Practice Groups |
An elderly nun named Gelongma Phalmo tells the story of her younger days as an assistant to a venerable lama in a monastery in Sikkhim:
More than anything, I looked forward each day to my own quiet time to sit quietly on my zafu. I would get all of my chores done and, just as I would sit, someone would beckon me, "Rinpoche needs you right now." Day after day the same thing would happen. Try as I would to just sit a little, as soon as I sat, I would be called to come.
Finally, I realized I must make everything I do my meditation. And so I did.
With a twinkle in his eye, Rinpoche said that from now on, he would probably not be needing me so often-especially when I was sitting!
That's how Karmapa Rinpoche trained me.
It's amazing how fast the week-long retreat goes. It's Friday already. Sunday we'll be on the street again. Tonight I'd like to talk about dancing with life, integrating the Dzogchen view and meditation into the actions and conduct of our daily life-where it really counts, after all. Enlightenment should show up in behavior, don't you think?
First, how to practice in daily life and bring our awareness practice into life. Secondly, how-from awareness practice-enlightened behavior, impeccable conduct, occurs. Not just trying to be religious, to conform to any particular ideal or style, but how enlightened behavior and unselfish compassion naturally proceed from awareness. For we need not let preconceived notions about what spiritual life should look like tarnish and impede the freshness and spontaneity of our own untrammeled purity of heart and true nature.
When I think about dancing with life, I think about fear, withdrawal, our hangups-our behavioral armor, as Wilhelm Reich called it. The armor that we put on when we were young, probably very young, to protect us; our persona, our personality, our way of managing feelings and coping with things to make them less painful. Of course, it is very easy to be externally spiritual, quiet, peaceful, and lovely here-lovely flowers growing on their little, square seats, in their little pots, and everybody just does what they're told. You ring the bell and everybody salivates and goes to the kitchen like Pavlov's well-trained dogs! And the volume control is down very low here, and the speed is slow. But when we go out of here, the volume goes up a little, and the fast forward button engages, and things get a little faster. And all the pots start bumping against each other like bumper cars at the amusement park. Horns blare and drivers start cursing-then where are you? How are you amidst all of that?
Are we afraid of that? Can we handle that? Are we afraid we're going to lose something when we leave this nice oasis here, our peaceful week-long, protected meditation practice? Can we dance with life, or do we need to stay here all the time? Not just here, like living at Haus Engl, but in the "meditation hall," surrounded by other people who are like us and agree with us on almost everything. Are we willing to go forward, to grow and change, or are we just trying to find the right place to stay, like a peg in a hole, and just stay there, like a safe harbor where we can anchor our boat in a snug little harbor and never be troubled by the wind or the waves? For me, the point of life is not to find a safe little harbor, to anchor where the waves and the wind can't get us. That's a very temporary situation; maybe just to sleep at night or to wait for the big storm to blow over. But our being is a great vehicle meant to enjoy freely the vast sea of being and life. Not just to find safe corners to sit in like a Buddha statue in a niche, like a dog that's been kicked too often. As long as you stay in the corner, you're safe. But what kind of way of life is that? Is that what we bring to our meditation? Is that how we want to carry on in life, as avoiders? I hope we've learned something more than that here. That we don't think that we just have to go out from here and put in our earplugs and eyeplugs and our mindplugs and get home and get back into our meditation room there where it is safe. Enough retreat already. Let's advance. Let's attack, even!
Can we open up a little, let go of our resistances and face our fears and anxieties, and have some tolerance and acceptance of what might perhaps be uncomfortable feelings? Can we really inhabit and experience them fully for once, not just try to protect our illusory selves from any uncomfortable feelings, doubts, and anxiety? We always hear about greed, hatred, delusion-all termed bad! And, OK, they're problematic, yes. But what about the things we don't hear so much about in Buddhist scriptures? Does anyone here ever feel lonely, anxious, nervous, insecure, hesitant, doubtful, shy, inadequate, depressed, alienated? Where does it say in Buddhist scriptures about feeling inadequate and having low self-esteem? Sutras usually say you have no self; that could too easily become self-denial and self-deprecation. The Dalai Lama, in a conference with Westerners a few years ago, was explaining how easy it was to just rest meditatively in your Buddha-nature, even if you didn't believe in God or in any dogma. Some of the Western psychologists present pointed out that that was also a belief. And he said, "No, that's not a belief in Buddha. It's just your own basic goodness that everybody feels." The psychologists tried to explain to him that Westerners have a problem with low self-esteem; that they didn't believe that they were basically good and that there was no problem in their essence. Western cultural assumptions and Christian doctrines like original sin and so on need to be considered, in dealing with our conditioning.
