Into the Heart of Life (11 page)

Whether you are sitting on a cushion or in a chair, sit up straight. The important thing is to keep your back straight and your feet flat on the floor. Bring your shoulders up; bring them backwards and down again, and that way you are in a good posture. Now just relax. Otherwise, you will get tired.

Focus your attention on the coming and going of the breath. The breath is a good focus for practice because there is a strong connection between our breath and our state of mind. Be aware of your breath as it comes and goes. With the breath as a focus, you are present. You cannot breathe in the past or in the future. You can only breathe now. Normally, we are not conscious of our breathing. But the moment we are conscious of it, we bring our mind into the present. This is skillful means. You can become conscious of your breath during the day, at any time: driving, walking, sitting at your computer, even while you are talking. Breathing in; breathing out. And that in itself is a meditation. Even sitting up straight, holding a formal pose, is not required for this.

According to the Tibetan tradition, one should be able to keep the mind one-pointedly on twenty-one breaths without being distracted. Thoughts are no problem. Following after and identifying with thoughts is the problem. Thoughts can be like a river, with us right in the middle getting tossed up and down. Becoming conscious of our thoughts is a way to step out of that river. As you step out of the current of the river you can focus your attention on what is forefront: your breath, as it rises and falls, especially your outgoing breath. You may count
one,
as you breathe in;
two,
as you breathe out. Don’t give the thoughts in the back of the mind any attention. If by any chance you jump back into the river and get swept along, climb out onto the bank, and start again.

One,
as you breathe in;
two,
as you breathe out. Keeping the mind very relaxed, centered, you just concentrate on the breath as it comes in and as it goes out. And that is all you have to do. Nothing else in the world matters right now, except to breathe in and out and to know it.

Step two

Now take that spotlight of awareness that is centered on the breath, and turn it inward to the thoughts themselves. Our thoughts are constantly flowing by, moment to moment to moment. The contents of the river are ever-changing. But now, as we’re very relaxed, we can step out from the river and rest on the bank. We can just watch the river go past without immersing ourselves.

We are not judging our thoughts at this time. We are not thinking that this is a clever thought, or a terrible or stupid or interesting thought; they are just thoughts. Whatever thoughts arise inside of us, whatever sounds arise outside of us, all are just thoughts, just sounds, and are not important. What is important is the knowing quality, the knowing quality that is centered on the flow of thoughts. Normally, when we are thinking, we
are
the thoughts. But now we are stepping back and becoming a witness to the thoughts, an observer. So there is the thought current and there is that which is aware of the thought current.

Keep the mind very relaxed but very centered; you’re just seeing the thoughts as they flow by and not becoming involved with them. Try that for five minutes and see how you get on.

Whatever sounds you hear are just sounds and are not important. Don’t follow them. Whatever thoughts you have in your mind are just thoughts. Don’t get fascinated by the thoughts; don’t follow them. Just keep sitting on the bank. See if you can make as it were a separation in the mind between the flow of thoughts and the awareness that knows.

Step three

The third step is the easiest step of all. You just rest in that awareness. Now you might think you don’t have any awareness, but the very fact that you can think and know that you are thinking is a manifestation of awareness. Normally, though, we are not conscious of being conscious. Just sit and be aware of being aware. There is absolutely nothing to do.

We always want to be doing something, and this is the problem. We always think, “What do I do?” This is one of the reasons why other aspects of Tibetan meditation such as visualization of deities and mantra recitation are so popular: there is so much to do. But it can leave you going, “Huh?” You can see the mind running around, looking for something to hold on to. But I am describing the kind of meditation in which we just sit. We just sit to sit. It is very akin to Soto Zen. We just sit, without thinking about it. We are just conscious of being here.

There is nothing to do; there is nothing to concentrate on; there is nothing else but to be in this moment, as it is. Technically speaking, if you want an official name for this kind of meditation, it is called “resting in the nature of mind.”

All you have to do is do nothing. Just sit here, and be aware of just sitting. Usually, what happens is that we become more conscious of energies flowing through the body, a sense of being. But don’t try to manufacture anything, just be very open to whatever happens.

The quickest way to stop suffering is to recognize our lack of identification with our thoughts and feelings. Normally, we try to get beyond our underlying dissatisfaction by distracting ourselves. We try to lift up our sense of ego by feeding it with as much pleasure as possible. We distract ourselves endlessly, so we don’t have to see that underneath it all is deep dissatisfaction. For example, it is noticeable in the United States, which has such a high level of material prosperity, that practically everyone who can afford it seems to have their own private therapist or psychiatrist, just as they have their own dentist or doctor. So clearly, even having so much pleasure and comfort in one’s life does not actually cover up the underlying dis-ease, or what the Buddha called
dukkha
.

Actually, “dis-ease” is a good translation for
dukkha,
which is the opposite of
sukha,
meaning ease, the seemingly smooth and nice. As we come to recognize dukkha, dis-ease, within ourselves, we come to recognize just how sick we are with the three poisons of desire, hatred, and confusion. Renunciation is a matter of letting go. And the ultimate renunciation is to release one’s grasp at a self-autonomous, enduring, and separate
me
at the center of the universe.

One of the fastest ways to gain realization is through really observing the mind—observing the thoughts and seeing that we are not our thoughts. Thoughts rise and thoughts fall. But we are not the thoughts. There is something
behind
the thoughts: there is a consciousness, an awareness, behind the coming and going of thoughts. And that is what we have to pay more attention to, especially during practice. Our mind is like a clever computer. We can program it very well, but that is not the energy driving the computer. We have to reconnect with the energy behind the computer, and meditation is a way to bring us back to that. The energy source is vast. Our computer is just one little computer, but this energy is vast and all-encompassing.

