Comfortable with Uncertainty – 1 – Awakening Bodhicitta

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Today we start a series of talks about our new book, Comfortable with Uncertainty:  108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion, by Pema Chodron. This is a pithy book with some very specific practices that are designed to open our heart and shift our perspective.  We’ll start with laying the groundwork of the some of the words that will be used and the practices that we will be working on:

The main practice, which is training in bodhicitta (awakened/open heart/mind).

Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit word, the language of the original teachings that were written down, like Latin. Bodhi means awakening or enlightening, and citta which is mind or consciousness, but is sometimes translated as heart/mind.  In Tibetan Buddhism, the heart and mind were recognized as a single unit that operated to drive our experience of consciousness.  Sometimes it is thought of as beyond thinking and feeling—an openness that transcend the physical experience of living.  B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist scholar, even throws in the term, Spirit, to try a get at the spaciousness of Bodhicitta.  Bodhicitta is getting at this experience of being open to whatever is needed, without hanging on to our own fixations.

Bodhicitta in its most complete sense would combine both:

• The Absolute:  the arising of spontaneous and limitless compassion for all beings.  Absolute is this universal idea of spaciousness, freedom from attachments.
• The Relative:  the falling away of the attachment to the illusion we have of our selves as something separate from the whole. Relative is referring to the everyday intention to want the best for others as if it were our own. 

These two aspects of Bodhicitta go hand in hand.

Bodhicitta is also the union of wisdom and compassion.  Sometimes, when we think about compassion, it might be assumed that we should just give all our money away.  Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called that idiot compassion. When we are truly present and aware in the moment, and have a fundamental desire to relieve the suffering of all beings, in that moment, with wisdom, we will know what is the best action to take.

Chogyam Trungpa also describes Bodhicitta as this tender spot within us all. Most of us, have an emotional place that we protect, wanting not to be hurt.  But by arousing Bodhicitta, we are opening the willingness to be vulnerable, to be open to the possibilities.  A sense of friendliness to all things and all people, including ourselves.

Pema talks about another key component of arousing bodhicitta as being a spiritual warrior—a sense of bravery and kindness, of courage and compassion.  We don’t normally think about warrior as a peaceful image, but in this description, we can see how the importance of a sense of fearlessness is a very valuable part of the process.  Bravery and courage implies going forward even if it feels uncomfortable or scary.  We will be breaking old habits to experience ourselves and the world in this new way, and the first reaction might be fear and trepidation.  The practices we will be discussing about seeing our fear clearly and dismantling the unskillful defensiveness that we have built around our heart.  Note that we will not do away with uncertainty—uncertainty is a natural part of living.  Instead, we learn to respond to uncertainty in a dramatically different way, using uncertainty as a reminder to be open to all the possibilities in each moment.

Lastly, Pema Chodron encourages us to see this practice as integrated into everyday life.  It is not as if we have to save another person from drowing in a river in order to open our heart.  There are small everyday ways that we can practice having an open heart/mind that can ultimately make a huge difference our lives and the lives of other. “Even the most mundane situation becomes and opportunity for awakening.”

In the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring these valuable practices:

• Meditating with bodhicitta
• Tonglen (a specific technique of giving and receiving, from simply wishing another to be free of suffering, all the way to visualizing exchanging oneself for others.
• The Lojong teachings:  59 pithy slogans that can serve as easy reminders how to shift our perspective
• Aspiration practice:  using the four boundless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity/impartiality.
• Reflection on the paramitas (“perfections” or skillful qualities):  including generosity, ethics, patience, enthusiastic effort, concentration and wisdom.

Basics of Buddhism - 4 - The Four Boundless Qualities

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"Compassion and love, sympathetic joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries. 

As the source both of inner and external peace, 
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."
                                                                -His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

The Buddha taught his son, Rahula, to cultivate these four attitudes and actions to find deep peace.  They are called The Four Immeasurables, Boundless Qualities, The Four Sublime States, which are LOVE, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY,

The short prayer practice goes like this:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and sometimes we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves.  Just sit with that reaction.  Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing feeling loving and kind.  This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions.  RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for what they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world. 

(From Sharon Salzberg) Brahma-Viharas is a Pali word (original language of the Buddha) meaning “heavenly abode” or “best home.” The Buddha taught that practicing these four qualities leads to the “liberation of the heart which is love.”