This is a very subtle point here. We assume a lot, perhaps too much, when we use traditional ways of explaining Dharma. The Dharma teaching is that everybody can do it themselves. "Be a lamp unto yourself," Buddha said. But many of us come from an upbringing that tells us that, no matter what we do, we're not good enough. It is very difficult to overcome that conditioning, those hesitations, those feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. So we are afraid to just jump into naturalness and noncontrivance, as Dzogchen suggests. It is much safer to sit in our little flowerpot here than to jump onto the dance floor and to dance with life, where anything might happen unexpectedly. As long as we stay here in our little pot, like a little stunted bonsai, we are safe. But is that the kind of spiritual life we want to lead? Or are we stunting our growth and staying in a very small mold, like the square cubes in icecube trays? Everybody gets a square black or maroon meditation cushion, and every Buddhist fits. You get a little square black zafu imported from Japan. And if your roots grow even a little bit, somebody comes around and goes, "Whap! Get back in the icecube tray." Is that what we are doing with our development? Trying to be good little boys and girls? Keep trimming off every surprise growth branching out, cracking the mold, reaching for the light or the nourishing water in all directions, like growing shoots and roots?
What are we afraid of? Afraid of making mistakes, of absolutely fucking up? We've already made so many mistakes and fucked up so many times, why are we afraid of making a couple more? Can't we try to be just a little more playful about this? We're not born to be wallflowers at life's dance hall and just sit on the side and watch, where it's safe and we won't sweat into our new clothes, our party clothes. What kind of life is that? And yet we all do that in different ways. Last night I was talking about being out-to-lunch and not really inhabiting fully one's being and existence. It could be painful, if we become more aware, which also means more sensitive. You might feel some feelings, you men! That's scary. I can't talk to you women, but the men at least know this problem: fear of feelings. They are so messy, unmanageable, unexpected.
One of the American Zen masters, George Bowman Roshi, an excellent Dharma teacher, said to me when we were joking around, "You don't seem to get angry very often, Surya." And I said, "No. I'm proud that I haven't been angry in at least five years." He said, "Oh, yeah. I was really angry once. It was in 1974!" It was all a good joke. Like the icecubes in the tray: Well-placed, seemingly very imperturbable, but totally frozen. Of course, we get angry every day. But do we allow ourselves to feel it, acknowledge it? No. Never! We just keep it in and hide it. Cold anger is like cold hell. And it makes us crazy, keeping it inside, brooding over it.
Can we dance? Dance with life? We are the dance. Let's not be dualistic here. We can use all kinds of images, but we are the dance. Can we be the dance, or do we always have to contract and constrict, take ourselves out of the dance and be the observer, the wallflower, the detached meditator, the philosopher, the lover of truth? Not true, but loving truth. "Truth is over there, and I love it. I study it all the time. I talk about it, write about it. Put it on the shrine." Philosopher means lover of truth, but how dualistic putting it out there is! Do we have to contract and pull out of the dance in order to appreciate the dance? That's what we do. We're afraid of getting carried way. But maybe we have to renounce that holding back sometimes and let ourselves be carried away. That's the tantric flip: Use the force of the opponent, like in Aikido or Jujitsu, to flip it over. Not just trying to resist and push back the enemies, the kleshas, the negativities, but just stick out your foot and trip it. It flips over under its own momentum.
You can't control these energies, these karmic winds. But you can learn how to sail them more skillfully. We can surf on the waves, and even seek bigger waves when we know how to surf. Then we have more fun dancing with the waves of life.
Of course, when we surf, we get knocked over, we get wet. But that's all part of the fun. We have to get wet. Or do we just want to be wading in the shallows of life? Just get our toes wet, never make the plunge, because it's too dangerous and we might drown? If we are not willing to drown in it, we can't really experience it fully. Whether it is making a commitment to a relationship, a commitment to a practice or to your vocation, or taking a risk to go beyond your self-imposed limits; it is risky, it is challenging, but it is worth it. So when we leave here, I hope that this outrageous tantric approach called Dzogchen-which really opens up all the possibilities, not just the pious, religious possibilities, but all the possibilities of freedom and proactivity, unrestricted creativity, outrageous spontaneity-will inspire you to experiment in your own life. Not just to meditate here in the hall and stay quiet and walk slowly. You can also do fast walking meditation. You can also run! In Rinzai Zen, they run around the hall. One of my friends in Korea told me that in her monastery every morning for a half an hour the master would come out and jog with all the monks backwards. Just imagine how much attention you have to pay to jog backwards in line for a half an hour. Attention is the entire point. Try it. Jogging backwards requires full presence of mind, total attention-meditative training.
