Cherishing Others

The determination, "I must always cherish all living beings" is the object of the twelfth Lamrim meditation in Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's The New Meditation Handbook. The actual title of the meditation is "The Advantages of Cherishing Others."

I did the meditation today, and gained a deeper experience of it than I ever have before. That seems to be the way it is with Lamrim meditations -- they are never quite the same. Even though you may meditate on the same topic every twenty-one days, you are never really doing the same meditation twice, in my opinion.

In The New Meditation Handbook, Geshe Kelsang lists several advantages to cherishing others. The first has to do with the law of karma.

Karma is very simple, really. All of our actions of past, present, and future are causes, and all of our experiences of past, present, and future are effects. Therefore, if we are experiencing positive circumstances now (being taken care of, being loved, living in a comfortable environment, good health...), they are the result of our having performed related virtuous actions in this or previous lives. And the motivation for performing such virtuous actions almost always involves cherishing others in one way or another.

So. Whatever pleasant circumstances we have, we can thank ourselves for cherishing others to generate them, and if we want to have similar circumstances in the future, we must keep cherishing others to create the necessary good karma.

If we are not enjoying pleasant circumstances -- if others are taking advantage of us or treating us poorly -- we can turn this situation around. Our cherishing others now always results in positive effects later. One of the laws of karma is that an action is never wasted. The virtuous seeds we plant will ripen.

One catch, though, is that we need to take the long view. Virtuous seeds planted in this life may not ripen until our next life, or in lives after that. But one thing we can be sure of is that any time we perform an action of cherishing others, we are creating positive circumstances for ourselves sometime in the future.

But what about now?

That leads us to the second advantage of cherishing others. Geshe Kelsang says, "The immediate effect [of cherishing others] will be that many of our problems, such as those that arise from anger, jealousy, and selfish behaviour, will disappear, and our mind will become calm and peaceful."

When I think about this, I can see that it is true. When I am seeing life through the distorted magnifying glass of my own wants and needs, I can often find it lacking. But when I set down the magnifying glass, and instead think of others wants and needs, I often find there is something I can actually do to help, even if it is only to offer a prayer. I benefit because this makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and makes me feel good about myself. Giving just has a way of doing that. I feel peace when I lay my head down at night. I feel I have accomplished something meaningful, something worthwhile. And that generates a deep sense of satisfaction.

Geshe Kelsang says, "The precious mind that cherishes all living beings protects both myself and others from suffering, brings happiness, and fulfills our wishes."

Wow.

It's a win, win, win situation. We win later, we win now, and others win too. With all this winning going around, it seems shocking that more of us aren't scurrying to engage in cherishing others all the time!

It's very, very unfortunate that our imprints and our environment set us up to cherish ourselves instead of others. It causes so much unhappiness, and takes us out of reach of a potential source of limitless joy.

How fortunate some of us are to have discovered Dharma and "seen the light!"

I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, claim at this time to have achieved the realization of cherishing others. If I had, I would always cherish all living beings all the time, and I would not be plagued by self-cherishing as much as I am.

But I feel excited today, because this was the strongest experience I have had so far of "getting it" that cherishing others is a source of potential happiness beyond my wildest dreams. If I come to believe this truth deeply enough, if it gets firmly ingrained in my mind, the juggernaut of my self-centered existence will begin, gradually, to change course.

And I and everyone I associate with will benefit from it.

Fame & Disgrace

This is the last of four articles about the eight worldly concerns. In Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's Joyful Path of Good Fortune, he describes this pairing as follows:

• Being pleased when enjoying a good reputation
  
• Being displeased when not enjoying a good reputation.

In other traditions, I have heard it stated simply as "fame & disgrace."

When I was a child and teenager, I used to fantasize about being famous. I had a talent for writing songs and playing the piano, and I imagined that someday I would be a famous musician.

Whenever I had these fantasies, I would experience a feeling of euphoria. It seemed so important to be famous -- like an enormously big deal.

Now, looking back, I can easily trace my hunger for fame to my feelings of low self-worth. Because of circumstances at home and at school, I came to believe that my feelings did not matter and therefore, I did not matter. Being famous would be a way to matter -- to be important to someone, or many someones.

