training the mind: a brief guide to dharma practice

8/8/2019 Training the Mind: A Brief Guide to Dharma Practice

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Training the Mind: Dharma Practice

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This is a collection of articles on dharmapractice, many of which first appearedas blogs. They are not overly formal andmany contain personal stories andanecdotes as illustrations. The type ofmind training detailed here is the mostcommon form of meditation as used byboth the Tibetan and Zen Buddhists.

This book is copyright by MichaelErlewine 2011. You are free to share itprovided there is no fee charged. Thisbook may not be included free in abundle for which there is a charge.Otherwise please share.

Photos are by Michael Erlewine.Drawings are by Sange Wangchuk andMichael Erlewine.

ISBN # 0-925182-72-9

[email protected]

Table of Contents

Introduction - 1

Why Buddhism is Not a Religion - 2

What Really Makes Me Sad - 4

What Is Meditation? - 6

Don’t Prolong the Past - 9

What Practice Really Is -11

Mind Practice: How to Do It - 14

What about Hate & Fear? - 18

Tonglen: Mental Feng Shui – 22

Practicing Meditation -- 24

Aspirations & Dedication of Merit - 28

Urgency in Dharma Practice - 31

Mother Nature and Compassion - 40

Dedication

Any merit arising from this book isdedicated to all sentient beings in thethree times and ten directions that theymay all avoid suffering, finding truehappiness and the path to realizationand enlightenment.




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Why Buddhism is Not a Religion

I know that Buddhism is classified as areligion, but having studied it for over 37years I am here to say IMO it is not. Iwas raised Catholic and „that‟ my friendsis a religion.

Buddhism acknowledges no higherpower then my own mind. It has no„God‟ or deity up there that I have toplease or otherwise suffer theconsequences. Conversely there is noone that can save me other than myown efforts. It is up to me. Buddha wasnot a god and never became a god. Hedied like we all will and was quick topoint out that he is no different from youand me. We all have Buddha Nature.Even worms do!

Buddhism has no creation myth and is

not concerned about finding a beginningor an end to anything but suffering andignorance. There is no starting point orending point to cyclic existence and thisworld. Cycles by definition have nobeginning and no end. There is no timeof a first creation and no creator.Buddhism is concerned only that I

realize the true nature of my own mind.It is not concerned itself with where Icame from (or when) and where I amgoing (the next life).

Instead it is concerned only with waking

up from this dream of cyclic existence. Itrecognizes the endless cycles ofexistence as beginning-less andendless. To Buddha this whole world isseen as a very real illusion, the answerto which can only be found by each oneof us realizing the true nature of themind. Buddha can‟t just somehow do itfor all of us. We each have to do itourselves.

What Buddha did was point out amethod or way for me (when I getaround to it) to become more aware andto just wake up. The word “Buddha” inSanskrit simply means “Awakened.” Andthe teachings that the historical Buddhaleft are called the “Dharma,” which issimply the method or path to awakenand nothing more. The dharma is like atwelve-step program to train the mind.

Now this is only me speaking, but to my

mind what the dharma of the Buddhalays out is a totally scientific way to trainthe mind, only “Science” has not quitegotten there itself yet. Scientists tooneed mind training.

I am not religious by any definition of theword. I don‟t „worship‟ anything and Idon‟t go to church other than to thenatural world. I don‟t believe in a God„up there‟ helping or watching over me.Whatever I am, I am an equal part of

what this is all about and that is all I ask:that Buddhism treat me as a co-partneror something like that. It does.

I know that in this life I have to helpmyself. The Buddha, even if he werehere in this room, could not simply reachover, touch me on the forehead, and




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enlighten me. The whole point ofBuddhism is that it is a method we eachhave to do for ourselves. It is interactive.We must wake ourselves up andBuddha pointed out how to do it. Only

we can do that.I am embarrassed when people treatBuddhism as if it were somehow holy orother worldly and miraculous, making itsimply a question of faith. Buddhism isnot about „faith‟. The miracle is that thedharma works and that is enough. Ihave faith in the methods of the dharma.That‟s all. I was raised as a naturalistand I know nature and nature‟s lawsquite well. Buddhism is the only spiritual

method that I have found that iscongruent with natural law – with thefacts of science and nature. This is whyI am surprised that more scientists arenot Buddhists.

In fact in Tibetan Buddhism they have aterm “The Lama of Appearances” thatstates that Mother Nature herself is likea guru and teaches the same dharma asa high human lama. Now that iscongruency. And IMO the Buddhists arethe finest psychologists in the world.

Yes I know that there are Buddhists (likeall spiritual disciplines) that over-moralize and make everything into rulesand taboos. If you follow the simplemediation that Buddha indicated, that isall that has to be done. Organizedanything is asking for trouble andspiritual organizations and religions areno exception. Keep it local and small.