So let's not be too square about what is meditation, what is awareness, what is cultivating mindfulness. Try jogging backwards in the morning. That'll wake you up. You might also feel less driven, less compulsive to get somewhere. It can reverse the tendency to drive and strive forward in a unilateral fashion. We're always trying to get somewhere, driving forward. Let's hurry backwards for once. Maybe that'll be a good deconditioning of our achievement orientation, our Buddhist bulldozer mind. Forget about Enlightenment or Bust. Buddha Here Now!
Let's not be afraid when we leave this retreat place that we are going to lose something, lose what we gained here. Anything we are going to lose, we should lose; it's not the real thing. It's just temporary: our peace, our concentration, our little routines, our little flower pots we found here to sit in. That's not home. That is not our true home. That's just a good little test tube. Let's come home to ourselves and to our being and to our own way, wherever we are. To our true life. Reclaiming our true selves, our Buddha-nature; being the host in this temple, not just guests.
Of course when we leave here we are going to have less concentration. The mind starts going faster, the decibel level increases dramatically, there are other demands on us, family and work and all sorts of things. Of course. Even if you do a three-year retreat, three years also pass and then you're out pounding the streets again. A pedestrian on the street again. It is what we learn, it is what we are, that counts. Not merely what we do. Whatever we learn here or in Buddhist practice-it is the wisdom, the insight, the clarity, the heart-opening, the change of heart, that counts. Not just the state of mind, which is what passes. So let's not be afraid when we leave here that we are going to lose something. In fact, let's consider that we've been out to lunch here and it's time to really get on with it and get back to where spiritual life really matters: in our own life, where we are fully responsible for our life. Here other people are doing things for us, a little too much, perhaps. It can be too easy here.
Sometimes it's easy to meditate with a group, with a teacher. It's good, it's significant. It's important to recharge our batteries sometimes this way. But in a way it also makes it too easy. You just come here and Surya Das shouts at you or makes you laugh and you temporarily forget all your problems. But the problems don't go away, do they? The problems remain, to be worked out day by day, don't they? And one's path remains to be worked out. So I would look forward to leaving and to use these tools in life. This Dzogchen View of everything, complete and perfect as it is. Recognizing that everything that happens is perfect, even if it seems unwanted; it is all lawful karmic unfolding. Dzogchen Meditation allows us to better accept everything as it is, seeing through everything and remaining free and unconditioned. And the Action of Dzogchen, spontaneous, unpremeditated, blossoms as appropriate, impeccable behavior. Whatever form it takes, it is just an expression of our innate Buddha-nature, our true, original nature. We don't need it to fit into any special form or explicitly religious, pious practice. Water can take any form; that's its genius. The Great Way, the Tao, truth, reality can take any form. Our being can take any form, can fit in anywhere. Let's not be too square or rigid. We can fit in anywhere. Whatever music the bands of the universe play, we can dance with it. Whatever waves come, we can surf on them. Whatever winds come, we can sail with them.
This brings up fearless courage, even in the face of adversity, fear, illness, death. This is a good preparation for death and dying, also. Let's face it. We're all dying. We're all getting older. We don't know how long we'll be alive. So it's good to prepare for this now. Not at the last minute. It's too late then, when your body and mind get out of control. This is the time to begin conscious dying and face our fears, our doubts, our questions. This is the time to prioritize what we want and need to do in our lives. And to do it. To find it and complete our karma here. Not to procrastinate.
So let's not waste time. It's good that we're leaving this retreat Sunday. We've been here long enough. How long does it take to wake up and be responsible, and to really let go? How long does it take to become yourself? How far do we have to go to become That, what we are? How to become what we are?
When we leave here, I hope that you'll find it possible to use some of these tools-whether it is the specific meditative practices or the view or just the lightness and humor, cosmic laughter at the absurdity of things. Dharma should lighten your load, help you throw off some of the extra baggage, to be honest with yourself and others. Not just nostalgically remembering how great it was at Haus Engl in the mushroom-filled Bavarian woods, and thinking I can't wait for the next retreat somewhere, always going to the next place. But really digging into our true life, wherever we are.
When we do leave, I think it would be very helpful if we carried on with some regular formal daily practice also. I'm sure I don't have to tell you this; you're all seasoned veterans of these Dharma wars! But you know how hard it is to carry on practice in your own life. So I hope you will, every morning or night or both, do some formal meditation, some chanting, some breathing and relaxation exercises. A lot of you come privately and tell me how much you love the chanting. It seems to be like a big secret and a sin that you are confessing. Are we ashamed of being soulful, hearty, passionate people? Why don't you just chant for a whole hour every morning if you like it? Chanting is a great form of prayer and meditation. Lose yourself in the chanting, and find your true, transpersonal self. Or chant when you are driving around or jogging around. I listen to chanting tapes in my car. Then I chant along. It's really a great way to be. There are no disturbances, no phone calls. It's a great time to meditate. It's hard when you're driving your car to just close your eyes and meditate. But you can always chant. Or listen to Dharma talks in the car. All of my Dharma study is now on tapes in the car. It's one of my best private, personal times. And if you don't like what the teacher is telling you to do, you can always push the fast-forward button and get onto the advanced teachings! (Just joking!) Or replace Dharma drivel with some good music. Man cannot live by Dharma alone, you know!