• Loving-kindness is both friendship and also gentle, like a gentle rain that falls indiscriminately upon everything. Loving-kindness practice is a steady, unconditional sense of connection that touches all beings without exception, including ourselves. The Buddha first taught it as an antidote to fear.
• Compassion is our caring human response to suffering.  A compassionate heart is non-judgmental and recognizes all suffering—our own and that of others—as deserving of tenderness.  Compassion is combined with wisdom to create right action.
• Sympathetic Joy is the realization that others’ happiness is inseparable from our own. We rejoice in the joy of others and are not threatened by another’s success.
• Equanimity is the spacious stillness of mind that provides the ground for the boundless nature of the other three qualities. This radiant calm enables us to ride the waves of our experience without getting lost in our reactions.

Being Love – 6 – The Myth of Unconditional Love

(No podcast this week, but feel free to click here for the new downloadables from SerenityPause.com.  Podcast to return in one week. For free ITunes of other talks, click here.) 

This morning we finalize our discussion about cultivating the quality of love in our life.  And it seems like perfect timing since I would like to dedicate this Dharma talk to my dear mom who passed away last week.  It’s been an profound process interacting with all my mom friends from an entire lifetime—from her sisters who she grew up with, to her friends from the suburb where I grew up, to her friends from the small town in East Texas where she and my dad retired, and lastly her friends she made just this last year in the memory care facility where she lived.  I had a lot of time this last week to reflect on this concept of how to infuse more love into our lives.  My mom was an expert at that.

Many of you met her last year when she lived with me for a few months. She loved this place so much!  There was several things I found irritating about my mom.  One habit she had was that she loved to meet new people and talk with them, often about what her three daughters were doing—which I found excruciating.  Complete strangers would compliment me on my achievements that my mother had shared with them.  She was always too slow to leave a party or church or a dance or any get together where she could interact with people.  As a child, I remember this trait of hers with great frustration--I wanted to go home, and she was never ready.  Another trait that bugged me was that she wanted to take my picture all the time, and I remember one skating party when I was eleven, I refused to pose for her—it seemed way too embarrassing—I just wanted to skate,  So, she took pictures of some other kid who she made friends with.  I still have the pictures of this strange girl who was more than happy to pose and make my mom happy.

My mom and dad had a great love affair and treated each other with such great respect, with roles clearly defined, they made marriage look easy.  That is the excuse I’m giving for why I was really bad at marriage. I didn’t realize that behind the scenes, they worked hard to get through the bad times together, and with three daughters, trust me, there were a lot of bad times.

In Buddhism, we often distinguish between the personal love between two people, and the loving-kindness that we can cultivate, but I am finding that these two kinds of love are more intertwined than we might think.  We talk about personal love as a love with expectations.  We talk about loving-kindness as love without expecting anything in return.  But as I reflect on the love that my mother shared with my father, with me and my sisters, with her family and friends, it seems that there is a mixture of these two loves that at the heart of how to create more love in one's life.

It seems that perhaps there is a myth of unconditional love.  This concept that if we were REALLY good people, we could love without any expectations at all, isn’t that what loving-kindness is supposed to be about?  But now, upon reflection, that kind of love seems too detached for me.  It seems that it might be easier to love someone unconditionally because we might use it as an excuse to keep them at arm's length, to not have those tough conversations when someone is being harmful to themselves or to others.

When I look at the love I was given by my parents, and the love that I try to cultivate in these practices, Perhaps expectation is not quite the right word.  it seems that there is a bit more "engagement".  If I truly want to extend love to someone, I cannot stand by if they are destroying their lives through addiction and destructive behavior.  Unconditional love is NOT about doing nothing.  It is sometimes about doing something while still recognizing and respecting the free will of others. 

One of my sisters is a lifelong smoker, and my mother was a nurse and health fanatic.  My mother loved my sister unconditionally, but never hesitated to share with her that she feared that she would bury her daughter before she herself would die because of this addiction. When my mom felt strongly about something, she could be relentless. She loved my sister in spite of her smoking and because of that love, did whatever she thought might help her stop.  My sister did not find this constant advice and encouragement (some might say badgering...) endearing at all.

I think we can all agree that smoking isn’t a healthy habit, but where does one person’s opinion about what is right become conditional?  Some criticisms we share with each other may not be so black and white.   Sometimes, we try to use our love as a bargaining chip for changing them.  "I will only love you if you are the way I want you to be."  Creating some wriggle room in the definition and expression of unconditional love might lead to some messiness.  Yet, isn't life messy?  Isn't love, any kind of love, often messy?  Finding the balance between conditional and unconditional love is not easy.  And yet, I would offer that somewhere in the middle of it all is the very sweet spot of life. 

