The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (5 page)

Through the process of practicing the mindfulness-awareness technique on a regular basis, we can no longer hide from ourselves. We clearly see the barriers we set up to shield us from naked experience. Although we still associate the walls we’ve erected with safety and comfort, we also begin to feel them as a restriction. This claustrophobic situation is important for a warrior. It marks the beginning of longing for an alternative to our small, familiar world. We begin to look for ventilation. We want to dissolve the barriers between ourselves and others.

Experiencing our emotional distress
. Many people, including longtime practitioners, use meditation as a means of escaping difficult emotions. It is possible to misuse the label “thinking” as a way of pushing negativity away. No matter how many times we’ve been instructed to stay open to whatever arises, we still can use meditation as repression. Transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience.

Trungpa Rinpoche describes emotion as a combination of self-existing energy and thoughts. Emotion can’t proliferate without our internal conversations. If we’re angry when we sit down to meditate, we are instructed to label the thoughts “thinking” and let them go. Yet below the thoughts something remains—a vital, pulsating energy. There is nothing wrong, nothing harmful about that underlying energy. Our practice is to stay with it, to experience it, to leave it as it is.

There are certain advanced techniques in which you intentionally churn up emotions by thinking of people or situations that make you angry or lustful or afraid. The practice is to let the thoughts go and connect directly with the energy, asking yourself, “Who am I without these thoughts?” What we do with meditation practice is simpler than that, but I consider it equally daring. When emotional distress arises uninvited, we let the story line go and abide with the energy. This is a felt experience, not a verbal commentary on what is happening. We can feel the energy in our bodies. If we can stay with it, neither acting it out nor repressing it, it wakes us up. People often say, “I fall asleep all the time in meditation. What shall I do?” There are lots of antidotes to drowsiness, but my favorite is, “Experience anger!”

Not abiding with our energy is a predictable human habit. Acting out and repressing are tactics we use to get away from our emotional pain. For instance, most of us when we’re angry scream or act it out. We alternate expressions of rage with feeling ashamed of ourselves and wallowing in guilt. We become so stuck in repetitive behavior that we become experts at getting all worked up. In this way we continue to strengthen our painful emotions.

One night years ago I came upon my boyfriend passionately embracing another woman. We were in the house of a friend who had a priceless collection of pottery. I was furious and looking for something to throw. Everything I picked up I had to put back down because it was worth at least ten thousand dollars. I was completely enraged and I couldn’t find an outlet! There were no exits from experiencing my own energy. The absurdity of the situation totally cut through my rage. I went outside and looked at the sky and laughed until I cried.

In vajrayana Buddhism it is said that wisdom is inherent in emotions. When we struggle against our energy we reject the source of wisdom. Anger without the fixation is none other than clear-seeing wisdom. Pride without fixation is experienced as equanimity. The energy of passion when it’s free of grasping is wisdom that sees all the angles.

In bodhichitta training we also welcome the living energy of emotions. When our emotions intensify, what we usually feel is fear. This fear is always lurking in our lives. In sitting meditation we practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions and the fear. 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.

Attention to the present moment
. Another factor we cultivate in the transformative process of meditation is attention to this very 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.

Coming back to the present moment takes some effort, but the effort is very light. The instruction is to “touch and go.” We touch thoughts by acknowledging them as thinking and then we let them go. It’s a way of relaxing our struggle, like touching a bubble with a feather. It’s a nonaggressive approach to being here.

Sometimes we find that we like our thoughts so much that we don’t want to let them go. Watching our internal movie is a lot more entertaining than bringing our mind back home. There’s no doubt that our fantasy world can be very juicy and seductive. So we train in using a “soft” effort when interrupting our habitual patterns; in other words, we train in cultivating self-compassion.

We practice meditation to connect with maitri and unconditional openness. By not deliberately blocking anything, by directly touching our thoughts and then letting them go with an attitude of no big deal, we can discover that our fundamental energy is tender, wholesome, and fresh. We can start to train as a warrior, discovering for ourselves that it is bodhichitta, not confusion, that is basic.

5

Warrior Slogans

In all activities, train with slogans.

—MIND-TRAINING SLOGAN OF ATISHA

I
N THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
Atisha Dipankara brought the complete bodhichitta teachings from India to Tibet. In particular he emphasized what are called the lojong teachings, the teachings for training the mind. What is so up-to-date about these teachings is that they show us how to transform difficult circumstances into the path of enlightenment; what we most dislike about our lives is the meat and potatoes of the mind-training practices of Atisha. What seem like the greatest obstacles—our anger, our resentment, our uptightness—we use as fuel to awaken bodhichitta.

