Practicing Peace in Times of War (3 page)

Developing patience and fearlessness means learning to sit still with the edginess of the discomforting energy. It’s like sitting on a wild horse, or maybe even more like a wild tiger that could eat you up. There is a limerick to that effect: “There was a young lady of Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They came back from the ride with the lady inside, and the smile on the face of the tiger.” Sitting with our uneasiness feels like riding on that tiger.

When we stick with this process we learn something very interesting: there is no resolution for these uncomfortable feelings. This resolution that human beings seek comes from a tremendous misunderstanding: we think that everything can become predictable and secure. There is a basic ignorance about the truth of impermanence, the truth of the fleeting groundless nature of all things. When we feel powerful energy, we tend to be extremely uncomfortable until things are fixed in some kind of secure and comforting way either on the side of “yes” or the side of “no,” the side of “right” or the side of “wrong.” We long for something that we can hold on to.

But the practice of patience gives us nothing to hold on to. Actually, the Buddhist teachings, in general, give us nothing to hold on to. In working with patience and fearlessness, we learn to be patient with the fact that not only us but everyone who is born and dies, all of us as a species, are naturally going to want some kind of resolution to this edgy, moody energy. And there isn’t any. The only resolution is temporary and ultimately just causes more suffering. We discover that joy and happiness, a sense of inner peace, a sense of harmony and of being at home with yourself and your world come from sitting still with the moodiness of the energy until it rises, dwells, and passes away. It never resolves itself into something solid. We stay in the middle. The path of touching in on the inherent softness of the genuine heart is sitting still, being patient with that kind of unformed energy. And we don’t have to criticize ourselves when we fail, even for a moment, because we’re just completely typical human beings; the only thing that’s unique about us is that we’re brave enough to go into these things more deeply and explore beneath our surface reaction of trying to get solid ground under our feet.

Patience is an enormously supportive and even magical practice. It’s a way of completely shifting the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things by either going to the right or the left, labeling things “good” or labeling them “bad.” It’s the way to develop fearlessness, the way to contact the seeds of war and the seeds of lasting peace—and to decide which ones we want to nurture.

Patience and curiosity also go together. You wonder, “Who am I?” Who am I at the level of my neurotic patterns? Who am I beyond birth and death? If you wish to look into the nature of your own being, you need to be inquisitive. This path is a journey of self-reflection, beginning to look more closely at what’s going on in our mind and heart. The meditation practices give us suggestions on how to look, and patience is an essential component for this looking. Aggression, on the other hand, prevents us from seeing clearly; it puts a tight lid on our curiosity. Aggression is an energy that is determined to resolve the situation into some kind of solid, fixed, very hard pattern where somebody wins and somebody loses. There is no room for open-ended curiosity or wonder.

If you have already embarked on this journey of self-reflection, you may be at a place that everyone, sooner or later, experiences on the spiritual path. After a while it seems like almost every moment of your life you’re there, where you realize you have a choice. You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or to let go, whether to harden or soften, whether to hold your seat or strike out. That choice is presented to you again and again and again.

Perhaps each one of us has made the discovery that behind resistance—definitely behind aggression and jealousy—behind any kind of tension, there is always a soft spot that we’re trying to protect. Someone’s actions hurt our feelings and before we even notice what we’re doing, we armor ourselves in a very old and familiar way. So we can either let go of our solid story line and connect with that soft spot or we can continue to stubbornly hold on, which means that the suffering will continue.

But it requires patience even to be curious enough to look, to self-reflect. And when you realize you have a choice to stay still or to act out it requires great patience to stick with that edgy feeling and not escalate the suffering. You almost automatically speed up or shut down, you involuntarily seek solid ground, and you’ll frequently feel afraid. You may feel that if you let go and simply feel the energy you’re going to die, or something is going to die. And you’re right. If you let go, something will die, but it’s something that will benefit you greatly.

I’ve come to find that patience also has humor and playfulness. It’s a misunderstanding to think of it as endurance, as in “just grin and bear it.” Endurance involves some kind of repression or trying to live up to somebody else’s standards of perfection. Instead, you find that it helps to be able to laugh at what you see as your own imperfections. Patience could be a synonym for gentleness and loving-kindness. You can develop patience and loving-kindness and a sense of humor for your own imperfections, for your own limitations, for not living up to your own high ideals. Someone once came up with a slogan, which is, “Lower your standards and relax as it is.” That’s a slogan for patience.

In Tibetan Buddhism there’s a set of teachings for cultivating compassion called mind training, or
lojong.
One of the
lojong
teachings is, “Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.” This means if a painful situation occurs, be patient, and if a pleasant situation occurs, be patient. This is an interesting point. Usually, we jump all the time; whether it’s pain or pleasure, we want resolution. So if we’re happy and something is great, we could also be patient then, and not fill up the space, going a million miles an hour—impulse shopping, impulse talking, impulse acting out.

I’d like to stress yet again that the thing we have to be most patient with is when we find ourselves being despondent about our inability to do any of this. For patience to lead to the cessation of suffering, for it to develop into fearlessness and genuine curiosity, we need to be patient with ourselves just as we are.