I never achieved the fame I longed for. Various circumstances conspired to send me on the path of being a pre-med student instead. I was still trying to matter, just in a different way.

I fell short of medical school and became a medical technologist, and that was when my dreams of fame came back. I was active in my church music program, and wrote songs for our group. Everyone at church seemed to love me. I was famous, in that small way. Our band recorded two live concert albums and one of my songs even got brief airplay (by a deejay who happened to be our percussionist's cousin).

Finally, impressed with what I had done, my parents offered to front the money to send me and my then-husband to the Gospel Music Association's Seminar in the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado. With the excitement of finally pursuing a long-held dream, I recorded three of my best songs and entered them in the songwriting competition.

The preliminary competition was judged based on the recordings only, and on the very first night of the festival, the semifinalists were to be announced. I sat on the edge of my seat, stylus poised above my Palm device so I could write down the names of my songs that were in the semifinals. There were twenty semifinalists. When they had read ten and not gotten to mine, I started to sweat. At fifteen, I was extremely nervous. At eighteen, I was in a panic, and when they had read all twenty songs and none of mine were on the list, I sat there in shocked disbelief.

Numbly, I allowed my husband to shepherd me out of the auditorium and onto the sidewalk. There were people all around. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I simply said, "anywhere but here."

We attended some of the classes during the festival. My ex-husband, a very talented electric guitarist, made it all the way to the finals in instrumental competition and placed third overall. But my week had been over before it even started. In many ways, it seemed my life was over.

Prior to the competition, I had regularly been angry with God for not allowing me enough time to do my full-time job, take care of my house and husband, fulfill my church responsibilities, and write and record songs the way I wanted to. I really, truly believed God had created me expressly for the purpose of writing Christian songs and felt like I was being asked to do an impossible task considering my circumstances.

That first night at the festival, everything changed. I knew that if God had really wanted me to be a Christian songwriter, I would have been in the semifinals. Suddenly everything I believed about myself and my purpose was turned upside down.

I was numb and depressed for months. I didn't know what to think. I felt washed up. Over. Dead.

No one at my church could believe what had happened to me. But what had happened was that I, used to being a big fish in a small pond, was thrown into an ocean full of much bigger fish than me, and suddenly I just wasn't so special.

Finally, I threw my energy into a new determination to go back to the GMA Seminar and kick some butt. I did a much better job of writing and recording three songs. That first night of the second festival, I breathed a sigh of relief when I was one of the twenty semifinalists. I placed twelfth overall out of hundreds of songs, and that was quite an accomplishment.

But the judges weren't satisfied with my song. Listening to their critiques, and learning more about the supposed craft of songwriting during classes that week, I began to understand the formula for songs that can sell. And that's what it's all about, in secular or Christian music. It has to sell.

I went home, and tried to write songs that would sell.

But my heart just wasn't in it. I wanted to express myself in a way that made sense to me, and I quickly came to realize that anything less would be selling out. Yes, I was technically capable of writing the way Nashville wanted. But something had happened during the year or so since that first shocking night.

I had grown some backbone. I had started believing I mattered, because it seemed that I would never receive that confirmation from outside myself, not to the endless extent that I needed it. And I began to see that if fame amongst the members of my church wasn't enough to satisfy my need, nothing would ever be enough.

I went into a metamorphosis that would ultimately result in my leaving Christianity and finding Buddhism. It would result in my leaving my husband and finding another. And it would result in my seeing myself as myself, judged by my own standards, and not by what I thought others believed about me.

So. It took over three decades of my life before I was able to let go and just be me.

Now, as a Dharma practitioner, I have learned that fame is a worldly concern -- something that distracts us from our true purpose. And I believe that to be completely true. When self-grasping and self-cherishing are abandoned, there is no need to seek fame. Needing to seek fame for our own self-gratification is poisonous and distracting. And I'm so glad I don't have that need anymore!

I do think it's important to say that there's nothing wrong with fame in and of itself. Many Dharma teachers and gurus, for example, are famous. This does not make them fraught with worldly concern. They use their fame only to help others, and their fame enlarges their audience and makes them more credible. So it is not wrong to want fame -- it is wrong to want it for the wrong reasons.

