Dharma Realities

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala October-December 2008)

As I write, the Beijing Olympic Games are in full swing. On my TV screen are ecstatic gold medallists. The silver or bronze winners may be only a few hundredths of a second behind, but it is the holder of the gold medal that gets most of the attention. Western society admires and rewards the “best”.

I enjoy watching the Olympic Games because I enjoy seeing what the human body can do, but I cringe at the jingoistic commentaries arriving in my lounge room. Why do nations need so desperately to measure themselves in this way, like siblings vying for the attention of Mom and Dad?  Being best becomes an end in itself. The 25 gold medals won by Australian Olympians between 1980 and 1996 cost around $37million.¹

We can smile at this foolishness, but most of us are deeply affected by the demand to be best. Either we have some skills and try to be top at something, or we give up and fall into hopelessness and depression. Sometimes we swing between those two extremes and wonder why we are chronically dissatisfied. What is more, we bring this neurosis into Dharma practice. We want the gold medal of having the most attention from teacher, or sitting longer in meditation, or being the busiest student at our Dharma center.

It is pride that causes the problems. Pride is quite different from self-confidence. Pride inflates our fragile self-esteem. It becomes a source of disrespect, especially towards people with lesser qualities. It might pretend to be self-confidence, but self-confidence simply knows our strengths and limitations. It is neither puffed up nor deflated when it measures itself. It leaves us free to be compassionate towards people we can help and to be clear in our Dharma practice.

Guru devotion is so easily twisted by pride. It turns into a competitive race to be the best Dharma student. The teachings on guru devotion tell us to do even more than our best, and there is a good reason for that: correct devotion is the root of the path. So how and why do we get caught up in pride?  The self-serving ego desperately wants to be propped up, not annihilated. It needs to be proud of itself. It serves the teacher so it can be important. It wants the gold medal of best Dharma student. Then when someone else gets the attention that it wants, it becomes jealous and resentful. Whenever such feelings intrude into our Dharma practice we can be sure that our self-serving ego has taken over once again.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says: “Dharma practice offers the most exciting, highest happiness there is: following advice, finding no hardship at all in whatever advice the guru gives, even things that generally seem hard in the view of other people, even impossible. That itself is guru devotion. Then, seeing your guru as Buddha, without any question, is incredible, the peak, the highest enjoyment. Then, nothing is difficult to accept. But if the devotion is not strong, if it is wishy-washy, if there’s no real devotion, only a little, and it’s artificial, from the lips, but not in the heart, or it’s very weak like when a fire has been burning a long time and there are only one or two sparks left, it can disappear very easily. Then it’s very difficult to follow advice, even if the advice is simple, and not a great sacrifice. Even very small things become hard. The mind doesn’t want to do it.”²

Wishy-washy devotion, doubt, anger towards the Dharma – these are all signs that our motivation has become contaminated by an ego caught up in a grasping and muddled search for happiness. Remember, this ego goes to great lengths to avoid annihilation and yet the point of Buddhism is precisely that, to annihilate this ego. There is a big difference between doing our best with a quiet ego-less self-confidence and being the one with the grossly puffed-up ego who wants to win a gold medal.  How fortunate we are, then, in the midst of the worst excesses of our pride. It is this same inflated ego that we are trying to expose when we investigate emptiness.

1 Brett Hutchins, Sydney Morning Herald, 7. August 2008

2 https://www.lamayeshe.com/lamazopa/advicebook/lamrim/guru.shtml

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala August-September 2008)

“I hope that you understand what the word ’spiritual’ really means. It means to search for – to investigate – the true nature of the mind. There’s nothing spiritual outside. My rosary isn’t spiritual; my robes aren’t spiritual. Spiritual means the mind and spiritual people are those who seek its nature.” – Lama Yeshe.

When I first heard about the Buddhist idea of taking refuge, my immediate reaction was one of disgust. I thought it meant running away from reality. It reminded me of a hymn which I disliked for the same reason: “Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee.” No way was I going to hide from life.

Looking back, my reaction reflected my own way of coping when life became too much: running away and hiding. I love being alone. My default personality type is introversion. Yet in those days I despised introversion as a weakness. Obviously my understanding of refuge has changed, but there was an element of truth in that early reaction. Refuge can mean running away from reality.