It is very helpful to bring the Dharma creatively into our life. I call it Creative Dharming. It's not just Dharma Lite or Dharma for Dummies. It is smart to find Dharma in every situation, each and every moment. In the Mahamudra/Dzogchen tradition, we have this thing called bogden, enhancement. I was really happy when I learned about this. I always felt after doing retreat that I should really hold onto my practice, like I had made a few more steps so I should hold onto it a little harder and not lose it. Then I'd be discouraged as the days and weeks went by back at work, feeling like my practice was slipping, my intensity and focus were fading. But the practice of bogden, enhancement, is like taking your practice on to the next step.
The oft-given example of bogden is Naropa. He was the abbot of Nalanda University and a great pundit, scholar, lecturer, and monk in ancient India. After doing that for thirty or forty years, he had a vision of this old witch-like woman who told him something like, "Naropa, you're just dancing on books. You know the words but not the inner meaning. You're missing the whole point. Go and find your destined guru, Tilopa." Tilopa was a crazy yogi, like a mad dog living by the river. But Naropa gave up his job as august abbot and went wandering in search of that crazy yogi by the Bengal river. Again this witch, this hag-who was actually Vajrayogini, the wisdom deity incarnate-appeared in the form of a leprous, untouchable woman by the roadside. Somehow this hag seduced him. And when Naropa found himself rolling around in the mud with this old untouchable-making love to a woman was bad enough for a monk-abbot, but to a leprous untouchable!-but there he was having more bliss than he had ever had in his meditations and enlightenment experiences. And he realized that he was no longer just a monk, that he had become a tantric yogi.
It is always said in the Mahamudra lineage that that was Naropa's enhancement. He no longer had these ideas of clean and unclean, pure and impure, leprous and beautiful, untouchables and brahmins, and so on. He gave up being a restrained, chaste monk and became a mad-dog yogi like Tilopa through the blessings of this leprous beggar dakini woman. Of course, she was an incarnation of the ruby-red, sow-headed chow-hound Vajrayogini, the dakini whose head was like a pig's head. (Why is her head like a pig's head? Because she doesn't discriminate between clean and dirty, just like a pig. Just eats anything, goes anywhere, does anything. That's an example of freedom. Not just thinking this is clean and that is dirty, but enjoying just rolling in the mud. Like Saraha the siddha, who sang, "Who can blame me for just rolling around in the mud? What's wrong with the mud? It's just earth and water." But in India the Brahmin rules were very strict about white clothes, untouchables, and a lot of other discriminations, like we make. "Oh, I want it to be quiet, not noisy." Or, "I should be with spiritual people, vegetarians who do yoga every day, not the hunters, rednecks, and beer-drinking rowdies at Oktoberfest.")
Enhancement practice would be going right from here to the Oktoberfest pavilion and seeing how you handle that. In fact, in Kyoto, Japan, in the Zen temple of Putaiji where I studied in the early seventies, at the end of every five-day sesshin there is a big sake party in the monastery. The roshi leads it. I used to hate that. I thought, "Five days of intense meditation. I don't want to just waste it getting drunk and having a hangover the next day." But aged Uchiyama Roshi demanded it, and led the way. He was an old man, about 70 years old. He was a great master. And I never could understand it then. That was in 1973 and '74, and I really couldn't get the point. But as I grew up more, I got the point: I was holding onto the small and afraid of entering into the big. Like Naropa had to enter into the bigger way, in the mud, get real a little, and live like everyone else by the river, not like a precious monk in a monastery with a lot of books where everything was under control like an anal-retentive bachelor controlling his own life every moment. He had to let go and let things get out of control more. That's called enhancement. Ironing out or evening out the difference between the holy Dharma and your gritty, daily life.
To end the story, Naropa found Tilopa by the river near Calcutta. Tilopa's eyes were staring, bloodshot, and yellowed, and he was wearing rags and living under a bridge and eating what the fishermen threw away, the entrails of fish. That Tilopa, by the way, is the patriarch of the Mahamudra lineage. Holy Tilopa. You can read the royal songs of Tilopa. Even now, 1000 years later, people are still singing and teaching those songs of the mad dog, that crazy yogi. He blew Naropa's mind, and made him a mensch and an enlightened siddha.