In our celebrity-worshiping culture, fame is seen as the be-all end-all by many. And with low self-worth as rampant as it is in our culture, it is hardly surprising that people will grab onto any chance at fame that they can get. Witness reality TV "stars," and the like. I suspect some people even commit crimes just so they can enjoy their "five minutes of fame."

The solution to this isn't to get rid of the reality TV shows (although that's not a bad idea). The solution is for people to see themselves as they really are -- see the gold buried in the field of their consciousness for what it truly is -- see themselves as intrinsically good and worthwhile.

Praise & Blame

This is the third of four articles about the eight worldly concerns. In Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's Joyful Path of Good Fortune, he describes this pairing as follows:

• Being pleased when receiving praise
• Being displeased when not receiving praise.

In other traditions, I have heard it stated simply as "praise & blame," but as in the other pairings, the "blame" is misleading because the issue isn't simply that we have an aversion to blame -- it is also that we have an aversion to the simple absence of praise.

Why is praise a worldly concern? Because when we are looking for praise, we are caught up in people-pleasing, not Dharma. Do I do this? You bet I do.

One easy example is my online activities. I like it when people respond favourably to my tweets or read and comment on my blog. It's definitely not the only reason I tweet and blog, but it is a factor. To deny that would be dishonest.

All things considered, though, I'm not the praise addict that I used to be. For years, I was heavily involved in the music program at my church, and I bent over backward and then some trying to please the pastors and other members of the congregation. I drank in their praise like air and at the time it seemed just as essential.

But something was missing inside me, much more so than now. At my very core, I did not feel that I was okay. So I needed other people to tell me I was okay, and when they did, it took the pain of not feeling okay away for a while. Through therapy and the early years of my Dharma practice, I came to believe in my own fundamental goodness. This was staggeringly important with regard to my potential for mental health and happiness.

So. I get twinges now of not being okay, but it's not a state of being anymore. And the need for praise is less, but not completely absent. Yet.

One of the most beautiful things about Buddhism is the belief that at heart, we all have Buddha-nature, or Buddha-seed. We are like a cloudless sky, and all of our delusions and difficulties are like clouds that temporarily obstruct the sky, but are not a part of it and do not change its inherent nature.

Believing I am good on the inside has enabled me, in many ways, to behave better on the outside. The difference between the doctrine of Buddha-nature and the doctrine of original sin, for me, is the definitive difference between Buddhism and Christianity. My roots were in the latter, and on top of a family that didn't treat me as if I were okay inside, my religion was telling me that, too. This created a lot of pain, and a lot of acting out on my part.

Which brings me to blame.

The degree to which I used to beat myself up was endless. I did not need other people to blame me -- I did a bang-up job of it myself. My pain created delusions, my delusions created less-than-perfect behaviour, the less-than-perfect behaviour created shame, shame created blame, and blame created more pain. I lived in a constant state of pain, and no wonder. I was always blaming myself for something, and at the heart of it all was the blame I felt for being somehow flawed and defective.

The expectation of Christianity is that we be perfect. Anything else is sin, and we're not supposed to sin. Even one sin would have been enough to send Jesus to die on the cross, they say. So I was living with a completely ludicrous expectation for myself (perfection) and hating myself for being anything less.

The teachings that I have received in Buddhism have never told me it is reasonable to expect myself to be perfect right now. They have taught me, instead of blaming myself and others, to have compassion for myself and them. They have given me understanding as to why I behave in certain ways, and in many cases the understanding alone has been sufficient to stop the unwanted behaviour. There are many teachings directly addressing the need to abandon blaming. And abandoning blaming, when it is achieved, creates a profound and joyous freedom.

Whether you suffer from being addicted to praise, beset with blame, blaming yourself, or blaming others, I believe the answer lies in Dharma. Study. Meditate. Spend time with Sangha. If you do, you really can make significant improvement. I am proof.

Loss & Gain

This is the second of four articles about the eight worldly concerns. In Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's Joyful Path of Good Fortune, he describes this pairing as follows:

• Being pleased when receiving resources and respect
• Being displeased when not receiving resources and respect.

In other traditions, I have heard it stated simply as "loss & gain."

In Buddhist teaching, the eight worldly concerns are to be abandoned because they are fraught with two of the three poisons: attachment and aversion/hatred/anger (the other poison is ignorance/indifference). For purposes of this post, I'll simplify it to attachment and aversion.