Jim Parker sent me a great TED Talk by Brene Brown about how important it is be vulnerable in order to create more love in our lives.  We must risk being rejected in order to put ourselves out there, with a love that may not be returned.   For many of us, vulnerability is far too scary, so we choose to numb out with addiction or run away with distractions, anything to not have to feel the awful feeling of hurt, fear, rejection. Brene Brown calls vulnerability the magic potion for having love in our life.  When we allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, there is an unspoken arising of worthiness—it’s okay to be imperfect and still love, be loved and belong. Brene gives us the three C’s for increasing the love in our life:

·         Courage = to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, the courage to be imperfect, and the courage to work on those parts of you that may be hurting yourself or hurting others.

·         Compassion = to begin with ourselves to then be able to have compassion for others, because none of us needs to be perfect to deserve love.

·         Connection= to explore making connections with others who are imperfect as well; it is connection with others that leads us to the greatest joy, gratitude and happiness in life.

What I found in my parents was a willingness to love others without expectations of love in return, AND they were both willing to express concern and offer suggestions when they felt someone were being hurtful to themselves or to others.  For me, that is what unconditional love is all about. 

As one by one, friends and family of my mom came to offer me their condolences, their stories were consistent.  My mom always had time for them, she always made them feel special and cared for, she never missed an opportunity to volunteer to help others, to give something away with love (many of you have her crosses that she crocheted with love.  Her last project was trying to learn to crochet a heart when she learned that maybe a cross wasn’t the best gift to give a Buddhist…)

I had a co-worker who had a sign in his office that has always stuck with me.  He had a wife and three children, and in the hectic stress-filled life of corporate work, I know it was often difficult to have work-life balance.  But he kept a sign in his office, that said “children spell love T.I.M.E.”  That is what I learned from my mom about cultivating unconditional love.  It is not about one heroic act or a grand gesture—it was about always having time to just be with me, to be with others, to be interested in their lives, to listen carefully to their hopes and dreams.  

I recommend that we shatter this old myth of unconditional love—it does not mean that we don’t care about what others are doing, but rather we care so much that we are willing to love them as they are and help them any way we can. We do NOT have to be a doormat, but be a loving supporter, a spiritual cheerleader, a caring coach, an accepting partner, and knowing when to give someone a second or third or fourth chance.

My mom and dad were not perfect, but they were experts at unconditional love.   They were comfortable with being vulnerable and examining what they themselves could do better, and they accepted themselves and others in all their imperfections.  I am grateful for this amazing gift.   

Being Love – 5 – Embracing Our Past in Order to Love More in the Present

(No podcast this week, but feel free to check out the new serenitypause.com website that has some downloadables.  Podcast to return in two weeks. For free ITunes of other talks, click here.) 

How can we expand the experience of loving-kindness in our life?  

Sometimes it requires reflecting on how we relate to our past, how we carry the past around with us in this present moment.   Today, I want to give us all permission to look at the things that scare us--those thoughts or emotions that might be embarrassing or shameful or unskillful in whatever way--depression, addiction, anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, guilt.  We can practice seeing them more clearly, no longer having to run away from them, but instead compassionately shining the light on these emotions and thoughts and using them as a learning tool for love.  

In Buddhism, we practice being compassionately aware of all of our thoughts, emotions and sensations, and this practice is a powerful tool to transform our everyday experience.  Making friends with our demons is a part of these practices, going all the back to the time of the Buddha.  The monks and nuns were given a task to spend the night in the “charnel grounds”.  This was worse than going to the cemetery.  This was the place where the vultures were eating the bodies, tearing them limb by limb.  That sounds terrifying to me, yet sometimes, for me, I have found that my own negative thoughts and emotions seem to be tearing me apart from the inside.

Sometimes, we can be fearful and even not be fully aware of the fear.  Jung said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.  You will call it fate, or an accident, or misfortune. Invite your unconscious shadow material into the light of conscious awareness and everything will change, inside of you and outside of you.” 

You can begin this journey to the Truth in this very moment as you read these words, by accepting all the parts of you—the parts you are proud of and the parts that you are not, the parts that give you joy and the parts that the embarrass you.  