So let's not be so square that when we leave here we'll keep everything the way it is and the way it was. Of course, you can't anyway; you'll just create more conflict for yourself if you try to keep things any such way. Let's practice enhancement, take our practice to the next stage. Bring it into our life, whatever it is that we're doing. Dance with life fearlessly. Take this great vehicle out on this vast sea where it belongs, and enjoy it. We don't have to hide in a cozy, snug, safe harbor. It's unsinkable. It is the waves. There's nothing to fear from the waves of change. We are inseparable from all that is.
I personally found that the many years of trying to protect whatever I gained in the spiritual life was one of the biggest hangups of all. Trungpa Rinpoche used to rag us mercilessly about this feebleness of spirit. I have found that this sort of tantric enhancement is very helpful in balancing out all the general Buddhist discipline and controlling and purifying. The five days in sesshin just drinking tea and eating brown rice purified our bodies, but my mind felt very attached to that purity and tranquillity. The sake made me forget about that. And Zen-crazed Japanese monks would smoke cigarettes and stay up all night and drink sake and wrestle. They used to wrestle all night. Fortunately, I didn't have to do that. I think they were afraid of me; I was too big. Imagine that instead of having a circle sharing talk at the end of this retreat that we'll all wrestle together. All together; not just one-on-one, but all together, just rolling around like kids at a pajama party or pillow fight. Think about that. If I said we were going to do that tomorrow, I bet half of you wouldn't come. But why not? What's the big deal? Is it too unspiritual?!
So this teaching of enhancement is truly marvelous. The other day I went to the hot baths at Eggen-Baden, and I was there for many hours. I was looking into relaxing more and meditating and sky-gazing and dissolving in the natural state and floating in the water, and so on. It was a lot like being in a sensory-deprivation tank. And how much it was like rebirthing, resting in nondual Rigpa, nondual awareness. How naturally it came to me there. Much easier than sitting in a funny cross-legged position that my body was hurting in. That bathtub experience became an enhancement. Finding out how to practice anywhere. Even though there were a hundred old people around and a lot of noise, a lot of German chatter, it didn't matter-not at all.
You don't have to be alone to meditate. You can be doing it on the highway or anywhere. I think it is very important to be creative with taking what we have learned-it's hard to say this in words, but let's refer to the sky-gazing or the cutting through-and find moments in the day to use it. Of course, every moment is the best moment, but maybe we can't remember every moment. But let's try our best to use it during the day. Not just one hour of meditation in the morning. Even one moment in the middle of the day, or once in a while. Break up the day and just stop what you're doing and go "Ahhh." It stops everything. It stops the world, as Carlos Castaneda says. Like the Muslims five times a day stop their work and bow to Mecca. It punctuates the day, makes the whole day sacred. Why don't we do it five times a day or ten times a day? Just for one moment would be enough. Not just waiting for our hour on the meditation cushion, or waiting for next Sunday, or waiting for the next ten-day meditation retreat with a teacher from afar. Let's bring it into our life, those moments that cut through the solidity, the claustrophobia, the veils of illusion; let's perforate the solidity, make little holes in all the solidity of all our concepts in our daily life and let the fresh air blow through. It is a lovely way to live.
I think this is the best way to carry on a spiritual life, by bringing it in many times during a day, not just meditating once in the morning. It is better to really integrate it. While we're waiting in line at the movies, or stopped at the light waiting for it to change, sitting at our desk, or whatever. We can just stop the world for that moment. Each moment can be a little awakening, a little prayer. Or use nature. Go out in a garden or look at the sky. Relax, let go totally, and dissolve into it. We say become one with it, but actually we are one with it. Just stop withdrawing, pulling out of it. Stop contracting out of it. Just be it for one moment. Be the breath. Pure, pristine awareness, unmanipulated presence of awareness. Stop doing for a moment and just be. You don't have to be anything. You don't have to be anyone. Just be. That's before we've even been born as someone, as a separate suffering self. Pure being.
So when we go out, I hope you can find creative ways to do this. It's nice to join a sitting group and have the support of others once or twice a week. It's nice to go to retreats once in a while, hear teachers or teachings, and read spiritual books, but even better is to make every moment part of the path of your life. Celebrate every moment. Take joy in the smallest things. Appreciate every moment, whether it's wanted or unwanted, positive or negative in appearance. It can all be assimilated into the path. Even shit can become manure and help flowers grow. So we can get a little more even, spiritually detached, and equanimous. And enjoy the rollercoaster. Surf the waves. Not just trying to flatten everything out and make it all boring and say, "Oh yeah, I haven't been mad since 1974." That's denial. That's pathological almost. Does the ocean improve when the waves die down? I don't think so.
