
A: Our cherished views and opinions, the secret hopes we harbor, our hidden guilt, our fantasies. These are all created out of thin air, for none of them are real, nor do they belong to anyone. Bubbles, that’s all they are, just soap bubbles. And yet they exert a tremendous pressure over our lives. They keep us spinning endlessly. The mind embraces these notions and becomes shackled to them. They anchor the mind to the bottom of the ocean of life.
Q: How does one escape from them?
A: Through meditation practice. Make an effort to recognize those energies that confine and limit our lives. Isolate them. Sand them down. File them down. Chisel them down one chip at a time, day by day. Keep observing everything with careful scrutiny—everything, including the observer. Shake every concept loose until nothing is left of what you previously mistook for something.
When the mind is empty of both coarse and subtle things, it enters into the stream of life free. From then on you can just flow effortlessly with the energy of life, secure in the realization of the way things are.
Life is a challenge. There is an art to living it well. And, like any art, diligent training is required to do it skillfully. The sooner we learn the ropes, the smoother the ride. The choice whether to live foolishly or skillfully lies entirely within the range of each person’s power. There are other things beyond this range that we can’t begin to control. If we are clever, we keep our nose out of those aspects of our life and turn toward what we can control, alter, improve, and transform.
It is obvious that each person is obliged to live his or her own life and take responsibility for all life choices and decisions. No one can bear the responsibility for our actions but ourselves. Life doesn’t allow us to bury our heads in the sand to escape this. Nor does it make sense to kick the wall and protest against the misinformed perception that life is not fair. And “couch-potatoing out” is not an option on the menu. We are obliged to meet and embrace our life. If we can do this with grace and dignity, our life blossoms. If we don’t, life sinks deeply into the emotional and psychological potholes of guilt, apathy, and cynicism, which lead to addictions and depression. Nature demands that we grow, otherwise, we become stagnant. There is an inner directive that calls us to be who we are, to manifest our destiny. That being the case, we would be wise to move into our lives with intelligence, with courage, and with the enthusiastic interest necessary to develop our skills for living. Directing our life thus absolutely prevents it from withering into a tangle of remorse and regret.
It is our duty to find the time and space, no matter how cramped and difficult our circumstances may be, to outgrow our immaturity and grow into our inherent loveliness. In this way we incline our life toward wisdom and compassion. By beginning at the beginning, performing small gestures of warm-hearted concern for others, we pave the way for a time when we will be able to squeeze a great deal of kindness into any situation. In this way we can help bring peace into the world.
The most appropriate place to start is in our home. In small ways. And continuously, so that a pattern begins to emerge and old perceptions fade away. This is easier said than done, but it can be done. If the vision of a life brought into balance and harmony is kept in mind, this all becomes possible. The vision of bringing light and love into our home is a powerful impetus for evolutionary change. With this in mind we can endeavor to be a force for bringing harmony to our home. We can work to be willing to let go of everything that puts us in conflict with others. This is a beautiful gesture. This is the skill and art needed to live in our world in an elegant way; one that amplifies goodness rather than weighs the world down by decreasing goodness.
Often the best thing to do—the wise and humble response—in a difficult situation at home or anywhere is to leave the scene and enter into silence. We die to the inner fool, the clown who would act recklessly and say things that bite deeply. Learning to choose the path of a wise person in difficult situations develops the ability to act intelligently when overwhelming situations arise and threaten to blow us away into confusion.
If we have a meditative glimpse into the nature of time, we know that this moment is all there ever is. The future grows out of this very moment. Each of us, as beings conditioned by karma, carries the whole of a past we don’t even remember in an energy stream we cannot see. We know intuitively that habits, patterns, proclivities, attitudes, and the like are deeply embedded. Only a bit of all this can we connect to the experiences in our present life. The rest is unknown, an enigma. If karma is a reality—and cutting-edge science is now ready to concede that it is—then certainly life will continue to present an almost endless sequence of challenges that prompt contemplation and reflection for the seeker. If we meet life with wisdom and compassion, further problems won’t come tumbling out of our actions. Rather, we will recognize life as a flow of changing circumstances and meet it accordingly.
Q: I think I need a beeper to wake me up every three minutes, or some sort of electric device to wear on my wrist that would give me a little jolt. Has anyone ever tried this high-tech method of staying alert?
A: To begin with, every three minutes wouldn’t be often enough. If you recognize the need for a little bit of alertness, you must see that what is needed is a continuous, twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week awareness of who you are.
The awareness you seek must come from inside, supported by ethics and morality. This awareness prompts us to be here and now, in the present moment. This then leads to samadhi, or concentration, which in turn will awaken your dormant wisdom-compassion. This is a thumbnail sketch of the path to awakening.
Attitude is the key to the whole enterprise of meditation. It is the take-off point where all the other factors in a meditative life begin. If our attitude runs off track in one particular direction, we will find ourselves off in that direction for quite some time—just as in long-distance air travel, a few degrees make the difference between arriving in Iraq or in Thailand. Therefore, the serious meditator is obliged to be super-vigilant about attitude.
