THE I’s OF THE BUDDHA ARE UPON YOU
Now that the panic has passed, I want to feel embarrassed for the outburst. But instead, I keep feeling that howling in public to reveal pain may be an honest way to help others understand the Dharma path is not a bunny slope. Even after two decades of practice with the motivation to help all sentient beings, somebody with hair on her head slipsliding along the sidewalks of Samsara in ordinary clothes can be ambushed by powerful emotion, and hurled into that tangled darkness where it’s easy to mistake coiled rope for a live snake. A huge pile up of bad news--deaths, disease, family fatwas and financial devastation— blocked the view. But I stand by the consoling words of my Dharma sister Nancy: “Don’t beat up on yourself. We’re all here in human bodies because we’re not yet perfect enough to be Buddha.”
Fortunately, the Dharma welcomes panic attacks. Mingyur Rinpoche says in his new book, Joyful Wisdom, they demonstrate the awesome power of mind to turn a passing thought into an emotional cyclone tearing up everything in its twisted path. How better to see we have nuclear power, so we will want to work on nonproliferation? Sometimes Biblical characters panic too, and rudely demand God explain why he hast abandoned them. The Bible is full of retrograde moments of lost faith or lost cause, because without ignoble backslide, how can redemption happen? Where would be the happily ever after once upon a time, say, in the belly of a whale?
When the appearances in our life have become so strong we cannot overcome them, my teacher Thrangu Rinpoche recommends bringing obstacles to the path. He says we should be grateful for disturbances of the peace, for without adversities how would we know whether our samadhi has validity, that it’s working? That’s why great meditators deliberately abandon serene settings of solitude to seek “a very crowded place where disturbing emotions can easily arise. …This practice will develop realization.”
It seems the reverse can do that as well, because slinking from the cacophony of city life into the silence of retreat has made that ugly, scary darkness all gone. For a week, I read the words of my perfect teacher, prayed passionately and sat stone still watching my mind. I tricked myself into doing that this time by visualizing myself seated in a reviewing stand to watch troops parade by, these being of course my thoughts. Because in a parade like that, you can't really distinguish one passerby from another, and because sitting in the reviewing stand means you are definitely not part of it, one degree of separation was magical, forcing me to follow Jetsun Tenzin Palmo's admonition to not get stuck focused on what arises by looking at the space in which it arises. The distance in this view severed the shoots of suffering, as the prayer to the wisdom deity Manjushri puts it.
So many times, students stubbornly seek out a teacher, any available teacher, to earnestly download the confusion of some job, health, or relationship crisis, desperately hoping to get back a clear do this or that answer. And the letdown from a spout of general philosophy seemingly unrelated to the question leaves them more depressed and bewildered. You can see them painfully wondering why after they asked a question in such painstakingly detailed English, the teacher answered them in Tagalog.
So I feel very grateful to have beseeched the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and my teacher to tell me what had gone wrong, and to have got in return the enormous blessing of an unmistakably clear answer. In the secure, breathe-easy environment of a retreat center that provided a comfortable room, dependable meals and inspiring scenery--everything all taken care of, no worries-- I could easily see Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso's point that fear really is just a thought about the future. It is not now. So many things will change between now and that feared future, including what to fear.
My teacher would probably describe this retreat as bringing pain to the path. “This refers in particular,” he says, “to the mental pain of feeling sad and poverty-stricken. Usually one tends to feel that such pain is doing one considerable damage. The practice is not to fall under the sway of such an impoverished state of mind. Usually one feels that the situation is unbearable, but here one mixes one’s mind with this sadness and looks directly at this disheartened state and sees its actual nature, which is emptiness. This enhances one’s meditation. …it enables one to recognize the nature of one’s mind.”
It is significant comfort to look him straight in the eye and realize the Buddha actually does have business with you. Even though he doesn’t speak in the language of your daily struggle, knowing nothing about the craziness of 21st Century computerized, credit swapped culture, he has perspective, something all too easily obscured by the instant gratification of the faster and faster short run. The Buddha is still here because he is a useful reminder that this too shall pass. It’s all impermanent, illusory, insubstantial--these i's have it. Life is one big Ipod shuffle, The mind training, “Emptiness is the best protection because it cuts the solidity of your beliefs”, really does turn out to be the thingamabob that does the job. Twenty six hundred years and still working, a true energizer battery.
