Dharma Realities

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

I know it can smell revolting. I know that possums and rats get a good feed from it. I know that it contains only leftovers, discarded peels and old food from the fridge, shredded paper from my office and dead leaves. But since I cannot sit next to a rotting corpse and meditate on death, why not sit next to the compost bin instead? It is almost as revolting a place to meditate as beside a corpse.

Impermanence and death feature high in my mind. I read, in the lists generated by FPMT Prayers for the Dead, how many have died at an older age than mine and how many at a younger age. The balance is tipping. Once they were mostly older people, but soon it will be mostly younger people. This is a good reason to prepare for my own demise. One day my body will be as loathsome as my compost bin.

When my compost is at its most loathsome, it is time to turn it over and put it on the garden, recycling the rubbish (at least that which has not already been eaten by the local fauna) to create good soil, good humus. The plants will benefit and produce pleasure or shelter or food. And so my compost meditation takes a new turn. My inner rubbish can be purified and become of benefit. It can provide food for others … “don’t make my mistakes.” As it rots away, only that which can benefit remains … “my efforts at improving my mind may be slow and may feel loathsome, but that is the purification process, after all.”

Loathsome? Well it is to me, but obviously not to the possums. Merely labeled “loathsome.” Aha, a new way to meditate on my compost!

But let me meditate on the positive side of my compost bin and its contents. In the end it creates humus, good soil, opportunities for growth. This label, “humus” has a number of interesting links. It is derived from Latin, where “humus” means “ground” or “earth.” Words like “human,” “humor,” “humility” and “humiliation” all go back to this rootedness in the earth. Now my compost meditation can spread in many directions.

Humility and humiliation have the same root, but very different meanings. They both refer to being low, at ground level, but we can choose to be there or we can be forced to be there. We can be grounded or ground up. Who gets to clean the toilets? Usually, the lowest rung of society. Humility means choosing to clean abhorrent waste and seeing it as an honor. If an inanimate object could be humble, then surely that would apply to my compost bin. What a laugh. Those who do the worst jobs have the opportunity to create the great spiritual quality of humility. Humor also comes from the same root!

Now my compost bin meditation has led me to the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation. The second verse says, “When in the company of others, I shall always consider myself the lowest of all, and from the depths of my heart hold others dear and supreme.” This is a statement of humility.

Saint Isaac, the Syrian, a 7th century Orthodox saint, put it this way: “How can a man acquire humility? … By an unceasing remembrance of errors; by an anticipation of approaching death; by inexpensive clothing; by always preferring the last place; by always running to do the tasks that are the most insignificant and distasteful; by not being disobedient; by unceasing silence; by a dislike of gatherings; by desiring to be unknown and of no account; by never holding to one sort of work exclusively; by shunning conversations with numerous persons; by abhorrence of material gain.”¹

Tibetans look at a person who holds himself above others and they say that person is like someone sitting on a mountain top: it is cold there, it is hard and nothing will grow. But if the person puts himself in a lower position, then that person is like a fertile field – a field of humus, a person of humility. My compost bin has many teachings if I care to listen.

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

There’s the story of the fisherman hanging on to his capsized boat and asking God for help. He turns away a surfer on his board, a jet ski, another boat and even a helicopter saying, “No, God will save me!” After many hours, the fisherman, feeling destitute, pleads to God, “Where are you?” Eventually God looks down from the clouds and says, “I sent you a surfer, a jet skier, a boat and even a helicopter. What else do you expect me to do?” (more…)

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with retreat participants inside the structure of the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion in Bendigo, Australia, April 2011. Photo by George Manos.

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

It was a very subdued atmosphere in retreat at Atisha Centre. Suddenly our various expectations of being rescued from our unwanted situations have gone. Our guru, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche is in the hospital, his right side paralyzed, unable to speak. The weakness of the human body, even that of the guru, is alarmingly apparent. We cannot talk to him or tell him our concerns or ask for blessings. Or to be more precise, we cannot do these things with his current emanation.