Let's keep up to date with things. Rather than storing all our anger for twenty years, until we explode one day, let's just release it little by little every moment. Let the energy, the bubbles, release. One of my friends teaches a kind of tantric yoga. She says to release these bubbles, these energy knots, into your aura, into your energy field every moment. Don't store them up. Don't hold onto them and suppress them. Just keep releasing them every moment like bubbles arising from the depths and popping as they rise to the surface. Can you feel what that would do? Rather than holding it in so you get neckaches and headaches and backaches, release it every moment. Don't tense up and tighten up around these ephemeral energies. If your partner does something you don't like, just say "I don't like that." Don't close it off and hoard it and keep it for ten years until you have 10,000 of them built up, and you explode. Better to stay emotionally up to date, every moment. Be honest. Release it. Release it. Release it. "I don't like that. I wish you wouldn't do that." You can say that. Not, "Don't do that. You shouldn't do that." That's different. Simply acknowledge it. Don't suppress it. That's how we can integrate it every moment in our life. Just like when we are meditating: allowing things to happen so they don't pile up like a big snowdrift. The more awareness we have, the more we can acknowledge these things, rather than just cut them off. Too often, before we even feel it, we cut it off, push it down. We make ourselves crazy that way. The internal pressure builds up: tension, stress, high blood pressure, ulcers, bitterness, resentment… Who needs it?! Release it. It is a great relief not to carry all that shit around. Learn to die a little with releasing each moment, and to be born afresh each moment too.
That's why dancing is so great. I think dancing with life is a good image of how we can go along. Thomas Merton said, "God prays by dancing." I like that thought. Did you ever practice dancing until you drop? That's a great practice. In Dzogchen we do that sometimes. Not in this cloister particularly, but in some kinds of more unconventional practices. You exhaust yourself through movement until you just collapse, then, in that moment, when you can't even remember who you are anymore, pop the question: Who am I? What is this right now? That's the moment to turn the mind on itself. When you can't even move, when you can't even be yourself anymore-then what? Who are you?
Let's take this principle out into life, and not hold back, shield, barricade, and protect ourselves, like we're saving ourselves for the real job, hoarding our energy for later. This is the real work. Let's not hold back. It is now or never, as always.
I think this is a very important subject, maybe the most important of the whole week. Sometimes I think we Buddhists are much too achievement- and goal-oriented; too technique-oriented. We think that doing something is going to do it for us. It's not that simple. It's the being itself that counts. That's what we learn through the techniques that we do. If meditative techniques don't ultimately undo themselves, they are not sufficiently liberating, not what Buddha called "the heart's sure release, liberation."
What we are doing here is the most important thing in the world, but it's not better than what anybody else is doing. Everybody is doing their best. Just like us. What's the difference? The farmers are farming to get happy. We're meditating to get happy. What's the difference? The hunters are hunting to get happy. We have to recognize everything as part of the great dance, the cosmic mandala of suchness. All are like deities in the divine dance.
The practice of everyday life is everyday life. Of course, what we bring to it determines whether it is really practice or not. Let's not pretend otherwise. It doesn't say in the Bible to be little children, it says to become again like little children. Of course, everybody is living everyday life, but practice is to come back to it again, with awareness, to know what's what. To be fully aware of that. Then it is true that all beings are Buddhas, including rats and cockroaches and all the rest. Awakened Buddhas recognize them as Buddhas, but sleeping Buddhas don't. That's the difference.
So in daily life, no fuss. That is very ordinary, but also most extraordinary. Who can be that simple, that rich, that content? The great pandit Nagarjuna said, "Contentment is true wealth." Who can be content to just be with whatever is? Just to do whatever we're doing? Who can just do what we have to do without complaining? If not complaining, then crowing about it, being proud of it, making a big deal of it; making it into a story. Telling ourselves stories.
I have noticed that even when meditating I'm telling myself stories. We're always telling ourselves a story. That's the autobiography of Samsara. Telling ourselves a story: Where I've been and where I'm going and what it means and what I'm getting out of it and every variation on that theme. Even when we're sitting, we're telling ourselves some story: "Oh, this is a good one." Or, more often, "This is not a good one!" They're equal, those two stories, regardless of the content. Or, "This would be a good one if the person in front of me would stop moving or if my knee didn't hurt." Or whatever it is this hour. Always telling ourselves a story.