We have an attachment to gain, and an aversion to loss. In fact, if you use Geshe Kelsang's definition, not only do we have an aversion to loss, but we also have an aversion to the simple absence of gain. If our fortunes are not increasing, many of us are inclined to be displeased.

In thinking about this issue, I explored what things I typically want to gain, and what I'm afraid to lose. In addition, I examined my lack of contentment, the ability to be satisfied, peaceful and happy within the status quo.

Like most Westerners, and indeed most people, I want to gain money. I can think of all sorts of things I'd like to buy that I currently can't afford: a new iPod, Lasik surgery for my eyes, a couple of Cornish Rex kittens, and a new wardrobe for my husband (no offense to my husband -- his clothes are just plain worn out).

Three weeks ago I found out I will be receiving a sizable inheritance soon. Since then, despite trying not to, I have spent a lot of time and energy worrying about how I am going to allocate the money. I have prayed for wisdom. I have prayed for the money to be as much as possible so I can pay off my debts and buy a few things I want. But, as my Dharma teacher pointed out to me the other night, it's funny how concerned I am about this, considering a few weeks ago I had never heard of this money and it didn't exist for me.

So there is my gain...it's coming, and it might not be enough. I'm attached to it, and I'm attached to ideas of how I want to spend it. It is a worldly concern that has distracted me during many a meditation session now. I prayed for money, and now I'm getting it, and it isn't solving my problems. Sure, it is making some debts go away, for which I am grateful. But it hasn't brought me true and lasting happiness.

What am I afraid to lose? Well, lots of things. My husband, to an illness or accident. Our income, for similar reasons. Our home. My beauty as I age. My favourite clothes as they wear out. And on, and on, and on. I worry about potential losses, too -- probably not as much right now as I worry about coming gains, but I do worry about them. Like most people, I don't naturally accept the impermanence of everything.

I don't think I am unusual in this. We, as human beings, seem to have an aversion to change. We expect to stay healthy and young-looking, and when this doesn't happen, we think something unnatural has happened to us. We literally seem to think that we ourselves and everyone else we know are going to live forever. Whenever anybody dies, it makes us uncomfortable, or inconsolable, depending on how close we were to the person. But they were never ours to begin with.

Our aversion to losing is really about our attachment to the things we could lose. It all comes back to being caught up in the things of this life...seeking them and then trying desperately to hold onto them once we get them.

Contentment -- what an unpopular thing! We live in a consumer culture, where we are actively encouraged to always want more and better. It is not enough simply to have a home, we must renovate and redecorate it. We must want something, or what is the point of everything? We think we need something to work towards: a new boat, a vacation, a slim goal weight in time for our daughter's wedding. The idea of looking around at the status quo and being okay with it is downright scary for most of us.

What would we do with ourselves?

Sometimes I wonder if all this chasing after gain is really just a way to avoid the pain we feel inside, the same pain that drives us to seek pleasure constantly. The reality of our condition is very uncomfortable for us. Disaster could strike at any time, for any one of us. We will die, and so will everyone we love. In today's economy, losing our home is a very real possibility. We may never make enough money to go to France the way we always wanted to. We will never again look the same way we looked when we were twenty-five. When we are old and gray, if we are lucky enough to get old and gray, we may look back and think we didn't live up to our full potential because we didn't gain all the things we wanted.

What can we do about this situation?

Well, for many of us who have taken a frank and fearless look at things, there was only one thing to do: seek help. And we probably looked around at various types of help for a while before we finally found the Three Jewels.

Within Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha lie the answers to all of our problems and pain, now and in the future.

The trick is to learn to take refuge in them, and not in all of the worldly things we tend to chase and cling to.

I can't claim to have learned this trick. I am working on it, though. I see the need for correct refuge, which brings me a step closer to finding it. Sometimes my mind is very clear and I can focus on the Three Jewels almost effortlessly. Other times it is disturbed and all I can seem to focus on are my upcoming inheritance, and whether or not I will be able to afford those exotic cats.