The rest of the world continues: a light, cool breeze, sunshine, scurrying ants and a bush renewed by recent rains. In the distance, cars pass on their Easter holiday activities. From the gompa come the sounds of prayers: Medicine Buddha, light offerings, mantras. These are dedicated to our guru’s long life, but they cannot alter this one fact that at some stage this present body of his will die. What will we do then? We discover that we had assumed that our guru would last forever. Indeed he will, but not in this current body that we know and love.

It is hard to imagine FPMT with neither Lama Yeshe nor Lama Zopa, yet the time will come when this will happen. More than ever we need to understand guru devotion.

First there is the listening, his instructions so softly whispered at times that we strain to hear. Listening is not easy. It is in our silences that the guru can speak to us, when we plant his feet firmly at the corolla of lotus petals in our hearts and wait. In silence and openness we can become aware. We wait. “Lama, think of me” we say, but we do not always stop to listen to what he says. Listening means waiting. Listening means the guru is always present.

Having listened, then we act. There is a particular way of carrying out the guru’s instructions. It is called humility. Atisha Centre, so little for so many years, has suddenly flowered after the drought. How did so few members bring the vision of Lama Yeshe into reality? They listened and then when the time was ripe, they acted.

We all agree that harmony in our centers is important in extending the lives of our teachers. Harmony comes from humility. Humility is a simple recognition firstly of our limitations and secondly that our strengths come through benefits given to us by others. Humility does not push to the front seat, or beg desperately for the guru’s time. Humility does not see my offerings as best or my prayer sessions more powerful or my devotion as stronger than anyone else. Humility recognizes that sometimes other people can be right and I can be wrong. Humility gives the victory to others. Humility acknowledges that I can choose to create disharmony or harmony.

If we really understand the teachings, if we really have an inkling of the power of mind, then we know that we do not need the physical presence of the guru to be blessed by him. It is our restricted mind that grieves when the guru’s current body dies. We forget that we have placed him on our hearts. We forget that the mental continuum is not confined to the physical body. We forget about the clairvoyant powers of a highly developed mind. We forget the enormous number of emanations that a bodhisattva can produce. Above all we forget that in pure guru devotion, the guru is a buddha, fully enlightened, capable of knowing all, deeply compassionate.

“The amount of Dharma you know, the number of realizations you have, depends on how much devotion you have for your guru. The greater your devotion, the greater your Dharma understanding and realizations. It all depends on your guru devotion.” – From “Advice on Guru Practice” by Gomchen Khampala

We have been so profoundly blessed. Lama Zopa, as our guru, teaches us the essence of humility, of compassion and of wisdom. He shows us the qualities we will develop on our individual paths to enlightenment. This will always be true as he remains in his current body, and when the time comes for him to leave it.

Lama Yeshe is still here at Atisha Centre. Lama Zopa is also here among the gum trees and dusty soil and the new statues and gardens and the Great Stupa rising with its steel beams glistening.

For a complete story on the April Australia retreat at which Lama Zopa Rinpoche manifested symptoms of a stroke please refer to page 12 of the July-September 2011 issue of Mandala.

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

My tomatoes have not ripened and it is nearly the end of summer.

I awoke this morning to a howling wind, rain and thinking that once again the washing will not dry easily. It was so easy to snuggle under the doona and pretend that the outside world did not exist. I wonder how many million people have the same thought on awaking.

Go away, real world. Here it is still summer. I want my tomatoes to ripen but they have to deal with this relentless wind and little sun. It is not hard to imagine a different world: pleasant day, soft breeze, lying in a hammock and soaking up the sun. Tucked under my doona, which is just what I do, ignoring the sounds of wind and rain. I stick my head up against the pillow. It is newly shaven and sensitive to this cold air. Now I am warm again. I do not want this comfort to end.

I abide solely in this warmth.

It is easy to abide in this way when all is pleasant and it is possible to ignore the rest of the world. Meditation can be like this. Go away world, I do not want to know about you. Call it navel-gazing or narcissism, or attachment to comfort. It is meditation gone wrong. It is meditation in which the post-meditation state is unwanted. We can abide in peace forever, it seems, while everyone else suffers.