Awareness is curative. The more we are aware of it, we might get tired of the story-telling. It can be amusing and we can enjoy it, but we don't have to be so invested in it as if without the story nothing would be real. Actually, it's quite the opposite: With the story, we lose the reality that is there. The story is obscuring it. The story is covering it up. So we're all telling ourselves the story of who and what we are. Every moment, if we check-and I was looking into my own mind-we are always telling a story through concepts, which are not the reality itself, they're just overlaid on reality, like maps that outline the territory but are not the real territory. Telling ourselves stories endlessly. I think it would be interesting to look into the practice of everyday life, into what story we're telling ourselves now. Like, "Oh, I've come a long way so I can just indulge in this now." As if there is some real meaning in that. If you want to indulge, just go ahead. We don't have to make a big story out of it. That's just extra energy wasted, when you could just be indulging straightahead!
Telling our story and then inevitably telling others' stories, and if they don't buy into our stories having fights and ending up with wars about them. We can really settle back, I think, and look into what we are really getting out of telling these stories. See if it isn't just as rewarding, or even more so, to just tune into the actual story, which doesn't depend on us to tell. Just tune in and listen to the real story. Buddhism always says nothing and empty and no-self, that everything's like a dream, unreal, and all, but the positive side is what we would call reality. In Buddhism we don't hear so much about reality, we emphasize unreality because it's a deconstructive approach. The positive side is freedom, openness, loving-kindness, mastery, impeccability, genuine living, altruism. That's the reality. And we're missing that story because we're telling our own story constantly and then trying to pass it to others to reinforce our own story-telling.
I think this practice we do here and at home is something we can really use to learn to listen better, to tune in, to be receptive. Not just to try to control or understand or get somewhere. But look into the story-telling and see what we are getting out of it. See if we need to construct any story about what we are doing. In fact, we are just sitting here. Hard to argue with that. But look at the stories we could have around it. Do we need to have those stories? Like, "This is a Buddhist center and it's good to come here." Or, "We get merits." Or, "I'm a Buddhist. I'm part of the sangha." Those are all good stories, and they are true to a certain extent, but how conscious are we that we need to tell those stories? Rather than just be here totally. And be there totally when we walk down the street afterwards. And be there totally when we are in our bed at night. And be there totally next week at our horrible job that we hate with all those horrible people that we hate. Or whatever. Can we do all that without the story?
This practice prepares us to simply be and live ordinary moments with no fuss and not have to overdo everything. To really practice the practice of every moment. Not to make every moment into some kind of pious, Buddhist thing, but realize the Buddha-nature in every moment; the light shining as every moment. It is the practice of every moment in a very naked form. Not having to add on any of these mantras and Buddha-fields. Not having to add on transforming and purifying everything.
This openness and awareness practice of Dzogchen really attunes us to a receptivity and openness, a way of being that is very useful, even radically transformative. We can listen better, rather than story-telling and talking so much. We can tune into things as they are. Receive what is happening and surrender to that, give ourselves up to the process. We don't have to tell it, to push it, to fabricate it. It is all happening without our interference. That's the meaning of wu wei-beyond action and non-action both. That's the meaning of Dzogchen, whether we're sitting or walking around or chopping water or carrying wood, or whatever.
I think it is something very practical that we can actually do in our life. Not something esoteric that depends on a lot of specialized knowledge. I personally feel that it is incumbent upon us to live more that way. To look into that as a possibility and let go of some of the story-telling. Although as an old storyteller once said: Why did God make the world? Because he likes a good story. That's where all these stories all come from. We make them up to entertain ourselves. But if you find it exhausting, tiresome, if you don't like the story line, you might look into who's telling the story and why.
I told you my little story tonight. Now it's your turn. Any questions or stories tonight?
What's the difference between bodhicitta and low self-esteem?
The notion that we are not who we think we are, that we're not an independent, concrete ego, doesn't mean low self-esteem. We might realize very high self-esteem when we realize what our true self is, our transpersonal, luminous, loving, infinite self-nature. That's your true self. So that's not low self-esteem.
You might say it's no self-esteem. It's like not esteeming your ego, but esteeming that higher nature in all. Low self-esteem is actually an ego problem, a problem with a separate, individual, clinging ego that is attached to its view of itself, its story. "I am no good. I'm pathetic and can't do anything" and so on. That's low self-esteem. That's egotism. That's self-clinging. Anatta, not-self, is beyond egotism. It's unselfish.
If you have low self-esteem, it's very hard to be unselfish, isn't it? You are always fighting to survive, to hold onto your tiny bit of turf. Ego has so little turf that it is a constant struggle to survive. That's egotism.
Bodhicitta is the opposite of that. There's no struggle for ego to survive. It has infinite possibilities. But a problem that many of us have is that we bring our low self-esteem to our practice and we feel, "How can I do it? I'm not good enough." Or, "I'm not doing it right." You look around the room out of the corner of your eye and everybody else is sitting there like a Buddha, and you're sitting there feeling like the fan that the shit always hits. But everybody is really the same. There is nobody sitting here like a Buddha any more than anyone else.
