Be Like Water

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless -- like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

-- Bruce Lee

The shrine room here at Gampo Abbey perches on a cliff high above the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it sometimes feels like you are in the steering room of a tall ship at sea, looking out at the ocean as it stretches below you into the distance. At this time of year, many chunks of ice, large and small, drift slowly northwards and out to sea.

A few weeks ago in this blog, I wrote about the Buddhist teaching of "anatta" (from the Pali language, or "anatman" in Sanskrit), meaning "no-self" or "selflessness." The gist of it is that, while we do appear here in some form, there really is no inherently existent, permanent "self" at the center of our experience, as we commonly assume there is.

Buddha suggested that we think about this paradox in terms of what are called the "two truths" -- relative truth and absolute truth. From the perspective of relative truth, we appear -- you're over there and I'm over here, and we seem to exist as separate entities. From the perspective of absolute truth, however, neither of us can be said to exist inherently and permanently. We appear for a certain time, in a certain form, with certain capacities and characteristics, due to a confluence of causes and conditions that are temporary.

Consider those chunks of ice floating in the water. Each one seems to exist as a thing unto itself, separate from the water, with its own distinct shape and form and even personality. Some are large and difficult to ignore, others are small and may slip past unnoticed. In a relative-truth sense, that is how it manifests. On the level of ultimate truth, however, the ice cannot be said to exist independently of the water or to have any solid identity that can be pinpointed. An iceberg arises from the water, is made of nothing other than the water itself, exists within the water, and melts back into the water. For a certain time, causes and conditions conspire to shape this water into a seemingly solid form that appears to have an identity of its own -- but at no time is the ultimate nature of the ice any different from the ultimate nature of the water in which it appears. Whatever relative form it takes -- water, ice, snow, rain, fog -- its ultimate nature does not change.

Even the largest, most distinctly shaped iceberg, capable of sinking ships, does not have an inherent identity that can be pinpointed. Where is its essential "icebergness?" Slice the iceberg into three pieces -- in which of the three pieces does its inherent self remain? Slice it into a billion pieces -- it's still just water.

The Buddha taught that this is how we exist. There is an ultimate nature of mind that underlies everything, or you could say it *is* everything, and yet it has no form that can be pointed to, no center and no circumference, no inside or outside. For a time, due to causes and conditions (what we call "karma"), this "unborn awareness" that has no form has frozen into a form that appears to us to be a self, just as the iceberg floating in the water appears to be a thing unto itself. But this "self" has never been anything other than the naked, original mind, the unborn awareness, from which it has arisen.

"In the boundless space of suchness,
In the play of the great light,
All the miracles of sight, sound and mind
Are the five wisdoms and the five buddhas.
This is the mandala which is never arranged but is always complete.
It is the great bliss, primeval and all-pervading. HUM
It is boundless equanimity, which has never changed.
It is unified into a single circle beyond confusion.
In its basic character there is no longer any trace
Of ignorance nor of understanding.
Nothing whatever, but everything arises from it.
Yet it reveals the spontaneous play of the mandala."

-- from The Sadhana of Mahamudra

We awoke here this morning to find the ground and the trees and the mountains freshly coated with two inches of pure white snow -- it looks like a Christmas postcard. Later in the morning, a thick fog drifted in from the sea and blanketed everything for a few hours. Later still, the fog cleared a bit and revealed, anew, the snow and ice and water.

A Few Things I've Observed in My First 10 Days at the Monastery

The mind can be both dull and agitated at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The more you find it annoying when someone suggests a better way of doing something, the more your ego is getting in the way.

Living in a community, people will be full of suggestions about better ways of doing just about everything.

On your day off, if a local tells you that a certain hiking destination in the mountains is 3 hours away, assume that it will take you 5 hours to get there. (At 4 hours, you might begin to realize this, and turn back.)



Black Brook, where I stopped to have lunch (a little over 2 hours of mountain trekking away from the monastery). To continue hiking towards the elusive Pollets Cove, I had to take off my boots and socks and wade through the frigid water. Those are small icebergs floating offshore where Black Brook empties into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Physical labor can help clear the mind.

Moose poop comes in two varieties: pellets and patties. (Why? Does it depend on what they ate?) Sometimes the two will appear right next to each other.



Photo: The two varieties of moose poop. Left: patties. Right: pellets.

Fox poop, on the other hand, is small, black and shiny. Sometimes a fox will sniff around another animal's poop (such as that of a moose) and add his contribution to the pile.