For some time after the death of Atisha these teachings were kept secret, passed on only to close disciples. They did not become widely known again until the twelfth century, when the Tibetan Geshe Chekawa organized them into fifty-nine pithy slogans. These sayings are now known as the lojong slogans or the slogans of Atisha. Becoming familiar with these slogans and bringing them to mind throughout our lives is a valuable bodhichitta practice.
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Geshe Chekawa had a brother who was contemptuous of the Buddhist teachings and was always giving him a hard time. However, when many lepers who were studying with Chekawa became cured, his brother began to get very interested in what they were being taught. Hiding outside Chekawa’s door, the irascible brother started listening to the teachings on using uncomfortable circumstances as the path. When Chekawa began to notice his brother becoming less irritable, more flexible, and more considerate, he realized that his brother must be listening to the mind-training teachings and applying them. It was then that he decided to teach the lojong slogans far more publicly. He figured that if they could help his brother, they could help anyone.

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice? Usually not. But right there, in the midst of our confusion, is where the slogans of Atisha are most penetrating. The easy part is to familiarize ourselves with them. More challenging is to remember to apply them. To remember a slogan right in the midst of irritation—for example, “Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment”—might cause us to pause before acting out our resentment by saying something mean. Once we are familiar with it, a slogan like this will spontaneously pop into our mind and remind us to stay with the emotional energy rather than acting it out.

The mind-training slogans present us with a challenge. When we are escaping the present moment with a habitual reaction, can we recall a slogan that might bring us back? Rather than spinning off, can we let the emotional intensity of that red-hot or icecold moment transform us? The pith of the slogan practice is to take a warrior’s attitude toward discomfort. It encourages us to ask, “How can I practice right now, right on this painful spot, and transform this into the path of awakening?” On any average day of our lives, we have plenty of opportunities to ask this question.

The slogan “Train in the three difficulties” gives us instruction on how to practice, how to interrupt our habitual reactions. The three difficulties are (1) acknowledging our neurosis as neurosis, (2) doing something different, and (3) aspiring to continue practicing this way.

Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we’re stuck, it’s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. “Doing something different” is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of tenaciously indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out. We can let the story line go and connect with the underlying energy or do any of the bodhichitta practices introduced in this book. Anything that’s nonhabitual will do—even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits. The third difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.

In essence the practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines. Then we feel the bodily sensation completely. One way of doing this is to breathe it into our heart. By acknowledging the emotion, dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves about it, and feeling the energy of the moment, we cultivate compassion for ourselves. Then we could take this a step further. We could recognize that there are millions who are feeling the way we are and breathe in the emotion for all of us with the wish that we could all be free of confusion and limiting habitual reactions. When we can recognize our own confusion with compassion, we can extend that compassion to others who are equally confused. This step of widening the circle of compassion is where the magic of bodhichitta training lies.

The irony is that what we most want to avoid in our lives is crucial to awakening bodhichitta. These juicy emotional spots are where a warrior gains wisdom and compassion. Of course, we’ll want to get out of those spots far more often than we’ll want to stay. That’s why self-compassion and courage are vital. Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.

When the bottom is falling out we might suddenly recall the slogan “If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.” If we can practice when we’re jealous, resentful, scornful, when we hate ourselves, then we are well trained. Again, practice means not continuing to strengthen the habitual patterns that keep us trapped, doing anything we can to shake up and ventilate our self-justification and blame. We do our best to stay with the strong energy without acting out or repressing. As we do so, our habits become more porous.

Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Those of us who struggle with this know. Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that it is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but
know
that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.

When we’re feeling confused about our words and actions and about what does and does not cause harm, out of nowhere the slogan “Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one” might arise. Of the two witnesses—self and other—we’re the only one who knows the full truth about ourselves.

Sometimes the way we see our ignorance is by getting feedback from the outside world. Others can be extremely helpful in showing us our blind spots. Particularly if they cause us to wince, we’d be wise to pay attention to their insights and criticism. But ultimately, we are the ones who know what’s happening in our hearts and minds. We’re the only ones who hear our internal conversations, who know when we withdraw or feel inspired.

When we begin to train we see that we’ve been pretty ignorant about what we’re doing. First, we see that we are rarely able to relax into the present moment. Second, we see that we’ve fabricated all kinds of strategies to avoid staying present, particularly when we’re afraid that whatever’s happening will hurt. We also see our strong belief that if only we could do everything right, we’d be able to find a safe, comfortable, and secure place to spend the rest of our lives.

Growing up in the fifties, for a while I believed that what I saw on television sitcoms was the typical family. They all got along. Nobody got drunk or flew into a rage. There was never any real ugliness. Many of us watching thought, of course, that only our family was the exception to the norm. The truth went unspoken in favor of this American dream.

As we practice, we begin to know the difference between our fantasy and reality. The more steadfast we are with our experience, the more aware we become of when we start to tighten and retreat. When we are denigrating ourselves, do we know it? Do we understand where the desire to lash out at another is coming from? Do we aspire not to keep going down that same old self-destructive road? Do we realize that the suffering we feel is shared by all beings? Do we have any longing for all of us to stop sowing the seeds of misery? Only the “principal one” knows the answers to these questions.