The Lone Ranger
These days, everybody wants to be spiritual but nobody wants to be religious. Religion is a dirty word. Religion, we think, is for people who've bit the hook, who've gone in too far, who've drunk the Kool-Aid. Religion, we think, means giving up your autonomy, ceding control to someone else, becoming a sheep in the flock. Religion, we think, means abandoning your critical intelligence and adopting someone else's ideas and codes of behavior.
Our modern aversion to religion, our mistrust of it, is not unfounded. So numerous are the abuses, absurdities, hypocrisies, lies and murders that have been perpetrated in the name of religion, that to attempt to describe them accurately would fill an entire library. Sadly, the faces of the religious are too often exactly the faces of those sheep we do not wish to become.
These days, we feel more drawn to the Lone Ranger archetype of the spiritual seeker, the adventuresome and independent philosopher who pursues justice and truth wherever he may find it, without getting bogged down in the bureaucracy and laws of religion. Yet there is something a bit suspect about this archetype, as well. Without the guidance and structure of religion, the Lone Ranger too easily falls into a habit of spiritual snacking: munching potato chips of wisdom here and there, but never really sitting down to eat a proper meal. This mentality is encouraged by the modern spiritual scene, a multicultural smorgasbord where anyone can, with a little effort, endlessly sample teachings drawn from this tradition and that, putting together a personalized mash-up of little bits of spiritual wisdom from here and there, and dabbling now in this practice and now in that one. There is nothing wrong with exploring the range of wisdom that is out there. But we would be mistaken to think that the Lone Ranger strategy of spiritual snacking is really going to nourish us in any meaningful way. However tasty they may be, potato chips are not the same thing as a real meal, and we can make ourselves sick if potato chips are all we ever eat.
Within every religion, there are always two dimensions: the outer, more superficial dimension, and the inner, more profound dimension. (In academic terms, we would call these the exoteric and esoteric dimensions, respectively.) The inner, profound dimension carries that religion's genuine spiritual teachings, while the outer, superficial dimension carries its forms and its traditions and its cultural accretions, its outward observances. At the birth of every religion, the inner, profound dimension is dominant, and runs strongly towards mystical, transcendent experience; but over time, this inner dimension is encrusted and hidden within the outer, superficial layer that grows thicker and thicker as the years and centuries pass. The inner, profound dimension never entirely disappears, but it may become hidden to such a degree that only someone who has diligently penetrated through the outer layers and engaged with them fully can really get to the inner core of wisdom that lies at their center.
All Paths Lead to God
Oddly enough, it seems to be the case that the inner core of wisdom within every religion puts forward a set of essential teachings that sound strikingly similar to the essential teachings of every other religion. It is usually the outer, superficial layers that look very different from one religion to the next. When you get right down to it, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the esoteric teachings of mystical Christianity, mystical Judaism, mystical Hinduism, mystical Islam, and mystical Buddhism. The formless Dharmakaya of the Buddhists sounds a lot like the formless God of the Christian mystics, and like the formless G-d of the Kabbalists, and like the formless, non-dual reality of the Advaita-Vedantists. All these systems attempt to describe ultimate reality using different words and cultural references, but they are all fingers pointing to the same moon -- there can, after all, be only one moon, regardless of where on earth you stand. But there can be many fingers, and many ways of pointing, and many disagreements about fingers and ways of pointing -- and in the end, there can be genocide to prove that this finger is pointing to the moon more correctly than that one, and genocide can take place beneath the light of that very moon.
So we are right to be a bit wary of religion. Over the centuries, or millenia, religions have a tendency to become too heavily encrusted in their own exoteric forms, to get too caught up in their own bullshit and forget the meaning of the essential teachings that lie at their core. Religions are human institutions, after all, and are subject to human corruption and ignorance and greed and avarice. And sadly, many decent people who embrace religion -- even with the best intentions -- do so only at the outer, superficial level. They embrace the forms and the traditions without comprehending their meaning -- because nobody explains it to them -- with an overly simplistic belief that by doing so they will somehow be saved. Lacking the proper training to interpret the mystical, symbolic descriptions of ultimate reality that often appear in religious texts, they take these descriptions literally, at face value, and in doing so they become blind to the true meaning of the teachings. They become fixated on the finger, and forget all about the moon -- like dogs, who simply stare at your finger when you point at something. Instead of looking where you're pointing, dogs wait for the snack, the reward for being a good dog, which they are convinced is hidden within your pointing hand. The majority of religious people, too, are simply obeying the rules of behavior while staring at the hand and waiting for their reward. If you have any doubt about this, turn on the TV and watch the news, and see what religious people around the world are doing to each other. If they had any idea of the meaning of the teachings they claim to be following, it would be impossible for them to do such things.
The difference between spirituality and religion, says the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, is that spirituality begins with questions, whereas religion begins with answers. The outer forms of religions tend to be full of answers; many religious people are looking for easy answers to life's questions, and are therefore quite content to cling to the outer forms. Wear certain clothes, say certain words, avoid certain behaviors, and perform certain rituals, they're told, and you'll be guaranteed happiness and salvation. That certainty is so comforting and seductive, like a warm, fuzzy blanket on a cold winter night. But the inner, esoteric dimension of religion -- what we think of as true spirituality -- is full of questions, and questions are not warm and fuzzy. To really engage with those questions, to go into them, is to engage in a process of waking up that can be profoundly unsettling, because it provides little or nothing in the way of certainty or outward forms to which one can cling. Neither waking up, nor being born, nor being truly born again, are necessarily pleasant to go through -- they all involve leaving our comfort zones and entering a scary, unfamiliar world with harsh lighting. Few people have the stomach for such an undertaking; most would rather stay in the womb, in the dream, for as long as possible. Thus, the comforting, external forms of religion -- the ones that provide all the answers -- are much more appealing to the masses.
But for all of religion's glaring faults, and despite our modern way of distancing ourselves from religion's outer aspects, we are still drawn to its inner dimension. We are drawn to spirituality, and we yearn for meaning and for greater understanding and happiness. Although we are still attached to the comforts of the womb and the dream, we also long to finally be born, to finally wake up. And we feel a tremendous, instinctive revulsion towards the nightmare of materialism and nihilism and negativity that surrounds us today. Intuitively, we know that there has to be a better way. There has to be more. Something essential is being overlooked, and is in danger of being lost altogether. The inner, esoteric core of meaning that lies at the heart of religion calls to us, and we know it has something to teach us. And we know, too, if we're honest with ourselves, that the modern Lone Ranger strategy of holding ourselves aloof from religion while still trying to dabble in spirituality will give us broad coverage but probably not much depth.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there are three dimensions of spiritual experience: in addition to the outer and inner, there is also the "secret" dimension. It's called secret because no one except you can really understand it or experience it. It is the innermost dimension of your own experience and your own nature -- in other words, it is the moon itself, beyond all fingers and pointing. It's also called "self-secret," because it can be staring you right in the face (and it is, by the way) and you still won't see it if you don't know how to recognize it.
In an ideal world, all the forms of religion, and all our ways of engaging with them, are aimed at helping us learn to recognize our awakened nature -- and, once recognized, to fully wake up and help others wake up from the collective nightmare we are having. If, on the other hand, we have convinced ourselves that we're actually having a pleasant dream, and that having pleasant dreams is what life is really about, then waking up (and all the effort it requires) may not sound very appealing. Why bother? But people generally don't come to spirituality -- or religion -- if they are happy and content with things as they are. They come because they are unhappy, and malnourished, and if they know what is good for them, they will come seeking more than potato chips.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Intuition
Hypothetical scenario: Your best friend, Sally, has become infatuated with a new boyfriend, Bill, and you're about to meet him for the first time. Sally can't wait to introduce you to Bill, and has been extolling his virtues to you at great length, priming you to see him in the same rosy glow as she sees him. Bill is the best guy she has met in a long time, she says -- and you have to admit, he sounds great. You feel excited for Sally, and genuinely prepared to accept and like the new gentleman in her life. But when the moment comes and you're sitting with the two of them, some small detail about Bill immediately strikes you the wrong way, and in a flash you see that the relationship is doomed, that Sally is fooling herself. But how do you know this? What makes you think so? All you really saw was the subtle way Bill glanced away, a couple of times, when Sally began to speak -- or maybe it was something about the way he dresses or cuts his hair that makes him look a bit self-involved and superficial, a dandy, someone who probably has no qualms about lying to his girlfriends to get what he wants. Maybe you're not even sure how you got the impression you did -- that is, you don't consciously register whatever clues might have given you this impression -- but you see it as clearly as if Bill himself had told it to you.
But you swallow the knowledge and stuff it down, you ignore it, because obviously Sally doesn't see Bill that way -- she's crazy about him. And she knows him a lot better than you do, doesn't she? She has spent a lot more time with him than you have, and much more intimately -- so she must see another side of him, she must know the real Bill. You're just being paranoid and focusing on the negative. Besides, look at how happy she is with him -- you should be happy for her. Your conscious mind kicks in and provides all these good reasons to brush aside your bad first impression of Bill. And how could you explain it anyway, even if you tried? Would you tell Sally that your ominous feeling about Bill was based on his haircut, or the way he glanced at the floor? How would you react if someone told you the same thing about your new love interest? It would sound like nonsense, and it might even create a rift between you and your friend. So you keep it to yourself -- but it refuses to completely go away. Somewhere in the back of your mind, it is always there, nagging you. When the moment finally comes for Bill to reveal his true colors and break Sally's heart, you realize that your initial impression of Bill -- formed in a few seconds, from one or two petty details that couldn't hold a drop of water in a court of law -- was right all along. In those first few seconds, an intuitive knowledge arose in which you saw Bill more accurately than Sally did in all the months she was dating him.
How is that possible? How could you see something clearly, in such a short time, that Sally couldn't see despite having the advantage of lots of exposure to Bill?
(Full disclosure: I have been the friend in this situation, more times than I can remember, and I have rarely dared to open my mouth and tell the Sallys of this world what I saw in their Bills. I have also *been* Sally, more than once. My friends have seen similar things about the Bills in my life -- sometimes I could see it on their faces -- but even if they dared to try to tell me what they saw, it didn't do me much good. Like Sally, I was infatuated, and I had to find out for myself -- the hard way -- if my hopes were misplaced.)
Thin-Slicing
Malcolm Gladwell has a term for what happens with your impression of Bill: he calls it "thin-slicing," a way of drawing very rapid conclusions about something based on what may seem like very little information. I'm currently in the middle of reading Gladwell's book "Blink." For a long time, out of nothing more than stubbornness and snobbishness, I refused to read this book. There was a whole year, around 2006, when I couldn't get on a subway car in New York City without seeing at least one person reading "Blink" -- and possibly two or three such readers in the same car. I couldn't walk into someone's apartment without seeing "Blink" on the nightstand beside their bed. It began to feel like a conspiracy, a hostile takeover, something out of "The Stepford Wives," and I developed an irrational aversion to the mere sight of this book. As a reader, I tend to assume that I'll have an allergic reaction to any book that attains a near-Beatles level of mass-market popularity. But at the recommendation of a friend here at the Abbey, I finally took the plunge recently, and although I'm not yet halfway through it I will come clean and admit right now that I was wrong about "Blink." Its fame is justified: it is a fascinating read, well-written and thoughtful, and has got me reflecting in new ways about topics that have long been near and dear to my heart.
Thin-slicing is what Gladwell calls "the power of thinking without thinking," which is another way of saying intuition. Through stories and scientific studies, he explores the origins and the meaning of all those little moments like the one with Sally and Bill, in which some kind of knowledge that isn't entirely conscious arises very quickly or subtly -- often so quickly or subtly that we are not even aware of it, and we don't know how to explain it. But we know it.
Take Gladwell's story, for instance, of the Getty Museum's acquisition of a very expensive Greek statue that turned out to be a forgery. The Getty's curators, lawyers and scientists spent months examining the statue and methodically proving its validity, and they were all fooled by it; but several visiting art experts who saw it had told them, after taking one glance at it, that it was a fake. The Getty, in this case, was Sally, and the statue was Bill -- and the Getty's curators were as mortified as Sally would be by the assertion that Bill wasn't a worthwhile investment. But how did the visiting experts know, at a glance, that the statue was fake, when the Getty's entire team of experts believed it to be real, and had scientific studies and forensic reports to prove their claims? Just as with Sally and Bill, it was an intuitive impression that formed within seconds of seeing the statue, and all they could pin their impressions on were little details: something about the fingernails didn't look right, for instance, or the statue's overall appearance seemed too "fresh." Such fleeting and evanescent opinions didn't hold much weight next to the hundreds of pages of reports from the scientists and lawyers that seemed to prove the statue's validity, but in the end these rapid intuitive judgments turned out to be correct, and the lawyers and scientists were wrong.
The Getty story illustrates Gladwell's argument that, sometimes, a flash of intuition can offer a more direct path to the truth than even the most thorough and methodical, rational analysis. In some cases, rational analysis, for all its virtues, can even blind us to the truth that is right in front of our faces -- particularly if our analysis is unconsciously applied towards the goal of proving the existence of something we hope is true. (Think of poor Sally.)
Wisdom Seeking Wisdom
By now, those who read this blog regularly may be wondering: what does all this have to do with Buddhism or spirituality? It so happens that Buddhism has been very much concerned, for about 2,600 years, with questions of truth and illusion, and how we know the difference.
Intuition, as Gladwell shows us, is a powerful and valid way of knowing things that the conscious mind can't necessarily figure out on its own. It is another way of getting at the truth about a situation -- but it is a way whose workings are poorly understood, and easily misapplied. Our culture doesn't encourage us to trust our intuition, and doesn't regard intuition as a reliable form of knowledge: we implicitly lump intuition into the same camp with things like astrology and UFOs and ESP, things that smack of pseudo-science and aren't really taken seriously by mature thinkers (although ESP may be little more than intuition on steroids). Instead, we favor rational analysis and the scientific method, and we assume that the more we have studied and thought about a subject, the better we understand it. Buddhism, too, encourages this emphasis on rational analysis: the Buddha said that we should not accept his teachings simply because they came from him, but instead we should apply our own intelligence and analyze the teachings to see if they really make sense and are in accord with our own experience of reality. If, through analysis, we find that's the case, then we should accept the teachings and try to live by them.
But the powerful effect of intuition is not limited to mundane situations such as meeting Bill or evaluating a purchase. Intuition can also play a crucial role in our experience of the spiritual path -- it may, in fact, be the motivating factor that leads us to pursue the spiritual path in the first place, and guides our decisions along the way. Despite the countless arguments for materialism and nihilism presented to us by our culture, we feel intuitively that those positions are inadequate -- that there is something more to be experienced, that there is more going on here than meets the eye, and that life has a greater purpose and meaning than what we have been conditioned to believe. If we follow our intuition, it leads us on a quest to discover that purpose and meaning and to integrate it fully into our lives. Our own innate wisdom leads us to seek our own innate wisdom.
Wisdom, in fact, is the Alpha and the Omega, from the Buddhist point of view: it is both the goal and the path; it is where we came from and where we are going; it is both our original nature (now hidden from us) and the nature of the final unfolding of Enlightenment with a capital "E." We talk a great deal about wisdom in the study and practice of Buddhism. We also talk a great deal about ignorance. Ignorance is what keeps us from seeing our true nature, and it is the root of all our mistaken views and emotional afflictions, the primary cause of all our suffering.
But we don't often talk about the role of intuition as a form of wisdom: we tend to think that wisdom or "prajna" operates primarily at the level of the conscious, reasoning mind. Intuition is even regarded with a skeptical eye; to take something as valid we generally require a higher standard of proof that can only be provided through reason and conscious thinking. Because we are afflicted with ignorance, the logic goes, intuition -- which is murky and mysterious by nature -- is therefore untrustworthy; it is as likely to be polluted and mistaken as it is to be correct. And there is some truth in this: our prejudices, our likes and dislikes, our ego-centric comfort orientation, our wishful thinking, can all masquerade as intuition if we don't know how to tell the difference.
However, when we completely exclude intuition as a valid form of knowing, we are embracing a lop-sided epistemology (sorry for using a big word like that, but it was necessary). We are utilizing only one side of our minds -- the conscious side, the thinking, rational self -- and saying that only this side has the power to know, to recognize truth, to mitigate reality. We are correlating wisdom with that five percent of the iceberg of the mind that sits above the surface of the water, and excluding the ninety-five percent that resides outside of conscious awareness or control. Yet experience shows us again and again that many valid forms of knowledge arise -- quite mysteriously, we think -- from that ninety-five percent. Our responsibility as spiritual practitioners, then, is to recognize and listen to our intuition, and learn to distinguish between what is authentic and what is not. More often than not, it is when we ignore our intuition that we get ourselves into trouble. Ignoring our intuition is, in fact, one way of understanding ignorance, the root of all our suffering.
On the spiritual path, we often have flashes of intuitive insight into the true nature of things -- insights that are sometimes more genuine than anything we could cook up through rational analysis. But these intuitions, though they feel quite authentic, are fleeting; we are not quite sure how we arrived at them, and we would probably have great difficulty in explaining them to another person in a way that would make sense. Just as with Sally and Bill, we don't know what to make of a more spiritual intuition, and so we might ignore it. Our reasoning mind kicks in and we begin to talk ourselves out of it, just as we did when we saw something ugly about Bill. We can actually waste a lot of time on the path this way, stuck in the quicksand of doubt, undermining our own wisdom by refusing to take it seriously.
But a glimpse of truth is simply that. A glimpse. Of truth. For an instant or two, the veil that obscures our vision was casually brushed aside and we caught a glimpse of something much too large for us to wrap our minds around -- so large that we lack words to describe what it was. We couldn't even see it clearly -- all we know is that it was bigger and truer than anything we've known before. But because we lack words for it and cannot frame it satisfactorily in the language of the thinking, reasoning mind, we don't trust it -- and we know, therefore, that others would not trust it, either. So we blow it off. Keep it to ourselves. Forget about it. And in doing so, we ignore the truth that was right in front of our faces.
In this way, each of us is Bill, and each of us is Sally, and each of us is Sally's friend -- all rolled into one. The fact that you're even reading this means that, to some extent, you have already seen through your own Billshit and that you are consciously seeking out "spiritual" ideas and information to help you make sense of what you have seen, to get at the truth behind the facade. The question is whether you will take the matter seriously enough to let poor Sally in on it.
How good of a friend are you to yourself?
How much do you trust your own intuition?
But you swallow the knowledge and stuff it down, you ignore it, because obviously Sally doesn't see Bill that way -- she's crazy about him. And she knows him a lot better than you do, doesn't she? She has spent a lot more time with him than you have, and much more intimately -- so she must see another side of him, she must know the real Bill. You're just being paranoid and focusing on the negative. Besides, look at how happy she is with him -- you should be happy for her. Your conscious mind kicks in and provides all these good reasons to brush aside your bad first impression of Bill. And how could you explain it anyway, even if you tried? Would you tell Sally that your ominous feeling about Bill was based on his haircut, or the way he glanced at the floor? How would you react if someone told you the same thing about your new love interest? It would sound like nonsense, and it might even create a rift between you and your friend. So you keep it to yourself -- but it refuses to completely go away. Somewhere in the back of your mind, it is always there, nagging you. When the moment finally comes for Bill to reveal his true colors and break Sally's heart, you realize that your initial impression of Bill -- formed in a few seconds, from one or two petty details that couldn't hold a drop of water in a court of law -- was right all along. In those first few seconds, an intuitive knowledge arose in which you saw Bill more accurately than Sally did in all the months she was dating him.