Crows and other birds actually make an audible noise every time they flap their wings. It's so quiet up here sometimes, you can hear birds flying. (On the other hand, when it's this quiet, the tinnitus in my ears seems to grow louder, filling up the available space. Perhaps the noise in my mind is doing the same.)

One would logically assume that sitting still and being silent for 3 hours, breathing naturally and resting one's mind, would be easier than hiking up a densely wooded mountain for 3 hours. The opposite is sometimes true.

Jukebox Karma

Music is profoundly human. Making music and listening to music are two of the most uniquely human activities. There are species of birds whose songs approach the level of what we would define as music, and there are even exotic birds who hold twigs in their feet and use them to tap out a drumbeat on a tree branch as part of an elaborate mating display. But no other species invests quite as much emotional content in music, and takes music as far, as humans do. It is one of our most essential ways of articulating and expressing meaning in our lives. It can also be one of our most neurotic forms of self-indulgence. Music has the power to stir up and perpetuate emotional states of mind, both positive and negative.

I find myself thinking a lot about music right now because of its sudden, noticeable absence from my life. I have just begun a year-long (or more) stay at a Buddhist monastery where music is regarded as a form of entertainment and escape that is unnecessary and distracting (though, truth be told, it is occasionally indulged in private....one of the senior nuns here recently succumbed to a swooning infatuation with Jacques Brel love songs, which she confessed to us with a guilty, self-deprecating giggle). Except for liturgical purposes, listening to music, singing, dancing, whistling, and other musical expressions are not permitted in public here.

Music has a way of getting inside your mind and planting seeds there, leaving behind a kind of echo of itself, a psychic residue that can linger even for years, in some cases for a lifetime. Musical memories are stored in a different part of the brain than other memories. Studies of Alzheimer's patients show that even when most other memory and cogitive functions are compromised, songs and lyrics from decades ago can often be easily recalled.

A Buddhist teacher I once studied with, Bill McKeever, called this phenomenon "jukebox karma" -- the accumulated karmic seeds planted in our minds by the thousands and thousands of songs we have listened to, over and over and over, throughout the course of our lives. Many contemporary meditation practitioners, myself included, often find jukebox karma to be one of the most irritating obstacles we encounter within our own minds. There we are on the cushion, trying diligently to meditate and keep our minds centered on some object of meditation, and instead we find that our mind stubbornly wants to keep replaying the chorus from some godforsaken Billy Joel or Rod Stewart song we heard on the radio. Gack! We try to let it go and come back to our meditation, but a moment later we are back at it. The jukebox karma is just too strong.

For the past week, I've had several songs from Marvin Gaye's album "What's Going On" recycling themselves through my mind every time I start to become quiet. On the scale of musical choices to be stuck on, it's not a bad one. It's a great album, full of meaning and power but not laden with the emotional baggage and mental associations that make many other albums treacherous territory. It was the last album I listened to before leaving New York, as I packed up my last belongings and prepared to leave my life (including my CD collection!) behind to come here. But no album, however good it might be, is much appreciated when you can't get it out of your head for a week.

I trust, or perhaps I should say I hope, that as I spend more time here and move further into practice, further away from the CD collection I left in safekeeping with a friend in New York, my jukebox karma will begin to soften and my mind will make room for other experiences to emerge besides old Marvin Gaye albums. But the Buddhist teachings on karma say that karmic seeds, once planted, are always there in the mindstream. Even if it takes lifetimes, they remain there until they meet with the proper conditions to sprout, and then they bloom into fruition.

Here's hoping that many of the jukebox karmic seeds I planted during my teenage heavy metal years do not soon meet with the proper conditions to come back and haunt me.

I Love You

As I begin to write this I am in a plane en route to Halifax, a brief stopover on my way to Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery at the far end of Nova Scotia, where I plan to live for a year or more. Following a call from inside me that has made itself heard these past months, I am taking a leap into the unknown, into full-time spiritual practice and discipline, into a new environment and a new way of life. For the moment, for the year, for I don't know how long, I have left behind two decades of history in New York City and said goodbye to job, apartment, friends, and most of my worldly possessions. Quite literally, as the old John Denver song goes: "I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again."

Although I cannot know what kinds of teachings lie ahead of me on this leg of the journey, I do know now, beyond a doubt, that the process of getting ready to embark on it has been profound and transformational.

For the past several days, a beautiful old Marvin Gaye song, "God Is Love," has been running the loop inside my head. Those who know me personally may find it hilarious to know that I'm identifying so strongly at this pivotal moment in my life, as I'm entering a Buddhist monastery, with a Christian gospel song, but to me the song's theological perspective is beside the point. The underlying message is universal. In it, Gaye urges the skeptical listener not to disparage his friend God, who "made this world for us to live in, and gave us everything." Then Gaye makes his main point: "All He asks of us [in return] is we give each other love."