I won‟t blather on much longer, butplease note my objection to classifyingwhat is simply a practical method tobecome more aware and wake-up(Buddhism) as if it was a full-blownreligion like Judaism, Islam, Christianity,and so on. I have nothing againstreligions and appreciate a sincere

religious person whenever I meet them.I am not an atheist or an agnostic. I amspiritual at heart, but in this fashion:

The word religion comes from the Latinword „religare” which means to “bind

back” or “tie down.” In other wordsreligion of any kind is concerned withthe things that last and last longest. Inthat case I could accept the dharma asbeing religious because the dharmapoints out what really lasts and isgenuine, like the true nature of the mind.

If our concern is to find somethinglasting or true in this life to set our sailsby, then we all must be religious at onetime or another. If when shit hits the fanwe all seek for solid ground to stand on,then we are all religious when thathappens. Religion is about the thingsthat last longest when all else fades inimportance. This occurs for each of uswhen suddenly something untowardhappens in our life, like a parent orloved one dies. Stuff fades fast inimportance at those times and even thegrittiest of us finds ourselves reachingfor something more lasting that we cancount on. That is all the religion I know,the things I can count on being there forme when all else fails. That is as closeas I get to religion and the dharma hasyet to fail me. Does that make mereligious?

That being said, I am very devoted tothe dharma teachers and lamas I havemet in this life. I owe them an immensedebt of gratitude for pointing introducing

me to the dharma.




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What Really Makes Me Sad

Two people I care a lot about just had ahorrible fight, one that they can‟t evenbegin to get over. What makes me sadis how we deal with a situation like this,our „past‟ when something bad hashappened. Almost everyone I knowspends so much of their time digging inthat past, trying to figure out whywhatever happened „happened‟. It is liketrying to put the toothpaste back in thetube. You never will figure it out.

Meanwhile there is a way to deal withwhatever has happened in the past thathas been tried and found true for manycenturies. And it is simple compared torejiggering the past. What is done isdone. You can‟t relive it and it is not

even the same you that did whateveryou did that you regret. Don‟t look back.I disagree with those who say that thosewho do not understand the past arecondemned to repeat it. There is abetter way or at least another way.

I see often see this in couples whenthey argue and fight. It happens to me

as well, but also to many of my lovedones. They spend hours and days untilthey are completely exhausted trying tofigure out where they went wrong. Someeven go into therapy, consultations, and

remedial work of all kinds. While thismay help, it never seems to give themthe answers they seek.

It is true that the past is prologue to thefuture; we all know that. We don‟t get anaward for realizing this because that‟show we define the past, as „past‟. Andyou can‟t change the past. Period. Youcan only change the present AND whatwe do in the present totally determinesour future.

The Buddhists taught me how to dealwith arguments, fights, blowouts, and allthe other kinds of scenes we sometimesfind ourselves in the middle of. And itworks every time and is relatively(compared to sticking your finger in thepast) easy as well. This is it:

When you discover that you are offbase, have made a mistake, hurtsomeone you love, got carried away, or

whatever… the moment you realize thatsomething like this has happened, yousimply stop. You don‟t dwell further onwhat just happened. You don‟t thinkabout it, anguish over it, or even wastetime regretting it. You just drop it andtake your mind back to trying to do yourbest, to its normal state of beingpeaceful and kind. And you start over.You make a new beginning.

If two minutes later you wake up and

find yourself angry all over again orbringing up the past, no matter whathappened, you do the same thing: Stop,take your mind back to where you wouldlike it to be, and start over.

You do this all day long, all night long,continually, and nothing else. In other




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words you don‟t prolong the past,whether it was good, bad, or indifferent,and you don‟t vilify your actions or theway you behave, even if they werereally wrong, even if you are totally to

blame. You just drop it, bring your mindback to the way it should be, and startover. You do this again and again.

This is very similar to the 12-step plan ofthe alcoholics in that you take it a day ata time, only here it is moment bymoment, a moment at a time. And thisactually works because by creating anever more perfect present, by startingover, you automatically create a newand better past and a better future, just

like that. You are building a new habit,even if it takes time. And here is thekicker:

This is precisely what is called inTibetan and Zen Buddhism:“Meditation.” It is sad that the word„meditation‟ is used for so many differentthings when it is so simple. The mostcommon form of meditation is calledShamata Meditation, from a Sanskritword meaning calm-abiding, letting themind rest. In that form of mediation wedo exactly what was described above.We sit and let our mind rest on an object(or no object). When we find ourselvescarried away thinking about somethingelse (like our next dentist appointment),we simply stop right there, drop thatthought and bring our attention back toresting the mind. We start over.