If I am to abide in this world, then I am to abide in wind and rain. I am to abide in a world of imperfect people. I am to abide in a world where there is hatred and war and greed and jealousy. And, of course, I also abide in a world of sun and gentle wind, of kindness and sharing and humility. The point is that abiding means being present to all that is around us and not just our personal selection of what we would prefer.

This is often called “being in the moment.” Of course we cannot “be” anywhere else but in the moment. We cannot “be” in the past or the future. It is the enormity of the moment that is overwhelming. It includes the whole universe and everything in it from the biggest galaxy to the tiniest atom. To be in the moment, accepting whatever this moment brings without grasping or aversion, is too much right now. I need to choose which part of this moment to abide in.

Take this moment of watching TV as the images of people being shot and abused appear. If I am to abide in this moment, then I allow the full horror of the conflict into my mind, to feel viscerally the suffering on both sides of the conflict. It means to feel all this without being destroyed by my own awareness. I know I am not capable of being like that. I would need to be a bodhisattva now.

Becoming a bodhisattva does not happen overnight, however strong our intention. We still need to develop the skills. Maybe at this stage I can allow a little of the horror of war to seep into me, but not the lot. It is too much to handle. So I breathe out and relax. Training for me today will be to allow the wind and rain to continue without resentment, that is, with a mind of equanimity.

If my tomatoes ripen, then will I be happy and rejoice at being able to eat them as I pick them? No problem. If my tomatoes do not ripen, then will I be annoyed and frustrated at the wasted time and energy put into growing them? I hope not. So I can choose to use the success or failure of my tomatoes as another training in being a bodhisattva, to acquire a little more equanimity. With equanimity I can drop the good/bad classification of inanimate things, even tomatoes. If I stop classifying them, then I can see them as they are: tomatoes grown in difficult circumstances. That way I might be able to apply the same to animate things, to people, to emotional storms that come my way.

Children growing in difficult circumstances, like tomatoes, may become emotionally stunted, suffering adults. If my equanimity is well developed, I am more likely to see their child or adult self suffering and know what it is. If I can see their suffering, then maybe I can help. If I cannot help, then maybe I can train myself some more. I can grow a little more into bodhisattva-hood and maybe become a buddha one day.

Hmmmm. Who would have thought that worrying about tomatoes could be such good bodhisattva training?

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis. There seem to have been a lot of them lately. Our earth is shrugging off some of its pressure and reshaping its surface in the process. What we thought was solid, immovable and permanent, is in fact not. Impermanence is at work.  Impermanence has also made itself felt at Sandy Point, but fortunately not as an earthquake. The balmy spring days have disappeared with a blast of icy wind and rain from the Antarctic.  It was a perfect place to be reborn yesterday, but not today.

My self-cherishing ego (sche) has very clear ideas about a perfect human rebirth. Sche sees balmy days, plenty of food and drink, no illness, not getting old, as the qualities of this perfect birth. Sche would like to be in a place where there would be no need for education because sche would just absorb knowledge without effort.  There would be no computers stalling with the latest virus. The house would remain perfectly clean and tidy without effort on sche’s part. Her back would never be painful. There would be no disagreements because everyone would agree with sche. In fact, no impermanence once that state of perfection has been achieved.

This so called prefect human rebirth of sche sounds suspiciously like the god realms. In fact, sche thinks the god realms are pretty good. Unfortunately, there is still impermanence and sche would still have to die. Anyway, sche is not worried about that. It’s too far in the future and perhaps death could be postponed.

My sche has no interest in the dharma, except when it can feel comfortable. Being blissed out in meditation is OK. Having attention from the guru is great, provided the guru does not challenge sche in any way. Sche only wants to be important, not exposed. Sche is thoroughly dismayed when it does not come top in a Basic Program test, or is required to help clean the gompa. Some voluntary work is OK, provided it brings praise and respect. My sche is thoroughly immersed in the eight worldly dharmas.¹

Of course, that is not what the perfect human rebirth is about. It means a rebirth with uninhibited access to the Dharma, the teachers and the teachings. Unfortunately for my sche, this means being exposed as a fraud, a figment of my imagination, however painful to acknowledge it, however dearly I try to hang onto it. Sche claims to be the source of my happiness and that Dharma progress is measured by comfort. These are things that I very much want.