Love your mother (she bore you)
Love your father (he works for you)
Love your sister (she's good to you)
Love your brother (your brother!)

I am taking Gaye's advice to heart. In a way, that is the reason I am embarking on this journey inwards and launching myself, physically and otherwise, into the open arms of a new family of full-time spiritual practitioners: to deconstruct some of the walls around my heart and learn, I mean really learn, what it is to love. What other journey is there?

Never in my life have I felt the love and support of my friends and family as strongly as I have felt it this week, as they have said farewell to me and wished me happiness on my path (even from those who do not understand the choice I have made). My eyes have been blasted open to see, with a new clarity, how much our paths are intertwined. I feel a deep respect and affection for every human being who has touched my life, at this transitional moment when, paradoxically, I have left so many of those very people behind me as I travel north to a country I have never seen before.

A close disciple once said to the Buddha, in a reflective moment, that good companions accounted for half of the spiritual path. The Buddha replied: "Do not say it is so. Good companions are the *whole* of the spiritual path."

For the first time, I feel that I can appreciate what the Buddha meant by that.

To every person who has shown me kindness and supported me on my life's path, my gratitude overwhelms me at this moment and I have no words to express it. Tears well up and I'm trying, right now, not to cry into my keyboard for fear of short-circuiting my laptop.

It is in this way that we must train ourselves: by liberation of the self through love. We will develop love, we will practice it, we will make it both a way and a basis, take our stand upon it, store it up, and thoroughly set it going.

- Shakyamuni Buddha

No Self

In 2007 I was fortunate to attend several days of profound Dharma teachings given in New York by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. These thoughts are inspired by those teachings.

Whether we realize it or not, most humans tend to think that collecting wealth, companions and power will make us happy. While these things may provide temporary pleasure and comfort, they are not a genuine path to lasting happiness because no matter how much of them we acquire, our wealth, companions and power are always, themselves, temporary and unreliable, subject to loss and change. Even when we have these things in abundance, we worry about losing them. The fortunes of rich men can vanish overnight, or be stolen by other rich men like Bernie Madoff. Friends can turn into enemies, and lovers into exes. Power can become corrupted or be taken away (as the slogan artist Jenny Holzer slyly puts it, "Abuse of power comes as no surprise"). We create tremendous suffering for ourselves by clinging to these things, based on the mistaken idea that genuine, lasting happiness can be had in them.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, transformation of our emotions is one of the keys to genuine happiness. But our methods for transforming emotions must be realistic, based on an accurate understanding of the way things really are. If our approach to training the mind is based on a distorted understanding of how we exist in the world, then we are out of touch with reality and our efforts to attain happiness will also be unrealistic. If we practice in that way, we're just spinning our wheels. So it is essential to inquire into the true nature of what we call the "self."

Buddha taught that you are your own master, yet he also taught that the thought of "I am" (the sense of self) is like the mind of a demon, the wellspring of suffering upon suffering. On the basis of this thought of "I am," which we take for granted, we give rise to "I have," "I want," "I like," "I dislike," "I hate," and all the other self-centered thoughts that lead us to push away the things we think will make us unhappy and pull at the things we think will make us happy. This basic sense of self is based on the notion of some kind of master agency that sits at the center and controls the entire mind-body experience.

But if this "self" inherently exists in the way we habitually think it does, then it shouldn't be very difficult at all for us to pinpoint exactly what it is and where it exists. We have all sorts of largely unexamined ideas about what the self is and where it can be found, but when we examine these ideas more closely and search for this so-called "self" through analytical meditation, we find it is a very slippery fish that always seems to escape our grasp. In Buddhism this kind of analysis is called meditation on emptiness -- because we seem to find, upon further inspection, that our actual experience is "empty" of the self that we've always assumed was there at the core of it all.

In Buddhism, studying and meditating on emptiness is essential because without an understanding of the "emptiness of self" (or "selflessness"), there is no possiblity of genuine liberation from suffering. Until we penetrate that fundamental misperception of reality, we will always be operating on the basis of a deluded sense of self and clinging to the objects that we think will make the self happy. The purpose of studying emptiness is not to negate the existence of things or to deny the validity of our experience, but to expose and ultimately eradicate the clinging that arises in response to our experience.

