The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (3 page)

New practitioners often embrace meditation or the Buddhist teachings with passionate enthusiasm. We feel part of a new group, glad to have a new perspective. But do we then judge people who see the world differently? Do we close our minds to others because they don’t believe in karma?

The problem isn’t with the beliefs themselves but with how we use them to get ground under our feet, how we use them to feel right and to make someone else wrong, how we use them to avoid feeling the uneasiness of not knowing what is going on. It reminds me of a fellow I knew in the 1960s whose passion was for protesting against injustice. Whenever it looked as if a conflict would be resolved, he would sink into a kind of gloom. When a new cause for outrage arose, he’d become elated again.

Jarvis Jay Masters is a Buddhist friend of mine living on death row. In his book
Finding Freedom
, he tells a story about what happens when we are seduced by the lord of speech.

One night he was sitting on his bed reading when his neighbor, Omar, yelled out, “Hey, Jarvis, check out channel seven.” Jarvis had the picture on without the sound. He looked up and saw a lot of enraged people waving their arms in the air. He said, “Hey, Omar, what’s going on?” and his neighbor told him, “It’s the Ku Klux Klan, Jarvis, and they’re yelling and screaming about how everything’s the fault of the blacks and the Jews.”

A few minutes later, Omar hollered, “Hey, check out what’s happening now.” Jarvis looked up at his television and he saw a large group of people marching, waving placards, and getting arrested. He said, “I can see just by looking at them that they’re really angry about something. What’s up with all those people?” Omar said, “Jarvis, that’s an environmentalists’ demonstration. They’re demanding an end to cutting down trees and killing seals and everything. See that one woman raging into the microphone and all those people screaming?”

Ten minutes later Omar called out again, “Hey, Jarvis! Are you still watching? Can you see what’s happening now?” Jarvis looked up and this time he saw a lot of people in suits looking like they were in a real uproar about something. He said, “What’s up with these guys?” and Omar answered, “Jarvis, that’s the president and the senators of the United States and they’re fighting and arguing right there on national TV, each trying to convince the public that the other is at fault for this terrible economy.”

Jarvis said, “Well, Omar, I sure learned something interesting tonight. Whether they’re wearing Klan outfits or environmentalist outfits or really expensive suits, all these people have the same angry faces.”

Being caught by the lord of speech may start with just a reasonable conviction about what we feel to be true. However, if we find ourselves becoming righteously indignant, that’s a sure sign that we’ve gone too far and that our ability to effect change will be hindered. Beliefs and ideals have become just another way to put up walls.

The third lord, the lord of mind, uses the most subtle and seductive strategy of all. The lord of mind comes into play when we attempt to avoid uneasiness by seeking special states of mind. We can use drugs this way. We can use sports. We can use falling in love. We can use spiritual practices. There are many ways to obtain altered states of mind. These special states are addictive. It feels so good to break free from our mundane experience. We want more. For example, new meditators often expect that with training they can transcend the pain of ordinary life. It’s disappointing, to say the least, to be told to touch down into the thick of things, to remain open and receptive to boredom as well as bliss.

Sometimes, out of the blue, people have amazing experiences. Recently a lawyer told me that while standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change an extraordinary thing occurred. Suddenly her body expanded until it felt as big as the entire universe. She felt instinctively that she and the universe were one. She had no doubt that this was actually true. She knew she was not, as she’d previously assumed, separate from everything else.

Needless to say, the experience shook up her beliefs and made her question what we do with our lives, spending so much time trying to protect the illusion of our personal territory. She understood how this predicament leads to the wars and violence that are escalating all over the globe. The problem arose when she started hanging on to her experience, when she wanted it back. Ordinary perception was no longer satisfying: it left her feeling troubled and out of touch. She felt that if she couldn’t stay in that altered state she’d just as soon be dead.

In the sixties I knew people who took LSD every day with the belief that they could maintain that high. Instead they fried their brains. I still know men and women who are addicted to falling in love. Like Don Juan, they can’t bear it when that initial glow begins to wear off; they’re always seeking out someone new.

Even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we are training, they are essentially no big deal. If we can’t integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. We can trust our experiences as valid, but then we have to move on and learn to get along with our neighbors. Then even the most remarkable insights can begin to permeate our lives. As the twelfth-century Tibetan yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa’s peak experiences, “They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.” It isn’t the special states themselves that are the problem, it’s their addictive quality. Since it is inevitable that what goes up must come down, when we take refuge in the lord of mind we are doomed to disappointment.

Each of us has a variety of habitual tactics for avoiding life as it is. In a nutshell, that’s the message of the three lords of materialism. This simple teaching is, it seems, everyone’s autobiography. When we use these strategies we become less able to enjoy the tenderness and wonder that is available in the most unremarkable of times. Connecting with bodhichitta is ordinary.