To get to the real happiness, the lasting happiness, I need an inner earthquake, a major realignment of my mind. Sche has to be challenged and demoted. If I challenge my sche, then I might experience shame, depression, anger and resentment towards the Dharma as I recognize the effects of my sche. Which, then, do I reject? The Dharma or my sche? Sche has always claimed to be my closest and best friend. Dharma makes the same claim. I can’t have both. If I choose Dharma, I can expect earthquakes.

Emptiness poems:  3.

Four times Milarepa²

built a tower, block by block,

hauling each huge stone.

And three times Marpa

made him pull it down.

So I wonder

what Milarepa thought

amongst his drops of sweat,

aching legs and shoulders,

bruises and stinging cuts?

I feel for him, although

my tower building is in my mind

and overheated brain, each

being crudely dismantled

by earthquakes as deeper

strata are realigned –

logic sparking ancient patterns

for a subterranean settling.

¹ Eight worldly dharmas are: 1. being happy when getting material things and 2. unhappy when not; 3. being happy when experiencing pleasure and 4. unhappy when not; 5. being happy with fame and a good reputation and 6. unhappy with notoriety and a bad reputation; 7. being happy when praised and 8. unhappy when criticized.

² Milarepa is a famous Tibetan yogi, noted for his spiritual poetry, his extensive meditation practice and unorthodox methods. He sought a teacher after realizing that killing people who annoyed him was not a good way to live. He requested Marpa to be his teacher, but Marpa apparently ignored him, not allowing  Milarepa to attend teachings and giving him jobs such as building towers that Marpa subsequently knocked down.

By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

My horse, Merlin

I have decided my dog is actually a horse. After all, he has four legs and runs along the beach and he likes eating carrots. Unfortunately, since I started feeding him hay, he has lost weight; he resents being saddled. Anyway, the saddle is too big and I cannot find a blacksmith to make shoes for him. He also has this unusual habit of chasing seagulls. I haven’t seen horses doing that before. I think you would agree that Merlin is a nice name for a horse. Other people insist he is a dog. I don’t know why.

Now that I believe Merlin is a horse, then there are things to do and ways of relating to him that do not apply if he is a dog. I have to change the way I feed and groom him. He will need a stable instead of a kennel – although, he is a small horse, so his kennel may do as a stable. I wonder if hay is cheaper than dog food?

You do not agree? No matter how much you try, if I absolutely insist he is a horse, then nothing you can say would make me change my mind. I would just rationalize away the inconsistencies. I could, like any one of the three Messiahs in the psychiatric hospital¹, pretend you are not there, say are a mental case, or say you are simply wrong.

In fact, every appearance in our daily lives is a false projection of our own mind. Our own mind makes it up and it becomes an obstacle to touching reality. My projection, or delusion, that Merlin is a horse becomes an obstacle to looking after him. My delusion that I inherently exist is an obstacle to being in touch with reality as it actually exists.

You have to see that your attitudes, your view of the world, of your experiences, of your girlfriend or boyfriend, of your own self, are all the interpretation of your own mind, your own imagination. They are your own projection, your mind literally made them up. If you don’t understand this then you have very little chance of understanding emptiness. — Lama Yeshe

Which brings me to the important part of the story. We firmly and habitually believe that we exist as an inherent entity. Because we believe this, we act accordingly. We experience fear that we might not exist after death. We hang on to whatever we believe will prevent this from happening. If teachers present us with the facts about reality, we either ignore them or think they are mad. If we are lucky, we will begin to see reality as they do.

Merlin is definitely not an illusion. He is sitting at my feet right now wondering when I will get up and feed him. If, say through hypnosis, I see a horse in front of me then the trance has affected my eyesight. When I am no longer trapped by the hypnotic effect, then I see his actual dependently-arising shaggy face. If I still think that this shaggy face is a horse’s head, then I am definitely deluded.

Actually, Merlin prefers me to consider him as a dog. That way he gets doggy type meals, a bed inside near the fire, soft toys to play with. He is a much happier horse.

Realizing emptiness is like this. Firstly, we need to one see though the delusion. We can do this through logic. You can prove to me that Merlin cannot be a horse. We can prove that inherent existence is impossible. It is more difficult to get rid of the habits which accompanied the deluded thought. Once I understand he is really a dog, then I stop giving him hay, which in terms of the metaphor means to stop creating negative karma through delusions. Don’t give him hay (negative outcome of delusion), give him dog food (positive outcome of being in touch with reality).

When we investigate our own psychology, we can remove our afflictive obscurations² or negative outcomes which arise from our deluded thoughts. This is a bit like me agreeing (to satisfy you, because I trust you) to feed my horse dog food because it is better for this horse. But it is only when I see the truth, when I see through my delusion, that I really understand why giving him dog food really is best for him. It is only when we know what we are refuting when we talk about emptiness that we can see the truth of the teachings on emptiness. There really is no point in grasping on to something that does not inherently exist just because we believe it inherently exists.

One day it suddenly hits me. Merlin is not a horse, he is a dog. My whole view of Merlin-reality is changed and with it all the problems and paradoxes that arose through my false beliefs. They are simply irrelevant.

With thanks to the DB@H forum!

1. Rokeach, M. (1981). The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. New York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1964)

2. Afflictive obscurations: attachment, anger, pride, afflictive ignorance, afflictive doubt, transitory view, wrong view, holding these views as superior, holding ritual and ethics as supreme.

I wonder what reality looks like with the super clean and clear binocular vision of ultimate truth and relative truth. It may be a while before I know, that is, before I become a Buddha. Meanwhile we look at reality through very murky lenses and mistake the smudges for the real thing.

Dharma Realities is a blog where we can investigate the peculiarities of our muddy vision.

I hear many stories about good intentions gone wrong, about ritual becoming more important than its meaning, about carping and criticism between Dharma students (ordained and lay), about disillusionment with one’s spiritual part, about confusion regarding spiritual teachers, about Dharma becoming a burden instead of a joy. I also have my own fair share of experiences. Some of these ideas have been written in my Mixed Motives column of Mandala magazine.

Dharma Realities is a blog where we can cheerfully acknowledge we are not yet Buddhas, or even Arhats, but ordinary people with ordinary hangups.

For this blog, I am just Chönyi Taylor: mum and grandma, friend and listener. If you need a formal introduction, I am Ven. Dr. Chönyi Taylor, BSc, M Ed, Ph D, MAPS, Registered Western Teacher for FPMT and Honorary Lecturer in Psychiatry at Sydney University and author of Enough! A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release From Addictive Patterns (Snow Lion, 2010)

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala April-June 2010 Online Exclusives)

The more I study Dharma, the more I come to realize “Oh! This stuff really does work,” the better I feel. I am sure we all have our own stories to tell. I remember when I suddenly realized that I did not need to make pleas to some distant deity, but just be aware of the ever-present atmosphere of profound wisdom and loving kindness. It reminded me of that passage in the Bible: “Even the very hairs on your head are numbered.”¹

A few wispy clouds hang listlessly in a deep blue sky. I need a hat now that my numbered hairs are so short. How easy to feel cared for on a day like this as I walk along the beach. With salt on my lips and sand on my feet, I return to a house shut down to keep the heat out. How easy to rejoice. How easy to send this peace out on my breath. I am so happy. My ego is so happy.

My ego tells me that my Dharma practice is all about me. It is about wanting my happiness, my peace of mind, the ripening of my good karma. If I need to send a thought out to others, then it is a small price to pay. In any case, says my ego, if I say my prayers then my teachers will be happy with me and give me their attention. My ego says that its happiness and mine are one and the same thing.