As the great Tibetan master Tilopa said to his disciple Naropa, "You are not bound by appearances, you are bound by clinging. Cut through clinging, Naropa." In other words, objects such as wealth and companions and power do not, in and of themselves, bind us and make us suffer -- rather, we gum up the works with our habit of clinging to these things and our efforts to manipulate the world to get more of them. Ultimately, our clinging is rooted in a false idea of self, which is why rooting out this mistaken sense of self through emptiness meditation is necessary to find enlightenment and genuine, lasting happiness.

It is also important to cultivate a calm, stable and peaceful mind, and to generate lovingkindness and compassion for all sentient beings. These, too, are aspects of awakened mind and keys to genuine happiness. But lovingkindness and compassion do not, in themselves, directly oppose and uproot ignorance -- even heightened states of concentration cannot dispel the innate clinging to a mistaken sense of self. For this, only direct inquiry into the self and the realization of emptiness in one's own experience can unlock the door to lasting happiness.

Drive All Blames into One

This slogan, drawn from the Tibetan system of mind-training known as "Lojong," suggests that rather than looking for someone else to blame when things go wrong, it might be simpler and more productive to cut the crap and accept responsibility for it ourselves.

When a situation goes sour in the office or in some social setting, usually we find everyone (including ourselves) sitting around pointing the finger and looking for someone else to blame. Stepping forward and taking responsibility for the screw-up is the last thing on anyone's mind, and when someone does take responsibility it can defuse the tension and change the whole atmosphere. Suddenly everyone can relax again, no longer afraid that the hot potato of blame is going to stop with them. I've experimented with this a few times at the office, and it does have an effect (not least of all, on one's own mindstream). Even if you know in your own mind that the screw-up isn't really your fault, accepting the blame allows the whole group to move on and fix the situation.

Consider this example, from today's New York Times:

"Washington is all in a tizzy over who's at fault. Some say it's the Democrats' fault, [or] the Republicans' fault. Listen, I'll take responsibility, I'm the president."

- President Obama, on the fury over executive bonuses at the American International Group

What an amazing thing to witness in Washington politics. What a grown-up response to a childish situation of name-calling and blame games. What a difference a new President makes.

"Drive all blames into one" also works on an individual level. Anytime we feel strong negative emotions, we instinctively want to blame David who caused us to feel that way and harp on David's behavior as the root of the problem. Instead, we could point the accusing finger inwards, and recognize that although David's behavior may not have been what we wanted from him, the actual reason we're so upset is because of our own ego hangups and our self-centered expectations. "Drive all blames into one" suggests that we look honestly at our own emotional reactivity and take responsibility for that before we start telling David what a jerk he is.

Obviously, if David is beating us up or stealing our money or something, then we're not being asked to blame ourselves for his actions -- if that's the case, then we really do need to get the hell away from David. But more often than not, the Davids of the world simply behave in ways that push our buttons. "Drive all blames into one" means that we recognize our buttons and how they're being pushed rather than automatically baring our claws and lashing out at the hand that's pushing them.

Reprieve

This poem is from 2006. It originally appeared in Bodhi magazine.

Waiting to cross Ninth Avenue
this morning, in the rain
I saw you there. I saw
the danger and wondered
why you didn’t run away.
With steel-belted radials thundering
past on either side, strangely,
you sat there. Then I saw.
It wasn’t that you didn’t
want to move, it was that
you couldn’t. Another car had
clipped you, your legs were useless.
You raised your head, looked around,
struggled, gave up, waited
for what would come next.
I wanted to jump into the street,
stop the traffic, do something
but what could I do? I watched
in horror, and looked away
each time a car passed, waiting
for the awful sound, the explosion
of fluids and tissues on asphault,
but each time you were still there.
My light turned green then, and I began
to walk. I hesitated with each step,
drawing closer to you and wondering
what could I do? What should I do?
Pick you up and carry you to the sidewalk?
No, I said, people do not do that here. People
in New York City do not pick up rats,
that is not done. And traffic would not stop
for you, no ambulance would come,
no animal hospital would accept you. As I passed
I stopped. You raised your head again,
looked at me, looked right at me.
By nature we are enemies, you and I.
Ever since we figured out it was you
who brought the Black Death into our cities,
we have been sworn to destroy you.
We have industries devoted to your death, people
in white coats plotting your annihilation.
But this morning you were not Rats, and I
was not the Human race. “God loves all creatures,
great and small,” I recalled from Bible School.
You were a small creature, soaking wet, pathetic,
crippled, waiting for an impossible reprieve.
“I do not want to die this way,” you said. “I do not
want to let you die this way,” I replied. But I saw
that you would never walk again, not even
if I broke with the whole Human race
and did the unthinkable, risking worms, lockjaw, rabies.
What I did, in the end, was worse. “I’m sorry,” I said,
and, reluctantly, I kept walking. I did not look back.
I prayed that your ordeal would end quickly,
that the next car would get you. I prayed
that you would find peace on Ninth Avenue.