How is that possible? How could you see something clearly, in such a short time, that Sally couldn't see despite having the advantage of lots of exposure to Bill?
(Full disclosure: I have been the friend in this situation, more times than I can remember, and I have rarely dared to open my mouth and tell the Sallys of this world what I saw in their Bills. I have also *been* Sally, more than once. My friends have seen similar things about the Bills in my life -- sometimes I could see it on their faces -- but even if they dared to try to tell me what they saw, it didn't do me much good. Like Sally, I was infatuated, and I had to find out for myself -- the hard way -- if my hopes were misplaced.)
Thin-Slicing
Malcolm Gladwell has a term for what happens with your impression of Bill: he calls it "thin-slicing," a way of drawing very rapid conclusions about something based on what may seem like very little information. I'm currently in the middle of reading Gladwell's book "Blink." For a long time, out of nothing more than stubbornness and snobbishness, I refused to read this book. There was a whole year, around 2006, when I couldn't get on a subway car in New York City without seeing at least one person reading "Blink" -- and possibly two or three such readers in the same car. I couldn't walk into someone's apartment without seeing "Blink" on the nightstand beside their bed. It began to feel like a conspiracy, a hostile takeover, something out of "The Stepford Wives," and I developed an irrational aversion to the mere sight of this book. As a reader, I tend to assume that I'll have an allergic reaction to any book that attains a near-Beatles level of mass-market popularity. But at the recommendation of a friend here at the Abbey, I finally took the plunge recently, and although I'm not yet halfway through it I will come clean and admit right now that I was wrong about "Blink." Its fame is justified: it is a fascinating read, well-written and thoughtful, and has got me reflecting in new ways about topics that have long been near and dear to my heart.
Thin-slicing is what Gladwell calls "the power of thinking without thinking," which is another way of saying intuition. Through stories and scientific studies, he explores the origins and the meaning of all those little moments like the one with Sally and Bill, in which some kind of knowledge that isn't entirely conscious arises very quickly or subtly -- often so quickly or subtly that we are not even aware of it, and we don't know how to explain it. But we know it.
Take Gladwell's story, for instance, of the Getty Museum's acquisition of a very expensive Greek statue that turned out to be a forgery. The Getty's curators, lawyers and scientists spent months examining the statue and methodically proving its validity, and they were all fooled by it; but several visiting art experts who saw it had told them, after taking one glance at it, that it was a fake. The Getty, in this case, was Sally, and the statue was Bill -- and the Getty's curators were as mortified as Sally would be by the assertion that Bill wasn't a worthwhile investment. But how did the visiting experts know, at a glance, that the statue was fake, when the Getty's entire team of experts believed it to be real, and had scientific studies and forensic reports to prove their claims? Just as with Sally and Bill, it was an intuitive impression that formed within seconds of seeing the statue, and all they could pin their impressions on were little details: something about the fingernails didn't look right, for instance, or the statue's overall appearance seemed too "fresh." Such fleeting and evanescent opinions didn't hold much weight next to the hundreds of pages of reports from the scientists and lawyers that seemed to prove the statue's validity, but in the end these rapid intuitive judgments turned out to be correct, and the lawyers and scientists were wrong.
The Getty story illustrates Gladwell's argument that, sometimes, a flash of intuition can offer a more direct path to the truth than even the most thorough and methodical, rational analysis. In some cases, rational analysis, for all its virtues, can even blind us to the truth that is right in front of our faces -- particularly if our analysis is unconsciously applied towards the goal of proving the existence of something we hope is true. (Think of poor Sally.)
Wisdom Seeking Wisdom
By now, those who read this blog regularly may be wondering: what does all this have to do with Buddhism or spirituality? It so happens that Buddhism has been very much concerned, for about 2,600 years, with questions of truth and illusion, and how we know the difference.
Intuition, as Gladwell shows us, is a powerful and valid way of knowing things that the conscious mind can't necessarily figure out on its own. It is another way of getting at the truth about a situation -- but it is a way whose workings are poorly understood, and easily misapplied. Our culture doesn't encourage us to trust our intuition, and doesn't regard intuition as a reliable form of knowledge: we implicitly lump intuition into the same camp with things like astrology and UFOs and ESP, things that smack of pseudo-science and aren't really taken seriously by mature thinkers (although ESP may be little more than intuition on steroids). Instead, we favor rational analysis and the scientific method, and we assume that the more we have studied and thought about a subject, the better we understand it. Buddhism, too, encourages this emphasis on rational analysis: the Buddha said that we should not accept his teachings simply because they came from him, but instead we should apply our own intelligence and analyze the teachings to see if they really make sense and are in accord with our own experience of reality. If, through analysis, we find that's the case, then we should accept the teachings and try to live by them.
But the powerful effect of intuition is not limited to mundane situations such as meeting Bill or evaluating a purchase. Intuition can also play a crucial role in our experience of the spiritual path -- it may, in fact, be the motivating factor that leads us to pursue the spiritual path in the first place, and guides our decisions along the way. Despite the countless arguments for materialism and nihilism presented to us by our culture, we feel intuitively that those positions are inadequate -- that there is something more to be experienced, that there is more going on here than meets the eye, and that life has a greater purpose and meaning than what we have been conditioned to believe. If we follow our intuition, it leads us on a quest to discover that purpose and meaning and to integrate it fully into our lives. Our own innate wisdom leads us to seek our own innate wisdom.
Wisdom, in fact, is the Alpha and the Omega, from the Buddhist point of view: it is both the goal and the path; it is where we came from and where we are going; it is both our original nature (now hidden from us) and the nature of the final unfolding of Enlightenment with a capital "E." We talk a great deal about wisdom in the study and practice of Buddhism. We also talk a great deal about ignorance. Ignorance is what keeps us from seeing our true nature, and it is the root of all our mistaken views and emotional afflictions, the primary cause of all our suffering.
But we don't often talk about the role of intuition as a form of wisdom: we tend to think that wisdom or "prajna" operates primarily at the level of the conscious, reasoning mind. Intuition is even regarded with a skeptical eye; to take something as valid we generally require a higher standard of proof that can only be provided through reason and conscious thinking. Because we are afflicted with ignorance, the logic goes, intuition -- which is murky and mysterious by nature -- is therefore untrustworthy; it is as likely to be polluted and mistaken as it is to be correct. And there is some truth in this: our prejudices, our likes and dislikes, our ego-centric comfort orientation, our wishful thinking, can all masquerade as intuition if we don't know how to tell the difference.
However, when we completely exclude intuition as a valid form of knowing, we are embracing a lop-sided epistemology (sorry for using a big word like that, but it was necessary). We are utilizing only one side of our minds -- the conscious side, the thinking, rational self -- and saying that only this side has the power to know, to recognize truth, to mitigate reality. We are correlating wisdom with that five percent of the iceberg of the mind that sits above the surface of the water, and excluding the ninety-five percent that resides outside of conscious awareness or control. Yet experience shows us again and again that many valid forms of knowledge arise -- quite mysteriously, we think -- from that ninety-five percent. Our responsibility as spiritual practitioners, then, is to recognize and listen to our intuition, and learn to distinguish between what is authentic and what is not. More often than not, it is when we ignore our intuition that we get ourselves into trouble. Ignoring our intuition is, in fact, one way of understanding ignorance, the root of all our suffering.
On the spiritual path, we often have flashes of intuitive insight into the true nature of things -- insights that are sometimes more genuine than anything we could cook up through rational analysis. But these intuitions, though they feel quite authentic, are fleeting; we are not quite sure how we arrived at them, and we would probably have great difficulty in explaining them to another person in a way that would make sense. Just as with Sally and Bill, we don't know what to make of a more spiritual intuition, and so we might ignore it. Our reasoning mind kicks in and we begin to talk ourselves out of it, just as we did when we saw something ugly about Bill. We can actually waste a lot of time on the path this way, stuck in the quicksand of doubt, undermining our own wisdom by refusing to take it seriously.
But a glimpse of truth is simply that. A glimpse. Of truth. For an instant or two, the veil that obscures our vision was casually brushed aside and we caught a glimpse of something much too large for us to wrap our minds around -- so large that we lack words to describe what it was. We couldn't even see it clearly -- all we know is that it was bigger and truer than anything we've known before. But because we lack words for it and cannot frame it satisfactorily in the language of the thinking, reasoning mind, we don't trust it -- and we know, therefore, that others would not trust it, either. So we blow it off. Keep it to ourselves. Forget about it. And in doing so, we ignore the truth that was right in front of our faces.
In this way, each of us is Bill, and each of us is Sally, and each of us is Sally's friend -- all rolled into one. The fact that you're even reading this means that, to some extent, you have already seen through your own Billshit and that you are consciously seeking out "spiritual" ideas and information to help you make sense of what you have seen, to get at the truth behind the facade. The question is whether you will take the matter seriously enough to let poor Sally in on it.
How good of a friend are you to yourself?
How much do you trust your own intuition?
Friday, November 13, 2009
Mindful Speech, Part Three: Witchcraft
This is Part Three of a series of articles on Mindful Speech. Part One focused on Idle Chatter, and Part Two looked at the art of Listening and the role of Emotional Intelligence in authentic communication. This installment examines the incredible power of human speech, and the Six Points of Mindful Speech taught by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Witchcraft
Speech is magical. It is witchcraft. From within the formless realm of the mind, a thought arises. Because it arises in the mind, the thought, too, is formless by nature, but it takes on the vivid appearance of form. The form of the thought represents a concept, or a tangle of concepts, which, again -- in themselves -- have no form but nonetheless find expression in the mind. As that expression of formless thought and concept in the mind grows swollen with significance and perhaps urgency, we say that the person's face becomes "pregnant with expression."
Through some voodoo of embodied mind whose mechanics we don't even begin to understand, this formless thought hurtles toward the realm of physical expression. The mouth opens, and air begins to flow from the lungs. At a level that is only partially under the control of the conscious mind, a complex orchestra of muscles and organs -- the tongue, the lips, the vocal cords, the jaw -- begins to play in unison, their combined efforts creating a particular series of sounds as the air rushes out from the lungs and exits the mouth. The sounds produced are in no way random or improvisational, but are recognized and intentionally selected by the mind as symbols or signs that, alone or in particular combinations and patterns, represent specific concepts. Concepts that have arisen formlessly in the mind have now found physical expression in the form of sound.
The sound waves emitted by the speaker travel through the air and strike the delicate organs of the listener's ear. If the speaker and listener share an agreed-upon system of signs and symbols -- if they speak the same language -- then the sounds are interpreted and an image or a concept (which may or may not resemble what the speaker is trying to communicate) begins to arise in the mind of the listener. This image or concept in the mind of the listener, like the image or concept in the mind of the speaker, is formless by nature, but arises vividly with the appearance of form. As it arises in the mind of the listener, it is already being evaluated, and instinctive reactions begin to form: the listener may like it or dislike it, or agree or disagree with it, or may feel neutral about it. Waves of positive, negative or neutral energy begin to radiate out from the listener: emotional ripples created by a conceptual stone tossed from one pool of mind to another.
All of this happens so quickly, and so automatically, that we are largely unaware of it. Whether we know it or not, every single time we open our mouths to speak to another person, we are practicing witchcraft, casting a spell of formless thoughts and intentions that generates powerful and lasting effects in the person upon whom we work the magic of speech. We are all casting these spells upon each other, all the time. Sometimes they are love spells, and sometimes they are black magic. Every one of us is like a sleeping sorcerer, unaware that he is mumbling incantations and conjuring angels and demons all around him.
Our words have the power to cement marriages and to start wars; they can melt our hearts with tenderness and they can provoke a murderous rage. No wonder the Buddha placed so much emphasis on practicing Mindful Speech.
Truly practicing Mindful Speech, however, requires more discipline than simply avoiding the four kinds of unvirtuous speech (lying, harsh speech, malicious speech, and idle chatter). It means bringing an intensity of mindfulness and awareness to everything we say and how we say it. This is a 24-hour practice at which we are bound to stumble and fall, repeatedly -- but one that we cannot afford not to undertake, once we have grasped its importance.
Six Points of Mindful Speech
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche also placed a lot of emphasis on practices of Mindful Speech -- often to the dismay of his American students. In the 1980s, he began to teach a rigorous program of elocution training to many students, putting them through seemingly endless drills and pronunciation exercises that sometimes felt like grammar school (and a British grammar school at that, since he was teaching them to speak proper Oxonian English). I imagine that some students had trouble understanding what these pronunciation drills had to do with Buddhism. Carolyn Rose Gimian, one of his close students and the editor of many of his books, describes being brought to the point of tears one night during a month-long retreat with Trungpa, as he kept asking her to repeat the word "thoroughly" over and over. The point, as Gimian explains it, is to bring an intensity of awareness to one's own speech and how it affects one's mind and the minds of others, and to recognize and fully embrace the incredible power and meaning that words hold.
In conjunction with these sometimes torturous elocution lessons, Chogyam Trungpa presented teachings on six ways to deepen our practice of Mindful Speech -- six aspects of speech on which to focus our awareness. They are a series of tremendously helpful and practical reminders that can help us separate and bring attention to the different layers of mind and body involved in any act of speech.
Precision: Trungpa's elocution lessons emphasized the importance of precision. When we don't enunciate our words clearly, it creates barriers to smooth communication. A pattern of clipping our words or not projecting our voice so that others can hear us may symbolize a lack of confidence in what we are saying. I tend to be a quiet talker, and I have often noticed other people get frustrated when they can't hear what I'm saying -- but it's a pattern that runs deep, and I am often unaware that I'm doing it. And the frustration it causes in others comes full circle: because others can't really hear me, they might be more inclined to interrupt me, which then ticks me off. It's bad juju all around, and my own speech patterns are the main culprit. When I am able to bring a degree of mindfulness to the tone and volume of my voice as I'm speaking, I see much better results.
Simplicity: Often we don't need very many words to get our point across, but we ramble in circles or drone on and on because we don't choose our words well. If this is our habitual pattern, other people begin to tune out our monologues and think of us as blowhards. Few things are as universally irritating as someone who habitually talks too much, and doesn't know when they've said enough. A company I used to work for had the business slogan, "Simple is smart." That could be a good slogan to apply in the practice of Mindful Speech. When we slow ourselves down enough to choose our words strategically, with intelligence and discernment, we don't need to ramble on. The simplest way of getting our point across is usually the smartest.
Pace: When we talk too quickly, there is a quality of aggression that may come across in our speech -- it may be unintentional, and we may be unaware of it, but others can pick up on it. I think of this as a neurotic pattern from which New Yorkers, in particular, suffer a great deal. The general atmosphere of speed and aggression that permeates New York life -- which many New Yorkers cannot particularly see because it is the element in which they live and breathe, just as a fish cannot see the water in which it lives -- makes everyone feel impatient and edgy. In addressing each other on a daily basis, New Yorkers often speak incredibly fast, with a brusque attitude of barely concealed aggression.
Bringing mindfulness to this area of our speech means, again, slowing ourselves down enough so that we can pay attention to the tone and quality of our speech. When I think of a former colleague who habitually spoke with a tone of anger and aggression that made other people recoil from him, I can see that part of his problem was that he couldn't slow himself down enough to realize how he sounded.
Silence: Gandhi said, "Speak only when you can improve upon silence." Often, though, we speak in order to cover up the silence -- to make it go away. Silence makes us nervous, because it is too intimate -- we are forced to look at our own minds, and we are simultaneously confronted with the living, breathing reality of the person across from us. We feel awkward and exposed in the silence, and it is easier to just say something, anything -- idle chatter -- than to remain there, alone with ourselves or with another person, in that open space. But the open space of silence is the birthplace of creativity and inspiration, and without it speech could not exist -- just as the planets and stars and galaxies could not exist without the vast stretches of unseeable, unknowable dark matter that lie in between. The composer John Cage is perhaps best-known for his experimental piece 4'33", in which the pianist goes to the keyboard and does *not* strike any keys for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. For Cage, silence was the basis of all music, and the space in which all form and sound could manifest. When we regard silence as an important part of speech, we leave space for creativity and spontaneity and freshness to enter our conversations. We leave room to breathe.
Others: Listening to the texture and quality of others' speech is as much a part of mindful conversation as listening to ourselves. Sometimes we notice that the texture and quality of someone's speech is saying something different than -- or in addition to -- what their words are saying. Sometimes the body language that goes along with verbal speech tells us more than what a person is saying (the missing body language in Web-based communication is one of the reasons that emails and text messages are so easily misunderstood by the receiving party). If we see that a person's manner of speaking is bringing a higher degree of neurosis and emotionality into the situation, then we can choose how to respond in the most skillful way, in order to defuse the tension and restore sanity. If we remain unaware of it, then it's more likely we'll be drawn into the emotional subtext of the person's speech, and clear communication will be further obscured. Again, being able to pay attention to the texture and quality of others' speech means slowing ourselves down enough to step back from our own reactivity; if we're half-listening but half-caught up in mentally planning our response to what they're saying, for example, then we are less likely to perceive more subtle cues of emotional tone, pace, precision, and so on -- all the markers that point to what the person is really saying, beyond their mere words.
Self: The sixth point is like the culmination of the previous five. When we bring mindfulness and awareness to the totality of our own speech -- not only what we're saying, but how we're saying it and why -- then we can use speech much more skillfully, and wield it as a force for good. We can use it to strengthen our bonds with other people, rather than undermining them. We can use the magic of our speech to increase happiness and sanity in the world, rather than contributing our words to the witches' brew of neurosis and suffering from which so many beings are already drinking, spellbound and unaware.
Each of us is like a little Harry Potter, imbued with tremendous magical power, but shaky and uncertain about how to wield it and how to avoid getting ourselves in trouble with it. The process of coming to terms with our speech habits and developing Mindful Speech is like Harry's process of growing up and coming to terms with his own power. Like Harry, we face an array of dark forces -- both within ourselves and in the external world -- who would like us to employ the emotional sorcery of speech for less wholesome purposes. It is up to each of us to resist the darkness and bring more light into the world through the magic that comes out of our mouths.
Witchcraft
Speech is magical. It is witchcraft. From within the formless realm of the mind, a thought arises. Because it arises in the mind, the thought, too, is formless by nature, but it takes on the vivid appearance of form. The form of the thought represents a concept, or a tangle of concepts, which, again -- in themselves -- have no form but nonetheless find expression in the mind. As that expression of formless thought and concept in the mind grows swollen with significance and perhaps urgency, we say that the person's face becomes "pregnant with expression."
