The Lotus Still Blooms (5 page)

Our thinking can be far off the mark, and we can be so out of touch. We can use Right View by asking, “Are you sure?” This is a place to begin to right our thinking.

Second:
Ask, “What am I doing?” or, as Dr. Phil of TV fame so perfectly asks in response to people’s outlandish behavior, “What were you thinking?” When you create needless stress, ask: “What am I doing?” When you are anxious, ask: “What am I doing?” When you feel anger rising, ask: “What am I doing?” When you speak unkindly of another, ask: “What am I doing?” When you harbor ill feelings or resentments, ask: “What am I doing?” When you water seeds of negativity, ask: “What am I doing?” When you are racing through your life or through a simple task, ask: “What am I doing?” When your cosmic plate has become a platter and is overflowing, ask, “What am I doing?”

In the 1960s Ram Dass popularized the phrase “Be here now.” These concepts lead to self-awakening and bring us fully into the present moment, which is the only place we can know the truth. When we are swept up in the trauma of life, living with unskilled rather than skilled behavior, it is good to stop and ask ourselves, “What am I doing?” When anger rises in us, let us ask, “What am I doing?” Whenever we feel victimized, ask, “What am I doing?”

We are such habitual creatures, we repeat a habit, energy, an attitude, a behavior without much forethought. We need to be aware when we are doing this, and one way to do this is to say to ourselves, “Hello, habit energy.” We can then begin to notice our habitual, compulsive, ceaseless thoughts. Sometimes it is simply a habit to worry or to be distracted. If at these moments we can pause, recognize the habitual behaviors and greet them, we can begin to learn to get past them.

Third:
Ask, “Is this helpful?” This is a phrase I resonated toward when I first heard it. It is like a reality barometer. Is this gossiping conversation helpful? Is this attitude helpful? Is this prejudice helpful? Is this fear helpful? Is this anger helpful? Is this guilt helpful? Is this long-held belief helpful? Is holding family secrets helpful?

We all can carry hidden beliefs—attitudes based on fear and negative programming from our family, culture and society that keep us separated from one another. These beliefs keep us asleep.

Is this helpful? This simple, clear question is a way to assist us living mindfully. In the moment-by-moment living of our lives, this question is a simple way to explore our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. This leads to our healing, to our becoming a more whole, aware human being, to becoming a person living out of an attitude of loving kindness, rather than living from hate, fear and prejudice.

A word I fell in love with in my earliest years of studying Buddhism was “bodhichitta.” Bodhichitta is the manifestation of compassion, grace, love and goodness, all rolled up together. When we welcome and strive to express bodhichitta energy, we long to assist all others in realizing freedom from suffering. Bodhichitta translates as “the enlightened essence of the heart,” or “the heart of our enlightened mind.” The great Buddhist saint Shantideva called bodhichitta “the supreme elixir, the inexhaustible treasure, the supreme medicine, the tree that shelters all beings.”

Studying Right Thought has helped me go deeper into the difficult lesson in life that deals with our thoughts and the concept that in the early stages of our journey we are seldom aware of our true thoughts. Our true thoughts are buried deep within our minds underneath the monkey-mind chatter, the habitual and the unconscious thinking. In order to reach these true, inner thoughts we must learn to still the mind through faithful meditation practices.

The Buddha said that the broader the student’s consciousness, the more profound is his experience of the teaching. Intellectual learning must be applied to one’s own life, into one’s own practice.

Knowledge, practice and a compassionate heart must all be united in a true teacher. It is taught that there are ten qualities all true teachers embody. They are: (1) Disciplined mind. (2) Calm mind. (3) Calm being. (4) Knowledge that exceeds students’. (5) Enthusiasm for teaching. (6) Vast learning. (7) Realization of emptiness, a commitment to practice compassion. (8) Eloquent and skillful teaching. (9) Deep compassion toward students. (10) Resilience and ultimate patience with students.

The student’s qualities need to be (1) An open mind. (2) An objective mind. (3) The intelligence to discern what is accurate from what is inaccurate. (4) Enthusiasm.

The essence of spiritual practice is to be a better person and to refrain from harming others.

—HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

And we must learn to always remain calm at our depths, like the ocean at its depths.

The Buddhists say all things and events lack self-existence. The teaching states that all things are impermanent and are an illusion. One of the greatest insights I have ever taken away from the Dalai Lama was when he said, “We can say something is an illusion, not because my writing tablet, desk and pen are not here, but we can certainly say and agree that they are impermanent.” Therefore, anything that is impermanent can be said to be an illusion because it is impermanent. It will not last forever.

The next logical conclusion is that the mind eventually reaches this level of awareness. The ultimate nature of reality is the emptiness of all things and events—the absence of independent reality. Nothing can cease the continuation of consciousness or mind. Emptiness is not nothingness. It means it does not have its own origination. This is the Middle Way. This can be most challenging for our Western minds to comprehend.

The mind can be likened to the ocean viewed from an airplane at 35,000 feet. It looks completely calm, yet when you near the surface, you find much turbulence if a storm is in progress. So, too, our minds appear to be calm and serene, but when we look inside, there can be much monkey-mind chatter and much turmoil and raging turbulence.

Our lifelong task is to learn to still the mind—to free the mind of angry thoughts, sad thoughts, depressed thoughts, separate thoughts, lonely thoughts, hateful thoughts, thoughts of attachment. The only means of doing this is constant practice and observation, replacing an angry thought with a calm thought, a sad thought with a joyous thought. We must practice deep meditation.