Addicted to Love: Waking Up through Heartbreak

The Buddhist teachings on how to work skillfully with strong emotions have always made a lot of intellectual sense to me. But about a year and a half ago, someone I had fallen in love with chose to walk away from our relationship, and I was emotionally devastated. The attachment and the sense of abandonment were overwhelming. Every day for two weeks, I sat on the edge of my bed and cried. Many of those Buddhist teachings about working with emotions often came to mind during that experience, but when the rubber met the road I found handling my emotions skillfully to be much more daunting in practice than it was in theory.

What surprised me most in this whole experience is how hard it can be to simply let go. I found myself stuck in a pattern of trying to hold on to the past, even after it had already changed into something else — I just kept wishing I could turn the pumpkin back into a carriage. This emotional pattern of clinging persisted long past the point where I knew I should let go and move on — but I simply didn’t know how. I couldn’t stop myself from reflecting on how things could have been…should have been…if only I had…if only he had….

Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown teaches a workshop called “Addicted to Love: Romantic Fantasy, Relationships and Meditation,” in which she focuses on the neurotic aspects of romantic love, the role of romance and intimacy on the spiritual path, and the difference between romantic fantasy and genuine love.

One major difference between the two, says Simmer-Brown, is that romantic love is always characterized by a tragic sense of danger and obstacles that heighten the intensity of imperiled love. On a grand scale, think of Romeo and Juliet — the über-love story in our culture, and the template for a thousand other romantic stories — whose tragic romance was only intensified by the opposition of their families and the obstacles it put between them. In romantic love, there is always a feeling of death involved, which only serves to spur the lovers further into their romance. Thus, romantic love is unhappy love. By definition, it cannot be fulfilled. It is a set-up for disappointment.

I recall how it always seemed like my boyfriend had one foot in and one foot out, and how I dug myself in deeper in response to that. He let me know he had been planning to leave New York and move back to the West coast, so the thought that he might one day suddenly pack up and end our relationship was always like a sword dangling over us, warning me of the pain to come if I grew too attached to him. But, taking that obstacle as a classic challenge to the romantic fantasy, it only made me try that much harder to hold on, to persuade myself (and him) that we belonged together more than we belonged apart.

Simmer-Brown characterizes romantic love as a kind of theism: the theistic idea that the other person, the lover, the soul mate, the “right one,” is going to somehow redeem us, make us complete. It’s a kind of mystical longing for the divine, embodied in the form of the lover and the star-crossed connection. This is an idea that permeates our culture and is embedded in most of the stories that we tell ourselves about love. But because this mystical longing for the redemptive power of the divine is misdirected at another human being who is inevitably flawed and impermanent, it involves us in the pursuit of that which inevitably brings disappointment and unhappiness. My boyfriend was always going to leave, and he basically let me know that all along — by definition, I was setting myself up for disappointment and heartbreak by continuing to grow more and more attached to him.

Hidden deeper within the familiar narrative of romantic lovers and soul mates is a very problematic kernel of an idea: that we’re basically incomplete and deficient to begin with, and we need the lover to come along and rescue us from ourselves and our loneliness. In the Shambhala teachings, this idea would be described as the ultimate “setting-sun worldview” — the ultimate way of selling our selves short and failing to recognize and abide in our own basic goodness. "When we experience our lives through this lens of personal insufficiency," says Buddhist teacher Tara Brach in her book Radical Acceptance, "we are imprisoned in what I call the trance of unworthiness. Trapped in this trance, we are unable to perceive the truth of who we really are."

In “The Power of Now,” Eckhart Tolle talks about the addictive search for wholeness through romantic fantasies, which he describes as "an intense and universally sought-after experience":

[When] that special relationship comes along, [it] seems to be the answer to all the ego's problems and to meet all its needs. At least this is how it appears at first. All the other things that you derived your sense of self from before now become relatively insignificant. You now have a single focal point that replaces them all, gives meaning to your life, and through which you define your identity: the person you are "in love" with. You are no longer a disconnected fragment in an uncaring universe, or so it seems. Your world now has a center: the loved one. The fact that the center is outside you and that, therefore, you still have an externally derived sense of self does not seem to matter at first.