One of my teachers, Tulku Jigme Khyentse, said to me once, "Surya, it's good to be confident, but you should be confident in the right thing." He was talking about self-confidence. He was saying don't be confident in your self; be confident in your true self, in your Buddha-nature. Be confident in your awakened nature, not in your ego self. That's the difference between your low self-esteem that is holding onto its ego dummy and true realization of the liberating possibilities of Buddha-nature. That's bodhicitta.
It's a slight shift in perspective. It's like those pictures of goblets and faces. When you look at it the first time, you see one or the other, but then there is a shift and you see the other. So how do you shift from one to the other? It's hard. It's like with form and emptiness, or self and other. The more aware we become, the more open and less rigid we are, the easier it is to shift from one to the other. From the figure-the goblet-to the ground-two faces. We can see that we are different but we're the same. We can see that we're bound, but we're free. We're a self, an individual conventional person, an ego, walking around with an identity card and all the rest. That's the goblet. On the other hand, we are the ground, Buddha-nature. We're not just an identity card, conventional person. It's like the waves in the sea. Should we say there are no waves because we're just looking at the sea? Which part do we pick out? If you have bigger perspective, bigger view, more wisdom, you see there are waves in the sea. The waves are made of the sea. The sea has waves. They're not so separate, but they can be distinguished. There's a wave, there's a trough, there's a wave, but it's all the sea. It's like the figure and ground shift at the same time, form and emptiness. Sunyata on one hand and Bodhicitta, compassion on the other hand.
It just takes a little shift, but it is a very profound shift. It's not a small thing. It is really a very radical shift, to be able to have sort of double vision. On the one hand we know who we are and where we live and where we work and all that in the conventional sense, but on the other hand, to also remember and to know who we are and where we live and where we work in the absolute sense. That's the Middle Way of Buddhism, isn't it. The conventional and the absolute in balance at the same time. Two levels of truth. It takes some time to turn that corner.
Low self-esteem is just one of ego's little stories. Like you might wonder why other people like you since you don't like you, or something. These thoughts come up. In our practice there's a point where you are invited to receive love from the enlightened ones, receive love from your loved ones, receive love from the circle of all beings. There's a reason for that. We're working on that low self-esteem. We're working on that hard scab, that shell covering our wounds. We are all so wounded. There are practices that can make our membranes a little more permeable so it is not so hard to receive love, to have self-esteem, to feel we're OK enough to give out love. Not feeling so separate, feeling more connected. But also not feeling too connected and being like a child that hasn't separated from the mother yet. You need both: separate, independent, individuated, grownup, healthy ego; and realizing the transpersonal and higher true nature-at the same time.
Then you can have real self-confidence: Confidence in your true nature, not just your true nature, but the true nature of all. Not just confident in one's self and not in others, but real confidence in Buddha-nature.
Asks about ego and letting go, about bursting the bubble of ego and returning to the sea.
The whole sea is in the bubble, the ego. The bubble is transparent. It contains the whole sea. You don't have to get rid of your ego. Just see through it. You don't have to fight with it. The bubble is the sea. And it is dancing in and as the sea already. We don't have to figure it out: yes or no, right or wrong, smaller or bigger, or many or one. These are all just intellectual concepts. It's a paradox, but only to the mind. Can we tolerate the paradox of yes and no, of will on one hand and allowing on the other? Of course, you can give your opinion and do your best, but you also have to be able to let go; you need to maintain the bigger perspective. It's a challenge. There's no easy answer. Better to keep the question alive than come up with some quick, superficial answer. Every moment try to investigate: Where is the Middle Way between the two sides of everything? As you say, the model, the concepts, are very limiting. But those are like the bubbles, also. They can be there. You are not just that. This is the View. You are not just that. It's not really a limitation. It's just a momentary form of emptiness. You are not that. You are not stuck there. It's not you anyway. You momentarily experience feelings, thoughts, sensations, but they are not really yours, or anyone's.
I can see that the idea of dancing seems a little frivolous to you. We are all rather grim Calvinists in some way, and the idea of just celebrating life is a little frightening. But one can live like Zorba the Buddha. You don't have to be the perfect world-saver or goody-two-shoes or a spiritual success. That's just a more subtle form of ambition. It is much more simple and joyful than that. Like love. Love is not a big achievement. You can't really brag about it. Even though it is a big deal, you can't boast about it. And you don't have to do it better than anyone else. You and I are nothing, in the light of sunyata, of wisdom. Yet I am everything, one with everyone and everything, in the light of unconditional love and interbeing. And in the creative tension between these two sides we find the Middle Way, the golden mean, that is our true life.
October 7, 1994
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