Through some voodoo of embodied mind whose mechanics we don't even begin to understand, this formless thought hurtles toward the realm of physical expression. The mouth opens, and air begins to flow from the lungs. At a level that is only partially under the control of the conscious mind, a complex orchestra of muscles and organs -- the tongue, the lips, the vocal cords, the jaw -- begins to play in unison, their combined efforts creating a particular series of sounds as the air rushes out from the lungs and exits the mouth. The sounds produced are in no way random or improvisational, but are recognized and intentionally selected by the mind as symbols or signs that, alone or in particular combinations and patterns, represent specific concepts. Concepts that have arisen formlessly in the mind have now found physical expression in the form of sound.
The sound waves emitted by the speaker travel through the air and strike the delicate organs of the listener's ear. If the speaker and listener share an agreed-upon system of signs and symbols -- if they speak the same language -- then the sounds are interpreted and an image or a concept (which may or may not resemble what the speaker is trying to communicate) begins to arise in the mind of the listener. This image or concept in the mind of the listener, like the image or concept in the mind of the speaker, is formless by nature, but arises vividly with the appearance of form. As it arises in the mind of the listener, it is already being evaluated, and instinctive reactions begin to form: the listener may like it or dislike it, or agree or disagree with it, or may feel neutral about it. Waves of positive, negative or neutral energy begin to radiate out from the listener: emotional ripples created by a conceptual stone tossed from one pool of mind to another.
All of this happens so quickly, and so automatically, that we are largely unaware of it. Whether we know it or not, every single time we open our mouths to speak to another person, we are practicing witchcraft, casting a spell of formless thoughts and intentions that generates powerful and lasting effects in the person upon whom we work the magic of speech. We are all casting these spells upon each other, all the time. Sometimes they are love spells, and sometimes they are black magic. Every one of us is like a sleeping sorcerer, unaware that he is mumbling incantations and conjuring angels and demons all around him.
Our words have the power to cement marriages and to start wars; they can melt our hearts with tenderness and they can provoke a murderous rage. No wonder the Buddha placed so much emphasis on practicing Mindful Speech.
"Monks, a statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five?
"It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will."
-- Shakyamuni Buddha, AN 5.198
Truly practicing Mindful Speech, however, requires more discipline than simply avoiding the four kinds of unvirtuous speech (lying, harsh speech, malicious speech, and idle chatter). It means bringing an intensity of mindfulness and awareness to everything we say and how we say it. This is a 24-hour practice at which we are bound to stumble and fall, repeatedly -- but one that we cannot afford not to undertake, once we have grasped its importance.
Six Points of Mindful Speech
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche also placed a lot of emphasis on practices of Mindful Speech -- often to the dismay of his American students. In the 1980s, he began to teach a rigorous program of elocution training to many students, putting them through seemingly endless drills and pronunciation exercises that sometimes felt like grammar school (and a British grammar school at that, since he was teaching them to speak proper Oxonian English). I imagine that some students had trouble understanding what these pronunciation drills had to do with Buddhism. Carolyn Rose Gimian, one of his close students and the editor of many of his books, describes being brought to the point of tears one night during a month-long retreat with Trungpa, as he kept asking her to repeat the word "thoroughly" over and over. The point, as Gimian explains it, is to bring an intensity of awareness to one's own speech and how it affects one's mind and the minds of others, and to recognize and fully embrace the incredible power and meaning that words hold.
In conjunction with these sometimes torturous elocution lessons, Chogyam Trungpa presented teachings on six ways to deepen our practice of Mindful Speech -- six aspects of speech on which to focus our awareness. They are a series of tremendously helpful and practical reminders that can help us separate and bring attention to the different layers of mind and body involved in any act of speech.
Six Points of Mindful Speech
- Precision: Enunciate your words clearly.
- Simplicity: Choose your words well.
- Pace: Speak slowly, without speed or aggression.
- Silence: Regard silence as an important part of speech.
- Others: Listen to the words, texture and quality of others' speech.
- Self: Focus mindfulness on your speech.
-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Precision: Trungpa's elocution lessons emphasized the importance of precision. When we don't enunciate our words clearly, it creates barriers to smooth communication. A pattern of clipping our words or not projecting our voice so that others can hear us may symbolize a lack of confidence in what we are saying. I tend to be a quiet talker, and I have often noticed other people get frustrated when they can't hear what I'm saying -- but it's a pattern that runs deep, and I am often unaware that I'm doing it. And the frustration it causes in others comes full circle: because others can't really hear me, they might be more inclined to interrupt me, which then ticks me off. It's bad juju all around, and my own speech patterns are the main culprit. When I am able to bring a degree of mindfulness to the tone and volume of my voice as I'm speaking, I see much better results.
Simplicity: Often we don't need very many words to get our point across, but we ramble in circles or drone on and on because we don't choose our words well. If this is our habitual pattern, other people begin to tune out our monologues and think of us as blowhards. Few things are as universally irritating as someone who habitually talks too much, and doesn't know when they've said enough. A company I used to work for had the business slogan, "Simple is smart." That could be a good slogan to apply in the practice of Mindful Speech. When we slow ourselves down enough to choose our words strategically, with intelligence and discernment, we don't need to ramble on. The simplest way of getting our point across is usually the smartest.
Pace: When we talk too quickly, there is a quality of aggression that may come across in our speech -- it may be unintentional, and we may be unaware of it, but others can pick up on it. I think of this as a neurotic pattern from which New Yorkers, in particular, suffer a great deal. The general atmosphere of speed and aggression that permeates New York life -- which many New Yorkers cannot particularly see because it is the element in which they live and breathe, just as a fish cannot see the water in which it lives -- makes everyone feel impatient and edgy. In addressing each other on a daily basis, New Yorkers often speak incredibly fast, with a brusque attitude of barely concealed aggression.
Bringing mindfulness to this area of our speech means, again, slowing ourselves down enough so that we can pay attention to the tone and quality of our speech. When I think of a former colleague who habitually spoke with a tone of anger and aggression that made other people recoil from him, I can see that part of his problem was that he couldn't slow himself down enough to realize how he sounded.
Silence: Gandhi said, "Speak only when you can improve upon silence." Often, though, we speak in order to cover up the silence -- to make it go away. Silence makes us nervous, because it is too intimate -- we are forced to look at our own minds, and we are simultaneously confronted with the living, breathing reality of the person across from us. We feel awkward and exposed in the silence, and it is easier to just say something, anything -- idle chatter -- than to remain there, alone with ourselves or with another person, in that open space. But the open space of silence is the birthplace of creativity and inspiration, and without it speech could not exist -- just as the planets and stars and galaxies could not exist without the vast stretches of unseeable, unknowable dark matter that lie in between. The composer John Cage is perhaps best-known for his experimental piece 4'33", in which the pianist goes to the keyboard and does *not* strike any keys for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. For Cage, silence was the basis of all music, and the space in which all form and sound could manifest. When we regard silence as an important part of speech, we leave space for creativity and spontaneity and freshness to enter our conversations. We leave room to breathe.
Others: Listening to the texture and quality of others' speech is as much a part of mindful conversation as listening to ourselves. Sometimes we notice that the texture and quality of someone's speech is saying something different than -- or in addition to -- what their words are saying. Sometimes the body language that goes along with verbal speech tells us more than what a person is saying (the missing body language in Web-based communication is one of the reasons that emails and text messages are so easily misunderstood by the receiving party). If we see that a person's manner of speaking is bringing a higher degree of neurosis and emotionality into the situation, then we can choose how to respond in the most skillful way, in order to defuse the tension and restore sanity. If we remain unaware of it, then it's more likely we'll be drawn into the emotional subtext of the person's speech, and clear communication will be further obscured. Again, being able to pay attention to the texture and quality of others' speech means slowing ourselves down enough to step back from our own reactivity; if we're half-listening but half-caught up in mentally planning our response to what they're saying, for example, then we are less likely to perceive more subtle cues of emotional tone, pace, precision, and so on -- all the markers that point to what the person is really saying, beyond their mere words.
Self: The sixth point is like the culmination of the previous five. When we bring mindfulness and awareness to the totality of our own speech -- not only what we're saying, but how we're saying it and why -- then we can use speech much more skillfully, and wield it as a force for good. We can use it to strengthen our bonds with other people, rather than undermining them. We can use the magic of our speech to increase happiness and sanity in the world, rather than contributing our words to the witches' brew of neurosis and suffering from which so many beings are already drinking, spellbound and unaware.
Each of us is like a little Harry Potter, imbued with tremendous magical power, but shaky and uncertain about how to wield it and how to avoid getting ourselves in trouble with it. The process of coming to terms with our speech habits and developing Mindful Speech is like Harry's process of growing up and coming to terms with his own power. Like Harry, we face an array of dark forces -- both within ourselves and in the external world -- who would like us to employ the emotional sorcery of speech for less wholesome purposes. It is up to each of us to resist the darkness and bring more light into the world through the magic that comes out of our mouths.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Mindful Speech, Part Two: Listening
This is Part Two of a series of articles on Mindful Speech. Part One focused on Idle Chatter. This installment looks at the art of Listening, and the role of Emotional Intelligence in authentic communication. Part Three will examine the Six Points of Mindful Speech taught by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Listen Up
I heard a story about Mother Teresa. Once, during an interview, a cocky young reporter asked this great spiritual leader -- whom most people considered to be a saint, even while she was still living -- about her daily prayer habits. "What do you say to God when you pray?" he asked.
"I don't say anything. I just listen," was Mother Teresa's reply.
The reporter's curiosity was piqued, and he ventured a further question. "So what does God say to you?"
Mother Teresa replied: "He doesn't say anything. He just listens." I imagine she watched the reporter for a long moment, and let this point sink in. She then added: "And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you."
I draw several lessons from that story. One is that there may be less difference between prayer and meditation than we commonly imagine. Another is that prayer itself -- perhaps the highest form of speech, from a spiritual perspective -- does not necessarily consist of what we think of as "speech" at all. In fact, speaking -- which probably involves carrying our little agenda into our meeting with the Divine, and spelling out for Him or Her what we think He or She should be concerned with -- is somewhat beside the point. For Mother Teresa, authentic, two-way communication with the Divine was based first and foremost upon listening -- on both sides.
The same principle applies to our "ordinary" conversations with other people. Authentic communication can only take place when all of the parties involved in a conversation are actually listening to each other. But this happens, in our human realm, far less often than any of us would like. When real listening is present and authentic communication takes place between people, it can feel like a form of prayer. Through listening, we recognize and respect the divinity with each other. And when our listening is absent or eclipsed, we essentially say to the other person: I don't recognize or respect you.
Lately I've been watching our conversations at the dining table, here at the Abbey -- trying to step back and observe, somewhat impartially, what kinds of things we're talking about, and how we're talking about them, and even speculating on the reasons why. As I mentioned in a previous article, it seems that we get involved in a lot of idle chatter at mealtime, and that quite a few people share a wish that we could have more meaningful conversations. Some people have taken this to mean that we should be talking more about Dharma at mealtime -- which makes sense in a way, since Dharma is what we came here to the monastery to study and practice. This has even led to the creation of a new, twice-weekly "Dharma discussion group" during the dinner hour -- which is great. But my observations lately have reinforced my conviction that merely talking about a meaningful topic doesn't make a conversation meaningful. What makes it meaningful has less to do with what is being talked about, and more to do with the how and the why.
Emotional Intelligence
We're often not fully aware of how we speak, and how the way we speak affects others. I used to work with someone who is very sharp and intellectually perceptive, and always has compelling things to say. But because he habitually speaks with an angry tone, other people have difficulty hearing what he says -- they primarily hear the "how," and their negative reactions to the "how" keep them from really hearing the "what." Trapped in a vicious cycle, he ends up feeling like no one listens to him, which only makes him more angry, and on and on it goes. What seems to be missing, on his part, is some basic awareness of how his speech habits are affecting other people; lacking this awareness, he constantly undermines his own happiness and increases his feeling of alienation from others.
This kind of thing happens more than we might imagine. A person who speaks in a loud and brassy voice might make other people cringe and recoil from her, but remain oblivious to the reasons why people react that way. A person (like me) who often speaks in a timid, quiet tone and forgets to project his voice adequately might make other people grow frustrated and give up trying to listen, and they might then speak over him, causing him to feel frustrated too.
Being aware of the "tone" and "feel" of how we speak -- and how others speak to us -- is a basic skill of emotional intelligence, and a fundamental part of the practice of Mindful Speech.
Recently, on an open day here at the Abbey, I was sitting around the table with several people at breakfast. We were talking about various Dharma teachings and ways of practicing the teachings in our own lives. After having been frustrated with encountering a lot of idle chatter during mealtime, I was delighted that the conversation didn't stray into trivial things, but stayed with topics that felt, to me, by comparison, fairly significant. But as the conversation went on, stretching towards an hour, I began to feel that, somehow, it was starting to sour. At one point, someone interrupted me and spoke over my words, raising her voice to assert her viewpoint and eclipse what I was saying. And I noticed myself wanting to do the same thing.
Sensing that the conversation had gone off its axis, I began to withdraw. I grew more quiet and tried to pay attention to the emotional dimension of the dialogue. Somewhere, it seemed that we had crossed an invisible line and now there was less open listening and responding taking place, and more assertion of prepared statements. I felt my own frustration at having been interrupted by the other person, and my feeling that she wasn't really listening to me but was just upholding her own conversational agenda. In observing the emotional dimension of her communication, I sensed a feeling of insecurity on her part, which may to have led her to interrupt me -- and then I saw the same insecurity reflected in myself. I saw my own ego's involvement in the conversation -- my need to be heard and my need to be right, a vulnerable feeling that showed up as an urge to react impulsively to what other people were saying. I realized that what I was frustrated with another person for doing to me, I was also doing: I wasn't really listening to the other person, and I was starting to cop a resentment that she wasn't listening to me. Somewhere along the way, a meaningful conversation had deteriorated into idle chatter -- a dialogue in which listening and authentic communication had been lost, replaced by a competition of viewpoints, a meeting of egos, each one of us dragging his or her own emotional baggage into the conversation.
"Speak only if you can improve upon silence," said Gandhi. That morning, I realized that my own more dubious motives for speaking had crept into the conversation, and my own speech was no longer an improvement upon silence. It was time for me to shut up and listen. In AA, old-timers often advise overly talkative newcomers: "Take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth, and just listen."
Listening Is the Better Part of Conversation
There is a traditional teaching about how to listen to the Dharma properly -- how to hold one's mind so that the truth that's conveyed in the teachings can actually reach us -- which I've written about here before. The same principles apply equally to the art and practice of authentic conversation between people. For meaningful communication to take place, our minds need to be like a clean, sturdy, upright container or pot that's ready to receive whatever is placed in it.
If the pot is upside-down, nothing can be put into it: this is what happens when we don't really listen with an open mind, but instead we assume that we know what the other person is going to say. Our minds begin to wander distractedly while the other person speaks to us. Caught up in our own internal chatter, we may be thinking about something else altogether, or mentally preparing our response to what they're saying before we've really heard them out. And we forget that other people can usually tell when we're not really paying attention; if they have any emotional intelligence at all, they pick up on the subtle cues in our expressions as our minds wander to other things or begin preparing a response prematurely, and this undermines their trust in us. They may feel disrespected because we're not really listening, and we may not even be aware that we've made them feel that way. To really listen to another person, we have to be open-minded and humble of heart, and drop our assumptions and our prejudices in the moment that we're listening.
If the pot has holes in it, then even if it's right-side-up, whatever you put in it will leak out and be lost. This is what happens when we don't actually absorb and remember -- accurately -- what the other person is saying. We may think we're remembering it accurately, but if we're challenged to repeat it back to them, our memory is patchy and full of holes, and may be distorted in important places. If we repeat to someone else what was said to us, our distortions and omissions are carried to the next person, and then that person distorts it a bit further. When it finally gets back around to the person who originally said it, her words may have been completely changed and people think she said something she didn't say at all.
If the pot is contaminated with something poisonous -- maybe it's really a container for food, but somebody has used it as a mop bucket -- then whatever is placed in it will also become contaminated. This is what happens when we listen with a mind that's caught up in its own emotional reactivity. We hear something that the other person has said and it triggers a reaction in us -- anger or jealousy or fear or lust, whatever it might be -- and it's like we can't hear anything else they say after that, because we're so consumed by our own emotions. If we don't possess a certain degree of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in the moment, we may be largely unaware of this process as it takes place; and if we're reacting to what the other person is saying, we may be reacting more from this emotional mind than from a place of understanding and listening.
"Conversation is a give-and-take," writes the Zen teacher Norman Fischer. "If we don't listen, we don't hear anything, and real conversation is over before it begins. We haven't taken anything in, and so we are just beaming our message at the other person."
The next time you have a conversation with someone, watch your own mind and try to notice when you are really listening to the other person and when you are not. Are you daydreaming while they talk to you? Are you mentally preparing your response as soon as they've begun to talk? Will you be able to actually remember what they are saying? Are you getting caught up in emotional reactions? What effect does this have on the conversation and on your relationship to this person? What role does Listening play for you in the practice of Mindful Speech?
I would love to hear about your experiences with this.
-- Read Part Three: Witchcraft --
Listen Up
I heard a story about Mother Teresa. Once, during an interview, a cocky young reporter asked this great spiritual leader -- whom most people considered to be a saint, even while she was still living -- about her daily prayer habits. "What do you say to God when you pray?" he asked.
"I don't say anything. I just listen," was Mother Teresa's reply.
The reporter's curiosity was piqued, and he ventured a further question. "So what does God say to you?"
Mother Teresa replied: "He doesn't say anything. He just listens." I imagine she watched the reporter for a long moment, and let this point sink in. She then added: "And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you."
I draw several lessons from that story. One is that there may be less difference between prayer and meditation than we commonly imagine. Another is that prayer itself -- perhaps the highest form of speech, from a spiritual perspective -- does not necessarily consist of what we think of as "speech" at all. In fact, speaking -- which probably involves carrying our little agenda into our meeting with the Divine, and spelling out for Him or Her what we think He or She should be concerned with -- is somewhat beside the point. For Mother Teresa, authentic, two-way communication with the Divine was based first and foremost upon listening -- on both sides.
The same principle applies to our "ordinary" conversations with other people. Authentic communication can only take place when all of the parties involved in a conversation are actually listening to each other. But this happens, in our human realm, far less often than any of us would like. When real listening is present and authentic communication takes place between people, it can feel like a form of prayer. Through listening, we recognize and respect the divinity with each other. And when our listening is absent or eclipsed, we essentially say to the other person: I don't recognize or respect you.
Lately I've been watching our conversations at the dining table, here at the Abbey -- trying to step back and observe, somewhat impartially, what kinds of things we're talking about, and how we're talking about them, and even speculating on the reasons why. As I mentioned in a previous article, it seems that we get involved in a lot of idle chatter at mealtime, and that quite a few people share a wish that we could have more meaningful conversations. Some people have taken this to mean that we should be talking more about Dharma at mealtime -- which makes sense in a way, since Dharma is what we came here to the monastery to study and practice. This has even led to the creation of a new, twice-weekly "Dharma discussion group" during the dinner hour -- which is great. But my observations lately have reinforced my conviction that merely talking about a meaningful topic doesn't make a conversation meaningful. What makes it meaningful has less to do with what is being talked about, and more to do with the how and the why.