Simmer-Brown suggests that this kind of romantic love is not really love of the person, it’s love of love. Instead of seeing the other person accurately, we project onto them and focus only on those parts that confirm our fantasy. When the fantasy is broken and the warts are revealed, romantic love easily flips into aversion and hatred — attachment frustrated turns to aggression. "Just as with every other addiction," says Tolle, "you are on a high when the drug is available, but invariably there comes a time when the drug no longer works for you." This is one reason we so often have difficulty maintaining lovingkindness in our intimate relationships: our hidden agendas and our romantic concepts and ideals about the “perfect” lover keep us from appreciating and relating to the flawed human being who is right in front of us.

As meditation practitioners, we commit ourselves to a basic sense of cutting through “setting-sun” mentality and waking up from our own confusion. In the practice of sitting meditation itself, this involves lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps rather than waiting for someone else to do it for us. If romantic fantasy is unrealistic, then it stands in opposition to meditation, which is fundamentally about cultivating a more open and genuine relationship to reality. As we begin to clearly see the romantic theology that surrounds us and permeates our thinking, we realize how it confirms our habitual “setting-sun worldview” and sets us up for one disappointment after another.

Much of the propulsive force of romantic fantasies springs from our desire to escape our own loneliness. Habitually, when we feel lonely, we reach for something to make it go away, something to give us meaning and a sense of solid ground to counteract the feeling of groundlessness that loneliness entails. Romantic relationships are the universal cure-all, the thing we all tend to reach for in times of loneliness.

“Intimate relationships do not cause pain and unhappiness," says Tolle. "They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that.” In retrospect, I can see that the amount of pain and unhappiness I experienced after the breakup of my relationship with that boyfriend was disproportionate to the level of commitment we shared or the amount of time we'd been together or any other common measure of a relationship's solidity. All that pain couldn't have been solely caused by the relationship or the breakup itself -- it was there in me already, and was triggered and brought out by those experiences.

Simmer-Brown points out that there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. "Loneliness that gives up its plea, its complaint," she says, "is aloneness — and aloneness is actually the starting point and the basis of the spiritual path." We are always alone, after all, even when we are in love. Relating to our aloneness in a less neurotic way, opening to the experience of aloneness with compassion and lovingkindness for ourselves rather than grasping automatically for something to make it go away, is the fundamental act of making friends with ourselves, a pivotal step in growing up spiritually and emotionally.

Desire drives our lives, and we couldn’t exist without experiencing it. It’s when we blindly try to fulfill desire and get what we want, or try to cling to something we already have, that desire spirals into neurosis and attachment and even full-blown addiction. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche points out that our emotional experiences are supposed to be transient, temporary -- that's their very nature. When we fight against their nature and try to solidify our emotions into something graspable and permanent, we are fighting against reality itself.

Although romantic love might be basically neurotic, at its core there is a flame of lovingkindness and compassion towards the loved one that is fundamental to our being and should be cultivated, because it has tremendous power to benefit the world. So our aim should not be to extinguish desire (which is just as extreme, in the opposite way, as indulging our desires compulsively). Rather, our aim should be to learn to experience and work with desire in a more conscious, skillful and loving way. As Eckhart Tolle warns, whether we actually succeed in learning to do this may determine the survival of more than our intimate relationships:

Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict-ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy and fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness.

I do not pretend to count myself among the relatively small number of people I know who have experienced what Tolle calls "enlightened relationships." My own history of emotional intimacy, including this recent heartbreak, has been relatively unenlightened and brought me a great deal of pain and confusion, even a little madness at times. I do not doubt, either, that I have inflicted pain and confusion on others in the process. But I can still aspire to learn from the experiences I have had, and any future experiences I might have, in order to wake up from my pain and confusion and to help others do the same. And despite the tears I have cried over romantic love and the bitter taste it left in my mouth, I can aspire to continue extending a spirit of lovingkindness and compassion, forgiveness and tolerance, generosity and friendship, towards even those who have hurt my pride and let me down, who didn’t live up to my heart's or my ego’s plans for them.

Besides, what is the alternative? Carrying torches, nursing wounds, holding grudges, wallowing in bitterness or self-pity? Keeping my heart closed because I didn't get what I wanted? That way madness lies.

