The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (11 page)

The far enemy of joy is envy. Until I started working with the practice of rejoicing in the good fortune of others, I never realized I could be so envious. To say that this was humbling is an understatement. I was amazed to see how frequently I react to others’ success with resentment. When I heard that my acquaintance’s book had sold more copies than mine, I instantly felt envious. Maybe it’s because these practices expose our hidden faults that we are sometimes reluctant to do them. But that’s one reason we continue to train: it takes practice to stick with ourselves as we are, in our totality.

The near enemy of equanimity is detachment or indifference. Especially in spiritual practice, it is easy to mistake dangling above the unkemptness of life for genuine equanimity. We are open and friendly and serene and proud that we’ve transcended emotional upheaval. If we feel distress, embarrassment, or anger, we think we’ve really blown it. Yet feeling emotional upheaval is not a spiritual faux pas; it’s the place where the warrior learns compassion. It’s where we learn to stop struggling with ourselves. It’s only when we can dwell in these places that scare us that equanimity becomes unshakable.

The far enemy of equanimity is prejudice. We get self-righteous about our beliefs and set ourselves solidly for or against others. We take sides. We become closed-minded. We have enemies. This polarization is an obstacle to the genuine equanimity that informs compassionate action. If we wish to alleviate injustice and suffering, we have to do it with an unprejudiced mind.

The heart practices set us up to become intimately acquainted with the near and far enemies. Our training is almost like inviting them to visit. As we move closer to our genuine ability to rejoice, we get to know our jealousy and resentment. As we start training in opening our hearts, we get a close look at prejudice and indifference. When we go through the stages of aspiration, these closed-down feelings become more vivid.

These enemies are good teachers that show us that we can accept ourselves and others complete with imperfections. We develop trust in our open and forgiving mind. In doing so, we discover the strength that allows us to enter into the suffering of the world.

14

Fresh Start

We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die.

—CHIEF SEATTLE

F
ORGIVENESS IS
an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start.

When a close friend of mine was dying, a Tibetan teacher told her to review her life with honesty and compassion. This process led her to some pretty dark places, corners of her mind where she was stuck in guilt and resentment. The teacher then instructed her in forgiveness, saying that the most important thing to do was to forgive herself. He suggested that she do a variation on tonglen. She should begin by visualizing herself and then intentionally bring up all her life’s regrets. The point was not to dwell in painful memories but to contact the feelings underlying the pain: guilt or shame, confusion or remorse. The feelings didn’t have to be named; she was to contact the stuckness in a nonverbal way.

The next step was to breathe these feelings into her heart, opening it as wide as she possibly could, and then to send herself forgiveness. After that, she was to think of others feeling the same anguish and to breathe their pain and hers into her heart and to send everyone forgiveness. My friend found this to be a healing process. It allowed her to make amends with those she had hurt and those who had hurt her. She was able to let go of her shame and anger before she died.

A woman who came to Gampo Abbey for a tonglen retreat had suffered severe sexual abuse from her father. She strongly identified with caged birds; she told me that she often felt like a bird in a cage. During tonglen, she would breathe in the feeling of being small and caged; on the outbreath she would open the door and let all the birds out. One day as she was sending and taking in this way, she experienced one of the birds flying out and landing on a man’s shoulder. Then the man turned around and she saw it was her father. For the first time in her life she was able to forgive him.

Forgiveness, it seems, cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel—shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don’t have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we’ll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we’ll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness. This potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.

15

Strength

Practice the five strengths,

The condensed heart instructions.

—MIND-TRAINING SLOGAN OF ATISHA

T
HE FIVE STRENGTHS
are
strong determination
,
familiarization
with the bodhichitta teachings and practices,
the seed of goodness
that is found in every living being, the practice of
reproach
, and the power of
aspiration
. These are five ways that a warrior increases confidence and inspiration.

Strong determination
is our commitment to use our lives to dissolve the indifference, aggression, and grasping that separate us from one another. It is a commitment to respect whatever life brings. As warriors-in-training we develop wholehearted determination to use discomfort as an opportunity for awakening, rather than trying to make it disappear. How do we abide with disagreeable emotions without retreating into our familiar strategies? How do we catch our thoughts before they become 100 percent believable and solidify into “us” against “them”? Where do we find the warmth that is essential to the transformative process? We are committed to exploring these questions. We are determined to find a way to realize our kinship with others, determined to keep training in opening our mind. This strong determination generates strength.

Familiarization
is the strength that comes to us when we take the teachings to heart, becoming familiar with them by using them over and over. When we wake up in the morning and start our bodhichitta training anew, what will we use as material? Just our usual day in all its variations—pleasant, unpleasant, or simply mundane.

What will happen to us today is completely unknown, as unknown as what will happen at death. Whatever happens, our commitment is to use it to awaken our heart. As one of the slogans says, “All activities should be done with one intention.” That intention is to realize our connection with all beings.

Recently I had the pleasure of going to a friend’s swimming pool in the country. I had just received a letter, so when I got there I sat in the car and read it. The letter was very straightforward. It pointed out to me that in a particular situation I had neglected to communicate with the right people. My lack of clear communication had caused confusion and disappointment. Reading this letter brought up a surprising amount of pain. Everything in me wanted to exit, and I adopted a common strategy: blame. It was someone else’s fault that this had happened.