Emotional Intelligence
We're often not fully aware of how we speak, and how the way we speak affects others. I used to work with someone who is very sharp and intellectually perceptive, and always has compelling things to say. But because he habitually speaks with an angry tone, other people have difficulty hearing what he says -- they primarily hear the "how," and their negative reactions to the "how" keep them from really hearing the "what." Trapped in a vicious cycle, he ends up feeling like no one listens to him, which only makes him more angry, and on and on it goes. What seems to be missing, on his part, is some basic awareness of how his speech habits are affecting other people; lacking this awareness, he constantly undermines his own happiness and increases his feeling of alienation from others.
This kind of thing happens more than we might imagine. A person who speaks in a loud and brassy voice might make other people cringe and recoil from her, but remain oblivious to the reasons why people react that way. A person (like me) who often speaks in a timid, quiet tone and forgets to project his voice adequately might make other people grow frustrated and give up trying to listen, and they might then speak over him, causing him to feel frustrated too.
Being aware of the "tone" and "feel" of how we speak -- and how others speak to us -- is a basic skill of emotional intelligence, and a fundamental part of the practice of Mindful Speech.
Recently, on an open day here at the Abbey, I was sitting around the table with several people at breakfast. We were talking about various Dharma teachings and ways of practicing the teachings in our own lives. After having been frustrated with encountering a lot of idle chatter during mealtime, I was delighted that the conversation didn't stray into trivial things, but stayed with topics that felt, to me, by comparison, fairly significant. But as the conversation went on, stretching towards an hour, I began to feel that, somehow, it was starting to sour. At one point, someone interrupted me and spoke over my words, raising her voice to assert her viewpoint and eclipse what I was saying. And I noticed myself wanting to do the same thing.
Sensing that the conversation had gone off its axis, I began to withdraw. I grew more quiet and tried to pay attention to the emotional dimension of the dialogue. Somewhere, it seemed that we had crossed an invisible line and now there was less open listening and responding taking place, and more assertion of prepared statements. I felt my own frustration at having been interrupted by the other person, and my feeling that she wasn't really listening to me but was just upholding her own conversational agenda. In observing the emotional dimension of her communication, I sensed a feeling of insecurity on her part, which may to have led her to interrupt me -- and then I saw the same insecurity reflected in myself. I saw my own ego's involvement in the conversation -- my need to be heard and my need to be right, a vulnerable feeling that showed up as an urge to react impulsively to what other people were saying. I realized that what I was frustrated with another person for doing to me, I was also doing: I wasn't really listening to the other person, and I was starting to cop a resentment that she wasn't listening to me. Somewhere along the way, a meaningful conversation had deteriorated into idle chatter -- a dialogue in which listening and authentic communication had been lost, replaced by a competition of viewpoints, a meeting of egos, each one of us dragging his or her own emotional baggage into the conversation.
"Speak only if you can improve upon silence," said Gandhi. That morning, I realized that my own more dubious motives for speaking had crept into the conversation, and my own speech was no longer an improvement upon silence. It was time for me to shut up and listen. In AA, old-timers often advise overly talkative newcomers: "Take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth, and just listen."
Listening Is the Better Part of Conversation
There is a traditional teaching about how to listen to the Dharma properly -- how to hold one's mind so that the truth that's conveyed in the teachings can actually reach us -- which I've written about here before. The same principles apply equally to the art and practice of authentic conversation between people. For meaningful communication to take place, our minds need to be like a clean, sturdy, upright container or pot that's ready to receive whatever is placed in it.
If the pot is upside-down, nothing can be put into it: this is what happens when we don't really listen with an open mind, but instead we assume that we know what the other person is going to say. Our minds begin to wander distractedly while the other person speaks to us. Caught up in our own internal chatter, we may be thinking about something else altogether, or mentally preparing our response to what they're saying before we've really heard them out. And we forget that other people can usually tell when we're not really paying attention; if they have any emotional intelligence at all, they pick up on the subtle cues in our expressions as our minds wander to other things or begin preparing a response prematurely, and this undermines their trust in us. They may feel disrespected because we're not really listening, and we may not even be aware that we've made them feel that way. To really listen to another person, we have to be open-minded and humble of heart, and drop our assumptions and our prejudices in the moment that we're listening.
If the pot has holes in it, then even if it's right-side-up, whatever you put in it will leak out and be lost. This is what happens when we don't actually absorb and remember -- accurately -- what the other person is saying. We may think we're remembering it accurately, but if we're challenged to repeat it back to them, our memory is patchy and full of holes, and may be distorted in important places. If we repeat to someone else what was said to us, our distortions and omissions are carried to the next person, and then that person distorts it a bit further. When it finally gets back around to the person who originally said it, her words may have been completely changed and people think she said something she didn't say at all.
If the pot is contaminated with something poisonous -- maybe it's really a container for food, but somebody has used it as a mop bucket -- then whatever is placed in it will also become contaminated. This is what happens when we listen with a mind that's caught up in its own emotional reactivity. We hear something that the other person has said and it triggers a reaction in us -- anger or jealousy or fear or lust, whatever it might be -- and it's like we can't hear anything else they say after that, because we're so consumed by our own emotions. If we don't possess a certain degree of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in the moment, we may be largely unaware of this process as it takes place; and if we're reacting to what the other person is saying, we may be reacting more from this emotional mind than from a place of understanding and listening.
"Conversation is a give-and-take," writes the Zen teacher Norman Fischer. "If we don't listen, we don't hear anything, and real conversation is over before it begins. We haven't taken anything in, and so we are just beaming our message at the other person."
The next time you have a conversation with someone, watch your own mind and try to notice when you are really listening to the other person and when you are not. Are you daydreaming while they talk to you? Are you mentally preparing your response as soon as they've begun to talk? Will you be able to actually remember what they are saying? Are you getting caught up in emotional reactions? What effect does this have on the conversation and on your relationship to this person? What role does Listening play for you in the practice of Mindful Speech?
I would love to hear about your experiences with this.
-- Read Part Three: Witchcraft --
Monday, November 9, 2009
Mindful Speech, Part One: Idle Chatter
This is Part One of a series of articles on Mindful Speech. This piece focuses primarily on Idle Chatter, one of the unskillful or unvirtuous forms of speech according to Buddhism. Forthcoming articles in this series will focus on the role of Listening and Emotional Intelligence, and the Six Points of Mindful Speech taught by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Foot in Mouth
In my life, many of my most painful and confusing moments, my biggest embarrassments and regrets, have come about because of my own mouth: either I said something I shouldn't have, or I didn't say something I should have, or I said something but didn't say it the right way and so it was misunderstood. Of the remaining painful moments and embarrassments -- the ones that didn't come about because of my mouth -- most of them probably came about because of my ears: something significant was said to me but I wasn't really listening, or I flat out refused to hear it, or I heard only what I wanted to hear, distorting what the other person was saying to make it match what I thought they should be saying or what I wanted them to say. Recognizing this, I try to take the Buddhist teachings on Right Speech to heart. I don't always succeed: speech is still the area where it's easiest for me to fall flat on my face -- which I do, and frequently -- but it's a practice. In fact, it's my main practice, according to some of my teachers.
When the Buddha taught about the Ten Unvirtuous Actions, he was well aware of how much trouble our speech habits get us into. Four of the ten items on his list relate to various kinds of speech:
If we forget this, and interpret the concept of unvirtuous actions in a moralistic way -- like a parental figure wagging their finger at us, telling us not to misbehave or disobey the rules -- then we've missed the point of Buddhist ethics altogether.
It's not difficult to see why lying is considered unskillful speech: when we deceive other people we betray their trust, and we burden our own minds with trying to keep track of the lies we've told and the fear of getting caught. It's also not difficult to see how harsh speech and malicious speech are unskillful: when we yell at someone or insult them, their feelings are hurt; and when we slander another person behind their back, we create or reinforce divisions and conflicts between people. All of these forms of speech harm other people, and harm the one who engages in them.
But idle chatter and gossip -- we might wonder, what's so wrong with that? It's fun. Small-talk and chit-chat are part of how we build relationships and establish trust. And who does it really harm? If anything, it's like a victimless crime, isn't it?
Here's the probem: we resist recognizing the downside of idle chatter precisely because we're so addicted to it. If we were to acknowledge the extent of the problem, then we might feel compelled to change our habits -- and what would we talk about if we threw out perhaps 80% or 90% of our everyday speech?
The Search for Meaning
Everyone longs for greater meaning in their lives. Our connections and conversations with other people, and the intimacy we share with them, can be one of the channels through which we find meaning and fulfillment. But if the speech we share with one another is habitually devoid of meaningful content and unfulfilling, then it becomes little more than a distraction and a burden upon our awareness.
The issue of idle chatter and meaningful speech came up in two community meetings here at the Abbey within the past few months. In the first meeting, about 35 of us came together to address the topic of silence, a practice we work with quite a bit in the monastery. We talked about the various things that support our practice of silence and the things that hinder it, as well as the reasons why we practice silence in the first place. At one point in the meeting, I suggested that one of the most compelling reasons to practice silence is because most of what we say when we're talking isn't meaningful in the first place. This comment seemed to touch a nerve, because there was an audible murmur of dissent among several people in the room. One or two people in particular seemed to react quite strongly against it. (It's possible their reactions arose from the thorny, relativistic question of how to define what's meaningful -- one man's garbage being another man's treasure, and so on. But that's a whole other ball of wax that I'm not particularly interested in dissecting here.)
At the second meeting, we addressed the topic of friendship and how we can build more meaningful connections and real bonds with people in the community. Towards the end of the meeting, I raised my hand and said that since I've been living at the Abbey, I've frequently felt a bit put off by the superficiality of the conversations I typically hear -- and engage in -- in the dining room. Sometimes when we break a long period of silence, I find myself really looking forward to connecting with people again and engaging in good conversation -- but then when I get to the dining room and sit down with others, I discover that people are talking about the same useless trivia they were talking about the day before, and the day before, and the day before. Dismayed, I've found myself on more than one occasion wishing we could go back into silence again.
And this is not to let myself off the hook or to look down condescendingly on others' speech habits: very often, I jump right into less-than-meaningful conversations, and sometimes I too am the one who instigates them. But in a spiritual community of people committed to living a meaningful life, one might reasonably expect that the level of discourse at the dining table would be somewhat more elevated than what one might find among the people dining in, say, the average McDonald's or Burger King. Like anyone, I yearn for more meaningful connections, but I, too, have a hand in creating the situation; I don't always practice what I preach, and I don't always have the skills or even the self-awareness necessary to steer a conversation away from idle chatter and towards something more meaningful.
When I made this observation in the community meeting, it met with a mixed reaction. A few people nodded their heads in agreement; I got the sense that numerous people in the community were aware of this habitual pattern of idle chatter at the dining table and felt that something essential was missing in our conversational habits. But I also sensed that some people in the room heard my plea for more meaningful conversation as a request for more talk about Dharma -- which would be a good thing in itself, but is not necessarily what I meant.
Remember that in Buddhism, an action is considered virtuous or unvirtuous based not so much on the outward action, but on the intention and the state of mind behind it. So it's not only about what we say, but also about how we say it, and why. We can talk about random trivia from pop culture, and it can still be meaningful if we're really communicating from the heart. By the same token, we can talk about meaningful, spiritual topics like the Dharma and it can still be idle chatter if we're just trying to assert our point of view or make ourselves sound smart to the other person.
The Chatterbox Inside
As meditation practitioners, we also realize -- to our great dismay -- that idle chatter is taking place almost all the time, in our own minds. The distracting chit-chat we encounter in the outside world is usually proportionate to the distracting chit-chat in our heads. And there is a feedback loop between the two. The more discursive we are internally, the more compelled we might feel to ventilate our discursiveness in conversation with other people; and the more we do that, the more discursive we tend to become. We egg each other on towards higher and higher levels of internal and external chatter. At the end of the day, we might have been running our mouths off from sunrise to sunset without saying anything significant whatsoever.
Practicing what the Buddha called Right Speech or Mindful Speech is not easy -- it requires a tremendous degree of self-awareness and mindfulness, and a commitment to staying open and present with other people in a state of uncertainty and vulnerability. Often we chatter because we're uncomfortable with silence, and we feel compelled to fill up the empty space. Mindful Speech also means applying the crucial but uncommon skill of listening -- which is, or should be, the better part of conversation -- rather than just talking.
Refraining from idle chatter may be the most difficult part of Mindful Speech, for most of us. We've all engaged in lying, slander and bullying speech at some point, but chances are we don't practice those things most of the time, and we find them relatively easy to avoid if we even try. But idle chatter often gets the better of us. It can, and frequently does, occupy massive sections of our mental bandwidth, and it can, and frequently does, dominate our conversations with other people -- so much so that we may be blind and deaf to it, and unaware that we're even doing it.
Make a commitment to watch yourself for one whole day, and try to notice all your verbal interactions with other people. Pay attention to the content of your conversations, but also to the tone and the context, and also try to see how much you really listen. Pay attention to what is really being communicated -- and what isn't.
How much of your speech is truly meaningful?
-- Read Part Two: Listening --
Foot in Mouth
In my life, many of my most painful and confusing moments, my biggest embarrassments and regrets, have come about because of my own mouth: either I said something I shouldn't have, or I didn't say something I should have, or I said something but didn't say it the right way and so it was misunderstood. Of the remaining painful moments and embarrassments -- the ones that didn't come about because of my mouth -- most of them probably came about because of my ears: something significant was said to me but I wasn't really listening, or I flat out refused to hear it, or I heard only what I wanted to hear, distorting what the other person was saying to make it match what I thought they should be saying or what I wanted them to say. Recognizing this, I try to take the Buddhist teachings on Right Speech to heart. I don't always succeed: speech is still the area where it's easiest for me to fall flat on my face -- which I do, and frequently -- but it's a practice. In fact, it's my main practice, according to some of my teachers.
When the Buddha taught about the Ten Unvirtuous Actions, he was well aware of how much trouble our speech habits get us into. Four of the ten items on his list relate to various kinds of speech:
- Lying or false speech
- Harsh speech
- Malicious or slanderous speech
- Idle chatter and gossip
If we forget this, and interpret the concept of unvirtuous actions in a moralistic way -- like a parental figure wagging their finger at us, telling us not to misbehave or disobey the rules -- then we've missed the point of Buddhist ethics altogether.
It's not difficult to see why lying is considered unskillful speech: when we deceive other people we betray their trust, and we burden our own minds with trying to keep track of the lies we've told and the fear of getting caught. It's also not difficult to see how harsh speech and malicious speech are unskillful: when we yell at someone or insult them, their feelings are hurt; and when we slander another person behind their back, we create or reinforce divisions and conflicts between people. All of these forms of speech harm other people, and harm the one who engages in them.
But idle chatter and gossip -- we might wonder, what's so wrong with that? It's fun. Small-talk and chit-chat are part of how we build relationships and establish trust. And who does it really harm? If anything, it's like a victimless crime, isn't it?
Here's the probem: we resist recognizing the downside of idle chatter precisely because we're so addicted to it. If we were to acknowledge the extent of the problem, then we might feel compelled to change our habits -- and what would we talk about if we threw out perhaps 80% or 90% of our everyday speech?
The Search for Meaning
Everyone longs for greater meaning in their lives. Our connections and conversations with other people, and the intimacy we share with them, can be one of the channels through which we find meaning and fulfillment. But if the speech we share with one another is habitually devoid of meaningful content and unfulfilling, then it becomes little more than a distraction and a burden upon our awareness.
"What primarily keeps us feeling lonely and misunderstood -- and fuels our hatreds and prejudices -- is simply a lack of conversation. We all talk most of the day. We talk at work, at school, at home. But how much do we really say, and how often do our words get at what really matters to us?"
-- Zoketsu Norman Fischer, "Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up"
The issue of idle chatter and meaningful speech came up in two community meetings here at the Abbey within the past few months. In the first meeting, about 35 of us came together to address the topic of silence, a practice we work with quite a bit in the monastery. We talked about the various things that support our practice of silence and the things that hinder it, as well as the reasons why we practice silence in the first place. At one point in the meeting, I suggested that one of the most compelling reasons to practice silence is because most of what we say when we're talking isn't meaningful in the first place. This comment seemed to touch a nerve, because there was an audible murmur of dissent among several people in the room. One or two people in particular seemed to react quite strongly against it. (It's possible their reactions arose from the thorny, relativistic question of how to define what's meaningful -- one man's garbage being another man's treasure, and so on. But that's a whole other ball of wax that I'm not particularly interested in dissecting here.)
At the second meeting, we addressed the topic of friendship and how we can build more meaningful connections and real bonds with people in the community. Towards the end of the meeting, I raised my hand and said that since I've been living at the Abbey, I've frequently felt a bit put off by the superficiality of the conversations I typically hear -- and engage in -- in the dining room. Sometimes when we break a long period of silence, I find myself really looking forward to connecting with people again and engaging in good conversation -- but then when I get to the dining room and sit down with others, I discover that people are talking about the same useless trivia they were talking about the day before, and the day before, and the day before. Dismayed, I've found myself on more than one occasion wishing we could go back into silence again.
And this is not to let myself off the hook or to look down condescendingly on others' speech habits: very often, I jump right into less-than-meaningful conversations, and sometimes I too am the one who instigates them. But in a spiritual community of people committed to living a meaningful life, one might reasonably expect that the level of discourse at the dining table would be somewhat more elevated than what one might find among the people dining in, say, the average McDonald's or Burger King. Like anyone, I yearn for more meaningful connections, but I, too, have a hand in creating the situation; I don't always practice what I preach, and I don't always have the skills or even the self-awareness necessary to steer a conversation away from idle chatter and towards something more meaningful.
When I made this observation in the community meeting, it met with a mixed reaction. A few people nodded their heads in agreement; I got the sense that numerous people in the community were aware of this habitual pattern of idle chatter at the dining table and felt that something essential was missing in our conversational habits. But I also sensed that some people in the room heard my plea for more meaningful conversation as a request for more talk about Dharma -- which would be a good thing in itself, but is not necessarily what I meant.
Remember that in Buddhism, an action is considered virtuous or unvirtuous based not so much on the outward action, but on the intention and the state of mind behind it. So it's not only about what we say, but also about how we say it, and why. We can talk about random trivia from pop culture, and it can still be meaningful if we're really communicating from the heart. By the same token, we can talk about meaningful, spiritual topics like the Dharma and it can still be idle chatter if we're just trying to assert our point of view or make ourselves sound smart to the other person.
The Chatterbox Inside
As meditation practitioners, we also realize -- to our great dismay -- that idle chatter is taking place almost all the time, in our own minds. The distracting chit-chat we encounter in the outside world is usually proportionate to the distracting chit-chat in our heads. And there is a feedback loop between the two. The more discursive we are internally, the more compelled we might feel to ventilate our discursiveness in conversation with other people; and the more we do that, the more discursive we tend to become. We egg each other on towards higher and higher levels of internal and external chatter. At the end of the day, we might have been running our mouths off from sunrise to sunset without saying anything significant whatsoever.