Oddly, or maybe not, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s sangha is practicing the paramitas this calendar year by devoting a month at a time to one of the six, and April is exertion. A retreat is exertion to the max. But, I am happy to say, if you make the effort when you are the worse for wear, you will probably be the better for it. Dharma is a mindboggling gift.
Om mani padme hung.
~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.Yours In The Dharma 2001-2008, Sandy Garson @copy: 2001-2008 Sandy Garson
All rights Reserved
Fortunately, the Dharma welcomes panic attacks. Mingyur Rinpoche says in his new book, Joyful Wisdom, they demonstrate the awesome power of mind to turn a passing thought into an emotional cyclone tearing up everything in its twisted path. How better to see we have nuclear power, so we will want to work on nonproliferation? Sometimes Biblical characters panic too, and rudely demand God explain why he hast abandoned them. The Bible is full of retrograde moments of lost faith or lost cause, because without ignoble backslide, how can redemption happen? Where would be the happily ever after once upon a time, say, in the belly of a whale?
When the appearances in our life have become so strong we cannot overcome them, my teacher Thrangu Rinpoche recommends bringing obstacles to the path. He says we should be grateful for disturbances of the peace, for without adversities how would we know whether our samadhi has validity, that it’s working? That’s why great meditators deliberately abandon serene settings of solitude to seek “a very crowded place where disturbing emotions can easily arise. …This practice will develop realization.”
It seems the reverse can do that as well, because slinking from the cacophony of city life into the silence of retreat has made that ugly, scary darkness all gone. For a week, I read the words of my perfect teacher, prayed passionately and sat stone still watching my mind. I tricked myself into doing that this time by visualizing myself seated in a reviewing stand to watch troops parade by, these being of course my thoughts. Because in a parade like that, you can't really distinguish one passerby from another, and because sitting in the reviewing stand means you are definitely not part of it, one degree of separation was magical, forcing me to follow Jetsun Tenzin Palmo's admonition to not get stuck focused on what arises by looking at the space in which it arises. The distance in this view severed the shoots of suffering, as the prayer to the wisdom deity Manjushri puts it.
So many times, students stubbornly seek out a teacher, any available teacher, to earnestly download the confusion of some job, health, or relationship crisis, desperately hoping to get back a clear do this or that answer. And the letdown from a spout of general philosophy seemingly unrelated to the question leaves them more depressed and bewildered. You can see them painfully wondering why after they asked a question in such painstakingly detailed English, the teacher answered them in Tagalog.
So I feel very grateful to have beseeched the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and my teacher to tell me what had gone wrong, and to have got in return the enormous blessing of an unmistakably clear answer. In the secure, breathe-easy environment of a retreat center that provided a comfortable room, dependable meals and inspiring scenery--everything all taken care of, no worries-- I could easily see Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso's point that fear really is just a thought about the future. It is not now. So many things will change between now and that feared future, including what to fear.
My teacher would probably describe this retreat as bringing pain to the path. “This refers in particular,” he says, “to the mental pain of feeling sad and poverty-stricken. Usually one tends to feel that such pain is doing one considerable damage. The practice is not to fall under the sway of such an impoverished state of mind. Usually one feels that the situation is unbearable, but here one mixes one’s mind with this sadness and looks directly at this disheartened state and sees its actual nature, which is emptiness. This enhances one’s meditation. …it enables one to recognize the nature of one’s mind.”
It is significant comfort to look him straight in the eye and realize the Buddha actually does have business with you. Even though he doesn’t speak in the language of your daily struggle, knowing nothing about the craziness of 21st Century computerized, credit swapped culture, he has perspective, something all too easily obscured by the instant gratification of the faster and faster short run. The Buddha is still here because he is a useful reminder that this too shall pass. It’s all impermanent, illusory, insubstantial--these i's have it. Life is one big Ipod shuffle, The mind training, “Emptiness is the best protection because it cuts the solidity of your beliefs”, really does turn out to be the thingamabob that does the job. Twenty six hundred years and still working, a true energizer battery.
Oddly, or maybe not, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s sangha is practicing the paramitas this calendar year by devoting a month at a time to one of the six, and April is exertion. A retreat is exertion to the max. But, I am happy to say, if you make the effort when you are the worse for wear, you will probably be the better for it. Dharma is a mindboggling gift.
Om mani padme hung.
~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.Yours In The Dharma 2001-2008, Sandy Garson @copy: 2001-2008 Sandy Garson
All rights Reserved
posted by Sandy Garson @ 10:16 PM
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