As tools for truth, consider making two practices your priority and focus:

• wise and compassion listening (both internally and externally), AND
• actively choosing more encouraging and supportive thoughts

By making these practices a priority, everything can be transformed.  It doesn’t mean you will never feel sadness again.  It doesn’t mean that your life situation will not continue to have ups and downs.  But it does mean that you will find the deeper love of living, the love that arises regardless of your external or internal circumstances. 

The first tool that we can cultivate is compassionate listening, to ourselves and to others.  It is difficult to fully love if we cannot be open to listening to ourselves and to others, listening not only to the easy stuff to hear, but even more importantly, listening to the tough stuff as well.  One of my favorite books is entitled, Crucial Conversations, which chronicles the value in having the conversations that are the ones we anticipate will be the difficult ones.  Those conversations left unsaid are the ones that often lead to the greatest misunderstandings, anger and resentment.    One of the eightfold steps of the Four Noble Truths is Wise Speech—I think that should include not only the one doing the talking but also the one doing the listening—Wise Listening is a helpful behavior to enlightenment. 

Wise and compassionate listening is not only about the words that are being spoken but also the reaction that is going on inside of us.  Words spoken, either external by someone else or internally to ourselves, can help or harm.  We are often assessing and analyzing, judging and opinionating, each and every moment of our lives.

This over-mental mastication is an obstacle to love.  However, do not underestimate the power you have to redirect your mind abd transform your experience of the world!    It helps to start with recognizing that you are capable of changing some of your thoughts.  I’m NOT saying all your thoughts.  This is a big distinction—there may still be thoughts we don't like that arise.  BUT, we can start to add more wise and compassionate thoughts in response to them.  Be more aware of how you talk to yourself, and experiment with changing the tone and texture of the conversation.

One of my favorite images for this practice is that we are like the ocean.  At the depth, is this pristine quiet, a stillness, not easily swayed--that is that innate sense of well-being that lives within each and every person. On the surface, there are various waves and winds that whirl around causing a great deal of churning and turmoil.  Think of the waves as those difficult emotions and thoughts. In Buddhism, they’re called afflictive emotions or mental states, because they can afflict us with this sense of unhappiness if we get caught up in the hurricane of their energy.  These afflictions can be both the painful pleasurable, and the obstacle is when we get stuck in pushing them away or clinging to them.

Dr. Aura Glaser wrote  “Into the Demon’s Mouth” in Tricycle Magazine, based on her book entitled, Call to Compassion, about how we often respond to these afflictions:

• Distraction:  "I’m so angry!  Let’s go have a cocktail" (or cigarette or cake...)
• Denial: "Me, Angry? No! I’m FINE….."
• Blaming:  "You are the one who is making me so mad!"
• Wallowing:  "I deserve this awful treatment.  I'm not worthy of anything better..."
• Spiritual bypassing:  "I’m Buddhist now, Buddhists aren’t supposed to get angry or jealous or resentful…"

More skillful ways of handling afflictive emotions:

• Awareness:  even if we shut down, we can be aware that we are shutting down
• Acknowledgement: learning to not appreciate who we are, warts and all
• Being Curious: seeing each thought and emotion as an opportunity for learning
• Taking away the fuel supply: No longer focusing our energy on fueling the storyline; instead you might ask the question, "How could I respond more skillfully to this thought/emotion?" and see what arises

“We can view all our life situations as inherently workable by using our innate qualities of loving-kindness and compassion,” towards ourselves and others."

We each have our own favorite top five affliction that keep coming up.  Pema Chodron describes it like having a radio that can only be tuned to a limited number of radio stations—worry, fear, resentment, frustration, whatever your common afflictive emotions or thoughts might be.  If I asked you to make a list of what makes you unhappy, you most likely could list them right now.  Think of times in this last week or month, when you felt unhappy.  What afflictive emotion or thought was simmering in your brain and your body? What are you afraid of?

With the knowledge of exactly what that voice inside of our head is saying and the emotion state of our bodies, we can now see the obstacles to our ability to love fully.  When we clearly see the obstacles, we can decide to change the response.

Lastly, optimism is a mental state that we can all cultivate:  it’s important to imagine that you are capable of change, even if it hasn’t work the last the last 15 times.  There’s a wonderful documentary called "Bob and the Monster", which is about Bob Forrest, who is now a highly respected drug and alcohol counselor.  He himself had to go through rehab over NINE times before he got sober and stayed sober for the last 13 years.  I love the inspiration of someone turning their life around.  Imagine meeting Bob or being Bob somewhere around rehab #5.  Would you give up?  What would you say to Bob or to yourself to make #5 the winning number?  Bob is an example to remind us that this time is the time we can get it right, this time, this moment can be the one when we take our life in a new direction.  This moment, right now, can be that moment.  Every moment is pulsing with that possibility.