Living in a Dharma center which is also a retreat center gives plenty of opportunity to meet people who are running away. Relationship problems, mental illness, burnout, failure, catastrophes, suffering in its countless guises are behind the search for peace. Our motivation for refuge is contaminated by neurosis, or exhaustion, or both. Secretly we want a refuge which makes no demands on us and solves our problems for us. Suffering, after all, is the first noble truth and the third noble truth promises complete release from that suffering. Like the words of the hymn, refuge can be the perfect hideout.

Most of us, when we first meet Buddhism are trying to prop up a self which is not only a deluded idea from the ultimate point of view, but is also deluded from a conventional point of view. This conventionally deluded self is busy denying what it does not want to know about itself. It says it is taking refuge because it wants to fulfill its bodhicitta motivation, but at the same time it refuses to look at its other less noble and self-seeking motivations. From that perspective, we understand refuge from a mind like a dirty mirror, reflecting only what we want it to reflect.

The delusion becomes worse when we try to explode the notion of a self-existing ‘I’ . We can be quite happy to refute the conscious aspect of that illusory ‘I’, and even think we have found the object to be refuted. The unconscious aspect of the ‘I’ which Jung calls the ’shadow’ remains intact. We have polished some parts of the mirror, and left the dirt on other parts.

Still, even when our motives are mixed, there are times when it makes sense to pull away from everything going on and take stock with our baby Buddha minds.  Buddha taught four noble truths, and the missing two are the ones which our mixed motives are not so keen to investigate. Neurotic refuge is not interested in the cause of suffering or the path from suffering which form the other two noble truths. Exhausted refuge cannot cope with them. At some stage we have to forgo the running away from reality and understand that refuge shows us the path to unmask and face up to our more subtle confusions and delusions.

If taking refuge only means running away from reality, then it is going to harden our delusions. We come home from retreat even more resentful of the realities of poor relationships, illness and failures. Home and work life seem to be a huge distraction from Dharma practice. On one hand, we yearn for the quietness of meditation and on the other hand we live in the noise and chaos of ordinary life. We yearn for the pseudo refuge of ignoring our karma. We have forgotten that each irritation of ordinary life is a personal Dharma teaching. Each irritation spotlights our own unique ignorance, aversions and attachments, and allows us to see underneath to our own personal, twisted wisdom.

If refuge really means hiding, are lamas hiding when they go away and spend three years or twelve years, or a whole lifetime in retreat? Retreat is a time to take perspective, to train the mind to behave itself, to train the mind to stay in increasingly subtle states, to strengthen wisdom and compassion. Refuge is a time to dwell in the compassionate wisdom of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. With that dwelling in refuge, we are open to the guidance we need from wiser and more compassionate minds than our own.

There are good reasons for taking refuge with a mind like a dirty mirror with all its self-serving motivations. We need a cloth and water to clean the whole mirror.

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala June-July 2008)

If we are honest we see how often our good intentions in Dharma practice collapse into the lesser intentions of our self-serving egos. Often we think we are acting from a good motive, such as generosity, when the reality is that we are coming from a negative motivation, such as pride.

There is the well-known story of Drontompa who saw a monk circumambulating a monastery. He called to the monk: “It is good to circumambulate, but it would better to practise Dharma.” The monk then thought he would do prostrations instead, but when Drontompa saw him, he called out, “Good to do prostrations, but better still to practise Dharma”. The same thing happened when the monk tried reciting mantras or making many offerings, even when he tried meditating. What was wrong? When he asked, Drontompa said three times, “Give up this life in your mind.”  Drontompa was referring to the Eight Worldly Dharmas: acquiring or not acquiring things, comfort or discomfort, interesting or uninteresting sounds, praise or criticism. The Twenty-first Century versions of the Eight Worldly Dharmas are called neuroses.

Psychiatry coined the word “narcissism” to refer to this self-serving ego. It came from the myth of Narcissus, the ultimate self-admirer. He fell in love with his own image in a pool. The problem was that the image could not love him back. Rather than shattering his own image into a thousand pieces, he died of thirst at the pool. If we want to eliminate the self-serving ego, then we need to shatter its image. Cherishing our narcissistic image is cherishing our self-serving ego.

The motives that come from the self-cherishing ego can trick us into thinking they come from a clear mind. If we investigate carefully, we can separate them out. This means taking a clear and courageous look at ourselves. That is the psychological task in realizing emptiness.