After much practice, the troubled mind can be put to rest, and then the basic nature of the mind can rise. Our basic nature is serene, clear, calm.

In order to have Right Thought, Thich Nhat Hanh says that we must embody the Four Immeasurables—Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. They are the very nature of a noble being, an enlightened being. We must stop feeding our negative states of mind. How? We cease from calling violence “entertainment.” We cease speaking endlessly of ourselves as the victim. We begin to see it as our lesson, our karma. We cease from watering those seeds, and we learn our lessons and go on.

We must be willing to look head-on at our suffering and what causes us to suffer. If we try to avoid this meeting, our suffering will continue to be the engine that runs our lives, filling our experience with more and more suffering. When we focus on suffering, sure as day follows night, more suffering will present itself.

Personally, in dealing with mentally tormenting situations, ones that seem to grab us by the throat and not let go, I have found it takes tremendous energy, focus and unwavering commitment to move out of consuming negative thoughts and to shift back into the true nature of my mind.

Lama Chonam, dear friend and Buddhist teacher, once said while teaching at my church, “Sometimes our individual and collective mind has to be shocked into seeing the nature of reality.” He said this in direct response to 9/11, when those two jets roared into the Twin Towers in New York City, a third slammed deep into the earth of rural Pennsylvania and a fourth smashed into the Pentagon. As Americans, our collective mind was shocked to its core. The unimaginable and unspeakable had occurred. We saw the images either up close or on television, and initially few of us could grasp what was happening.

I recall that I was working at home and had stopped and turned on the television just as the first jet struck. My mind could not comprehend what my eyes had just seen. I instantly began praying and doing my utmost to remain centered. In those moments we still did not know that the horror was intentional. As that gruesome reality began to be revealed when the second jet hit the second tower, I knew I had to drive the thirty minutes to my church to be with my staff. As I drove through several suburbs of Cleveland, it was surreal. There were so few cars on the roads. At stoplights fellow drivers would look back as I looked over, and in stunned silence we would nod. It was like driving through a dream in slow motion.

For America this was one of the worst possible illustrations of wrong thought. At times it seemed as if the world had gone stark raving mad. Congregants of mine were vacationing in Hawaii at a serene, exclusive resort when the news of the attacks on the Twin Towers began to spread.

They were having breakfast on the lanai when guests began intently watching a television set reporting the tragedy. A Muslim woman standing next to my congregants’ table began to jump up and down with glee, clapping her hands. Apparently she could not even remotely contain her happiness at the suffering of our country, where, at that moment, she was a guest.

My congregants were so terrified not only by what was occurring but also by the hatred playing out before them that they immediately went back to their room, packed up and took the next flight to Honolulu. They did not want to be on a remote island, not knowing what was going to be happening next, and they felt very frightened of that woman and her hate-filled reaction.

Buddhist teachers would instruct that we must have compassion for ones exhibiting such upside-down thinking and behavior. I can understand that, as could my congregants, that they chose not to be at the same resort as that Muslim woman—a choice many of us might make under the circumstances.

Right Thinking is always in alignment with the spiritual ideal.

—
THE DHAMMAPADA,
VERSE 100

RIGHT SPEECH

THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES I have learned during many years studying Tibetan Buddhism have become so much a part of me that I have begun to constantly have insights and realizations on the ultimate nature of reality. There is a point where
all
teachings converge and the common thread of truth can be seen. It is happening in my life, and I am endeavoring to share how it can occur with you.

Right Speech is the third aspect on the eight-spoked wheel of the Eight-fold Path. The expression and understanding of Right Speech is absolutely crucial on our spiritual journey if we are to attain an enlightened life.

When we practice Right Speech, we are constantly mindful of the vibration and impact upon ourselves and others of all the words we speak. If all of us were truly mindful of all our words, how different they would be.

With every utterance, a vibration is sent forth. Therefore, when we speak angry words, harsh words, toxic words, curse words, a like vibration is emanating from us and enfolding us and those around us like a blanket. On the other hand, when we speak words of loving-kindness, compassion, caring, tenderness, a vibration in kind is being sent out and embracing all. These vibrations, negative or positive, do not dissipate quickly.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk with whom I have studied in France, has said that we in our Western culture are very quick to turn to anger. I could not agree more. We so quickly become irritated over insignificant things, small matters, that we soon escalate to a state of uncontrollable anger. Our speech reflects our misperceptions as we attempt to make things matter that do not.

To live as conscious beings we must practice Right Speech every moment of our lives—not just our waking moments. We must bring this awareness even into our dreams, so that even in our dream states we become more aware. As we become more conscious and learn to do so, the living of our lives begins to become seamless. And this awareness in time will even filter down into our dreams. What we perceive in our awake reality begins to wed to our dream states. These different realities of mind begin to become connected, and a universal consistency begins to emerge.

In Right Speech we realize that absolutely every utterance has an impact on us, on those around us, on our animals, on our plants, on our environment. Therefore, we cease from saying anything that would harm, such as swearing and using words in anger that become toxic. This takes tremendous effort and a retraining of our minds It does not mean we suppress, but it does mean we learn to release the anger and fear that results in harsh, unkind, sarcastic, caustic communication.