In each moment, we might have an affliction arise.   We practice listening with compassion, to see more clearly, to have more curiosity about what exactly these afflictions, then building a greater sense of the vast ocean of peace beneath and beyond, the pristine stillness, the depth of well-being within us all. 

Being love - 2 - Four qualities that transform the mind

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Today we continue a series of talks based on the book by Thich Nhat Hanh entitled, Teachings on Love.  He begins with this simple opening:

“The Buddha taught that it is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love.  Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love.”

To cultivate this enduring love, Thich Nhat Hanh begins with what he calls the Four Immeasurable Minds, a teaching called the Brahma Viharas in Sanskrit, which is found in the first written collections of the Buddha’s teachings.  It a foundational teaching in Buddhism called the Four Immeasurables, it’s also called the four sublime states of being.  The Four Boundless Qualities that destroy the idea of a separate self. 

During the time of Buddha’s enlightenment, there was the beginning of a shift from a purely agrarian economic structure to some capitalism arising in small towns that had begun to spring up around areas in Northern India. One of the things that Buddha discovered that, along with the process selling and buying, also came greed, corruption, stealing, killing.   Perhaps we can imagine this very primitive culture 2500 years ago, just learning how to deal with each other in business arrangements.  Hmmmm….although the time may have been very long ago, it seems that we might still struggle with greed, corruption, stealing, killing.  Buddha identified that there seems to be a reaction in people, that often happens in good times and bad, when people feel a primitive sense of lack and poverty, have a sense of separation from one another, a desire, a craving to gain advantage over others, a need to put up defenses.  As Buddha reflected on the negative impact of these feelings, he could see that they were arising out of a sense of craving, aversion and ignorance.  This reaction caused great suffering in the world then, and it causes great suffering in the world now.

So what do we do?  Where do we begin?  Is it an impossible task to overcome these historic and monumental struggles within and around us?  What the Buddha discovered was that we can get beyond these struggles.  First, by recognizing them for what they are, then by practicing a kinder way of being and living, and lastly by embodying the Buddha Nature that is in each of us to see things more clearly, to act more compassionately and wisely. 

These four qualities are LOVING-KINDNESS, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY.  The Buddha taught the following to his son Rahula (from "Old path white clouds" by Thich Nhat Hahn):

"Rahula, Practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success. Practice equanimity or non-attachment to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. This is because that is. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."

Sympathetic Joy - I want all sentient beings to never be separated from the sublime joy, beyond delusion and illusion
Equanimity - I want all sentient being to live in equanimity, beyond preferences, which is beyond fear and hope.
As the source both of inner and external peace, 
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species.'
His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

So, the practice of the Four Immeasurables calls upon each of us first to try and cultivate these four feelings and actions.  In AA, there is an excellent phrase that says “Fake it until you make”.  In these practices, sometimes we don’t initially feel very loving or joyful.  We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves.  Just sit with that reaction.  Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing feeling loving and kind.  This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions.  RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for what they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world. 

So, the practice of The Four Immeasurables begins with the prayer,

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

Loving-kindness - I want all sentient beings to have happiness and feel love.

Compassion - I want all sentient beings to free from suffering.

So briefly, let’s start with a deeper definition of Loving-kindness.  There are is the kind of love that many of us have experience. That love when we see someone or something.  I want that person, I want that car, that thing.  This kind of love is more like lust and greed—it doesn’t always have anything to do with focusing on the other person’s happiness, or at least only at the point at which it intersects with your own.  Love, in this practice, is Love without attachment.  In Greek, this word represents divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love.

Next, compassion is described as an unselfish emotion which gives one a sense of urgency in wanting to help others.  Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche often added that this is not idiot compassion, where we feel we must over-give of ourselves and our money, which may come from a place of our own feeling of lack or poverty or guilt.  Compassion in this sense, is first opening up the feeling that we are all interconnected, therefore all suffering together, then through this feeling of inter-connectedness, NOT shutting down to other pain, and taking appropriate action to hell alleviate their suffering, which sometimes is not action at all.