Look far ahead. 
Generate a vast mind. 
Don’t squeeze yourself…

… Say the Kadampa geshes²

Look far ahead. “Well,” says my chronically dissatisfied ego, “I would really feel happier if we could attain the higher levels of the form realm.” So now I need to work toward a good rebirth. My ego is even happy to put up with meditation. Meditating on the emptiness of space is enough to give us the power to reach higher levels of meditative concentration.  More meditation, more concentration and it can even reach the formless realms. No blatant suffering to worry about. Amazing power. Bliss out. Happy ego.

“Not good enough,” complains my ego. “I want complete peace.” So now we can tolerate all sorts of difficulties, even practicing compassion to generate the merit to attain enlightenment. Our minds are vast and my ego is in a hurry. It squeezes me as much as possible. “Being relaxed is the same as being lazy,” says this unrelenting ego. How absurd! My ego, which wants peace, will not let me be peaceful. I’m beginning to think I would rather get rid of this dictator anyway. Don’t squeeze yourself, say the Kadampa geshes.  My ego does not like this, but when I step away from the dictatorship of this relentless ego of mine, I breathe a sigh of relief.

One day my ego will become stuck. It will tolerate everything except its own annihilation. And me? Well, I have learnt a lot even if my motivation was rather flawed. In particular I have learned how deep and subtle this ego can be, how easily it fools me into thinking I am being altruistic when I am being self-seeking, or wise when I  pretend knowledge, or full of realizations when I am foolishly faking.

In Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s words: “With a vast, brave mind, think, ‘I’m going to do all this. Even if it takes many, many years, I’m going to do it.’”³ What I am learning is that this vast brave mind is much better off without its tyrannical ego.

The Dharma really is all about me, not my ego.

¹Luke 12:7, Matthew 10:30

²From Kadampa Teachings by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

³From Kadampa Teachings by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala January-March 2010 Online Exclusives)

It is important to understand that true practice is something we do from moment to moment, from day to day. We do whatever we can, with whatever wisdom we have, and dedicate it all to the benefit of others. We just live our life simply, to the best of our ability.
– Lama Yeshe

It was quiet this morning before the wind came up with the threat of rain. It is so easy to be calm when all is calm around us. Nothing challenged my complacency. Merlin and I wandered along the high-tide mark with little dashes away from the more assertive waves. He is now asleep on one chair. I am on the other with my laptop. On other days, the world intrudes. Sometimes it intrudes with delight and joy. Sometimes the grey, cold rain sends me into a glum despair. Everything seems insurmountable and unending. As Macbeth said, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”¹ Poor old Macbeth was having a bad time, but would he have been so morbid and calculating if he was a Buddhist? Would I feel like this if I was a “real” Buddhist?

Buddhists are supposed to have the answers. Instead of trying to fulfill ourselves by becoming kings, as Macbeth was doing, we know the futility of searching for lasting happiness in short-term pleasures. We can head for the ultimate solution, the direct realization of emptiness. We can use the many practical methods for dealing with negative thoughts. We do not have to trudge through misery the way Macbeth did, yet the reality is that even long-term Dharma students find their enthusiasm withering. Their practice has become dry. I know that from firsthand experience and I have no doubt that many other Dharma students know what I am talking about.

When we experience spiritual dryness, practice seems more like a penalty. Dharma leaves us depressed and enlightenment seems so remote that the promise of achieving it seems hollow. What has happened to that wonderful excitement we felt when we first met the teachings, when we first found our teacher? What has happened to the delight of saying our prayers? What has happened to our enthusiasm for meditation? We know the “right” answers but they do not seem to be working. Some of us deal with this barrenness by becoming critical, or resentful, or self-righteous, or feeling overtaken by a sense of failure. Some of us retreat into Dharma activities with such energy we have no space left to work out what is happening. At least that solution, despite its mixed motives, will be beneficial for others. In secret though, within that desolation, we feel that Buddhism has not worked for us.