Practicing what the Buddha called Right Speech or Mindful Speech is not easy -- it requires a tremendous degree of self-awareness and mindfulness, and a commitment to staying open and present with other people in a state of uncertainty and vulnerability. Often we chatter because we're uncomfortable with silence, and we feel compelled to fill up the empty space. Mindful Speech also means applying the crucial but uncommon skill of listening -- which is, or should be, the better part of conversation -- rather than just talking.
Refraining from idle chatter may be the most difficult part of Mindful Speech, for most of us. We've all engaged in lying, slander and bullying speech at some point, but chances are we don't practice those things most of the time, and we find them relatively easy to avoid if we even try. But idle chatter often gets the better of us. It can, and frequently does, occupy massive sections of our mental bandwidth, and it can, and frequently does, dominate our conversations with other people -- so much so that we may be blind and deaf to it, and unaware that we're even doing it.
Make a commitment to watch yourself for one whole day, and try to notice all your verbal interactions with other people. Pay attention to the content of your conversations, but also to the tone and the context, and also try to see how much you really listen. Pay attention to what is really being communicated -- and what isn't.
How much of your speech is truly meaningful?
-- Read Part Two: Listening --
Friday, November 6, 2009
Diligence, Part Three: Put Your Heart into It
This is Part Three of a three-part article, a commentary on the seventh chapter of Shantideva's 8th-century text called the Bodhicharyavatara or Bodhisattvacharyavatara ("The Way of the Bodhisattva"). The seventh chapter deals with the topic of Diligence (or Joyful Exertion) on the spiritual path. Diligence is one of the Six Paramitas (Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience, Diligence, Meditation, and Wisdom), which are regarded in the Mahayana school of Buddhism as the six factors that develop the mind of awakening (or Bodhicitta) and ultimately bring it to its fruition of full enlightenment or Buddhahood.
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Aspiration: The Power of the Mind
Aspiration has to do with how we hold our minds and where we direct our intentions. The human mind, in its concentrated form, is tremendously powerful, and wherever we direct our minds our actions usually follow, exerting a force that creates positive or negative effects. The root of the power of aspiration is really understanding, at a deep and personal level, how the law of cause and effect -- which we call karma -- really works. In Buddhist terminology, it means knowing what to adopt and what to reject, really understanding what brings happiness and what brings suffering. When we understand this in our bones, then we can put the full force of our minds behind the intention to adopt what is beneficial and to reject what is harmful.
Sometimes cause and effect is difficult to see at work in our own lives, because it's hard for us to be objective about ourselves. If our state of mind is negative and we're suffering, we feel like the victim of circumstances and we tend to look outside ourselves for the reasons why we feel the way we do. But it can be easy, at times, to see the law of karma at work in other people's lives -- we're on the outside looking in, and it's easier to be objective and to see clearly which causes are leading to which effects. Sometimes we look at other people and think, "Well, it's so obvious that what he's doing is causing him to experience this suffering he's experiencing. I wonder why he can't see it. If only he could see what I see, he wouldn't continue doing what he's doing." But we should try to apply the same, objective scrutiny to ourselves and our own actions. Once we really, deeply understand how cause and effect operate in our lives and what leads to happiness, then the strength of Aspiration to practice virtue naturally begins to grow in us. Once we've burned our hands on the stove a few times, we begin to develop strong awareness, and a strong motivation to stop doing that.
Steadfastness: Stand By Your Mind
Once we know what to do and we've made up our minds to do it, then it's a matter of sticking by our intention and not giving up when the first little challenge comes along. Shantideva says that it might be better not to begin, than to begin but give up when we're only halfway through. Doing that only creates the karma of being wishy-washy and half-hearted about the path of awakening, which isn't going to get us there. Before we set out on the road, he says, we should honestly consider our resources and accurately judge what we're capable of doing, and not bite off more than we can chew. Being open-minded but realistic about what we can do helps us develop steadfastness in our practice.
At the point where we've made a realistic assessment of what we can do and we've decided to do it, then we should rouse all our confidence and devote ourselves to it wholeheartedly. With great determination and courage, we should fearlessly meet whatever negativity arises in our minds or in the external situation, and remember that it's workable. Nothing is as solid and monolithic as we think it is.
Being realistic about our limitations sometimes involves an action that many of us on this path seem to find rather difficult, which is saying "No" when it's appropriate. Among aspiring Bodhisattvas I've met in the American Buddhist community, there seems to be an unspoken belief that to train as a Bodhisattva means to say "Yes" to whatever you're asked to do, particularly within the sangha. This can lead to people taking on more responsibility or more roles than they can reasonably handle, and to mental or physical burnout. Sometimes saying "No" is actually more beneficial in the long run; learning when to say "Yes" and when to say "No" is one of the Bodhisattva's skillful means.
Steadfastness also means setting appropriate boundaries for ourselves and others; we should not let ourselves get distracted from our intentions by people who might be pursuing less wholesome ones. Just as a drug addict in recovery cannot reasonably expect to be able to stay clean if he's hanging around with the same old crowd of drug users, so each one of us has certain people who trigger our less wholesome qualities and we can't help getting dragged down into a pit of neurosis. There's a saying in the 12-Step world: "If you hang around the barber shop, sooner or later you're gonna get a haircut." But Shantideva also points out that, while we would do better to avoid those kinds of people, we shouldn't be arrogant or condescending about it; recognizing the equality of self and other, we shouldn't cop an attitude of moral superiority to others just because they're confused and suffering.
Arrogance is a dangerous poison for anyone, but it's especially poisonous for the spiritual practitioner. If we use our practices and our experiences on the spiritual path to inflate our egos or hold ourselves as being superior to those who are not practicing as we do, then we are completely misguided. Chogyam Trungpa was once asked, along with several other Tibetan teachers, how a student could measure the success of his or her own practice. All of the other teachers gave long, somewhat formulaic answers, but Chogyam Trungpa went right to the point: basically, he said, you know your practice is successful if you're becoming less arrogant and less opinionated.
Joy: Put Your Heart into It
We devote ourselves wholeheartedly and joyfully to the acquisition of external things that promise to make us comfortable and happy: money, possessions, relationships, careers, hobbies, and so on. Yet we know how hollow those promises are; we've studied the Buddha's teachings on the suffering of impermanence. So why do we not pursue the causes of true and lasting happiness -- enlightenment itself -- with the same joy and zeal?
Pema Chodron puts it like this: Imagine what might happen if we pursued enlightenment, and engaged in all our spiritual practices, with the same enthusiasm as we feel for, say, going swimming, or for eating popcorn and watching a good movie. We would probably be there already!
The problem is that we apply our joy and enthusiasm to the wrong things. There's nothing wrong with the things themselves, or with having them and enjoying them -- but when we believe that they contain real and lasting happiness and we spend too much of our time and energy in pursuing them, then we have led ourselves astray. We're putting our faith in temporary, fleeting pleasures, and in things that will only abandon us in the long run. Our priorities have become mixed up.
Shantideva says it's like we're licking honey from a razor blade. We're so drawn to the honey because it tastes so good; yet we don't realize that our attachment to the pleasure of tasting the honey is leading us to shred our own tongues on the razor blade.
Once we sort out our confusion and realize where our true priorities lie, we can't help but take great joy in pursuing the ultimate goal, because we know where it will lead us.
Letting Go: Knowing When to Walk Away
The fourth strength that supports our practice of Joyful Exertion is "mukti" (or "moksha"), a loaded word in Sanskrit that is a bit difficult to render in English. It has been translated as "relinquishment" and as "moderation," among other things, and it means releasing or letting go, or a spirit of sacrifice. In ancient India, "mukti" and "moksha" (from the root "muc" meaning "to let loose, let go") also referred to the state of Nirvana or transcendent liberation itself, and a "mukta" was a renunciant, someone who had let go of worldly pursuits in favor of the spiritual life and ultimate freedom.
Shantideva explains the power of letting go in terms of knowing when we need to set aside our work and our practices and simply get some rest, so that we can come back to it refreshed and ready to continue. Knowing when to call it a day and how to avoid burning ourselves out is a skillful means that we sometimes have to learn through trial and error.
Letting go could also mean something like the notion that is often expressed in 12-Step literature, of taking the right action and then letting go of the results. We can simply do what we know is the right thing to do in a situation, then turn over the results to forces that are larger than ourselves. When we take an action but don't let go -- when we continue trying to micro-manage the situation and control the results even after it's out of our hands -- then we are playing God. This usually undermines the beneficial effects of our actions.
Finally, applying the power of letting go could also be knowing when to walk away from a situation altogether -- knowing when remaining in a situation is no longer beneficial to you or to the other person, and will only be harmful. If you're in an abusive relationship, or involved with someone who's stealing from you or manipulating you, or if you're part of a community where one individual consistently causes trouble for the whole community and you know the situation isn't going to improve despite your best efforts to work with it, then the most beneficial thing to do is perhaps to cut your losses and walk away. You can still hold the aspiration that at some point in the future -- in this lifetime or a future one -- circumstances will change enough so that you could once again work with and benefit this person and resolve the negative karma between you, but wisdom in this case means knowing that, right now, that isn't possible.
As the great sage Kenny Rogers put it:
"You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run."
This is another skillful means that is potentially difficult for us to learn, as aspiring Bodhisattvas. We sometimes don't know where to draw healthy boundaries. We might think that our commitment to work with the neurosis of other sentient beings means that we have to just take whatever abuse the other person may inflict upon us. Slogans such as "All victory and gain to others, all loss and defeat to myself" might reinforce this idea. But the Bodhisattva ideal is not about making ourselves into a doormat; if someone is trampling all over us, they're really creating negative karma for themselves, and we're reinforcing the karma of being a doormat -- and to allow that kind of situation to continue past a certain point is what we call "idiot compassion."
Alert! Alert! Yet, relax! Relax!
To close chapter seven, Shantideva presents a series of pith reminders about how to practice Joyful Exertion or Diligence. Like Suzuki Roshi, he reminds us that although what we are doing is very important, we should also not take it -- or ourselves -- too seriously. Our path will be more successful and more enjoyable if we can be a bit more light-hearted about the whole thing and maintain a sense of humor. And when we realize that we've totally lost it, which is inevitable -- when we've dropped our sword in the middle of battle -- the only thing to do is to pick it up as quickly as possible and continue. It's no use (to mix metaphors) crying over spilt milk. When we rise to meet whatever challenges present themselves with this spirit of lightness and joy and delight in virtue, then it's like a cool breeze that enlivens all our actions and makes every situation we encounter much more workable and relaxed.
But not too relaxed! To sustain our path over the long haul, we need to apply constant mindfulness and guard against sneak attacks from the enemy within, who is always waiting in ambush. If we give our lesser nature an opening and allow our kleshas to go unchecked, they will quickly overwhelm us, and even small, petty emotions will get the better of us. Shantideva says that we should watch our minds with the same urgency and one-pointedness as someone would watch a snake that had crawled into their lap. Through maintaining this mindfulness in every situation and never wavering in our commitment to benefit all sentient beings, we can travel the path to enlightenment without unnecessary detours and swiftly arrive at the mind of absolute Bodhicitta -- mind that is absolutely, 100% awakened, fully manifesting all its positive qualities of wisdom and compassion, with no further obscurations to hinder it.
That's what they say, anyway...the ones who've been there. Frankly, it sounds like a better game plan to me than anything I've been able to come up with. What about you?
Dedication of Merit
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Aspiration: The Power of the Mind
Aspiration has to do with how we hold our minds and where we direct our intentions. The human mind, in its concentrated form, is tremendously powerful, and wherever we direct our minds our actions usually follow, exerting a force that creates positive or negative effects. The root of the power of aspiration is really understanding, at a deep and personal level, how the law of cause and effect -- which we call karma -- really works. In Buddhist terminology, it means knowing what to adopt and what to reject, really understanding what brings happiness and what brings suffering. When we understand this in our bones, then we can put the full force of our minds behind the intention to adopt what is beneficial and to reject what is harmful.
Sometimes cause and effect is difficult to see at work in our own lives, because it's hard for us to be objective about ourselves. If our state of mind is negative and we're suffering, we feel like the victim of circumstances and we tend to look outside ourselves for the reasons why we feel the way we do. But it can be easy, at times, to see the law of karma at work in other people's lives -- we're on the outside looking in, and it's easier to be objective and to see clearly which causes are leading to which effects. Sometimes we look at other people and think, "Well, it's so obvious that what he's doing is causing him to experience this suffering he's experiencing. I wonder why he can't see it. If only he could see what I see, he wouldn't continue doing what he's doing." But we should try to apply the same, objective scrutiny to ourselves and our own actions. Once we really, deeply understand how cause and effect operate in our lives and what leads to happiness, then the strength of Aspiration to practice virtue naturally begins to grow in us. Once we've burned our hands on the stove a few times, we begin to develop strong awareness, and a strong motivation to stop doing that.
Steadfastness: Stand By Your Mind
Once we know what to do and we've made up our minds to do it, then it's a matter of sticking by our intention and not giving up when the first little challenge comes along. Shantideva says that it might be better not to begin, than to begin but give up when we're only halfway through. Doing that only creates the karma of being wishy-washy and half-hearted about the path of awakening, which isn't going to get us there. Before we set out on the road, he says, we should honestly consider our resources and accurately judge what we're capable of doing, and not bite off more than we can chew. Being open-minded but realistic about what we can do helps us develop steadfastness in our practice.
At the point where we've made a realistic assessment of what we can do and we've decided to do it, then we should rouse all our confidence and devote ourselves to it wholeheartedly. With great determination and courage, we should fearlessly meet whatever negativity arises in our minds or in the external situation, and remember that it's workable. Nothing is as solid and monolithic as we think it is.
Being realistic about our limitations sometimes involves an action that many of us on this path seem to find rather difficult, which is saying "No" when it's appropriate. Among aspiring Bodhisattvas I've met in the American Buddhist community, there seems to be an unspoken belief that to train as a Bodhisattva means to say "Yes" to whatever you're asked to do, particularly within the sangha. This can lead to people taking on more responsibility or more roles than they can reasonably handle, and to mental or physical burnout. Sometimes saying "No" is actually more beneficial in the long run; learning when to say "Yes" and when to say "No" is one of the Bodhisattva's skillful means.
Steadfastness also means setting appropriate boundaries for ourselves and others; we should not let ourselves get distracted from our intentions by people who might be pursuing less wholesome ones. Just as a drug addict in recovery cannot reasonably expect to be able to stay clean if he's hanging around with the same old crowd of drug users, so each one of us has certain people who trigger our less wholesome qualities and we can't help getting dragged down into a pit of neurosis. There's a saying in the 12-Step world: "If you hang around the barber shop, sooner or later you're gonna get a haircut." But Shantideva also points out that, while we would do better to avoid those kinds of people, we shouldn't be arrogant or condescending about it; recognizing the equality of self and other, we shouldn't cop an attitude of moral superiority to others just because they're confused and suffering.
Arrogance is a dangerous poison for anyone, but it's especially poisonous for the spiritual practitioner. If we use our practices and our experiences on the spiritual path to inflate our egos or hold ourselves as being superior to those who are not practicing as we do, then we are completely misguided. Chogyam Trungpa was once asked, along with several other Tibetan teachers, how a student could measure the success of his or her own practice. All of the other teachers gave long, somewhat formulaic answers, but Chogyam Trungpa went right to the point: basically, he said, you know your practice is successful if you're becoming less arrogant and less opinionated.
Joy: Put Your Heart into It
We devote ourselves wholeheartedly and joyfully to the acquisition of external things that promise to make us comfortable and happy: money, possessions, relationships, careers, hobbies, and so on. Yet we know how hollow those promises are; we've studied the Buddha's teachings on the suffering of impermanence. So why do we not pursue the causes of true and lasting happiness -- enlightenment itself -- with the same joy and zeal?
Pema Chodron puts it like this: Imagine what might happen if we pursued enlightenment, and engaged in all our spiritual practices, with the same enthusiasm as we feel for, say, going swimming, or for eating popcorn and watching a good movie. We would probably be there already!
The problem is that we apply our joy and enthusiasm to the wrong things. There's nothing wrong with the things themselves, or with having them and enjoying them -- but when we believe that they contain real and lasting happiness and we spend too much of our time and energy in pursuing them, then we have led ourselves astray. We're putting our faith in temporary, fleeting pleasures, and in things that will only abandon us in the long run. Our priorities have become mixed up.
Shantideva says it's like we're licking honey from a razor blade. We're so drawn to the honey because it tastes so good; yet we don't realize that our attachment to the pleasure of tasting the honey is leading us to shred our own tongues on the razor blade.
Once we sort out our confusion and realize where our true priorities lie, we can't help but take great joy in pursuing the ultimate goal, because we know where it will lead us.
Letting Go: Knowing When to Walk Away
The fourth strength that supports our practice of Joyful Exertion is "mukti" (or "moksha"), a loaded word in Sanskrit that is a bit difficult to render in English. It has been translated as "relinquishment" and as "moderation," among other things, and it means releasing or letting go, or a spirit of sacrifice. In ancient India, "mukti" and "moksha" (from the root "muc" meaning "to let loose, let go") also referred to the state of Nirvana or transcendent liberation itself, and a "mukta" was a renunciant, someone who had let go of worldly pursuits in favor of the spiritual life and ultimate freedom.
Shantideva explains the power of letting go in terms of knowing when we need to set aside our work and our practices and simply get some rest, so that we can come back to it refreshed and ready to continue. Knowing when to call it a day and how to avoid burning ourselves out is a skillful means that we sometimes have to learn through trial and error.
Letting go could also mean something like the notion that is often expressed in 12-Step literature, of taking the right action and then letting go of the results. We can simply do what we know is the right thing to do in a situation, then turn over the results to forces that are larger than ourselves. When we take an action but don't let go -- when we continue trying to micro-manage the situation and control the results even after it's out of our hands -- then we are playing God. This usually undermines the beneficial effects of our actions.
Finally, applying the power of letting go could also be knowing when to walk away from a situation altogether -- knowing when remaining in a situation is no longer beneficial to you or to the other person, and will only be harmful. If you're in an abusive relationship, or involved with someone who's stealing from you or manipulating you, or if you're part of a community where one individual consistently causes trouble for the whole community and you know the situation isn't going to improve despite your best efforts to work with it, then the most beneficial thing to do is perhaps to cut your losses and walk away. You can still hold the aspiration that at some point in the future -- in this lifetime or a future one -- circumstances will change enough so that you could once again work with and benefit this person and resolve the negative karma between you, but wisdom in this case means knowing that, right now, that isn't possible.
As the great sage Kenny Rogers put it:
"You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run."
This is another skillful means that is potentially difficult for us to learn, as aspiring Bodhisattvas. We sometimes don't know where to draw healthy boundaries. We might think that our commitment to work with the neurosis of other sentient beings means that we have to just take whatever abuse the other person may inflict upon us. Slogans such as "All victory and gain to others, all loss and defeat to myself" might reinforce this idea. But the Bodhisattva ideal is not about making ourselves into a doormat; if someone is trampling all over us, they're really creating negative karma for themselves, and we're reinforcing the karma of being a doormat -- and to allow that kind of situation to continue past a certain point is what we call "idiot compassion."