Rules, rules, rules
I was once criticised for not filling my water bowls properly. I was told I should measure them with a rice grain. Should I measure it by the length or the width of the rice grain? Which variety of rice? What does it mean to fill the water bowls “properly”? What are the rules, and why do we have them anyway?

Rules are great for boosting the self-serving ego, particularly pride. Keeping to the fine print of ritual can come from pride or it can come from delight. Geshe Baen Gung-gyael knew about mixed motives. He set up the very best offerings on his altar because his benefactor was coming to visit. Suddenly he realized he really wanted his benefactor to think he was a good monk. He jumped up and threw ash all over the offerings. He caught himself out – his motives were mixed. The way we react to rules and ritual can give us insight into our mixed motives.

Rules are handy because we do not have to make decisions. Everything is in black and white. Rules can give us freedom, such as feeling confident that other cars will drive on the correct side of the road. They can also be like a prison. I remember when the acceptable length of a school uniform was three inches below the knee. That rule felt like a prison.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says that practices are more meaningful and enjoyable if you know the reasons why they work, rather than just following the rules of a tradition and invoking this or that. There are rules, which we call precepts, for lay people, for retreat, for Tantric practitioners, for monks and nuns. The purpose of these rules is to help protect the mind. We become free from problems and obstacles, all the sufferings. All our wishes for happiness, up to highest enlightenment, even the cause of happiness for all sentient beings, become fulfilled.

Rules become all-important when our self-confidence is very shaky. For a person with a chaotic or fearful mind, routine and rules mean being in control, at least for a time. This is the logic behind obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Excessive adherence to rules becomes a way of escaping from other suffering such as depression and the causes of that depression. But when we are unsure or afraid, then rules can help to develop self-confidence, such as a child knowing how to get to school. We cannot work out which is which by just observing someone else. We can only judge by examining our own minds.

When our motives are clear, then filling water bowls is a symbolic act with positive karmic benefits. Offering cool water gives rise to pure ethics. Similarly, offering the deliciousness of the water, its lightness and clarity, and its kindness to the stomach, all have positive karmic benefits. On the other hand, when our motives are from self-cherishing, whether disguised or not, then we create the karma for more self-cherishing.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has transformed his home in Aptos into a pure land. As you walk in, you are surrounded by a wealth of holy images and offerings and lights carried on the scent of incense. It feels like walking into his personal visualization of the merit field. For someone else the perfect altar may simply be a candle, flower and bowl of fruit. It all depends on the motive

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

(First published in Mandala July-September 2009)

I am in love. I adore my children and my grandchildren and my dog. What great pleasure there is when a grandchild runs up to me in delight: “Nanni, Nanni, Nanni’s here!” Such experiences are great treasures. I watch my dog, ears blown back by the wind, playing games with the seagulls. I listen as small fingers find their way around the piano to make a tune. Truly, I wish I could take the same enormous delight in all people and all creatures. My Dharma practice lets me know the incredible benefits of being able to do that, but my mind has lots of old and deep habits. These precious moments with my family teach me what is possible.

We usually use the phrase “being in love” for romantic love, in which all things seem to be possible. Romantic love gets a bad press because it is loaded with attachment and sex, but its other side is joy. It is the joy of having wishes fulfilled. I suspect that the wiser the wish, the greater the joy. The lovers in slow motion running across the idyllic field are no different than me and my grandchild being pulled toward each other with happiness.

When we get too serious about our Dharma practice, we forget that Dharma can be filled with joy. Definitely there are times when it is not easy to practice Dharma. There are times to push beyond our limits and then find that the limits were figments of our imagination anyway. There are times to be patient and not get upset because we have not managed to change instantly. There are those moments at a Dharma center when everything is in chaos. There are those moments with friends when they push us too hard, or ask too much of us, or violate our boundaries. These are hardly pleasurable moments.

It is so easy to extend these difficult moments and make ourselves miserable. We can be chronically dissatisfied because we think we are never good enough. There is always someone who is better than we are. We can be chronically dissatisfied because what we have is never quite enough. The advertising business makes sure of that. Why can’t we have only good karma ripening?

Amongst the worst moments, though, are those when we blame and punish ourselves for not being good enough. If we are not good enough, then we have to be better, to try harder, to know more. This is a seductive way of thinking because it sounds good. After all, if we want to reach enlightenment, then there is an awful lot of improvement to be done. It is not the aim which is the problem, but the attitude of blame. Blame drives us beyond what is reasonable and demands more than is possible. Blame makes us miserable even when we have achieved some small goal. Blame says, “If you are enjoying yourself, then you are wasting time. Get busy and do the hard stuff.” Blame says that pleasure is worldly.