Pleasure & Pain

"Abandoning the eight worldly concerns, you made your freedom & endowment meaningful"

~Heart Jewel Sadhana of Je Tsongkhapa

This is the first of four posts I'll be writing on the eight worldly concerns. In "Joyful Path of Good Fortune," Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes:

"To renounce attachment to the comforts of this life means to be free from eight worldly attitudes:

(1) Being pleased when receiving resources and respect
(2) Being displeased when not receiving resources and respect
(3) Being pleased when experiencing pleasure
(4) Being displeased when not experiencing pleasure
(5) Being pleased when enjoying a good reputation
(6) Being displeased when not enjoying a good reputation
(7) Being pleased when receiving praise
(8) Being displeased when not receiving praise

While we remain attached to resources and respect, pleasure, a good reputation, and praise, our mind is unbalanced and we are inclined to become overexcited when we possess them and dejected when we lose them."

In other traditions, I've heard the eight worldly concerns simplified into "pleasure & pain", "loss & gain", "praise & blame", & "fame & disgrace." While shorter and easier to remember, this list, in my opinion, loses some of the meaning of the eight worldly concerns.

Take "Pleasure & Pain," for example.

Just about everyone I know seeks pleasure and wants to avoid pain. But what Geshe Kelsang's definition also shows is that simply being displeased at the absence of pleasure is also a worldly concern.

This truth hits home for me in a big way, and, I think, has many implications for modern civilization.

We live in a world of entertainment and wanting to be entertained. We expect things to be fun, and when we are not having fun, we are likely to feel we are being cheated. We want to play at our work, and work at our play. We think our relationships should always bring us pleasure, and so should our lives. Then, when life and people don't deliver, when we are stuck in a state that is not pain but is the mere absence of pleasure, we are dissatisfied. In many cases, we get dejected, in which case the lack of pleasure becomes pain.

As a young child, I had a lot of fun. School was fun. My family went camping a lot. I didn't have a lot of homework or chores, and got to play a lot. I had fun friends, and a fun mom.

Little did I know I was due for a rude awakening about the age of nine -- one that would go on for the rest of my life.

Not everything is fun. This seems to be a self-evident truth when we look at the world around us, and yet for some reason, in our own lives, many of us expect to feel some degree of pleasure all the time. When we are doing something that does not give us pleasure, we see it as drudgery, and these activities can easily go from neutral to painful if we don't simply accept them as a part of life.

For the Buddhist practitioner, this constant chasing after pleasure can be a serious obstacle to practice. It is the essence of attachment -- it is almost addiction. We don't like that "funny feeling" that comes up when we don't have a pleasurable way to occupy our minds.

But that "funny feeling" is our state of existence itself: suffering, or samsara. It is the nature of the reality in which we live, and it is what we constantly try to cover over with pleasure.

To make progress along the path of Dharma, we must become acquainted with our suffering -- the first Noble Truth is that life is in the nature of suffering, true suffering. We can't get anywhere if we don't let ourselves be open to the way we suffer. Being open to our own suffering both creates the grounds for renunciation of samsara and forges the foundation of compassion for others' suffering. If we refuse to feel it, we will be seriously handicapped as Buddhists.

I have been stuck in this way for years, like a tortoise withdrawn into its shell to protect itself from the world. Now, I'm starting to peek out now and then, starting to see the world as it is and allow it to touch me. Then, I go back into my shell. I suspect it will be this way for some time.

Abandoning the eight worldly concerns isn't something that happens overnight. At least, I don't think it is. I think it happens gradually. As we grow in our Dharma study and practice, the need for constant pleasure diminishes, and we are stronger and better able to face the world without it.

On the other hand, I realize there may be people reading this who have not had the problems I have had with the worldly concern of pleasure. If so, I rejoice with you. You are that much farther ahead on the path to freedom.

Overcoming Irritability

Someday, I will no longer be such an irritable person. My self-grasping and self-cherishing will be less, and I won't get "hooked" so much by things that I don't expect, don't approve of, or can't control.

But at present, it is a battle. Just about every day this past week, I've gotten irritated at something. Someone not behaving the way I thought she ought to behave (in a very minor way). A small child making happy noises during a Dharma teaching. My husband making a business call while I'm trying to meditate.

Each time, through application of logic & reason, patience & compassion, and some deep breathing, I have managed to let my irritation go. But just this morning I got irritated by something someone said on the Internet. It seems neverending.