Alert! Alert! Yet, relax! Relax!
To close chapter seven, Shantideva presents a series of pith reminders about how to practice Joyful Exertion or Diligence. Like Suzuki Roshi, he reminds us that although what we are doing is very important, we should also not take it -- or ourselves -- too seriously. Our path will be more successful and more enjoyable if we can be a bit more light-hearted about the whole thing and maintain a sense of humor. And when we realize that we've totally lost it, which is inevitable -- when we've dropped our sword in the middle of battle -- the only thing to do is to pick it up as quickly as possible and continue. It's no use (to mix metaphors) crying over spilt milk. When we rise to meet whatever challenges present themselves with this spirit of lightness and joy and delight in virtue, then it's like a cool breeze that enlivens all our actions and makes every situation we encounter much more workable and relaxed.
But not too relaxed! To sustain our path over the long haul, we need to apply constant mindfulness and guard against sneak attacks from the enemy within, who is always waiting in ambush. If we give our lesser nature an opening and allow our kleshas to go unchecked, they will quickly overwhelm us, and even small, petty emotions will get the better of us. Shantideva says that we should watch our minds with the same urgency and one-pointedness as someone would watch a snake that had crawled into their lap. Through maintaining this mindfulness in every situation and never wavering in our commitment to benefit all sentient beings, we can travel the path to enlightenment without unnecessary detours and swiftly arrive at the mind of absolute Bodhicitta -- mind that is absolutely, 100% awakened, fully manifesting all its positive qualities of wisdom and compassion, with no further obscurations to hinder it.
That's what they say, anyway...the ones who've been there. Frankly, it sounds like a better game plan to me than anything I've been able to come up with. What about you?
Dedication of Merit
By whatever boundless merit we have attained
Through hearing, studying and communicating the Dharma,
May beings everywhere who suffer from addiction and attachment
Be liberated into great bliss wisdom.
May beings tormented by anger and aggression
Be liberated through love and equanimity.
May beings trapped in ignorance and denial
Be liberated into transcendent knowledge and see true reality.
And as beings travel the path to enlightenment,
May all forms of laziness be swept away by the great wind of Joyful Exertion.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Diligence, Part Two: The Enemy Within
This is Part Two of a three-part article, a commentary on the seventh chapter of Shantideva's 8th-century text called the Bodhicharyavatara or Bodhisattvacharyavatara ("The Way of the Bodhisattva"). The seventh chapter deals with the topic of Diligence (or Joyful Exertion) on the spiritual path. Diligence is one of the Six Paramitas (Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience, Diligence, Meditation, and Wisdom), which are regarded in the Mahayana school of Buddhism as the six factors that develop the mind of awakening (or Bodhicitta) and ultimately bring it to its fruition of full enlightenment or Buddhahood.
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Laziness: The Enemy of Diligence
In the opening verses of chapter seven, Shantideva defines Diligence as "joy in virtuous ways," or "delight in virtue." What this means is that, because we really understand the Dharma, we know what's going to add up to real happiness and what isn't. We have a sense of delight or joy in doing what we know will lead to ultimate happiness -- not only for ourselves, but for everyone we may encounter. This is like a patient who trusts the doctor's instructions, and diligently but happily takes the medicine because she knows it will help her get better.
The opposite of Diligence or Joyful Exertion is laziness, which comes in several flavors. The most obvious is what Shantideva calls "an inclination for unwholesomeness," which includes things like being attached to sleep and laying around all the time. Pema Chodron calls this kind of laziness "comfort orientation," which is basically the philosophy of life that posits "bobbing in the hot tub" as the solution to suffering.
Another kind of laziness Shantideva describes is despondency and self-contempt. Despondency is a loss of heart, like giving up on ourselves -- feeling we're not capable of meeting the circumstances of our lives or the challenges that come up on the spiritual path. Self-contempt is like despondency that has hardened into an intractable, "I don't care anymore" kind of attitude -- a feeling that none of it matters, it's not worth trying. Ani Pema says this attitude is like giving the world the finger.
And then there's our favorite modern form of laziness, which is just being too busy. When we get caught in the rat race of life and are just running from one activity to the next and never pausing to make time for our practice of the Paramitas, then we can't gain much traction on our Bodhisattva path. This kind of laziness doesn't happen only in big cities where people are overstimulated by their environments -- it can happen even in the countryside, or in a monastery.
Shantideva reminds us again and again in this chapter that life is short, and there's really no time for laziness if we hope to make any headway on our Bodhisattva journey in this lifetime. Death certainly lurks for each one of us somewhere up ahead, inescapably, and we don't know where -- for all we know it may be lurking around the next corner. When we really absorb this knowledge and let it sink in, it becomes more difficult for us to justify wallowing in any form of laziness.
Hellfire and Brimstone
Shantideva uses a lot of evangelical "fire and brimstone" language and fear tactics to try to scare us into realizing this, but his basic point here is very simple: Don't waste time. We need to get to the real point and take full advantage of this human life while it lasts. And what this really means is working with our minds, and using our own thoughts and emotions as the very vehicle of awakening. Otherwise, if we're not doing that, our practice is pointless. If we think we're going to get enlightened because we're walking in circles around a stupa or doing prostrations or ringing our little bell and drum and mouthing words from a chant book or raising our kundalini and getting in touch with our chakras, but we're not working with our minds and our own afflictive emotions, then I think Shantideva would say that our practice is a joke. He might even say, "See you in the next eon, after you get released from hell."
The problem is that we want something for nothing. We want enlightenment, but we want it handed to us in the form of an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, or zapped into our innermost being through a kind of Vulcan Mind-Meld with our guru, or maybe we're holding out for the day when enlightenment finally comes in pharmaceutical form. The idea of working for it really doesn't appeal to us very much.
I have often listened to a talk I have on CD by Tenzin Palmo -- someone who knows a thing or two about Diligence. After becoming one of the first Westerners ever to ordain as a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, in the early 1960s, Tenzin Palmo spent 12 years in solitary retreat, living and practicing night and day in an isolated cave high up in the snow-covered Himalaya mountains. In this particular talk, she was addressing an audience in Sydney, Australia at the time of the Olympic Games there; she was talking about the athletes who were competing in the games, and what great role models of Diligence they are. They wake up in the wee hours of the night to start training, and they train all day long; they change their diets; they give up relationships and leave their families and move to strange cities to train with the best coaches; they work tirelessly night and day toward their goal. Which is what? A medal -- if they're lucky. And here *we* are, Tenzin Palmo pointed out, aiming for the greatest prize in the whole universe -- enlightenment itself, not only for ourselves but for all beings everywhere -- and if you suggest to us that we wake up half an hour earlier to practice, suddenly we hem and haw and offer all kinds of excuses why we can't do that. Basically, she says, the problem is very simple: we're lazy.
So, for the kinds of laziness that show up as a habitual pattern of sleeping or lying around idly, or as being too busy all the time (which masquerades as the opposite of laziness, but it's really the same in terms of how it affects our spiritual path), the antidote is to reflect on impermanence and remember that we have no idea how much time we have left -- and, even in the best-case scenario, it's not very much. We should utilize whatever time we do have wisely.
For the kinds of laziness that manifest as despondency and self-contempt, Shantideva says that we should simply marshal our strength and invoke a feeling of confidence: remind yourself about the Dharma and remember that whatever situation or frame of mind in which you find yourself, it's workable. We should also take responsibility for our own actions and our state of mind, and stop giving away our power by blaming other people or circumstances for the way we feel or act. And we should practice putting ourselves in other people's shoes: seeing the equality of self and other, and then doing as much as we can to exchange self and other -- which cuts right through our self-absorption. Shantideva reminds us that the little hardships we face on the spiritual path are temporary and minor compared to the alternative -- which is continuing to flail about for years (or a lifetime, or multiple lifetimes) in a spider's web of confusion and suffering from which we can't seem to escape.
Extreme Tenderness
Shantideva makes the point several times in this chapter that, while we should always strive to overcome our laziness, we should also be realistic and know where our limitations are. He reminds us that the Buddha teaches not through austerity but through ways of "extreme tenderness." While there is, of course, much work to be done on the spiritual path, we need to remain gentle and friendly to ourselves. One of the keys to this is finding the level at which we can practice with enthusiasm and joy, rather than feeling like practice is an austerity. Pema Chodron says in her commentary that if your practice feels like an austerity, then something is wrong -- it's too tight -- and you should look at what you're doing. As Suzuki Roshi reminds us, when we find that our practice as aspiring Bodhisattvas is getting just a little too heavy and we're taking things "too seriously," we should look at how to bring some relaxation and tenderness and humor back into the situation.
Our Bodhisattva activities really only become the transcendent practice of the Six Paramitas when we can engage in them with this attitude of openness and letting go. Giving, for example, becomes Generosity only when accompanied by a genuine attitude of Generosity. If you're giving someone a dollar but mumbling to yourself about what an ungrateful slob he is, or copping a resentment about it, that's not the Paramita of Generosity.
When we find ourselves getting "too serious" about things, it might be helpful to turn the flame down a little bit on the stove, and let our practice simmer at a more reasonable pace rather than boiling over. The challenge for us as baby Bodhisattvas, or the balancing act, is in really honestly knowing our own limits, and working at the level where we can have enthusiasm -- and then knowing when we can really push ourselves beyond what's comfortable, and go a little further. "We can never underestimate our aversion to discomfort," says Pema Chodron. "Often, it's only life itself that pulls the rug out, and you find yourself thrown into the next level."
Styles of Imprisonment
The see-saw of happiness and suffering pivots around the way in which we work with our minds. Shantideva goes to great lengths in this chapter to explain how our motivation and attitude shape our actions, speech and thoughts -- and how these things, in turn, shape our experience in the world. When we create habitual ways of thinking, speaking and behaving, then over time these habits tend to harden into what Chogyam Trungpa called "styles of imprisonment": we find ourselves trapped in a world that is a mirror of our own minds and our actions. If we habitually act with aggression and anger, we find ourselves living in a hell realm, where everything seems to be against us and life itself becomes warfare. If we habitually act with craving and attachment, we find ourselves living in a hungry ghost realm, where we never seem to be able to get enough of what we desire and we're constantly starving for more, locked in poverty mentality. If we constantly dull out or space out, we find ourselves living in an animal realm, where existence is just about getting through the day and meeting basic needs without getting eaten by someone else, and we tune out and lose interest in anything that might challenge us to go beyond our comfort zone.
When he taught in New York City in 2008, His Holiness the 17th Karmapa said:
The way Shantideva phrases it is that we should "abandon sin." The word "sin," when it appears in Buddhist texts, often provokes a strong negative reaction among those who come from a Judaeo-Christian background. But once we strip away the associations of Original Sin and Divine Judgment and so forth, we're left with a very basic sense of what the Karmapa seems to be referring to as "negative tendencies," and the harmful actions that spring from them and cause further suffering for ourselves and other beings.
The Enemy Within
Shantideva continually exhorts us not to be downcast or gloomy when things seem to be lined up against us, but to leap into our practice of virtue with a mind of great joy. Often we tend to think that our obstacles and enemies are on the outside, in the shape of people or circumstances that challenge us. For instance, we might get very worked up thinking about the George Bushes and the Dick Cheneys of the world, and the Wall Street manipulators and the overpaid and corrupt CEOs, and the lords of the military-industrial complex. We might get very enthusiastic about pointing the finger of blame at those people for many of the problems we see in the world today.
But in terms of what hinders our practice on the spiritual path, what stymies our awakening, it's not the George Bushes and the Dick Cheneys of the world, or any other external figure, no matter how misguided or corrupt or irritating they may be. In fact, no one outside of ourselves really has the slightest power to hinder our awakening. What hinders our awakening is the enemy within -- what Shantideva calls our "mournful weariness." This enemy shows up in our minds as laziness, discouragement, despair, depression and fatigue -- all the internal enemies that deprive us of joyful exertion and make us withdraw fearfully into our protective shell.
For Shantideva, the real enemy is always within. An external enemy might damage our bodies, but from Shantideva's point of view that's of little consequence. What does real damage, what causes us lifetime after lifetime of suffering -- and what usually gets us involved with external enemies in the first place -- is our own tangle of kleshas or afflictive emotions: our anger and jealousy and craving and denial, and so on. When we act and live under the spell of our kleshas, we become our own worst enemies.
So what helps us overcome the enemy within? Shantideva presents Four Strengths or four skillful means -- Aspiration, Steadfastness, Joy, and Letting Go -- that dispel our mournful weariness and empower our practice of Joyful Exertion.
-- Click here for Part Three, "Put Your Heart into It" --
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Laziness: The Enemy of Diligence
In the opening verses of chapter seven, Shantideva defines Diligence as "joy in virtuous ways," or "delight in virtue." What this means is that, because we really understand the Dharma, we know what's going to add up to real happiness and what isn't. We have a sense of delight or joy in doing what we know will lead to ultimate happiness -- not only for ourselves, but for everyone we may encounter. This is like a patient who trusts the doctor's instructions, and diligently but happily takes the medicine because she knows it will help her get better.
The opposite of Diligence or Joyful Exertion is laziness, which comes in several flavors. The most obvious is what Shantideva calls "an inclination for unwholesomeness," which includes things like being attached to sleep and laying around all the time. Pema Chodron calls this kind of laziness "comfort orientation," which is basically the philosophy of life that posits "bobbing in the hot tub" as the solution to suffering.
Another kind of laziness Shantideva describes is despondency and self-contempt. Despondency is a loss of heart, like giving up on ourselves -- feeling we're not capable of meeting the circumstances of our lives or the challenges that come up on the spiritual path. Self-contempt is like despondency that has hardened into an intractable, "I don't care anymore" kind of attitude -- a feeling that none of it matters, it's not worth trying. Ani Pema says this attitude is like giving the world the finger.
And then there's our favorite modern form of laziness, which is just being too busy. When we get caught in the rat race of life and are just running from one activity to the next and never pausing to make time for our practice of the Paramitas, then we can't gain much traction on our Bodhisattva path. This kind of laziness doesn't happen only in big cities where people are overstimulated by their environments -- it can happen even in the countryside, or in a monastery.
Shantideva reminds us again and again in this chapter that life is short, and there's really no time for laziness if we hope to make any headway on our Bodhisattva journey in this lifetime. Death certainly lurks for each one of us somewhere up ahead, inescapably, and we don't know where -- for all we know it may be lurking around the next corner. When we really absorb this knowledge and let it sink in, it becomes more difficult for us to justify wallowing in any form of laziness.
Hellfire and Brimstone
Shantideva uses a lot of evangelical "fire and brimstone" language and fear tactics to try to scare us into realizing this, but his basic point here is very simple: Don't waste time. We need to get to the real point and take full advantage of this human life while it lasts. And what this really means is working with our minds, and using our own thoughts and emotions as the very vehicle of awakening. Otherwise, if we're not doing that, our practice is pointless. If we think we're going to get enlightened because we're walking in circles around a stupa or doing prostrations or ringing our little bell and drum and mouthing words from a chant book or raising our kundalini and getting in touch with our chakras, but we're not working with our minds and our own afflictive emotions, then I think Shantideva would say that our practice is a joke. He might even say, "See you in the next eon, after you get released from hell."
The problem is that we want something for nothing. We want enlightenment, but we want it handed to us in the form of an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, or zapped into our innermost being through a kind of Vulcan Mind-Meld with our guru, or maybe we're holding out for the day when enlightenment finally comes in pharmaceutical form. The idea of working for it really doesn't appeal to us very much.
I have often listened to a talk I have on CD by Tenzin Palmo -- someone who knows a thing or two about Diligence. After becoming one of the first Westerners ever to ordain as a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, in the early 1960s, Tenzin Palmo spent 12 years in solitary retreat, living and practicing night and day in an isolated cave high up in the snow-covered Himalaya mountains. In this particular talk, she was addressing an audience in Sydney, Australia at the time of the Olympic Games there; she was talking about the athletes who were competing in the games, and what great role models of Diligence they are. They wake up in the wee hours of the night to start training, and they train all day long; they change their diets; they give up relationships and leave their families and move to strange cities to train with the best coaches; they work tirelessly night and day toward their goal. Which is what? A medal -- if they're lucky. And here *we* are, Tenzin Palmo pointed out, aiming for the greatest prize in the whole universe -- enlightenment itself, not only for ourselves but for all beings everywhere -- and if you suggest to us that we wake up half an hour earlier to practice, suddenly we hem and haw and offer all kinds of excuses why we can't do that. Basically, she says, the problem is very simple: we're lazy.
So, for the kinds of laziness that show up as a habitual pattern of sleeping or lying around idly, or as being too busy all the time (which masquerades as the opposite of laziness, but it's really the same in terms of how it affects our spiritual path), the antidote is to reflect on impermanence and remember that we have no idea how much time we have left -- and, even in the best-case scenario, it's not very much. We should utilize whatever time we do have wisely.
For the kinds of laziness that manifest as despondency and self-contempt, Shantideva says that we should simply marshal our strength and invoke a feeling of confidence: remind yourself about the Dharma and remember that whatever situation or frame of mind in which you find yourself, it's workable. We should also take responsibility for our own actions and our state of mind, and stop giving away our power by blaming other people or circumstances for the way we feel or act. And we should practice putting ourselves in other people's shoes: seeing the equality of self and other, and then doing as much as we can to exchange self and other -- which cuts right through our self-absorption. Shantideva reminds us that the little hardships we face on the spiritual path are temporary and minor compared to the alternative -- which is continuing to flail about for years (or a lifetime, or multiple lifetimes) in a spider's web of confusion and suffering from which we can't seem to escape.
Extreme Tenderness
Shantideva makes the point several times in this chapter that, while we should always strive to overcome our laziness, we should also be realistic and know where our limitations are. He reminds us that the Buddha teaches not through austerity but through ways of "extreme tenderness." While there is, of course, much work to be done on the spiritual path, we need to remain gentle and friendly to ourselves. One of the keys to this is finding the level at which we can practice with enthusiasm and joy, rather than feeling like practice is an austerity. Pema Chodron says in her commentary that if your practice feels like an austerity, then something is wrong -- it's too tight -- and you should look at what you're doing. As Suzuki Roshi reminds us, when we find that our practice as aspiring Bodhisattvas is getting just a little too heavy and we're taking things "too seriously," we should look at how to bring some relaxation and tenderness and humor back into the situation.
Our Bodhisattva activities really only become the transcendent practice of the Six Paramitas when we can engage in them with this attitude of openness and letting go. Giving, for example, becomes Generosity only when accompanied by a genuine attitude of Generosity. If you're giving someone a dollar but mumbling to yourself about what an ungrateful slob he is, or copping a resentment about it, that's not the Paramita of Generosity.
When we find ourselves getting "too serious" about things, it might be helpful to turn the flame down a little bit on the stove, and let our practice simmer at a more reasonable pace rather than boiling over. The challenge for us as baby Bodhisattvas, or the balancing act, is in really honestly knowing our own limits, and working at the level where we can have enthusiasm -- and then knowing when we can really push ourselves beyond what's comfortable, and go a little further. "We can never underestimate our aversion to discomfort," says Pema Chodron. "Often, it's only life itself that pulls the rug out, and you find yourself thrown into the next level."