Third is Sympathetic Joy.  This is the joy we experience for others, when others gain.  Do you recall hearing that a co-worker got a raise or a new job, and perhaps, just perhaps, instead of feeling joy, you might have felt jealousy or frustration?  Cultivating sympathetic joy is a way to clearly see where we’re holding on to ourselves and our habitual clinging, and to let go, even just a little, to rejoice in the good fortune of others.

Lastly, is equanimity, and in fact, in a longer teaching on The Four Immeasurables, this quality is sometimes taught first, with the idea that when we can first clearly see our clinging, aversion and ignorance to all things and people, even to ourselves, we can at that point, begin to realize a better way of living, through non-preference, viewing all a equal.  Does this mean that we treat everything single person and thing exactly equal?  No.  Because if we are being fully present in each situation, certain situations and certain people need different reactions and responses.  BUT starting from a place equanimity, wanting everyone to experience living beyond attachment and fear, in that place of desiring the best for others, we each can choose a better experience for ourselves.

So, Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity practice is a way to first see more clearly how we are interacting in the world, and second to explore a new way of being, to experience deeper way of being, and third to fully embody these experience and sharing them fully with ourselves and with others.

'Compassion and love, joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries. 
As the source both of inner and external peace, 
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species.'
His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

Living Beautifully – 4 – The Bodhisattva Vow

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here) 

The Bodhisattva Vows are part of the teachings where we vow to not worry about solely our own awakening, but hold back from full enlightenment until we help all others become awakened as well.  This is often taught as the second step of the Eightfold Path, which is Right Intention.  How we motivate ourselves in our thoughts, words and actions. 

Sentient beings are numberless—I vow to liberate them.

Delusions are inexhaustible—I vow to transcend them.

Dharma Teachings are boundless—I vow to master them.

The Buddha’s enlightened way is unsurpassable—I vow to embody it.

The idea of wishing to help the entire world awaken.  That might seem a bit daunting!  On the internet, there is a clock that keeps track of approximately how many people there are in the world in any given hour.   So, as of about 6 pm last night, there were 7,120,332,037. Since the beginning of this year, there have been about 31 million more births than deaths, so we have a lot of people to consider. In 1900, there were 1.6 million people; in 1999 there were 6.1 million people.  "Currently, world population is growing at the most rapid pace in history," says Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau.

That is a lot of people who might be suffering.  We have got our work cut out for us.  And this idea of compassion may seem all warm and soothing, but when we start to try and apply it in real life, it’s very threatening to our ego, to our protective coating that we want to defend and ensure does not get pierced.  We can long to awaken so that we not only help ourselves, but we also help others.

(From Wikipedia) In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is an enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva) or, "heroic-minded one (sattva), passionate for enlightenment (bodhi)." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," Traditionally, a bodhisattva is anyone who, motivated by great compassion, has generated bodhicitta, which is a spontaneous wish to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Bodhicitta is translated as awakened heart-mind, the intention to achieve Buddhahood (Trikaya)or awakening as fast as possible, so that one may benefit infinite beings. One who has bodhicitta as the primary motivation for all of his or her activities is called a bodhisattva. Bodhicitta also means the aim to, on the one hand, bring happiness to all sentient beings, and on the other, to relieve them of suffering; this definition is consistent with the definition of seeking enlightenment, as enlightenment is the freedom from samsāra.

The Bodhisattva Vow

Beginning students commonly ask how they can honestly vow to save all beings. It sounds like missionary arrogance. Hui-neng [the Sixth Zen Patriarch] offers a response: "You begin by saving them in your own mind." It is bodhichitta that you are cultivating—your own aspiration for wisdom and compassion, and your determination to practice it in the world as best you can."   -- Robert Aitken Roshi, "The Bodhisattva Vows"

This is not being evangelical about the Buddhist practice, but rather how you show up in the world, how you mold your thoughts into creating skillful actions.  Practicing bodhicitta means cultivating all one’s innate enlightened qualities and following the path of awakening.  Having an open heart-mind is teaching us how to be open and seeing the innate goodness in ourselves and all others.

If Buddhism is simply a practice to relief suffering, then by its very nature, we want to relieve not only our own suffering but the suffering of others, and not just the others who are people we like, but ALL others.  Whoa!  You mean I have to relieve the suffering of that man at work that is constantly giving me a hard time?  Can’t there possible be some exceptions to this practice—I mean really!

In Buddhism, no exceptions.  We work towards relieving our own suffering and the suffering of all others, even the ones that annoy us or don’t seem to deserve it, or who have hurt us in some way. 