When we don’t run from everyday uncertainty, we can contact bodhichitta. It’s a natural force that wants to emerge. It is, in fact, unstoppable. Once we stop blocking it with ego’s strategies, the refreshing water of bodhichitta will definitely begin to flow. We can slow it down. We can dam it up. Nevertheless, whenever there’s an opening, bodhichitta will always appear, like those weeds and flowers that pop out of the sidewalk as soon as there’s a crack.

3

The Facts of Life

A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that—every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new.

—DZIGAR KONGTRUL RINPOCHE

T
HE
B
UDDHA TAUGHT
that there are three principal characteristics of human existence: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction. According to the Buddha, the lives of all beings are marked by these three qualities. Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are.

When I first heard this teaching it seemed academic and remote. But when I was encouraged to pay attention—to be curious about what was happening with my body and my mind—something shifted. I could observe from my own experience that nothing is static. My moods are continuously shifting like the weather. I am definitely not in control of what thoughts or emotions are going to arise, nor can I halt their flow. Stillness is followed by movement, movement flows back into stillness. Even the most persistent physical pain, when I pay attention to it, changes like the tides.

I feel gratitude to the Buddha for pointing out that what we struggle against all our lives can be acknowledged as ordinary experience. Life
does
continually go up and down. People and situations
are
unpredictable and so is everything else. Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers. I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment. We don’t have to be mystics or physicists to know this. Yet at the level of personal experience, we resist this basic fact. It means that life isn’t always going to go our way. It means there’s loss as well as gain. And we don’t like that.

Once I was changing jobs and houses at the same time. I felt insecure, uncertain, and groundless. Hoping that he would say something that would help me work with these changes, I complained to Trungpa Rinpoche about having trouble with transitions. He looked at me sort of blankly and said, “We are always in transition.” Then he said, “If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”

We know that all is impermanent; we know that everything wears out. Although we can buy this truth intellectually, emotionally we have a deep-rooted aversion to it. We want permanence; we expect permanence. Our natural tendency is to seek security; we believe we can find it. We experience impermanence at the everyday level as frustration. We use our daily activity as a shield against the fundamental ambiguity of our situation, expending tremendous energy trying to ward off impermanence and death. We don’t like it that our bodies change shape. We don’t like it that we age. We are afraid of wrinkles and sagging skin. We use health products as if we actually believe that
our
skin,
our
hair,
our
eyes and teeth, might somehow miraculously escape the truth of impermanence.

The Buddhist teachings aspire to set us free from this limited way of relating. They encourage us to relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change. Acknowledging this truth doesn’t mean that we’re looking on the dark side. What it means is that we begin to understand that we’re not the only one who can’t keep it all together. We no longer believe that there are people who have managed to avoid uncertainty.

The second mark of existence is egolessness. As human beings we are as impermanent as everything else is. Every cell in the body is continuously changing. Thoughts and emotions rise and fall away unceasingly. When we’re thinking that we’re competent or that we’re hopeless—what are we basing it on? On this fleeting moment? On yesterday’s success or failure? We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us. Nothing and no one is fixed. Whether the reality of change is a source of freedom for us or a source of horrific anxiety makes a significant difference. Do the days of our lives add up to further suffering or to increased capacity for joy? That’s an important question.

Sometimes egolessness is called
no-self
. These words can be misleading. The Buddha was not implying that we disappear—or that we could erase our personality. As a student once asked, “Doesn’t experiencing egolessness make life kind of beige?” It’s not like that. Buddha was pointing out that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied.

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs—or we don’t. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality—or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha’s opinion, to train in staying open and curious—to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs—is the best use of our human lives.

When we train in awakening bodhichitta, we are nurturing the flexibility of our mind. In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure about who we are—or who anyone else is either.

A man’s only son was reported dead in battle. Inconsolable, the father locked himself in his house for three weeks, refusing all support and kindness. In the fourth week the son returned home. Seeing that he was not dead, the people of the village were moved to tears. Overjoyed, they accompanied the young man to his father’s house and knocked on the door. “Father,” called the son, “I have returned.” But the old man refused to answer. “Your son is here, he was not killed,” called the people. But the old man would not come to the door. “Go away and leave me to grieve!” he screamed. “I know my son is gone forever and you cannot deceive me with your lies.”

So it is with all of us. We are certain about who we are and who others are and it blinds us. If another version of reality comes knocking on our door, our fixed ideas keep us from accepting it.

How are we going to spend this brief lifetime? Are we going to strengthen our well-perfected ability to struggle against uncertainty, or are we going to train in letting go? Are we going to hold on stubbornly to “I’m like this and you’re like that”? Or are we going to move beyond that narrow mind? Could we start to train as a warrior, aspiring to reconnect with the natural flexibility of our being and to help others do the same? If we start to move in this direction, limitless possibilities will begin to open up.