Styles of Imprisonment
The see-saw of happiness and suffering pivots around the way in which we work with our minds. Shantideva goes to great lengths in this chapter to explain how our motivation and attitude shape our actions, speech and thoughts -- and how these things, in turn, shape our experience in the world. When we create habitual ways of thinking, speaking and behaving, then over time these habits tend to harden into what Chogyam Trungpa called "styles of imprisonment": we find ourselves trapped in a world that is a mirror of our own minds and our actions. If we habitually act with aggression and anger, we find ourselves living in a hell realm, where everything seems to be against us and life itself becomes warfare. If we habitually act with craving and attachment, we find ourselves living in a hungry ghost realm, where we never seem to be able to get enough of what we desire and we're constantly starving for more, locked in poverty mentality. If we constantly dull out or space out, we find ourselves living in an animal realm, where existence is just about getting through the day and meeting basic needs without getting eaten by someone else, and we tune out and lose interest in anything that might challenge us to go beyond our comfort zone.
When he taught in New York City in 2008, His Holiness the 17th Karmapa said:
"It is important for us to empower our positive mental tendencies. We always value empowerment and individual rights, but we should pay attention to the manner in which we are allocating freedoms and privileges within our own minds. Whether we're aware of it or not, we are continually empowering certain qualities and tendencies of the mind over others. Sometimes we empower and give greater privileges to our positive mental tendencies; sometimes we more greatly empower our negative tendencies. However, most of the time we are not mindful of this process, so this is something we would do well to consider."
-- His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje
The way Shantideva phrases it is that we should "abandon sin." The word "sin," when it appears in Buddhist texts, often provokes a strong negative reaction among those who come from a Judaeo-Christian background. But once we strip away the associations of Original Sin and Divine Judgment and so forth, we're left with a very basic sense of what the Karmapa seems to be referring to as "negative tendencies," and the harmful actions that spring from them and cause further suffering for ourselves and other beings.
The Enemy Within
Shantideva continually exhorts us not to be downcast or gloomy when things seem to be lined up against us, but to leap into our practice of virtue with a mind of great joy. Often we tend to think that our obstacles and enemies are on the outside, in the shape of people or circumstances that challenge us. For instance, we might get very worked up thinking about the George Bushes and the Dick Cheneys of the world, and the Wall Street manipulators and the overpaid and corrupt CEOs, and the lords of the military-industrial complex. We might get very enthusiastic about pointing the finger of blame at those people for many of the problems we see in the world today.
But in terms of what hinders our practice on the spiritual path, what stymies our awakening, it's not the George Bushes and the Dick Cheneys of the world, or any other external figure, no matter how misguided or corrupt or irritating they may be. In fact, no one outside of ourselves really has the slightest power to hinder our awakening. What hinders our awakening is the enemy within -- what Shantideva calls our "mournful weariness." This enemy shows up in our minds as laziness, discouragement, despair, depression and fatigue -- all the internal enemies that deprive us of joyful exertion and make us withdraw fearfully into our protective shell.
For Shantideva, the real enemy is always within. An external enemy might damage our bodies, but from Shantideva's point of view that's of little consequence. What does real damage, what causes us lifetime after lifetime of suffering -- and what usually gets us involved with external enemies in the first place -- is our own tangle of kleshas or afflictive emotions: our anger and jealousy and craving and denial, and so on. When we act and live under the spell of our kleshas, we become our own worst enemies.
So what helps us overcome the enemy within? Shantideva presents Four Strengths or four skillful means -- Aspiration, Steadfastness, Joy, and Letting Go -- that dispel our mournful weariness and empower our practice of Joyful Exertion.
-- Click here for Part Three, "Put Your Heart into It" --
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Diligence, Part One: Learning to Swim
This is Part One of a three-part article, a commentary on the seventh chapter of Shantideva's 8th-century text called the Bodhicharyavatara or Bodhisattvacharyavatara ("The Way of the Bodhisattva"). The seventh chapter deals with the topic of Diligence (or Joyful Exertion) on the spiritual path. Diligence is one of the Six Paramitas (Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience, Diligence, Meditation, and Wisdom), which are regarded in the Mahayana school of Buddhism as the six factors that develop the mind of awakening (or Bodhicitta) and ultimately bring it to its fruition of full enlightenment or Buddhahood.
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Disclaimer
First things first. I'd like to offer a disclaimer right up front, before I actually say anything about the topic at hand. The backstory here is that I was recently asked to give a talk as part of a course focusing on Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara; this article is adapted from my notes for that talk. I was very happy to accept the invitation -- but, then, when I found out which chapter I was being asked to focus on, my next thought was: "Oh no! Not that one!" It's not simply that I find the topic of Diligence somewhat less inherently interesting than, say, Patience or Meditation (although I do); more significantly, it's that I don't really consider myself a very good example of Diligence, and I suspect that whatever I might have to say on the subject is largely second-hand knowledge and speculation on my part. In fact, I think I'm one of the least diligent Buddist practitioners I know, and if left to my own devices, I might have nothing at all to say about the subject. Fortunately, I'm not left to my own devices: lots of qualified teachers have given commentaries on this text, and I've studied a few of them and hopefully picked up something here and there that will be beneficial to others if I pass it along.
The Awakening Mind
So before diving into the seventh chapter, a bit of review of what leads up to that point in the text would be in order. I've been thinking about the structure of Shantideva's text in relation to a short verse that appears in the ngondro liturgy that was taught last year in Seattle by His Holiness the 17th Karmapa ("Brief Recitations for the Four Preliminary Practices"), which was translated by my friend Tyler Dewar:
The first line of this verse is what Shantideva's first chapter was all about: explaining the excellence and benefits of Bodhicitta, the mind of awakening, which is also sometimes called awakened heart (in Buddhism there's not really that much difference between "mind" and "heart"). I won't go into an explanation here of what Bodhicitta is, but if you don't have some familiarity with the concept then I doubt that the rest of this article will make much sense. But here's a basic definition, from Wikipedia:
Shantideva's second and third chapters talk about how to clear the obstacles in one's mind to the generation of Bodhicitta, and how to actually give rise to that frame of mind -- which is like the second line of the verse, causing Bodhicitta to "arise where it has not arisen." The third chapter deals a lot with the first of the Six Paramitas, which is Generosity, and subsequent chapters in the text deal with the rest of the Paramitas, in sequence.
The Six Paramitas always appear in a particular order -- Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience, Diligence, Meditation, and Wisdom -- and this order is not accidental. They proceed from gross to subtle, or from easy to difficult, and each one builds a foundation for the next. We start with Generosity because it's the easiest and the most accessible: anyone can practice generosity. It doesn't require any degree of learning or discernment, it only takes an open heart. Even animals practice generosity at times. As you progress through the Paramitas, though, they become more and more subtle, until you reach the Prajna-Paramita, the Paramita of Transcendent Wisdom, which sees emptiness -- the true nature of reality. I don't think there are animals practicing the Prajna-Paramita, but who knows? Often, to judge by external appearances, cats do look like they're absorbed in deep meditation -- which may be why so many Buddhists love cats.
The third line of the verse is what Shantideva's fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are concerned with: preventing Bodhicitta from diminishing where it has arisen. This means developing strong mindfulness and vigilant introspection, so that we bring out minds and our conduct into line with what is ethical and conducive to true happiness, and learning to apply the antidote of patience when anger strikes so that we don't blow it all in a moment of aggression. Of all the afflictive emotions, anger is the most destructive to our Bodhisattva intentions, which is why Patience gets its own Paramita. It is said in one of the Sutras that we could spend years or lifetimes indulging in passion and desire, and this still wouldn't be as destructive as a single act of anger and aggression. This is because even when we're lustful we can still hold the welfare of other beings in mind -- we can wish someone happiness and well-being even as we're mentally undressing them and drooling over them. Now, don't get confused: this is not advocating that we get carried away in lust or attachment, and it's not praising the mind of craving -- it's just saying it's not as bad as anger. Because when we mindlessly express anger and aggression towards other beings, we are directly going against their welfare and bringing suffering upon them -- which runs counter to everything the Bodhisattva stands for.
Shantideva's seventh chapter begins the third section of the text, which corresponds to the fourth line of the verse: what to do in order to make Bodhicitta increase and increase. This means conducting one's Bodhisattva business with a joyful and determined mind (Diligence), practicing Meditative Concentration, and finally opening into the Transcendent Knowledge or Wisdom that realizes emptiness as the true nature of reality.
Learning to Swim
So in order for Bodhicitta, or the mind of awakening, to increase and increase, we need to apply a certain effort and perseverance. To borrow an analogy from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, we've gotten in the water, now we have to learn to swim -- we can't just float there forever. But I think the other side of this analogy is that, in order to swim, you also have to be somewhat relaxed, somewhat open to the joy of being in the water. You can't just be flapping about wildly, in a panic -- you'll only drown yourself that way. So this element of joy and relaxation, in the midst of effort and perseverance, is the key.
This key point comes out pretty clearly in the course of Shantideva's seventh chapter, but the fact that it takes a whole chapter to really get it across illustrates the difficulty of finding in the English language one word, or even two words, that accurately and satisfyingly communicate the fullness of what this Paramita that we usually call "Diligence" is really about. The Sanskrit word, Virya (and Virya-Paramita) -- the root of our English words "virile" and "vigor" and "virtue," among others -- implies a mind that is strong and determined and won't give up in the face of adversity. But explanations of the Virya-Paramita's meaning almost always emphasize this other aspect of joy or delight in the practice of virtue. This has led to our present situation, in which we have seen translators use literally dozens of different words and word combinations in their efforts to get at the essence of the Virya-Paramita. Here are a few examples I've seen in different texts:
Imagine if we had 25 different ways of saying "Patience" or "Generosity." Given such a wide range of translations for the Virya-Paramita in English, you would not be alone if you find yourself wondering: what exactly *are* we talking about? To get some clarity, let's go back to our good friend, Wikipedia, which offers the following definition of Virya:
Joyful Exertion
One of the aspects of Virya that's most emphasized in Shantideva's seventh chapter is having a sense of joy or delight in one's Bodhisattva activities. This is why I prefer translations of Virya such as Joyful Exertion, or Cheerful Effort.
I'll just say it: I don't like "Diligence." It's a dry word devoid of feeling, and for me it evokes a picture of a classroom or a study hall full of good little boys and girls diligently studying for their exams. Words like "exertion" or "perseverance" or "endurance," by themselves, are equally flat and disappointing. "Endurance" even sounds like you're white-knuckling your way through something unpleasant, a "grin and bear it" type of outlook. But I think that conjoined terms like Joyful Exertion or Enthusiastic Perseverance begin to get closer to the real meaning of this Paramita.
When you look at the living Bodhisattvas (with a capital "B") that we have among us -- I'm thinking of the Karmapa, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others like them -- you don't see people who are gritting their teeth and "enduring" or just flatly "persevering" through the hardships and challenges that come their way. You certainly don't see people who slog through their work with a sense of weariness or a chip on their shoulders, or who end up copping a resentment about the burdens they have to carry and the things they're asked to do for others -- which is what I often do. Instead, you see people who embody so much cheerfulness and joy and relaxation, even in the midst of very difficult circumstances. When you look at them, they're always smiling and laughing -- and not in a Pollyannish or frivolous way, but in a way that is united with their tremendous heart of compassion and this sense of joy in practicing virtue to benefit others. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of a people that has been so brutalized, for so long, and every single day people wait in line to come and lay their troubles and their sorrows at his feet. He carries so much responsibility, and almost never has time to do anything that could be even vaguely construed as being just for himself. And yet, when you look at him, he's always finding humor all around him. Once, in New York City, I saw him stop in the middle of a teaching (perhaps even mid-sentence, although I didn't understand the Tibetan) and he cried for several minutes, apparently overwhelmed by compassion for suffering beings. Then, just as suddenly, with no additional comment, he recovered himself and continued teaching, and then he was laughing and joking again.
So I think that words like "Joyful Exertion" do a much better job of conveying the true spirit of awakening mind than "Diligence" or "Perseverance." But I'll use all of these terms somewhat interchangeably here.
Don't Take the Whole Thing Too Seriously
Ani Pema Chodron, in her commentary on Shantideva's seventh chapter, offers a quote from Suzuki Roshi that I think serves as a sort of key to interpreting this whole chapter on Diligence:
"What we're doing here is so important -- so important that we might as well not take it too seriously."
This is classic Suzuki Roshi: it stops your mind and makes you do a double-take to ensure that you didn't mis-read what he said. And then it makes you think, and wonder what exactly he could have meant by such a strange statement.
If you think of this statement in terms of Joyful Exertion, you can see how the first half of the quote gets at the Exertion part: the work in which we're engaged as Bodhisattvas -- the process of waking up from our own delusion and manifesting complete wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings -- is (perhaps it's an understatement) so important. And the second half of the quote gets at the Joyful part: we won't get very far on this path if we take ourselves or the situations we encounter too seriously or try to make things too solid. Our habit, of course, is to get very locked into a heavy, oppressive sense of how fixed and stuck things are -- whether it's other people and their neurotic behavior, or just our own minds. But when we bring in this feeling of lightness and joy and not taking things too seriously, then it transforms our experience. Everything becomes much more workable, and we're able to relax right in the midst of chaos.
Sometimes when I catch myself getting very stuck in a solid, heavy sense of things being a certain way -- and usually it's the *wrong* way, and something needs to be done about it -- then, if I can remember, I try to do what I call the "100 Years from Now" practice. This is simply to remind myself that, however big of a deal this situation -- and my role in it -- seems to me right now, 100 years from now there won't be a single human being left on planet Earth who remembers it. So does it really matter *that* much, in the grand scheme of things? Should I really be taking it *that* seriously? This perspective might sound bleak or lonely, but it serves its purpose well, which is to puncture the outer membrane of the "big-deal" mind that is painfully fixated on its concepts of how things are or how they should be, and takes things too seriously.
-- Click here for Part Two, "The Enemy Within" --
To listen to the original talk in audio format, use the controls embedded below. (If you're reading this via email subscription and the controls do not show up in your email client, click on the title above to view the page online. Or, to download the talk, click here (and pardon the advertising on the download page).
Disclaimer
First things first. I'd like to offer a disclaimer right up front, before I actually say anything about the topic at hand. The backstory here is that I was recently asked to give a talk as part of a course focusing on Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara; this article is adapted from my notes for that talk. I was very happy to accept the invitation -- but, then, when I found out which chapter I was being asked to focus on, my next thought was: "Oh no! Not that one!" It's not simply that I find the topic of Diligence somewhat less inherently interesting than, say, Patience or Meditation (although I do); more significantly, it's that I don't really consider myself a very good example of Diligence, and I suspect that whatever I might have to say on the subject is largely second-hand knowledge and speculation on my part. In fact, I think I'm one of the least diligent Buddist practitioners I know, and if left to my own devices, I might have nothing at all to say about the subject. Fortunately, I'm not left to my own devices: lots of qualified teachers have given commentaries on this text, and I've studied a few of them and hopefully picked up something here and there that will be beneficial to others if I pass it along.
The Awakening Mind
So before diving into the seventh chapter, a bit of review of what leads up to that point in the text would be in order. I've been thinking about the structure of Shantideva's text in relation to a short verse that appears in the ngondro liturgy that was taught last year in Seattle by His Holiness the 17th Karmapa ("Brief Recitations for the Four Preliminary Practices"), which was translated by my friend Tyler Dewar:
May precious and supreme Bodhicitta
Arise where it has not arisen
Not diminish where it has arisen
And continually increase and increase.
The first line of this verse is what Shantideva's first chapter was all about: explaining the excellence and benefits of Bodhicitta, the mind of awakening, which is also sometimes called awakened heart (in Buddhism there's not really that much difference between "mind" and "heart"). I won't go into an explanation here of what Bodhicitta is, but if you don't have some familiarity with the concept then I doubt that the rest of this article will make much sense. But here's a basic definition, from Wikipedia:
In Buddhism, bodhicitta (Ch. 菩提心, pudixin, Jp. bodaishin, Tibetan jang chub sem, Mongolian бодь сэтгэл) is the wish to attain complete enlightenment (that is, Buddhahood) in order to be of benefit to all sentient beings trapped in cyclic existence (samsāra) who have not yet reached Buddhahood. One who has bodhicitta as the primary motivation for all of his or her activities is called a bodhisattva.
Shantideva's second and third chapters talk about how to clear the obstacles in one's mind to the generation of Bodhicitta, and how to actually give rise to that frame of mind -- which is like the second line of the verse, causing Bodhicitta to "arise where it has not arisen." The third chapter deals a lot with the first of the Six Paramitas, which is Generosity, and subsequent chapters in the text deal with the rest of the Paramitas, in sequence.
The Six Paramitas always appear in a particular order -- Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience, Diligence, Meditation, and Wisdom -- and this order is not accidental. They proceed from gross to subtle, or from easy to difficult, and each one builds a foundation for the next. We start with Generosity because it's the easiest and the most accessible: anyone can practice generosity. It doesn't require any degree of learning or discernment, it only takes an open heart. Even animals practice generosity at times. As you progress through the Paramitas, though, they become more and more subtle, until you reach the Prajna-Paramita, the Paramita of Transcendent Wisdom, which sees emptiness -- the true nature of reality. I don't think there are animals practicing the Prajna-Paramita, but who knows? Often, to judge by external appearances, cats do look like they're absorbed in deep meditation -- which may be why so many Buddhists love cats.
The third line of the verse is what Shantideva's fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are concerned with: preventing Bodhicitta from diminishing where it has arisen. This means developing strong mindfulness and vigilant introspection, so that we bring out minds and our conduct into line with what is ethical and conducive to true happiness, and learning to apply the antidote of patience when anger strikes so that we don't blow it all in a moment of aggression. Of all the afflictive emotions, anger is the most destructive to our Bodhisattva intentions, which is why Patience gets its own Paramita. It is said in one of the Sutras that we could spend years or lifetimes indulging in passion and desire, and this still wouldn't be as destructive as a single act of anger and aggression. This is because even when we're lustful we can still hold the welfare of other beings in mind -- we can wish someone happiness and well-being even as we're mentally undressing them and drooling over them. Now, don't get confused: this is not advocating that we get carried away in lust or attachment, and it's not praising the mind of craving -- it's just saying it's not as bad as anger. Because when we mindlessly express anger and aggression towards other beings, we are directly going against their welfare and bringing suffering upon them -- which runs counter to everything the Bodhisattva stands for.
Shantideva's seventh chapter begins the third section of the text, which corresponds to the fourth line of the verse: what to do in order to make Bodhicitta increase and increase. This means conducting one's Bodhisattva business with a joyful and determined mind (Diligence), practicing Meditative Concentration, and finally opening into the Transcendent Knowledge or Wisdom that realizes emptiness as the true nature of reality.