Right there in the car, I got out a pen and began to write a letter to the person I was blaming. I made the blame solid and real: I put it down on paper. I knew enough to stop writing, but I said to myself, “How can I be asking other people to do this kind of practice? It’s asking too much. It’s too challenging, too hard.” I got out of the car and sat down next to the pool and the pain was so consuming that at first I forgot all about the bodhichitta teachings. I didn’t want to be a warrior. On the other hand, I know that unhappiness lies with exiting, with pointing myself away from the discomfort. Believe me, I’ve done it enough to know that this is true.

I tried to encourage myself along the line that I am bigger than my thoughts and emotions. I also acknowledged my thoughts, listening to what I was saying about myself and others. But no shift was happening, absolutely none.

Finally I got into the pool and started to swim laps. After going back and forth about six times, I put my elbows on the side of the pool and began to weep. At that point I was overwhelmed by a sense of how we suffer.

Then, not because I was doing a particular practice but because I’m so familiar with finding the soft spot, a reservoir of empathy arose seemingly out of nowhere, completely available to me. I was able to connect profoundly with my brothers and sisters all over the world.

All I had done there sitting by the pool was somehow to stay. I was trying to recall the teaching and to practice, but it didn’t really matter what I did. There is not a formula for doing this kind of work. My willingness to stay with the discomfort was what allowed something to shift. Then the reservoir of compassion began to emerge.

Frequently there is no such reward. Staying with sorrow or pain is not necessarily an immediately gratifying process. But over time, we begin to feel lighter and more courageous. Familiarization with the teachings and the bodhichitta practices in an ongoing way is how we learn to reside with distress and to experience our shared humanity. This is how we make the teachings useful and heartfelt in our lives.

The third source of inspiration is the
seed of goodness
. That reservoirs of openness and tenderness are available to us is the strength of the positive seed, the seed of bodhichitta. Sometimes remembering our basic goodness takes a leap of faith. The trick is to connect with the soft spot that we already have. Sometimes it helps to find little ways that the seed of goodness manifests in our life. To find our ability to rejoice and to care, even when it’s fleeting, strengthens our confidence. To see how we block our hearts and close our minds brings self-compassion and the longing not to do that anymore.

So our practice is to keep watering the seed. We water it by thinking of others, both when we’re happy and when we’re in distress. We water it by recognizing our kinship with all beings throughout time and space. We water it by noticing our negative and positive reactions to whomever and whatever we meet. We water it with gentleness and honesty. We learn to ask, “How can I use this suffering and this joy as a vehicle for transformation?” And we practice being kind when we get stuck.

The fourth strength is
reproach
. Reproach can be tricky because it backfires if there’s no maitri. Its strength is that if used with loving-kindness it will steer us away from debilitating habitual patterns. The gentlest method of reproach is to ask ourselves, “Have I ever done this before?” When we suspect that we’re turning away from the moment, we can say to ourselves as a reminder, “Does this way of acting or thinking feel familiar?”

Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged his students to be eccentric bodhisattvas and to give ego a hard time. He suggested that instead of listening to the radio or singing in the shower, we talk to our ego. “Okay, ego, you’ve been giving me problems for my entire life and now I’m getting a whole lot smarter. I’m not going to be under your sway for one more day!”

Patrul Rinpoche tells some wonderful stories about a monk called Geshe Ben. Reproaching the ego was one of his main practices. He specialized in catching himself getting hooked. One day some patrons invited Geshe Ben for a meal. After it was over, he was left alone in the room with a big bag of flour. Without thinking, he put his cup in the bag and started to take some for his journey. With his hand in the bag he exclaimed, “Ben, look what you’re doing!” Then he shouted, “Thief! Thief!” The patrons rushed in to find him standing there, his hand still in the flour, yelling, “I’ve caught him! I’ve caught him! I’ve caught the thief red-handed!” That’s the spirit of reproach. Including a sense of humor is what allows it to work.

The next time Geshe Ben had a meal with his patrons, they were serving other monks as well. Many delicious foods were offered, including yogurt—his favorite—and Ben was at the end of the row. After a while he began to feel nervous that there wouldn’t be enough. As the servers ladled the yogurt out, he nervously watched to see how much others were taking, feeling irritated with those who took more and happy with those who took less. Then suddenly he caught himself in the act, shouting, “Ben, look what you’re doing!” When finally the servers reached him he covered his bowl saying, “No! No! No more yogurt for this yogurt addict!”

The point of reproach is to develop enough self-respect that when we catch ourselves getting hooked in familiar ways we can stop. We aren’t disciplining our badness; we’re simply getting smart about what brings suffering and what brings happiness. We’re finally giving ourselves a break.

The fifth strength is the strength that comes from
aspiration
. We may not yet feel ready to act, but even in very difficult situations, we can do something to help. We can aspire to arouse bodhichitta, to free ourselves from neurosis and be of benefit. We can aspire to find the warrior’s strength and ability to love.

A student told me that early one morning he heard a woman screaming on the street. He was living in an urban practice center; other people woke up and they all went to her aid. But before that happened, when he first heard her screams, he had to acknowledge that he felt aversion toward the woman. He was unprepared even to make the aspiration to be in her shoes. He couldn’t aspire to feel her pain. It was too terrifying to imagine being so vulnerable and unprotected. He felt, “Better her than me.” So right there, on the spot, he thought of everyone like him who wishes to help but can’t. And he made the genuine aspiration that in this very lifetime, he and all the others could work with their fear and remove the barriers of separation.