In the very experience of romantic heartbreak itself, perhaps we can discover what Chogyam Trungpa, in "Shambhala: The Way of the Warrior," called the "genuine heart of sadness" -- that tender, fundamental quality of our being that is awakened to the suffering of others and infused with compassion and wisdom. In the Shambhala teachings, the genuine heart of sadness is not regarded as depressing or a bummed-out state of mind -- rather, it is a quality of authentic presence, beyond our usual ego trips and our habitual ways of shutting down and building a protective fortress around our hearts.

When all is said and done, perhaps it is because my heart has been broken that I am able to open it to others, and even to those who have broken it. As Leonard Cohen reminds us in the song "Anthem":

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

Pema Chodron on Faith and Reason

I recommend this compelling Bill Moyers segment and interview with Pema Chodron, which came out a while back. Here's the first few minutes of it....you can see the rest on YouTube.

Backdoor Meditation Instructions

In his book, "Wake Up to Your Life," Ken McLeod presents a set of explicit meditation instructions that go through all the usual details of how to sit in shamatha and work with the body, breath and mind -- instructions that usher us into meditation through the front door, so to speak. But then he adds a set of "backdoor instructions" -- short, metaphorical directions that "go through the back door and elicit the appropriate effort while avoiding the confusion often generated by a set of explicit instructions." McLeod's backdoor instruction, drawn from the yogic tradition in Tibet, is:

Body like a mountain.
Breath like the wind.
Mind like the sky.

I've often found it useful, in my own practice, to reflect on these kinds of poetic, pith instructions. Sometimes, contemplating one or another of these instructions will help me identify an obstacle that is arising in my practice and apply a remedy for it. Here are several backdoor instructions that I find myself returning to again and again.


MEDITATE AS THOUGH YOUR HAIR WERE ON FIRE

This instruction points to the urgency of truly being present and attentive to this moment, this moment, this moment. Imagine if you suddenly became aware that your hair was on fire, and how you might react to that situation. In an instant, everything else goes out the window and you pay complete and total attention to the crisis of the moment. When you realize your hair is on fire, there's no time to remain lost in daydreams or to react sluggishly.

Pema Chodron tells a story from Himalayan folklore, about a proud and ambitious woman who wanted to attain enlightenment. Everyone told her, if you really want to attain enlightenment, you should climb that mountain and go see the old hermit lady who lives in a cave at the top of the mountain. So, after much effort, the woman finally reached the top of the mountain and found the cave, where she glimpsed a saintly old lady sitting inside, meditating with a beatific and peaceful expression on her face. Overcome with awe, the woman prostrated at the feet of the old hermit and said, "I want to attain enlightenment. Please show me how." The old lady regarded her shrewdly and said, "Are you sure you want enlightenment?" The young woman, somewhat taken aback, said, "Yes, of course I'm sure." Whereupon the peaceful old lady transformed into a terrifying demon who brandished a stick and began to chase the woman out of the cave and down the mountain, shouting: "Now! Now! Now!" For the rest of her life, the woman was never able to escape this awful demon who was always chasing her and exhorting her to be present now, now now.

"Meditate as though your hair were on fire" evokes a similar feeling of the urgency of paying attention to each moment. We don't need to jump up from our meditation seat and run screaming out of the room (although sometimes, when wrestling with monkey mind, we might feel like doing exactly that). Rather, it's a question of how we apply ourselves to our meditation. Sogyal Rinpoche talks about how sometimes we find ourselves meditating in a kind of fog, as if we have a hood over our head, and how important it is when we notice that to cut through it and energize ourselves and reinvigorate our awareness. If we go on meditating with the hood over our head, it can grow into a habit, and a habit like that could become a big obstacle for us on the spiritual path.

Trungpa Rinpoche once talked about the quality of that moment when you've just stepped in dog shit. There can be no question about it, no ambiguity. That moment is sharp and vivid and precise, and cuts through everything else. Every moment has that quality, if we are awake to it.

This instruction is pointing to something similar. In this very moment, your hair is on fire, burning with the brilliance of the present experience of consciousness, which has never happened in quite this way before and will never happen again. Are you going to pay attention to it or let it pass by unnoticed?

It reminds me of an advertising slogan I once found inside a bag of cookies. Printed on the little paper that separated the cookies was this word of advice:

"If you're going to have a cookie, have a cookie."

If you're going to meditate, meditate. Don't go about it in a half-assed way. Be present for this moment. And this one. And this one. And this one.