Learning to Swim
So in order for Bodhicitta, or the mind of awakening, to increase and increase, we need to apply a certain effort and perseverance. To borrow an analogy from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, we've gotten in the water, now we have to learn to swim -- we can't just float there forever. But I think the other side of this analogy is that, in order to swim, you also have to be somewhat relaxed, somewhat open to the joy of being in the water. You can't just be flapping about wildly, in a panic -- you'll only drown yourself that way. So this element of joy and relaxation, in the midst of effort and perseverance, is the key.
This key point comes out pretty clearly in the course of Shantideva's seventh chapter, but the fact that it takes a whole chapter to really get it across illustrates the difficulty of finding in the English language one word, or even two words, that accurately and satisfyingly communicate the fullness of what this Paramita that we usually call "Diligence" is really about. The Sanskrit word, Virya (and Virya-Paramita) -- the root of our English words "virile" and "vigor" and "virtue," among others -- implies a mind that is strong and determined and won't give up in the face of adversity. But explanations of the Virya-Paramita's meaning almost always emphasize this other aspect of joy or delight in the practice of virtue. This has led to our present situation, in which we have seen translators use literally dozens of different words and word combinations in their efforts to get at the essence of the Virya-Paramita. Here are a few examples I've seen in different texts:
- Diligence
- Exertion
- Joyful Exertion
- Energy
- Enthusiasm
- Perseverance
- Heroic Perseverance
- Enthusiastic Perseverance
- Effort
- Intelligent Effort
- Balanced Effort
- Cheerful Effort
- Joyful Effort
- Vigor
- Zeal
- Energetic Zeal
- Endurance
- Courage
- Endeavor
- Exuberance
- Boldness
- Fearlessness
- Vitality
- Heroism
- Bravery
Imagine if we had 25 different ways of saying "Patience" or "Generosity." Given such a wide range of translations for the Virya-Paramita in English, you would not be alone if you find yourself wondering: what exactly *are* we talking about? To get some clarity, let's go back to our good friend, Wikipedia, which offers the following definition of Virya:
In Buddhism, vīrya is one of the five controlling faculties (indriya), one of the five powers (bala), one of the six or ten paramitas, one of the seven factors of enlightenment (bodhyaṅga) and is identical with right effort of the Noble Eightfold Path (Pali: aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo; Skt.: aṣṭāṅga mārga). It stands for strenuous and sustained effort to overcome unskillful ways (akusala dhamma), such as indulging in sensuality, ill will and harmfulness (see, e.g., ahimsa, nekkhamma). It stands for the right endeavour to attain meditative concentration (dhyāna). Vīrya does not stand for physical strength. It signifies strength of character and the persistent effort for the well-being of others. In the absence of sustained efforts in practicing meditation, craving creeps in and the meditator comes under its influence. Right effort known as vīryabala is, thus, required to overcome unskillful mental factors and deviation from dhyāna.
Joyful Exertion
One of the aspects of Virya that's most emphasized in Shantideva's seventh chapter is having a sense of joy or delight in one's Bodhisattva activities. This is why I prefer translations of Virya such as Joyful Exertion, or Cheerful Effort.
I'll just say it: I don't like "Diligence." It's a dry word devoid of feeling, and for me it evokes a picture of a classroom or a study hall full of good little boys and girls diligently studying for their exams. Words like "exertion" or "perseverance" or "endurance," by themselves, are equally flat and disappointing. "Endurance" even sounds like you're white-knuckling your way through something unpleasant, a "grin and bear it" type of outlook. But I think that conjoined terms like Joyful Exertion or Enthusiastic Perseverance begin to get closer to the real meaning of this Paramita.
When you look at the living Bodhisattvas (with a capital "B") that we have among us -- I'm thinking of the Karmapa, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others like them -- you don't see people who are gritting their teeth and "enduring" or just flatly "persevering" through the hardships and challenges that come their way. You certainly don't see people who slog through their work with a sense of weariness or a chip on their shoulders, or who end up copping a resentment about the burdens they have to carry and the things they're asked to do for others -- which is what I often do. Instead, you see people who embody so much cheerfulness and joy and relaxation, even in the midst of very difficult circumstances. When you look at them, they're always smiling and laughing -- and not in a Pollyannish or frivolous way, but in a way that is united with their tremendous heart of compassion and this sense of joy in practicing virtue to benefit others. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of a people that has been so brutalized, for so long, and every single day people wait in line to come and lay their troubles and their sorrows at his feet. He carries so much responsibility, and almost never has time to do anything that could be even vaguely construed as being just for himself. And yet, when you look at him, he's always finding humor all around him. Once, in New York City, I saw him stop in the middle of a teaching (perhaps even mid-sentence, although I didn't understand the Tibetan) and he cried for several minutes, apparently overwhelmed by compassion for suffering beings. Then, just as suddenly, with no additional comment, he recovered himself and continued teaching, and then he was laughing and joking again.
So I think that words like "Joyful Exertion" do a much better job of conveying the true spirit of awakening mind than "Diligence" or "Perseverance." But I'll use all of these terms somewhat interchangeably here.
Don't Take the Whole Thing Too Seriously
Ani Pema Chodron, in her commentary on Shantideva's seventh chapter, offers a quote from Suzuki Roshi that I think serves as a sort of key to interpreting this whole chapter on Diligence:
"What we're doing here is so important -- so important that we might as well not take it too seriously."
This is classic Suzuki Roshi: it stops your mind and makes you do a double-take to ensure that you didn't mis-read what he said. And then it makes you think, and wonder what exactly he could have meant by such a strange statement.
If you think of this statement in terms of Joyful Exertion, you can see how the first half of the quote gets at the Exertion part: the work in which we're engaged as Bodhisattvas -- the process of waking up from our own delusion and manifesting complete wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings -- is (perhaps it's an understatement) so important. And the second half of the quote gets at the Joyful part: we won't get very far on this path if we take ourselves or the situations we encounter too seriously or try to make things too solid. Our habit, of course, is to get very locked into a heavy, oppressive sense of how fixed and stuck things are -- whether it's other people and their neurotic behavior, or just our own minds. But when we bring in this feeling of lightness and joy and not taking things too seriously, then it transforms our experience. Everything becomes much more workable, and we're able to relax right in the midst of chaos.
Sometimes when I catch myself getting very stuck in a solid, heavy sense of things being a certain way -- and usually it's the *wrong* way, and something needs to be done about it -- then, if I can remember, I try to do what I call the "100 Years from Now" practice. This is simply to remind myself that, however big of a deal this situation -- and my role in it -- seems to me right now, 100 years from now there won't be a single human being left on planet Earth who remembers it. So does it really matter *that* much, in the grand scheme of things? Should I really be taking it *that* seriously? This perspective might sound bleak or lonely, but it serves its purpose well, which is to puncture the outer membrane of the "big-deal" mind that is painfully fixated on its concepts of how things are or how they should be, and takes things too seriously.
-- Click here for Part Two, "The Enemy Within" --
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Dumb and Dumber
Pigs get a bad rap in Buddhism. We know today, from laboratory studies and barnyard anecdotes, that pigs are among the most intelligent animals -- more intelligent, scientists say, than dogs. But in traditional Tibetan Buddhist iconography, pigs are vilified as the symbol of ignorance. The famous depiction of the Wheel of Life illustrates how we get stuck in the cycle of suffering and in various hardened mind-states as a result of habitually indulging and acting out on our own afflictive emotions (kleshas, in Sanskrit). At the spinning hub of the Wheel itself we see the three main causes of our suffering, known as the Three Poisons -- ignorance, aggression and craving -- symbolized, respectively, by a pig, a snake, and a rooster.
Ignorance, or delusion, is regarded in Buddhism as the primary or root affliction, the one that underlies all the others: because we are deluded about the true nature of things, we fumble our way through life, making fatal mistakes and bringing all kinds of ruin and suffering upon ourselves and others.
As Westerners, it may seem strange to us that Buddhist psychology regards ignorance as a klesha, or an afflictive emotion, in the first place. A state of ignorance, or not knowing, does not correspond to what we think of as an emotion, which involves a state of feeling. The confusion here stems from a dissonance between the way we use both words -- ignorance and emotion -- in a traditional Buddhist context versus a contemporary Western psychological context.
In Buddhism, the term "emotion" or "afflictive emotion" (klesha) refers to any mental state that disturbs and agitates the mind, obscuring our ability to see reality clearly and leading us (most often) to act unskillfully. This includes states that are obviously charged with what we think of as "emotive" content, such as jealousy and craving and hate; but it also includes states such as pride and ignorance, which may seem to us to be less "emotive" but which nevertheless disturb and agitate the mind's natural clarity and openness.
The term "ignorance" also has to carry part of the blame. In English, "ignorance" seems to imply a state of being simply dumb about things: a mere lack of knowledge that could stem either from an innate stupidity that prevents one from understanding the nature of reality, or from the fact that no one who *does* understand the nature of reality has ever bothered to explain it to you and, therefore, how could you know? This kind of ignorance is a passive state.
But there is another kind of ignorance that is not a passive state, but a very active one -- and this is willfully ignoring the truth because the truth is not convenient or comfortable. This kind of ignorance is a basic state of denial or resistance towards the way things are that is rooted in our aversion to discomfort. We see only what we want to see, and hear only what we want to hear, in order to avoid the feeling of groundlessness or uncertainty that would arise if we allowed ourselves to take in the full truth of how things really are.
This meaning may actually come closer, in many cases, to the meaning of the Sanskrit term "avidya" (which we usually translate as "ignorance"), and it helps us better understand how the state of ignorance may, in fact, be charged with "emotive" content just as much as the other kleshas. "Avidya" comes from the Proto-Indo-European root "*weid-" meaning "to see" or "to know," and brings us our English word "wit." When we choose to ignore some aspect of reality -- to not-see it, to not-know it -- because reality is inconvenient, we dim our own wits, proceeding from dumb to dumber. From this perspective, "ignoring" or "denial" might often be a better translation for "avidya" than "ignorance," because they point to a state of mind which is actively tuning out some aspect of reality that provokes discomfort.
Consider, for example, the way we live in denial and fear of death. In modern Western society, we squirm at the very mention of death (we feel that to talk about such things is "morbid"), and we go to great lengths to keep it out of sight and out of mind as much as possible. Intellectually we all know we're going to die at some point, and that death could come at any time from any number of unforeseen causes, but emotionally we don't behave as if we really believed in these facts. When death does come, for us or for our loved ones, we often act so surprised. At the same time, because our general awareness of death is being suppressed, we are secretly fascinated by it. We devour murder mysteries and slasher films and vampire and zombie novels, because they give us a "safe" way to engage with the images of death without really letting in the knowledge that it's going to happen to us.
But "denial," as they say in 12-Step groups, "is not a river in Egypt." Our ongoing, willful act of ignoring the fact of our own inevitable death and the uncertainty of when it will happen -- the effort to keep this threatening knowledge out of sight and out of mind as much as possible -- does nothing to change the reality. All it accomplishes is to keep us in a state of ignorance, which botches our attempts to live authentically and happily in this turbulent realm. And it isn't because we're too dumb to realize the truth or because no one has bothered to explain it to us, but simply because we don't want to see it.
Ignorance, or delusion, is regarded in Buddhism as the primary or root affliction, the one that underlies all the others: because we are deluded about the true nature of things, we fumble our way through life, making fatal mistakes and bringing all kinds of ruin and suffering upon ourselves and others.
As Westerners, it may seem strange to us that Buddhist psychology regards ignorance as a klesha, or an afflictive emotion, in the first place. A state of ignorance, or not knowing, does not correspond to what we think of as an emotion, which involves a state of feeling. The confusion here stems from a dissonance between the way we use both words -- ignorance and emotion -- in a traditional Buddhist context versus a contemporary Western psychological context.
In Buddhism, the term "emotion" or "afflictive emotion" (klesha) refers to any mental state that disturbs and agitates the mind, obscuring our ability to see reality clearly and leading us (most often) to act unskillfully. This includes states that are obviously charged with what we think of as "emotive" content, such as jealousy and craving and hate; but it also includes states such as pride and ignorance, which may seem to us to be less "emotive" but which nevertheless disturb and agitate the mind's natural clarity and openness.
The term "ignorance" also has to carry part of the blame. In English, "ignorance" seems to imply a state of being simply dumb about things: a mere lack of knowledge that could stem either from an innate stupidity that prevents one from understanding the nature of reality, or from the fact that no one who *does* understand the nature of reality has ever bothered to explain it to you and, therefore, how could you know? This kind of ignorance is a passive state.
But there is another kind of ignorance that is not a passive state, but a very active one -- and this is willfully ignoring the truth because the truth is not convenient or comfortable. This kind of ignorance is a basic state of denial or resistance towards the way things are that is rooted in our aversion to discomfort. We see only what we want to see, and hear only what we want to hear, in order to avoid the feeling of groundlessness or uncertainty that would arise if we allowed ourselves to take in the full truth of how things really are.
This meaning may actually come closer, in many cases, to the meaning of the Sanskrit term "avidya" (which we usually translate as "ignorance"), and it helps us better understand how the state of ignorance may, in fact, be charged with "emotive" content just as much as the other kleshas. "Avidya" comes from the Proto-Indo-European root "*weid-" meaning "to see" or "to know," and brings us our English word "wit." When we choose to ignore some aspect of reality -- to not-see it, to not-know it -- because reality is inconvenient, we dim our own wits, proceeding from dumb to dumber. From this perspective, "ignoring" or "denial" might often be a better translation for "avidya" than "ignorance," because they point to a state of mind which is actively tuning out some aspect of reality that provokes discomfort.
Consider, for example, the way we live in denial and fear of death. In modern Western society, we squirm at the very mention of death (we feel that to talk about such things is "morbid"), and we go to great lengths to keep it out of sight and out of mind as much as possible. Intellectually we all know we're going to die at some point, and that death could come at any time from any number of unforeseen causes, but emotionally we don't behave as if we really believed in these facts. When death does come, for us or for our loved ones, we often act so surprised. At the same time, because our general awareness of death is being suppressed, we are secretly fascinated by it. We devour murder mysteries and slasher films and vampire and zombie novels, because they give us a "safe" way to engage with the images of death without really letting in the knowledge that it's going to happen to us.
But "denial," as they say in 12-Step groups, "is not a river in Egypt." Our ongoing, willful act of ignoring the fact of our own inevitable death and the uncertainty of when it will happen -- the effort to keep this threatening knowledge out of sight and out of mind as much as possible -- does nothing to change the reality. All it accomplishes is to keep us in a state of ignorance, which botches our attempts to live authentically and happily in this turbulent realm. And it isn't because we're too dumb to realize the truth or because no one has bothered to explain it to us, but simply because we don't want to see it.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Rock and Role
It occurred to me yesterday, as I was doing a meditation practice that involves holding one's attention on an external visual object -- in this case, a simple stone I picked up on the beach -- that many people in the world would probably consider the act of sitting and staring at a rock for 30 minutes to be evidence, if not of actual insanity, at least of great stupidity and dullness and a tremendous failure of imagination. If you're going to stare at something, they might ask, why not stare at the TV screen and at least be entertained while you're sitting there?In fact, using an external object (such as a stone) as an object of meditation is an ancient practice handed down in the Buddhist tradition, and is particularly emphasized in the Mahamudra meditation lineage of Tibet. But, at least in the Westernized forms of Buddhist practice that I've been exposed to, this technique does not seem to be as widely practiced as the more common forms of shamatha (or "calm abiding") meditation that involve resting the attention on the breath and bodily sensations, or on visualizations or mantras and other mental fabrications. (See my article "Meditation 101" for a basic introduction to shamatha practice with the breath.)
In fact, I've known long-time shamatha practitioners who have only ever done the practice using the breath, and have apparently never been told that shamatha comes in other flavors. Now, don't get me wrong -- the breath is a wonderful and profound object of meditation, for reasons that are too many to go into here -- and I have no doubt that these single-minded practitioners have gained a great deal from having such a narrowly defined practice. But I can't help but wonder if they could go deeper and wider if they were to train, as well, in other varieties of the practice. That has been my own experience.
The basic principle of all forms of shamatha meditation is to place the attention on a simple object, something that isn't complicated and doesn't require much thought, and rest the mind there. When the mind wanders, as it inevitably does, bring it back to the object, gently and without melodrama, and continue as before. As Ken McLeod puts it, "Return to what is already there and rest." That, in a nutshell, is shamatha. Deceptive in its simplicity, this practice, if done with sincerity and dedication, gradually calms and steadies the agitated and hyperactive mind, resulting in a heightened sense of well-being and greater presence. Shamatha goes right to the heart of the general ADHD that seems to be built into our human DNA, and continually places speed bumps in our way so that we have to slow down and come more and more into the present moment.
Different varieties of shamatha work with the different sense consciousnesses. Meditating on the breath centers the attention on the body consciousness and the sense of touch, the sensations of the body breathing. Meditating on an external object centers the attention on the visual consciousness and the perception of an object with external form. There are also meditations on sound, taste, and smell, but these sense objects are somewhat more intangible and elusive, and are therefore more difficult objects of meditation, at least for beginners.
As human beings, our eyes may not be as sharp as those of some animals, but our minds are nonetheless dominated by our visual perception of the world. Perhaps, from an evolutionary point of view, we've learned to rely so heavily on our vision because our powers of smell and hearing -- the other senses that would help us stay alive in a world of predators -- are completely pathetic by the standards of the animal kingdom. In the West, in this scientific age, we tend to think that the mind or the "self" is located in the brain, directly behind the eyeballs, and we are so strongly identified with our visual consciousness that it is difficult for us to imagine the existence of a mind without it.
This is what makes shamatha with an external object interesting -- it picks up on this dominant visual mind and uses the visual faculty itself as the conduit for meditation. Because we spend so much of our lives relating to visual forms, training in this way helps us carry the mind of meditation into our everyday experience -- which is, by the way (lest we forget), the whole point of meditation.
The external object could be any simple item: a pebble, a stick, a ballpoint pen cap. Personally, I recommend doing the practice with a stone. I find there's something appealing about the way a stone just sits there, so solid and unmoving, so very stony.
Place the stone on the floor or on a table in front of you, in a place where you can comfortably see it while maintaining good meditation posture. Place your attention on the stone, on the visual perception of it; look at yourself looking at the stone, and really *see* it. If the stone is large, you may find it helpful to direct your attention to one particular detail and hold it there. Try to look at the stone with a relaxed gaze; you're not trying to bore a hole in the poor rock with your laser vision, but you're also not letting your eyes wander away from the object. You're also not particularly thinking about the stone, but merely perceiving it, and holding your attention in that simple experience. When your mind goes off into a train of thought about something, and you become aware of it, simply return to perceiving the stone nakedly, without additional commentary. Notice how your eyes are always looking right at the stone but sometimes you don't even see it because your mind is somewhere else. How is that possible?
If you find that your mind is very discursive and drifting away from the stone a great deal, try the following thought experiment. Imagine that this stone sitting in front of you is not merely inert matter, but that it possesses tremendous intelligence and awareness. It knows when you're looking at it with your mind and when you're not. In fact, this stone gets very angry and wrathful when you are not paying attention to it, and it will rise up and strike you right in the forehead if your attention wanders from it for even a second. Imagining this, look again at the stone and see if your experience is the same. If not, what is it that makes the difference?
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