This kind of meditation builds a habit

that is useful on the cushion, but muchmore useful as described above in lifeitself, because we gradually learn tocatch ourselves when we are carriedaway, drop it, and bring our mind backto the moment and start again. By doingthis we create a present that is better

than the past and turns into a goodfuture.

In summary, it is easier IMO to build anew past by making a good present,than it is to fiddle with the past trying to

figure out where we went wrong. After awhile, we identify with the new presentwe are building and the past is no longereven important to figure out. We are nolonger „that‟.

This, friends, is why people meditate, todevelop this habit and to build a securefuture from the present moment. Give ita try.




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What Is Meditation?

Mind training is going secular. It no

longer has to be associated with areligion or even with spirituality. And itwon‟t be long before corporationsrealize the very great advantages tohaving employees with some mindtraining and then meditation will gopublic big time. It will no longer bealternative and it will no longer be analternative. It will be mandatory. As I liketo say: what college diplomas are today,mind training certificates will be

tomorrow.What I am pointing out here is thatalthough mind training is an integral partof Asian religions like Buddhism, it canalso stand alone by itself (secular) or beused with other religions. As I have triedto explain in previous blogs, mindtraining is a method to develop greaterawareness and not a religion or religiousby itself. However, mind trainingcombined with a spiritual practice can

be very potent. It is unfortunate that thegeneral public is confused about justwhat meditation is.

The confusion stems from the fact thathere in the west we have a single wordfor meditation and that word has tocover the enormous variety of practicesthat people actually do that are called

“meditation.” I want to mention just a fewof them here. I imagine each has its ownuse and value.

For example, many people understandthe word „meditation‟ to mean something

like contemplation, taking a concept like“compassion” or “impermanence” andturning it over and over in the mind,looking at it from all angles – contemplating it.

Others speak of “guided meditations”where someone (a guide) talks themthrough a guided tour or journey intosome section of the mind or experience,usually with the eyes closed. Still othersspeak of levels and going deeper anddeeper into Beta and Theta, and so on.

There are many Christian meditationsthat are forms of prayer and Muslimmethods of meditation that tend to focuson Allah, often by reciting the HolyScriptures from the Qur‟an. Many formsof meditation make use of sound ormantra, reciting a short series ofSanskrit (or other language) syllables ina constant (but clear) manner and

focusing on the sound.There are dozens of New-Agemeditations which tend to focus onsitting quietly, eyes-closed, and touchingon or into our common spiritual essenceand thereby refreshing the mind. Andincense and candles often help to setthe mood.

And there are even other methods ofmeditation that recommend the ending

of all thought, while still others point outthat any meditation method and effort tomeditate is not meditation, and that “no-meditation” is meditation. And methodslike Transcendental Meditation, onceused by The Beatles, advocate thesilent use of mantra with eyes closed,practiced 10-20 minutes twice a day,




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and going deep within that. I could go onand on.

My point here is that there are scores ofmeditation methods and it is no wonderthat anyone interested in mind training is

immediately confronted with their ownignorance of these many methods. Howwould you choose? And, since eachmethod requires patience and lots oftime before results appear, who couldafford to shop around? It is easier just toavoid the topic altogether.

And I may have one up on my readers,because I was introduced to meditationat a very early age. And this methodwas popular when I was a child. My veryfirst mantra, which my father presentedto me, was “O Wa Tay-Goo Si-Am,”which he told me to recite over andover. I did that and he had a good laughon me. That was his take on all thingsspiritual. It didn‟t help me a bit. It is nowonder that many of us have avoidedany type of meditation for most of ourlives. We don‟t want to look foolish.

Trying to sort out and judge the merits of

the many forms of meditation out thereis not my goal. For one, I have not triedmost of them and so have no opinion.However, there is a kind of consensusas to what meditation is, so let‟s startwith the word itself. “Meditation” comesfrom the Latin word “Meditari” whichsimply means “to concentrate.” Most or at least the majority of meditationmethods involve concentration of onesort or another.

To my understanding, the most commonform of meditation as used in Asia, incountries like India, Tibet, Nepal,Bhutan, Sikkim, Japan, and many partsof China is called “Shamata,” a Sanskritword that means “calm abiding.” It isabout learning to let the mind just rest.

This is easier said than done as most ofus who have tried it well know.

“Shamata” is the main form of meditation used by Buddhists, includingthe Tibetan and Zen Buddhists and,

although names for it may differ, this isthe one we will be considering here. Ifyou want to know about the mostprevalent and ancient form of meditation(2500 years or longer), it appears to beShamata of one kind of another. Andthere are different kinds of Shamata, butthey all accomplish the same function,that of allowing the mind to come to restnaturally.