MEDITATE AS THOUGH THERE WERE A SNAKE IN YOUR LAP

A somewhat related but slightly different instruction is to meditate as though there were a snake in your lap. Imagine how you might react if you discovered, at this very moment, that there was a dangerous, poisonous snake coiled up right there in your lap, staring at you, flicking its tongue. You would remain as still as a mountain. Your eyes and your attention would not wander for one moment from that snake. If your arm or your ear began to itch, you would not jump to scratch it out of reflex, but would remain utterly mindful of every movement -- you might even let it go on itching, rather than risk disturbing that snake with any sudden movement. And though it might sound like a contradiction in terms, you would probably relate to that snake in your lap best if you could just relax with it. Rather than sitting there unmoving in a stiff and frozen way, which would only provoke the snake, you could sit there unmoving in a totally relaxed way.

For extra credit, try meditating as though your hair is on fire and a snake is in your lap -- both at the same time!


ALERT! ALERT! YET, RELAX! RELAX!

This instruction comes to us from the legendary Tibetan female yogini, Machik Labdron, who lived in the 11th and 12th century. In a way, this instruction brings together the previous two -- the alertness and urgency of recognizing that our hair is on fire, together with the relaxation and stillness of having a snake in our lap.

The Buddha once instructed a monk who was having difficulty in his meditation, constantly swinging between extremes of dullness and agitation. The Buddha knew the man had been a musician before he became a monk, so he spoke in a metaphor the man would understand. He asked the man if his instrument sounded better when the strings were very tight or when they were very loose. The man responded that the answer was neither: the instrument sounded best when the strings were not too tight and not too loose, but balanced between the two. The way to meditate, the Buddha told him, is the same: not too tight, not too loose.

In meditation, we search for a balance between alertness and precise attention, on the one hand, and relaxation and open awareness on the other. If we lean too far in the direction of alertness and precision, we can become agitated and trip ourselves up with too much effort. That's being too tight. If we lean too far in the other direction and don't apply enough effort, we can space out and get lost in daydreams or sink into that foggy state where we're meditating with the hood over our head, not really present for our experience. That's being too loose.

Wisdom and experience in meditation arise through a combination of relaxation and attention, not through too much of one or too much of the other.

As Machik Labdron's instruction suggests, the balance between alertness and relaxation, between not too tight and not too loose, is something we can actively work with in our meditation. When we find that we are being too spacey or dull, we can apply a different technique to remedy that: counting the breath, for instance, which brings in an element of precision that sharpens our mindfulness. Or if we find that we are being too speedy and agitated with racing thoughts, we can drop the whole thing suddenly and take a break, take in our surroundings, and start fresh.

Alert! Alert! Yet, relax! Relax!


ONE-BREATH MEDITATION

One versatile technique we can try that works as an effective antidote to either agitation or dullness is the One-Breath Meditation. Just focus on being mindful and attentive to one single breath, with no thought of past or future breaths, no counting to ten or five or even two. Just one breath. This one. Being genuinely and wakefully present for even one single breath, with mindfulness and awareness, is better than sitting with a hood over our heads, lost in dullness or agitation, for a thousand breaths.


FISH AND WATER

Another metaphor that helps me think about the relationship between mindfulness and awareness in meditation is the image of a fish in water.

I read an article in the New York Times many years ago about a laboratory experiment that had been done to study the different ways that Asians and Westerners perceive things. One of the means by which they tested this was to show both groups a picture of a fish in an aquarium and use eye-tracking technology to see what parts of the picture their eyes gravitated to first. By and large, the Westerners perceived the fish first, and then took in the context of the aquarium in which the fish appeared. Asians, on the other hand, perceived the aquarium first, and then perceived the fish in this context. I'm not sure what this implies about the differences in perceptual habits among the different ethnic groups, but I've always found it to be provocative.

In this image, the fish is like mindfulness: that quality of the mind that zeroes in on a specific aspect of this moment of being, this experience, and pays attention to that aspect. And the water, or the aquarium, is like awareness: that quality of the mind that takes in the total situation and environment in which mindfulness is occurring.


"RETURN TO WHAT IS ALREADY THERE AND REST"

This is another pith instruction that comes from Ken McLeod's book, and although it's not as metaphorical as the others, I find it to be a helpful reminder about what it is that we're doing in meditation -- or, perhaps more to the point, what it is we're not doing.

Meditation isn't about cooking up something or creating some kind of experience that isn't already here. The present moment of experience is already happening and is just what it is. We don't need to add anything to it or subtract anything from it. We're just sitting here, taking in sensory perceptions, watching thoughts come and go. It's really very simple. No other ingredients required. We don't even need to breathe in any particular way; our bodies are breathing just fine on their own, without our minds trying to step in and manipulate the experience. When we find that our mind has gone off on a tangent, we can simply "return to what is already there and rest."