It’s easy to be loving and kind to the people we like.  It’s these difficult ones when we really earn our Buddhist stripes.  Compassion is about going beyond our comfort zones, not about being a doormat and letting anyone and everyone walk all over us (that is called Idiot Compassion!), but rather a Wise Compassion that comes from being fully present in the moment and reflecting on what will create the greatest good and relieve the most suffering.

The Buddha never taught to anyone who did not ask for teaching.  From the very beginning, even his five friends that were ascetics with him, they had to beg him to teach them about this wonderful practice that he had discovered, because they saw the different that it had made in him.  So, he encouraged us to never go out and preach from the mountaintops these teachings.  Instead, he said if you embody the teachings, others will be naturally curious about what has caused this transformation in your life, then and only then, should you share with them this practice. 

Our thoughts are shaping and defining our actions and words.  Pema Chodron encourages us to imagine that everyone is our guest.  How would you feel about having anyone and everyone over to your house—to all kinds of people! That is a little daunting—but we start with the thought of treating everyone with kindness and compassion.  Everyone is not going to physically come over to our house, but they can be allowed in our heart—not to tear us up, but for us to open up to share love and compassion, whether they are deemed worthy of it or not.  Imagine  love and compassion without judgment.  This is the start of living in the flow of life, instead of skating around the edges, holding on to the rail.  This is how we get comfortable with uncertainty. 

Lama Surya Das says:

If it looks like wisdom, but is unkind rather than loving, then it is not wisdom.  If it feels like love, but it’s not wise, then it is not love.

There is a tender part of our heart that doesn't want to feel vulnerable.  Maybe you’ve been hurt before and the pain was so awful, that you’ve sworn off being that open to anyone ever again.  Now, I’m encouraging you to try, even just little, even if it’s just a small crack, to open up your innately good and kind heart.  You may still be hurt again, but it might be easier to stay standing with these practices of compassion and wisdom. 

So, we can begin in the simplest of ways.  Of beginning willing to see how we are all inseparably interconnected.  Something as simple as when you sit down to eat, or I guess if you’re standing up in your kitchen or even when you’re driving down the road with a hamburger in your hand, try being so deeply thankful each and every person that made that meal possible—the farmers, the trucker, the  grocery store clerk, the waiter or waitress, the bus boy or girl.  We can give thanks for all the people that are making our life easier.

Then, we can look for ways to reach out in earnest and help others who are having a difficult time.  Several of us go to feed the hungry or work the pantry in KCK on Saturdays.  Others are tutors at Banneker Elementary School—it is always a heartfelt experience.  Before the meal begins, each person who is helping goes around and says where they are from.  It’s kinda fun that among the Episcopalians and the Baptists and the Catholics, there we are representing the Temple Buddhist Center.  How can we go out in the community and be a loving presence and support to those who are suffering?

And it can be as simple as one of our visualizations, which is to simple silently wish for each and every person you meet, “may you be happy” and spend a moment or two radiating out love and compassion towards them.  Try it this week, and see what a difference this simple change can make. 

And if we break the commitment, if we respond harshly to others, it’s simple to mend.  We simply admit that we were unskillful, re-commit to being a Bodhisattva, and begin again.  It can happen on the spot, no need to wait to being anew.

I’ll end with a quote from Shantideva, who wrote The Way of the Bodhisattva:

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found,

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorry of the world.

Letting Go - 7 - Becoming a Bodhisattva starts with Forgiveness

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It seemed ironic.  On Monday, I returned to the book we have been discussing entitled, Letting Go of the Person you Used to Be, by Lama Surya Das, and I realized that I had skipped chapter 7.  It is entitled “Being Heroic in the Face of Loss”, and after the tragedies this last week in Boston, it seemed the perfect topic for us to reflect upon today.  It is understandable to become scared or angry in the face of what appears to be random violence.  “Why me?” might be the question asked by those innocent bystanders hurt, “Why him?” might be asked by the family of that young MIT police officer who was killed, or “Why them?” might be asked by the parents and family of the suspected bombers.  It would be understandable that fear and anger and grief and sadness would arise from the mere attempt to understand these senseless acts.

So, what can we do about it?  We can’t change the past, we can’t re-attach healthy limbs that were blown away. We can’t bring back to lives of those killed.   What can WE do about it?

In certain traditions in Buddhism, there arose a teaching about what we can do about it ALL, how we can be a spiritual hero to ourselves and to the world. Practicing Buddhism is a clarion call to find that innate courage and strength that exists within every single one of us to rise above fear and anger, and find a higher purpose, a greater calling, a more skillful response.  We are called upon, each one of us, to be a Bodhisattva,

A Bodhisattva is translated in Sanskrit as heroic one, or in Pali, wisdom being, one who, motivated by great compassion, has a spontaneous wish to become a Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings, and who becomes dedicated to their ultimate welfare. This compassionate intention is called bodhicitta, or awakened heart-mind.

The term Bodhisattva was written down in the Pāli Canon, which were the original writings of what the Buddha said, where is it is said that he referred to himself as a Bodhisattva, both in his previous lives and as a young man in his current life, prior to his enlightenment, when he was working towards awakening.   He is said to have recounted his experiences as a young aspirant, using the phrase "When I was an unenlightened Bodhisattva..." The term describes a person whose aim is to become fully enlightened, fully awake in each moment.  AND, there is an additional component of being a Bodhisattva—not only do we commit to working diligently for our own awakening, but we support, encourage and motivate ALL sentient beings to become awakened.  In fact, we agree to return to this earthly plane again and again in order to help others. 

Lama Surya Das emphasizes that a Bodhisattva flies on the wings of compassion and wisdom—these two virtues that go hand in hand.  And we can commit to helping others, without regard for reward.   A Bodhisattva brings out the best in everyone!

In the Buddhist tradition, once a person has taken their Refuge Vows, which is the first step on this specific spiritual path, one then reflects on going further, deeper, to taking the Bodhisattva vows. These vows recognize the seeming futility of helping all people, but nonetheless encourages us to strive on, to at least try, to be encouraged, to consider how we might achieve this lofty goal.

The Bodhisattva vows are written and said in several different ways but here is one version:

Sentient beings are numberless—I vow to liberate them.

Delusions are inexhaustible—I vow to transcend them.

Dharma teachings are boundless—I vow to master them.

The Buddha’s enlightened way is unsurpassable—I vow to embody it.

These are the vows, the commitments, that we can wake up each morning and recommit to.  These vows can be a beacon for us, shining the light on compassionate and wise action. 

Each of us can aspire to be a spiritual hero.  You too can be a Bodhisattva!  Most of us, we may never be the kind of hero who is a “first responder” (unless you want to be or have been, or are one already!  Thanks to Angela and Ray for their courage!) But, each of us does have the power to be courageous in the face of whatever tragedies strike our lives or the lives of those around us, or even the lives of others in the world whom we might endeavor to help in some way.

You might be thinking, “I have enough troubles in my own life without trying to help somebody else!”  There are very tragic things that can happen in any person’s life:  we get sick, those that we love get sick and die, our relationships fall apart, people we love disappoint us or drain us, or we sometimes disappoint ourselves.  There are a myriad of tragedies that happen every day.  Regardless, WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE HOW TO RESPOND.  If you’re taking care of someone who has a long-term or terminal illness, your Bodhisattva vows may be tested every day.  You yourself may have some chronic illness that wears you down—I can’t even imagine the challenges that would present.  Or, in the future, many of us may have a chronic illness that will test our resolve.  And yet, we can still all aspire to this lofty aim.  “May I respond always in ways that are compassionate and wise, in ways that lift myself and others up to a higher spiritual level, without regard to reward.”

Start wherever you are. If you are despondent and scared or angry and resentful, start here now.  If you are sad or grieving or anxious or suffering, start here now.  If those that you love are suffering, start here now.

Regardless of what life throws at us, these vows can lift us up, encourage us and guide us through the difficult times as well as help us lift others up and guide others.

I also think that forgiveness is a key component of being a Bodhisattva.  Sometimes forgiveness is where we must start in order to see ourselves and the situation more clearly.  We may need to forgive ourselves and others, and perhaps we need to ask for forgiveness, in order to reclaim our power to begin again. 

Jack Kornfield, a brilliant Vipassana teacher says, "Forgiveness is not concerned with changing past events, it’s about changing you so that the future will be transformed"   Mother Theresa encouraged us to not worry about the number of people that we are helping, but rather to simply start with the people nearest to us—perhaps that might even be yourself.  Just like they say before the airplane takes off, sometimes you need to put the air mask on yourself before attempting to help another who might need help.

We all can be a Bodhisattva, a peace-making warrior,  and Future Buddha of America!  We’ll create a heartfelt group, the FBA!