The problem is that most people feel cozy enough in samsara. They do not really have the genuine aspiration to go beyond samsara; they just want samsara to be a little bit better. It is quite interesting that “samsara” became the name of a perfume. And it is like that. It seduces us into thinking that it is okay: samsara is not so bad; it smells nice! The underlying motivation to go beyond samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centers. There are many people who learn to meditate and so forth, but with the underlying motive that they hope to make themselves feel better. And if it ends up making them feel worse, instead of realizing that this may be a good sign, they think there is something wrong with Dharma. We are always looking to make ourselves comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won’t be a prison any more.

Traditionally, renunciation is combined with the purification of spiritual motivation known as bodhichitta.
Bodhi
basically means enlightenment, and
chitta
means heart or mind. So
bodhichitta
means the thought or the aspiration of enlightenment. There are two basic reasons we follow a spiritual path and look for liberation. One reason is that we want to be free. Let’s take the traditional example of a burning house: your whole house is on fire, and you run out from it. But all your family—your partner, your children, your parents, even your pet dog—are all still inside. What are you going to do? You don’t just say, “Well, I’m out. So too bad. Do your best to get out, too.” Naturally this leads to the second basic reason for following a spiritual path: we will try to pull them out as well.

Let’s take another example: suppose there is a huge swamp, and we are all drowning in it. Somehow, through tremendous effort, you manage to pull yourself out onto dry land. What are you going to do? Do you turn to face your family and your friends, do you turn to everyone still drowning in the swamp, and say, “Well folks, sorry. I am free on dry land, and if you really struggle hard, you can get out too—bye!” Even in a worldly situation, if one were on dry land, one would use that position to try to pull the others out. Likewise, on the spiritual path, it is understood that to aspire for merely one’s own spiritual well-being and freedom is actually inherently selfish. In this light we may find that the only real reason to strive spiritually for ever-deepening wisdom and compassion is our wish to help others likewise gain liberation. This aspiration, this complete turnaround in our whole motivation for striving on the spiritual path, is called bodhichitta.

Often people who regard themselves as being on a so-called spiritual path tend to become rather self-preoccupied: my practice, my guru, my path, my experiences, my realizations. While the spiritual path is intended to lead us to decrease and eventually to abandon completely our obsession with the ego, very often people use it to inflate the ego. They become very ambitious. Spiritual practice becomes for them just another form of achievement. Now, it is not just a matter of getting a promotion at your firm, or earning more money, or getting a bigger car or a bigger house. It is also a matter of which high lamas you meet; how many super-secret initiations you receive that nobody else ever receives; all the special inner instructions and realizations which you have obtained; how long your own retreat was, compared with that of others; and how your own retreat site was located in a yet more remote place. Bodhichitta counteracts all that, because we are now practicing not for ourselves but for others.

Becoming a bodhisattva, a spiritual hero, is not somehow a quick fix. The bodhisattva vow is a total commitment, through all one’s lives, in whatever form, to be here for the benefit of others until samsara is emptied. And when we become very high-level bodhisattvas, at the very last minute we may hear, “No, after you.” “No, no—you first!” “No, I have a vow! You first!”

But until that time we all hold hands and jump together. The point is that the bodhisattva vow is a complete change in motivation and attitude. One doesn’t have to underline it and say whether it is possible or not possible. The point is that it completely turns around one’s whole motivation for traveling the path. As the
Diamond Sutra
points out, ultimately there are no sentient beings to be saved, since the idea of a sentient being as a separate being is the delusion we are seeking to overcome in order to be enlightened.

What keeps us in samsara is our belief in ourselves as individual sentient beings. Therefore, the vow to save everybody already contains two wrong views: the belief in an “I” that will save sentient beings, and the belief that there are sentient beings to be saved. Nonetheless, although there is no one to save them and nothing to be saved, one still takes the vow to save all beings. Bodhichitta manifests on two levels: there is ultimate bodhichitta and relative bodhichitta. Ultimate bodhichitta understands the non-inherent existence of all beings, called emptiness. But it also understands the interconnection of all phenomena, or the interdependence of all beings. So on an ultimate level, there is nothing to be saved, because we are already enlightened. But on a relative level, which is where most of us live, it definitely looks as if there are sentient beings who are caught in the swamp of samsara and need to be pulled out.

Wisdom says there is nothing to be done; it has already happened. But compassion says, “Get to work! Start pulling!” These two aspects unfold together: the wisdom aspect, which sees that ultimately there is nothing to be done; and the relative aspect, which says, nonetheless, we have a lot of work to do. But of course we cannot start pulling all these endless beings out of the swamp if we are still drowning in the swamp ourselves. To use an analogy, suppose we want to be doctors. First of all, we have to go to medical school for many years to study how to use medicine properly. You might say, “No, no, no. I can’t waste that time; that would be really selfish. I have to go and help these poor people; they are sick, and they need me!” You might grab a bag full of medicine, and a scalpel, and rush off to help. There is a lot of compassion in that, but it lacks wisdom, as you might give the wrong medicine to people, and heaven knows what you might do with the scalpel! Intention is good, but the point is that such actions may do more harm than good because one lacks skillful means. Whereas if one has patience and goes to medical school, studies hard, and practices under skilled teachers, one can find an infinite number of people out there to help. Milarepa was a great Tibetan yogi of the eleventh century. One of his students said, “Look here, all these people are suffering. It is very selfish for us just to go away and meditate. We should be out helping people.” Milarepa replied: