Comfortable With Uncertainty (3 page)

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.

5

Loving-Kindness: The Essential Practice

F
OR AN ASPIRING BODHISATTVA
, the essential practice is to cultivate maitri
,
or loving-kindness. The Shambhala teachings speak of “placing our fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness.” Another image for maitri is that of a mother bird who protects and cares for her young until they are strong enough to fly away. People sometimes ask, “Who am I in this image—the mother or the chick?” The answer is we’re both: both the loving mother and those ugly little chicks. It’s easy to identify with the babies—blind, raw, and desperate for attention. We are a poignant mixture of something that isn’t all that beautiful and yet is dearly loved. Whether this is our attitude toward ourselves or toward others, it is the key to learning how to love. We stay with ourselves and others when we’re screaming for food and have no feathers and also when we are more grown up and more appealing by worldly standards.

In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves. Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness. Sometimes we feel good and strong. Sometimes we feel inadequate and weak. But like mother-love, maitri is unconditional; no matter how we feel, we can aspire that we be happy. We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being. Gradually, we become more aware about what causes happiness as well as what causes distress. Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

6

Loving-Kindness and Meditation

W
HEN WE START
to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, we often think that somehow we’re going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are. It’s a bit like saying, “If I jog, I’ll be a much better person.” “If I had a nicer house, I’d be a better person.” “If I could meditate and calm down, I’d be a better person.” Or the scenario may be that we find fault with others. We might say, “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have a perfect marriage.” “If it weren’t for the fact that my boss and I can’t get on, my job would be just great.” And, “If it weren’t for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.”

But loving-kindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open. Gentleness is a sense of goodheartedness toward ourselves. Precision is being able to see clearly, not being afraid to see what’s really there. Openness is being able to let go and to open. When you come to have this kind of honesty, gentleness, and good-heartedness, combined with clarity about yourself, there’s no obstacle to feeling loving-kindness for others as well.

7

Why Meditate?

A
S A SPECIES
, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort. To be encouraged to stay with our vulnerability is news that we can use. Sitting meditation is our support for learning how to do this. Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness-awareness practice, is the foundation of bodhichitta training. It is the home ground of the warrior-bodhisattva.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies. It is a method of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward ourselves and for parting the curtain of indifference that distances us from the suffering of others. It is our vehicle for learning to be a truly loving person.

Gradually, through meditation, we begin to notice that there are gaps in our internal dialogue. In the midst of continually talking to ourselves, we experience a pause, as if awakening from a dream. We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exist in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered.

This coming back to the immediacy of our experience is training in unconditional, or absolute, bodhichitta. By simply staying here, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being. It feels like stepping out of a fantasy and discovering the simple truth.

8

The Six Points of Posture

S
ITTING MEDITATION BEGINS
with good posture. Awareness of the six points of posture is a way to be really relaxed and settled in our body. Here are the instructions:

1. Seat
   : Whether you’re sitting on a cushion on the floor or in a chair, the seat should be flat, not tilting to the right or left, or to the back or front.
   
2. Legs
   : The legs are crossed comfortably in front of you—or, if you’re sitting in a chair, the feet are flat on the floor, with the knees a few inches apart.
   
3. Torso
   : The torso (from the head to the seat) is upright, with a strong back and an open front. If sitting in a chair, it’s best not to lean back. If you start to slouch, simply sit upright again.
   
4. Hands
   : The hands are open, with palms down, resting on the thighs.
   
5. Eyes
   : The eyes are open, indicating the attitude of remaining awake and relaxed with all that occurs. The eye gaze is slightly downward and directed about four to six feet in front of you.
   
6. Mouth
   : The mouth is very slightly open so that the jaw is relaxed and air can move easily through both the mouth and nose. The tip of the tongue can be placed on the roof of the mouth.
   

Each time you sit down to meditate, check your posture by running through these six points. Anytime you feel distracted, bring your attention back to your body and these six points of posture.

9

No Such Thing As a True Story

B
Y WEAVING
our opinions, prejudices, strategies, and emotions into a solid reality, we try to make a big deal out of ourselves, out of our pain, out of our problems. But things are not as solid, predictable, or seamless as they seem.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them “thinking,” and return to the breath. If we were trying to find the beginning, middle, and end of each thought, we’d soon discover that there is no such thing. Trying to find the moment when one thought becomes another is like trying to find the moment when boiling water turns into steam. Yet we habitually string our thoughts together into a story that tricks us into believing that our identity, our happiness, our pain, and our problems are all solid and separate entities. In fact, like thoughts, all these constructs are constantly changing. Each situation, each thought, each word, each feeling, is just a passing memory.

Wisdom is a fluid process, not something concrete that can be added up or measured. The warrior-bodhisattva trains with the attitude that everything is a dream. Life is a dream; death is a dream; waking is a dream; sleeping is a dream. This dream is the direct immediacy of our experience. Trying to hold on to any of it by buying our story line only blocks our wisdom.

10

Sitting Meditation

M
EDITATION PRACTICE
is a formal way in which you can get used to lightening up. I encourage you to follow the instructions precisely, but within that form to be gentle. Let the whole thing be soft. Breathing out, touch your breath as it goes. Sense the breath going out into big space and dissolving. You’re not trying to clutch or catch that breath, you’re simply relaxing outward with it. There’s no particular instruction about what to do during the in-breath—there’s nothing to hold on to until the next out-breath.

Labeling our thoughts during meditation practice is a powerful support that reconnects us with the fresh, open, unbiased dimension of our mind. When we become aware that we are thinking, we say to ourselves, “thinking,” with an unbiased attitude and with tremendous gentleness. Then we return our focus to the breath. We regard the thoughts as bubbles and the labeling like touching them with a feather. There’s just this light touch—“thinking”—and they dissolve back into the space. Even if you still feel anxious and tense when the thoughts go, simply allow that feeling to be there, with space around it. Just let it be. When thoughts come up again, see them for what they are. It’s no big deal. You can loosen up and lighten up.

Saying “thinking” is an interesting point in the meditation practice. It’s the point at which we can consciously train in gentleness and in developing a nonjudgmental attitude. Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness. So each time you say to yourself “thinking,” you are cultivating unconditional friendliness toward whatever arises in your mind. Since this kind of unconditional compassion is difficult to come by, such a simple and direct method for awakening it is exceedingly precious.

11

Four Qualities of Maitri

M
EDITATION TAKES
us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is a simple, direct relationship with our being. We call this maitri. There are four qualities of maitri that are cultivated when we meditate:

1. Steadfastness
   . When we practice meditation we are strengthening our ability to be steadfast with ourselves, in body as well as mind.
   
2. Clear seeing
   . Clear seeing is another way of saying that we have less self-deception. Through the process of practicing the technique day in and day out, year after year, we begin to be very honest with ourselves.
   
3. Experiencing our emotional distress
   . We practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions and the fear. We stay with the emotion, experience it, and leave it as it is, without proliferating. Thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness of our own energy. We learn to abide with the experience of our emotional distress.
   
4. Attention to the present moment
   . We make the choice, moment by moment, to be fully here. Attending to our present-moment mind and body is a way of being tender toward self, toward other, and toward the world. This quality of attention is inherent in our ability to love.
   

These four factors not only apply to sitting meditation, but are essential to all the bodhichitta practices and for relating with difficult situations in our daily lives. By cultivating them we can start to train as a warrior, discovering for ourselves that it is bodhichitta, not confusion, that is basic.

12

The Root of Suffering

W
HAT KEEPS US
unhappy and stuck in a limited view of reality is our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. This is how we keep ourselves enclosed in a cocoon. Out there are all the planets and all the galaxies and vast space, but we’re stuck here in this cocoon. Moment after moment, we’re deciding that we would rather stay in that cocoon than step out into that big space. Life in our cocoon is cozy and secure. We’ve gotten it all together. It’s safe, it’s predictable, it’s convenient, and it’s trustworthy. If we feel ill at ease, we just fill in those gaps.

Our mind is always seeking zones of safety. We’re in this zone of safety and that’s what we consider life, getting it all together, security. Death is losing that. We fear losing our illusion of security—that’s what makes us anxious. We fear being confused and not knowing which way to turn. We want to know what’s happening. The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart. Then we scramble to get another zone of safety back together again. We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara—the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.

13

Weather and the Four Noble Truths

I
N THE
B
UDDHA’S
first teaching—called the four noble truths—he talked about suffering. The first noble truth says that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort. Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. All around us the wind, the fire, the earth, the water, are always taking on different qualities; they’re like magicians. We also change like the weather. We ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid. And so we suffer.

The second noble truth says that resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering. Traditionally it’s said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view, which is to say, we are addicted to ME. We resist that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things. When we resist, we dig in our heels. We make ourselves really solid. Resisting is what’s called ego.