The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (12 page)

So these are the five strengths we can utilize in our practice of awakening bodhichitta:

Cultivating
strong determination
and commitment to relate openly with whatever life presents, including our emotional distress.

Building
familiarization
with the bodhichitta practices by utilizing them in formal practice and on the spot.

Watering the
seed of bodhichitta
in both delightful and miserable situations so that our confidence in this positive seed can grow.

Using
reproach
—with kindness and humor—as a way of catching ourselves before we cause harm to self or other.

Nurturing the habit of
aspiration
for all of us that suffering and its seeds diminish and that wisdom and compassion increase, nurturing the habit of always cultivating our kind heart and open mind.

16

Three Kinds of Laziness

In the garden of gentle sanity

May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

—CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

L
AZINESS IS A COMMON
human trait. Unfortunately, it inhibits wakeful energy and undermines our confidence and strength. There are three kinds of laziness—comfort orientation, loss of heart, and “couldn’t care less.” These are three ways that we become stuck in debilitating habitual patterns. Exploring them with curiosity, however, dissolves their power.

The first kind of laziness, comfort orientation, is based on our tendency to avoid inconvenience. We want to take a rest, to give ourselves a break. But soothing ourselves, lulling ourselves, becomes a habit and we become jaded and lazy. If it’s raining we drive half a block rather than get wet. At the first hint of heat, we turn on the air conditioner. At the first threat of cold, we turn up the heat. In this way we lose touch with the texture of life. We trust the quick “upper” and become accustomed to automatic results.

This particular brand of laziness can make us aggressive. We become outraged at inconvenience. When the car doesn’t work, when we lose our water or electric service, when we have to sit on the cold ground without padding, we explode. Comfort orientation dulls our appreciation of smells and sights and sounds. It also makes us dissatisfied. Somehow we always know in our hearts that pure pleasure is not the route to lasting happiness.

The second kind of laziness is loss of heart. We feel a sense of hopelessness, of “poor me.” We feel so poverty-stricken that we aren’t up to dealing with the world. We sit in front of the television eating, drinking, and smoking, mindlessly watching show after show. We can’t bring ourselves to do anything to ventilate our loss of heart. Even if we manage to crank ourselves up and open the window, we do it with a sense of shame. We make an outer gesture of breaking through laziness, but still hold that essence of hopelessness inside. That gesture of cranking up or pushing through is still an expression of loss of heart. We are still saying to ourselves, “I’m the worst. There’s no hope for me. I’ll never get it right.” Thus we don’t really give ourselves a break. We’ve forgotten how to help ourselves; we lack insight into what would bring us true relief.

The third kind of laziness, “couldn’t care less,” is characterized by resentment. We are giving the world the finger. It’s similar to loss of heart but much harder. Loss of heart has some kind of softness and vulnerability. Couldn’t care less is more aggressive and defiant. “The world is messed up. It’s not giving me what I deserve. So why bother?” We go to the bar and drink all day long, and if someone talks to us we pick a fight. Or we shut the curtains, get into bed, and pull the blankets over our heads. If someone tries to cheer us up, heaven help him! We wallow in feeling undervalued and put down. We don’t want to find any outlet. We just want to sit around, feeling weighted down with gloom. We use laziness as our way of getting revenge. This kind of laziness can easily turn into incapacitating depression.

There are three habitual methods that human beings use for relating to laziness or any troubling emotion. I call these the three futile strategies—the strategies of attacking, indulging, and ignoring.

The futile strategy of attacking is particularly popular. When we see our laziness we condemn ourselves. We criticize and shame ourselves for indulging in comfort or pitying ourselves or not getting out of bed. We wallow in the feeling of badness and guilt.

The futile strategy of indulging is equally common. We justify and even applaud our laziness. “This is just the way I am. I don’t deserve discomfort or inconvenience. I have plenty of reasons to be angry or to sleep twenty-four hours a day.” We may be haunted by self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, but we talk ourselves into condoning our behavior.

The strategy of ignoring is quite effective, at least for a while. We dissociate, space out, go numb. We do anything possible to distance ourselves from the naked truth of our habits. We go on automatic pilot and just avoid looking too closely at what we’re doing.

The mind-training practices of the warrior present a fourth alternative, the alternative of an enlightened strategy. This is the strategy of fully experiencing whatever we’ve been resisting—without exiting in our three habitual ways. We become inquisitive about the three kinds of laziness. With bodhichitta training, we practice not resisting the resistance, touching in with the fundamental tenderness and groundlessness of our being before it hardens. We do this with the clear intention that our ego-clinging diminish and our wisdom and compassion increase.

It’s important to recognize that we don’t usually want to investigate laziness or any other habit. We want to indulge or ignore or condemn. We want to continue with the three futile strategies because we associate them with relief. We want to continue to escape into comfort orientation, to talk to ourselves endlessly about our loss of heart, or to chew on the fatalism of couldn’t care less.

At some point, however, we might begin to get curious and start to ask questions like “Why am I suffering? Why does nothing lighten up? Why do my dissatisfaction and boredom get stronger year by year?”

That’s when we might remember our training. That’s when we just might feel ready to start experimenting with the warrior’s compassionate approach. That’s when the instruction to stay with the tenderness and not harden might start to make sense.

So we begin to look into our laziness and experience its quality directly. We come to know our fear of inconvenience, our shame, our resentment, our dullness, and we come to understand that others also feel this way. We pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves and notice how they cause our bodies to tighten. With ongoing practice we understand that we don’t have to believe these stories anymore. We do tonglen, sitting meditation, and the other bodhichitta practices as ways of opening to the rawness of emotional energy. We begin to feel some tenderness, realizing that everyone gets caught up as we do and that all of us could be free.