A clear, balanced attitude—one that does not cause mischief, that is settled and neutral, that recognizes that a meditative life is lived in the conventional world—is a great asset. All that we do, all our efforts to make headway in spiritual practice, are subject to patterns of our life that operate automatically—some would say diabolically—and entrap us. Not knowing that this is the prevailing condition, there is no possibility of recognizing an escape route even if we stumbled into one. We are like the blind turtle that fell into a mine shaft: there is no possibility of an exit. The machinery of thought that we have become chained to leads us by the nose again and again down the darkened path of familiarity. And the most familiar message we hear is the one which tells us we are who we think we are.
A clear, balanced attitude, which we can call an intelligent attitude, makes it possible to sidestep this deception. It maintains the awareness that things are not as they seem, that we are not who we think we are, that there are dimensions beyond our present level of consciousness toward which we can incline ourselves. An intelligent attitude has confidence that enlightenment is possible. It brings sufficient energy into our practice. There is nothing fixed that we have to surrender to. Our future is in our own hands.
An intelligent attitude is the key to setting aside the naivete that people sometimes bring to their practice. Just as an archer has calculated in the back of his mind for the wind factor as he aims for the target, so the intelligent seeker can proceed confidently and with clarity, knowing that he or she must practice within the framework of the mind, which is a world of deceptions, doubts, and temptations. An intelligent attitude has the savvy to use skillful means, acquired over lifetimes, to let go of the sticky conditions that try to keep us mired. We are able to sit above the world, not be embedded in it. There is a space where we can be clear and uninvolved. It is this sliver of non-involvement with the mind’s machinations that allows us to remain unstuck to anything that arises.
Right attitude creates a space from where we can gain a foothold beyond the mind. A right attitude has been dipped into the nectar of awareness and so will not be led astray for long. When our meditative consciousness has this courage and clarity, it is able to go against the grain and break the hold of conventional behavior and thinking. A seed sprouts, the seed of trans-sensibility—an evolved consciousness that recognizes two dimensions of experience almost simultaneously. We can be aware of both the object of observation as well as the detached observer. This in itself is already transformative.
There is a further dimension in which the meditator is not an object of awareness and there is no object of meditation. There is only an awareness, far more subtle, that isn’t involved with anything—no doing, no thinking, no creating. Here the ball and chain that connect us to the sense of personality are severed, at least for a while. This is the peace that all seekers aspire to—not merely the peace of a temporary internal quietude, but a peace beyond the reach of thought—the true peace of mind.
Q: Don’t you find walking the path to enlightenment hard?
A: Difficult, of course. There were times in the course of intensive mind training when I thought my mind would explode from the conflict of inner forces, or that I would burst into a hysterical, unstoppable crying fit. Something inside of me knew that if I didn’t grit my teeth and hold firmly to my faith in the Buddha-Dharma, I would fall deeper into the predicament that spins my life as it does. Living through those moments of crisis, the word difficulty enlarged to describe a greater magnitude of existential pain.
There are periods in the lives of all of us who aspire to do good and progress along the path when we have to be satisfied with just being able to squeak by and survive an onslaught of karmic conditions. There are times when difficulty is so permeated by sorrow that we can only lock the door and cry into our pillow. Then, as it must, it changes.
Q: Are you saying that this level of psychological pain or suffering was more than you were willing to confront?
A: Yes. It was almost to the point of saying if to practice mental training one has to face this level of conflict and suffering, I will look somewhere else for my spiritual needs.
Q: That kind of suffering puts me off.
A: You are quick to be put off. You throw in the towel before you consider the benefits that come from noble aspiration and determined practice. If you don’t accept that all spiritual growth involves hard work, going against the grain, enduring what you would prefer to avoid, then I don’t think I can be of much help to you.
You could look around trying to find a namby-pamby teaching vehicle that won’t challenge you or demand anything from you. If you find such a thing, go for it! Good luck. But I don’t think it will take you where you truly want to go. You have to remember that whatever you do, wherever you go, you go there and do that with your mind as it is.
Suffering is essential to gaining wisdom. Suffering needs to know why there is suffering. Invariably, the universe answers: “Things are as they are.” We can argue that they shouldn’t be so, but the universe replies: “If they shouldn’t be, they wouldn’t be.”
When there is a gulf between our notion of what we want the world to be and what the world is, what we want the world to be has to either bend or break. In the humility of this understanding we can restructure our life in a way that accords with reality.
As a working hypothesis you can bring to your practice the notion that the problem generating human suffering is well disguised and that it will require a great deal of determined effort and clever methodology to discover it and root it out.
The problem is well disguised because it is enclosed and protected by our most cherished belief: that we exist as we think we do. This notion has become a habit pattern so tightly held onto that only a few rare, wise beings have come to recognize it for what it is. Somehow, in some way, we have to step back from this notion. Our best ally and the only force that can unveil the delusion and bring things into clarity is wisdom. Wisdom supersedes the enchantment that surrounds and enhances the illusion of who we think we are.
When you sit in meditation, reflect upon this predicament. Then your practice will have benefits beyond mere relaxation. Or, it will become true relaxation, which means moving away from the influence of what leads us astray. Your practice will be protected from becoming another mindless habit. We must endeavor to maintain the alertness that makes our meditation a kind of magical unfolding, an adventure that frees the heart and leads us to grace.