There is a multitude of ways in which we can turn Dharma into a blame game. The pseudo-logic goes like this: I cannot allow myself to take pleasure in anything because that means I have attachment to that thing. Or sometimes it goes like this: I practice equanimity; therefore I do not indulge in either pleasure or displeasure. We can easily fall into blame, when all we need is a little patience with the slow rate of inner change.

Of course pleasure is a temporary thing. It comes and goes. It is not the lasting peace of nirvana. This does not mean that we cannot delight in those pleasures that come to us. And this delight is even greater when we let the pleasure freely pass. It is the grasping at pleasure which muddies romantic love and turns it into attachment, not the pleasure.

Every second of this human life is more precious than skies of wish-granting jewels, says Lama Zopa Rinpoche. So what are we going to do with each precious, delightful second?

By Ven. Tenzin Chönyi (Dr. Diana Taylor)

The winter sun is weak. No wind. The waves roll in parallel lines towards the shore. Myself, the dog, a couple of gulls, the otherwise empty beach are part of this quiet day. What will I be mindful of today: the way I walk, the gentleness of the day, the gulls wheeling away from Merlin’s barks, my headache, my next piece of writing, the aesthetics of the wave-sculpted sand? Mostly, I am choosing to be mindful of my thoughts. I have this article to write.

Mindfulness plays around between layers of my sensations and feelings and thoughts. Different things and thoughts grab my attention and mindfulness jumps there, like someone nervously holding a torch on a dark night. The problem, of course, is to make it stay where I want it to stay, regardless of the other exciting possibilities. If I want mindfulness to stay where I put it, I need a few other tools for developing concentration which we find in the texts on meditation.¹ Mindfulness is not concentration. It is one factor that assists in developing that concentration.

By itself, mindfulness is not necessarily virtuous. It is the motivation behind the mindfulness that determines whether it is helpful or unhelpful. If I choose to be mindful of the waves rolling in, then what is behind that choice? Maybe I want to avoid thinking about something else. Maybe I want to experience connectedness to this environment. Maybe I want to study wave action. Maybe I want to observe impermanence. So if the practice of mindfulness is going to be beneficial, then my motivation should also be beneficial. If mindfulness is going to generate compassion and wisdom in my mind, then it needs to be used in conjunction with what I know will generate compassion and wisdom.

If my motivation is to have the best garden on the street, then I will be mindful of what I need to do in order to create such a garden. I will remember to compost my food scraps, to pull out the weeds, to trim the bushes and prune the trees. As I do these I will be mindful about the way I am doing each one. So far, so good. But if my motivation comes from pride and wanting my neighbors to be jealous of my excellent garden, then I will not have achieved much for my own mind.

These days mindfulness is a popular word. Google will bring up over 2 million references. It is now the main focus of much of Western psychology, particularly Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). It is being used as a key tool in dealing with pain, stress, depression, addiction, anxiety disorders, disordered thinking, relationship problems, actualizing potential and so on. It is popular because it works. But the mindfulness of MBCT includes more than the mindfulness of keeping the mind placed on one thought or experience. MBCT mindfulness is described as “being aware of where your mind is from one moment to the next, with gentle acceptance.”² That aspect of “being aware of where your mind is” is what we call introspection. This is another important tool. Gentle acceptance is what we mean by equanimity.

Equanimity is an important key in turning mindfulness from a mental exercise into a beneficial practice and to stopping our exaggerations. It means having a little wisdom and a little compassion, at least towards oneself. Now we have something new to be mindful of: the self that gives rise to the craving or aversion of exaggerations.

Why should we be mindful? If it is just to lower our blood pressure, then we might be a little healthier but still have a dissatisfied mind. So let me go back to my walk on the beach. Was I being mindful? Yes, for very short periods. Was I concentrating? Yes, at times, as I began to plan this article, or just enjoyed the beach, or wondered who left the tracks in the sand. Did I have equanimity? Well that was not challenged because it was such a nice day. Was my walk a Dharma practice? Now that depends on my motivation.

¹ There are a number of books on this topic: for example, B. Alan Wallace’s The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind. Available from Wisdom Publications.

² Germer, C.K et al. Mindfulness and Psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press, 2005. p. xiii