I’m continuing the series of talks about the Lojong or Mind Training teachings. This group of 59 pithy slogans is a great place to start your practice or to deepen your practice, wherever you are at. In fact, a good reference book is Pema Chodron’s entitled, Start Where You Are. These teachings are about opening our heart, getting comfortable with the power we have to transform the way we relate to ourselves and others.
This week, we’ll talk about a slogan in the Seventh Point, about more specific guidelines to follow.
Seven: The Guidelines for Mind Training
42. Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.
In this slogan, what are the two? It’s talking about the happy or the sad, wonderful/awful, joyful/wretched. However, it’s really about the infinite spectrum of human experience. Whether you’re having an experience of great joy, or an experience of great sadness, or whether you having an experience anywhere in the between, this slogan is encouraging us to be patient. The message? Be patient!
Haven’t we heard our whole lives? Just be patient!
I would offer a completely different perspective on this slogan. Don’t be patient!
What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for before you make being mindful the most important thing in your life? How many times have we thought, “I don’t have time to be mindful today!” The scientific proof is that these Buddhist practices make every moment a good moment. It’s not about being Buddhist, it’s about being mindful. It’s about being aware. And it’s been scientifically proven that being mindful makes everything else in life more fulfilling. Start there! Start here! Right now. Let’s not wait until the end of this meditation, let’s not wait until the end of this talk. Now. Let’s each of us make mindfulness the priority in our lives right now, and now and now and now. Let go of your pre-conceived notions about what’s happening and just focus on being in each moment.
What are you waiting for? Think about those things in life that you’re think are going to make you happy. “I’ll be happy when I get a new job,” or “I’ll be happy when I finish school,” or “I’ll be happy when I get into a relationship,” or “I’ll be happy when I get out of a relationship.” What is your personal thing that you’re waiting for? What are you telling yourself that you’re waiting for and then you’ll be happy?
Now stop and decided to be happy in this very moment. We can cultivate a sense of happiness in each and every moment. When we do the loving-kindness meditation at the end of the meditation, there’s the part where we say, “May I be happy, May I be peaceful” Note that it doesn’t have any caveats or future time frame. It’s not may I be happy when this certain thing happen, It’s "may I be happy". Now. Period. This has been scientifically proven to increase a person's perceived level of happiness. Train your brain to rest in a state of happiness.
To clarify, this isn’t about giving up all goals in our lives. We can still plan to go to school or change jobs or whatever it is that we think we need or want to do, but don’t miss what’s happening in this moment right now because that’s where all the information is that we need to live.
We have to learn to love the process or we’re never going to be happy.
I was thinking the other day about checking something off my bucket list, you know, those things that you want to do before you die. And I had this mental image of checking it off the list. I was feeling anxious about the details of making it happen and had this thought about how good it will feel to check it off, and in that moment I woke up, and I laughed at myself. What good is a completed check list when I’m dead????? Will they put the completed list in my coffin and proclaim me a success? Who cares? Doing something on your bucket list is about enjoying the process. I lost sight of that for a moment. It’s crazy.
We don’t’ have to wait for life to happen. It’s happening. This it. Right now.
As most of you know, Unity Temple and the Temple Buddhist Center are all about supporting and encouraging each person to live a joyfully passionate life, doing what we love, and often I talk with people who aren’t sure what their passion is. They know what it’s not! That is usually easier to figure out. But sometimes it’s difficult to see where we want to go. I would advocate that being mindful in each moment is the VERY BEST WAY to discover your passion. When you’re fully aware in a moment where your heart is singing, when you feel like you’re in love with living, in that moment, you’ll find your passion. Passion isn’t something that we can contemplate intellectually or assess or analyze. We’ve got to live it to know it.
Another important aspect of passion is that we don’t have know the endgame. Passion isn’t about having a specific goal. It’s about experiencing joy in as many moments as possible. Just follow your passion wherever it leads you. You don’t have to know the whole journey, you just have to see the next step. And passions can morph and change over time. Nobody says you have to pick a passion and stick with it. When we are fully present in the moment, we’ll know what to do. It is as simple as that.
Okay, now that I’ve completed denigrated patience, I will cut patience some slack. The one piece of patience we might need is when we don’t get it quite right. Knowing the truth, that we should make mindfulness a priority, that being present is about living, doesn’t’mean we’re always going to be right here, right now. We CAN be patient when we’re not consistent. And just keep trying….dont’ give up. It’s so worth it.
In her book, Pema Chodron has a specifically Buddhist definition of patience, which is:
Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with our habitual response to either pleasure or pain.
We can have gentleness/patience with ourselves when we don’t get it right. And we can have patience with each other when others aren’t getting it quite right.
So instead of the slogan, "whichever of the two occurs, be patient", I offer something a little different to remind us of this teaching, “this too shall pass”. This can be our purpose! I use it when things are awful, and I need to just hang in a little longer. AND I also use it when things are wonderful, to make sure that I fully appreciate those most joyful moments in life.
Helen Keller was apparently a bit of a Buddhist herself. She said:
“Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
So I offer today, that the most worthy of purposes, is to be fully present. This too shall pass…
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