Christian mystics call the deepest of such dryness the “dark night of the soul.” The same self which had delighted in states of ecstasy must now surrender itself, its individuality and its will, completely and be at one with, be of the same taste as, the Divine Being. This sounds very much like abandoning the false view of the self, not just in theory, but in stark reality. This deep desolation stems from our resistance to letting go of our attachment to an inherently existing self. It is the most radical aspect of our practice. This realization is not achieved when we are ecstatic about our practice because there is no challenge at that time to our clinging to a false self in the same way that my peacefulness was not challenged by the quiet beach. When we experience spiritual dryness, it is this same false self which is objecting to its annihilation. Its clinging is deep and intense. It no longer likes Dharma because instead of being comforted by it as it was in its early days, it is now threatened by it. That false self is also what we call “me” and “I.”

The only option is to surrender this clinging which means giving up countless lifetimes of apparent safety and security, and for what? Uncertainty? Insecurity? To become of no importance? To experience death while still living? No wonder monks cling to their robes as they approach this awareness. It takes a lot of courage to welcome such an experience. And if we can give up the clinging, what then? Perhaps we can then see that much of our Dharma practice had been a subtle way to reinforce the false self. Perhaps the desolation means that we are moving into a deeper understanding of Dharma, of knowing that the realization of emptiness is not just an intellectual exercise but a radical restructuring of our whole self-perception.

¹ Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19-28

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala January-March 2009)

I want freedom from suffering on my own terms. I would like the weather to be always temperate, and people likewise. I would like only food that I enjoy, never having to get up early for puja and being able to get top marks in a test without studying. My teacher would give me unlimited and undivided attention. My pride would never be dented, my depression would never be denied and my anger would never be challenged.

Yes, I want freedom from suffering, but I want it now and on my terms. Don’t throw Dharma at me. My ego knows all the correct answers and uses them to protect itself. I want complete freedom from the suffering of my ego, not freedom from my ego.

It was my ego that took refuge, renunciation and bodhichitta vows. It wanted to be bolstered against turbulence. It did not want to be challenged, and it definitely did not want to be annihilated. It was quite happy for anything outside its pride and self-seeking to be annihilated. It was happy to annihilate anger that showed me up as an imperfect Dharma student and nun, or attachments to things that other people wanted but I did not. Even when it looked at the teachings on emptiness, my ego managed to make this serve its own purposes. It could, for example, deny any responsibility because it was empty. It could also twist dependent arising by claiming that my suffering was dependent on all the factors around me.

I doubt if I am alone in this battle to preserve my ego. Of course, that is not what Dharma is about, but it is very easy to fool ourselves. To annihilate suffering, we necessarily annihilate the ego. We are not invalidating the self which arises in dependence on the five aggregates of body and mind. We are invalidating that ego which lives in a state of denial, and in which anything outside the barriers set up by pride is ignored or repressed.

When we are sick, or depressed, or red with anger, or green with jealousy, these are the moments when the self-serving ego is exposed. The self-serving ego has a strong aversion towards any Dharma practice which challenges its supremacy. We can catch ourselves out and plug the emotions. We can say that Dharma teachings are too vague or too hard, and avoid any responsibility. But if we want deeper healing, then we have to stop and investigate why our self-serving ego is so desperate to protect itself. This is an intensely personal exercise. It involves seeking out our unique karmic imprints. It means asking ourselves: “Why do I react in that way?” “What are the expectations of my self-serving ego?”

Bolstering a prideful ego is the opposite of Dharma practice. So if I really want to practice Dharma I have to destroy the very thing that I had thought was going to be protected by Dharma. This also implies a huge transformation in my perceptions of this “I”. By this I mean transforming the dependently-arising “I” to include all those parts of itself that the self-seeking ego has denied. It means such things as acknowledging that I prefer to be in control, or that my self-righteousness is invalid, or my self-abnegation is not really renunciation but a way of manipulating people to help me, or my being a stickler for rules is a way of masking my faults. It means dropping the stratagems of the self-seeking ego. It means understanding our own ways of practicing the eight worldly dharmas. It means painful self-realisation. It means becoming your own therapist. It means not quoting texts, but developing realizations about these texts. And it involves pain.

Then when we are prepared to let go our self-serving ego we being to understand the richness of the Dharma teachings for what they are. And when I get there, you can throw it all at me and I will be delighted.