Laziness is not particularly terrible or wonderful. Rather it has a basic living quality that deserves to be experienced just as it is. Perhaps we’ll find an irritating, pulsating quality in laziness. We might feel it as dull and heavy or as vulnerable and raw. Whatever we discover, as we explore it further, we find nothing to hold on to, nothing solid, only groundless, wakeful energy.

This process of experiencing laziness directly and nonverbally is transformative. It unlocks a tremendous energy that is usually blocked by our habit of running away. This is because when we stop resisting laziness, our identity as the one who is lazy begins to fall apart completely. Without the blinders of ego, we connect with a fresh outlook, a greater vision. This is how laziness—or any other demon—introduces us to the compassionate life.

17

Bodhisattva Activity

As the buddhas of old gave birth to bodhichitta

And progressively established themselves in the training of a bodhisattva,

So I too, for the benefit of beings, give birth to bodhichitta

And progressively train myself in that discipline.

—SHANTIDEVA

F
EW OF US ARE SATISFIED
with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be of benefit. The bodhisattva-warrior, therefore, makes a vow to wake up not just for himself but for the welfare of all beings.

There are six traditional activities in which the bodhisattva trains, six ways of compassionate living: generosity, discipline, patience, enthusiasm, meditation, and prajna—unconditional wisdom. Traditionally these are called the six paramitas, a Sanskrit word meaning “gone to the other shore.” Each one is an activity we can use to take us beyond aversion and attachment, beyond being all caught up in ourselves, beyond the illusion of separateness. Each paramita has the ability to take us beyond our fear of letting go.

Through paramita training we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Going to the other shore has a groundless quality, a sense of being caught in the middle, being caught in an in-between state. We get into a raft on this shore, where we’re struggling with notions of right and wrong, busy solidifying the illusion of ground by constantly seeking predictability. And we’re traveling across the river to the other side, where we are liberated from the narrow-mindedness and dualistic thinking that characterize ego-clinging. That’s the traditional image.

This is the picture I prefer: In the middle of the river, with the shoreline out of view, the raft begins to disintegrate. We find ourselves with absolutely nothing to hold on to. From our conventional standpoint, this is scary and dangerous. However, one small shift of perspective will tell us that having nothing to hold on to is liberating. We could have faith that we won’t drown. Holding on to nothing means we can relax with this fluid, dynamic world.

The prajnaparamita is the key to this training. Without prajnaparamita—or unconditional bodhichitta—the other five activities can be used to give us the illusion of ground. The foundation of the prajnaparamita is mindfulness, an open-ended inquiry into our experience. We question without the intention of finding permanent solutions. We cultivate a mind that is ready and inquisitive, not satisfied with limited or biased views.

It’s like lying in bed before dawn and hearing rain on the roof. This simple sound can be disappointing because we were planning a picnic. It can be pleasing because our garden is so dry. But the flexible mind of prajna doesn’t draw conclusions of good or bad. It perceives the sound without adding anything extra, without judgments of happy or sad.

It is with this unfixated mind of prajna that we practice generosity, discipline, enthusiasm, patience, and meditation, moving from narrow-mindedness to flexibility and fearlessness.

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something—usually ourselves. When we feel unhappy, when we feel inadequate, we get stingy; we hold on tight. Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can—a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement—we are training in letting go. As Suzuki Roshi put it: “To give is nonattachment, just not to attach to anything is to give.”

There are so many ways to practice generosity. The main point isn’t so much what we give but that we unlock our habit of clinging. A traditional practice is simply to offer an object that we cherish from one hand to the other. A woman I know decided that whatever she was attached to she’d give away. One man gave money to people begging in the streets every day for six months after the death of his father. It was his way of working with grief. Another woman trained in visualizing giving away whatever she most feared losing.

A young couple decided to deal with their ambivalence about panhandlers by giving money to the first person who asked each day. They were sincerely attempting to work with their confusion around the issue of homelessness, but they had an agenda: they would be good, generous people and do their noble deed and then forget about their conflicted feelings for the rest of the day.

One morning a drunk asked the woman for money as she went into a store. Even though he was the first panhandler of the day, his presence disgusted her and she didn’t want to give him anything. When she came out of the store she hastily gave him a bill and rushed away. Walking to her car, she heard a voice calling, “Ma’am, ma’am!” She turned and there was the drunk, who said, “I think you made a mistake! You gave me a five.”

Giving practice shows us where we’re holding back, where we’re still clinging. We start with our well-laid plans, but life blows them apart. From a gesture of generosity, true letting go will evolve. Our conventional perspective will begin to change.

It is easy to regard the paramitas as a rigid code of ethics, a list of rules. But the bodhisattva’s world is not that simple. The power of the paramitas is not that they are commandments but that they challenge our habitual reactions. This is especially true of the discipline paramita. Discipline is the conduct that de-escalates suffering. The warrior refrains from nonvirtuous actions such as killing, harmful speech, stealing, and sexual misconduct. But these guidelines are not written in stone. The intention to open the heart and mind is what’s essential. If we do good deeds with an attitude of superiority or outrage, we simply add more aggression to the planet.

Paramita training has a way of humbling us and keeping us honest. When we practice generosity we become intimate with our grasping. When we practice the discipline of not causing harm we see our rigidity and self-righteousness. Our practice is to work with guidelines of compassionate conduct with the flexible mind of prajna—seeing things without “shoulds” or “should nots.”