I've blogged about my anger problems before -- about my anger at the "big" things. But I haven't talked about how easily I get angry at the "little" things.

I've been irritable my entire life. It can only be karma. Even when I was a child, I was prone to crabbiness. This means I've been irritable in other lives, as well.

It's time to break the chain.

The only thing I can think of to do, as an ultimate solution, is to meditate on emptiness. I will not attempt to explain emptiness in my blog, but in a nutshell it means that things do not exist in the way they appear, and that things exist in dependence upon our minds.

So, my mind is manifesting not only the things that irritate me & my irritation at them, but the irritable me itself. If I learn to see myself as a pure being, and see others around me the same way, there will no longer be any basis for irritation. If I can truly internalize the absurdity of my attachment to expectations, I will approach life with a much more open mind.

Meditating on emptiness is not easy. The concepts are difficult to understand (which is why I didn't try to explain them here). It is easy to get it wrong or just to not understand it at all. Or, like me, to understand it somewhat, but not completely.

If I understood it completely, I would no longer be grasping at myself as inherently and independently existent. My strong self-grasping in and of itself is evidence that I have not realized emptiness yet, even on a conceptual level.

But I keep trying.

I'm so glad to have gotten the empowerment of Manjushri (the Buddha of wisdom) two days ago. I feel that doing his Sadhana and saying his mantra will put positive imprints on my mind that will enable me to understand emptiness better. I'm also glad to be regularly doing the Sadhana of Vajrasattva (the Buddha of purification) now, because I feel this will help remove karmic obstructions to my understanding emptiness.

I know there is an end to my suffering in understanding emptiness. When I am irritable, I suffer. It is in no way fun, or beneficial. As Shantideva said, "This enemy of anger has no function other than to harm me."

Until I can reduce my self-grasping enough that irritation doesn't arise so often, I have to make do with applying patience & compassion once irritation has already arisen. To me, this process feels a little like dismantling an internal bomb. My anger wants to go off, and it is touchy. It is also stubborn, and resistant to my defusing efforts.

But over the past week, I have been successful every time, which is encouraging. Perhaps I ought to look at how far I've come, rather than lamenting about how far I have left to go.

Feelings

I'm having considerable trouble connecting with some of my feelings, and this is interfering with my Buddhist practice. I can think of several possible reasons for my lack of feeling, but I don't know if there are any immediate solutions.

One factor at work is medication I take for Bipolar Disorder. In particular, the antipsychotic Loxapine can have a blunting effect on the emotions. In some ways, for me, this has been good. I have been in some extremely stressful life circumstances, and the anxiety and despair (at least when I went on the medication) were beyond what I could cope with at the time.

Now my situation has improved somewhat, and I don't know if I can cope, or not. But there are two other more important medication changes I need to go through first (gradually) before I can think about experimenting with reducing Loxapine.

So, I'm stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

But that's not the end of the story. I'm still able to feel some things. I can bring myself to the point of tears thinking about my ex-husband's current circumstances, for example. I also cried the other day during a serious talk with my husband. So the capability is there. It's just somewhat stunted.

This causes problems in my Lamrim compassion meditations, and in other meditations as well. It is far more difficult to connect with feelings of compassion when I can't seem to connect with feelings in general. And in meditations where the object is supposed to be a feeling, I am seriously handicapped.

What can I do? What should I do?

Well, what I'm (not very effectively) trying to do is find out whether I'm blocking some of my feelings out of not wanting to feel them, and inadvertently blocking other necessary feelings by doing so. Since I have begun meditating again, I have been working on gaining a more peaceful mind, and have made some progress, I think. I am letting things go more and there is much less drama in my life.

My Tradition teaches that negative feelings are all minds, and that we can be free of them if we don't allow those minds to arise. I've been gaining some rudimentary skill at this. But I'm wondering if I have a problem with imprecision.

What kind of emotion is compassion, anyway? I'd have to say positive, because it's so important in the spiritual Path. But it can feel quite painful. So. A painful, positive emotion. The trick, then, is to stop allowing other painful minds to arise, but only allow that one. Very precise. And difficult, I think.

So far, I haven't figured out how to do it. But if I do, I'll write about it (and in the meantime, I would appreciate advice from anyone who feels inclined to give it).