There’s another
lojong
teaching that says, “One in the beginning and one at the end”; when you wake up in the morning you can begin your day with an aspiration, for instance, you might say, “I’m going to try today to the best of my ability to practice patience.” And then at the end of your day you look back over all you did with loving-kindness and you’re patient with the fact that when you review the last eight hours, or even review the last twenty minutes, you discover, “I was impatient and aggressive in the same style that I’ve been as long as I can remember; I got carried away with irritation exactly the same way I always do.”

Then the path of peace depends on being patient with the fact that all of us make mistakes. And that’s more important than getting it right. This whole process seems to work only if you’re willing to give yourself a break, to soften up, as you practice patience. As with the rest of the teachings, you can’t win and you can’t lose. You don’t get to just say, “Well, since I never can do it, I’m not going to try.” It’s like you never can do it and still you try. And, interestingly enough, that adds up to something, it adds up to appreciation for yourself and for others. It adds up to there being more warmth in the world. You look out through your eyes and you just see yourself wherever you go—you see all these people who are escalating their suffering just like you do. You also notice people catching themselves just like you do, and they give you the gift of their fearlessness. You begin to be grateful for even the slightest gesture of bravery on the part of others because you know it’s not so easy. Their courage increases your trust in the basic goodness of yourself and all beings throughout the world—each of us just wanting to be happy, each of us not wanting to suffer.

Not Biting the Hook

I
N
T
IBETAN
there is a word that points to the root cause of aggression, the root cause also of craving. It points to a familiar experience that is at the root of all conflict, all cruelty, oppression, and greed. This word is
shenpa.
The usual translation is “attachment,” but this doesn’t adequately express the full meaning. I think of
shenpa
as “getting hooked.” Another definition, used by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, is the “charge”—the charge behind our thoughts and words and actions, the charge behind “like” and “don’t like.” Here’s an everyday example: Someone criticizes you. She criticizes your work or your appearance or your child. In moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste, a familiar smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever. That sticky feeling is
shenpa.
And it comes along with a very seductive urge to do something. Somebody says a harsh word and immediately you can feel a shift. There’s a tightening that rapidly spirals into mentally blaming this person, or wanting revenge or blaming yourself. Then you speak or act. The charge behind the tightening, behind the urge, behind the story line or action is
shenpa.

You can actually feel
shenpa
happening. It’s a sensation that you can easily recognize. Even a spot on your new sweater can take you there. Someone looks at us in a certain way or we hear a certain song, or walk into a certain room and boom. We’re hooked. It’s a quality of experience that’s not easy to describe but that everyone knows well.

Now, if you catch
shenpa
early enough, it’s very workable. You can acknowledge that it’s happening and abide with the experience of being triggered, the experience of urge, the experience of wanting to move. It’s like experiencing the yearning to scratch an itch, and generally we find it irresistible. Nevertheless, we can practice patience with that fidgety feeling and hold our seat.

In these moments, we can contact the underlying insecurity of the human experience, the insecurity that is inherent in a changing, shifting world. As long as we are habituated to needing something to hold on to, we will always feel this background rumble of slight unease or restlessness. We want some relief from the unease, so when
shenpa
arises we go on automatic pilot: without a pause, we follow the urge and get swept away.

Mostly we don’t catch
shenpa
at an early stage. We don’t catch the tightening until we’ve already indulged the urge to scratch our itch in some habitual way. In fact, unless we equate not acting out with friendliness toward ourselves, this refraining can feel like putting on a straitjacket and we struggle against it.

The best way to develop our ability to stay fully present with
shenpa
and to equate that with loving-kindness is in meditation. This is where we can train in not getting swept away.

Meditation teaches us how to open and relax with whatever arises, without picking and choosing. It teaches us to experience the uneasiness and the urge fully and to interrupt the momentum that usually follows. We do this by not following after the thoughts and learning to return again and again to the present moment. We train in sitting still with the itch of
shenpa
and with our craving to scratch. We label our story lines “thinking” and let them dissolve, and we come back to “right now,” even when “right now” doesn’t feel so great. This is how we learn patience, and how we learn to interrupt the chain reaction of habitual responses that otherwise will rule our lives.

You can also begin to notice
shenpa
in other people. You’re having a conversation with a friend. At one moment her face is open and she’s listening, and the next you see her eyes glaze over or her jaw tense. What you’re seeing is her
shenpa,
and she may not be aware of it at all. When peace is your goal, this is an important observation.

From your side, you can keep going in the conversation, but now with a kind of innate intelligence and wisdom called
prajna.
This is clear seeing of what’s happening.

Without being blinded by your own story line or trying to get some ground under your feet, you simply recognize your friend’s
shenpa
and you practice patience—you give the situation some space. You have the innate intelligence to realize that when you’re discussing something that needs to happen in the office, or trying to make a point with one of your children, or your partner, that nothing is going to get through right now because this person has just been hooked.

So simply by recognizing what’s happening we can nip aggression or craving in the bud—our own and that of others. As we become more familiar with doing this, our wisdom becomes a stronger force than
shenpa.
That in itself has the power to stop the chain reaction. One method of doing this is to bring your awareness to your breath, strengthening your ability to be there openly and with curiosity. You might also change your way of talking at that point and ask, “How do you feel about what I just said?” The other person might say, curtly, “It’s fine, no problem.” But you know enough to be patient and maybe non-aggressively say something like “Let’s talk about this again later,” understanding that even simple words like this can avert two people from going to war.