Practicing Meditation

And let‟s be perfectly clear here thatmeditation is a habit that you learn andnothing instantly in itself. In other words,we do not just sit down quietly and callwhat we do meditation. That is called“sitting down quietly.” Traditionalmeditation is something that we mustlearn and practice. Meditation requireseffort on our part and the „effort‟ part isnot meditation. That‟s why it is called

„practice‟. We „practice‟ meditating.Learning meditation is trial and effort,and is not usually relaxing for beginnersby any means.

Those who light a candle or someincense and retire to a cushion in acorner, close their eyes, and go deepwithin, only to emerge 20 minutes laterrefreshed and relaxed are not doingShamata meditation. They are justrelaxing a bit and we all could use that,

but this is not what we are looking athere.

Shamata meditation (and I will just call it„meditation‟ from this point onward) is ahabit that has to be formed and itrequires diligence and work. You mayenjoy it, but I seldom did. I found it




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boring, irritating, exasperating, andpainful much of the time. But I felt thesame way as a kid playing piano scales.I have trouble with rote learning. Howabout you?

I have never been a good student, atleast in school. And I was not a goodstudent in meditation. It took me yearsto develop what I hope others can do ina much shorter time: gain someproficiency at meditation. I wishsomeone had told me what I am tryingto point out here. It would have helped.

I did not know back then that meditationpractice was “practice” and not the finalresult. I called it “practice” like everyoneelse did but the word never registeredas „practice‟. I wish someone hadexplained to me that mediation is a habitwe have to build, much like we practicemusic, learn our times tables, oranything else. If I had known that, Iwould have relaxed into that andprobably gotten the hang of it a lotsooner. After all meditation is all aboutdeveloping awareness by letting themind naturally relax and rest.

Meditation is a habit that has to belearned, a habit that has to be repeateduntil it becomes habitual (pun intended).Meditation practice is like scaffoldingthat will eventually be removed once webegin to actually get a real feel for it. It islike learning music. We practicefingerings and scales until we havelearned them and then we are free to

just play. Practicing meditation is like

that.And I did not understand back then thatthe habit of meditation writ small on thecushion looms large in real life, in therest of my day. I thought I was going forthose twenty minutes of enlightenmentand that if I didn‟t get that or someresult, my meditation was no good. I

went around for years thinking that mymeditation practice was lousy, whenactually my meditation, with all its trying,groaning, impatience, irritation, andavoidance, was just fine. I was doing

exactly what I was supposed to bedoing. But 37 years ago when I wastaught to meditate, there was no supportstructure that I had access to that couldexplain this to me. I was taught tomeditate by no less than the Ven.Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche himself,but I never saw him again. I was on myown for many years.

And as for feeling bad about mymeditation practice, I assumed that I

was just being delinquent, failing to getwhat others perhaps easily got, andgenerally missing the point. I missed thepoint alright, which was that everything Iwas experiencing (that I tried to deny orfelt ashamed of) was simply par for thecourse and totally normal. It is hard tolearn to meditate for many of us. That‟sthe way it is. We are building a habit andthat takes effort in the beginning.

I will close this blog by remindingreaders that the whole point tomeditation is to become more awareeach moment in our lives. The two keyconcepts to proper meditation are calledmindfulness and awareness. Awarenessis the goal or result of meditation andmindfulness (being more mindful) is howwe get there. Having after all theseyears learned to meditate a little I cansay that the increased awareness thatcomes from meditation practice,however small it may be, could be allthe difference in the world betweenignorance and awareness. In anotherblog I will look at meditation in moredetail.




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Don’t Prolong the Past

The great 19th Century Tibetan masterPatrul Rinpoche wrote:

Don‟t prolong the past, Don‟t speculate about the future, Just dwell in present awareness.

The question is how best to do this?How do we not dwell on the past or thefuture, but somehow be mindful of thepresent, the one place where a future(and therefore a new past) can be built.

The traditional way to do this which hasbeen taught for over 2500 years isShamata meditation. And there aremany, many forms of meditation.

Sitting quietly in meditation for a fewminutes each day may give me agreater sense of calmness and clarity,but that is not the only or even the mainreason to meditate. That is certainly notwhy I meditate. The primary reason tolearn to meditate is to build a mental

habit of mindfulness and awareness so Iam not so easily distracted and carriedaway all the time, so that I can bepresent.

The habit of meditation is not just aboutsitting on a cushion. While it is importantto sit, that is not the main reason to

meditate. Sitting on a cushion builds ahabit that we can then use the rest ofthe day when we are engaged in ourregular life. We sit and meditate to learnmindfulness and to make it a strong

habit, but we use that mindfulness (thatwe learn while sitting in meditation)everywhere else and all the time. Weneed it.

Sitting meditation is about learning toremain mindful and in the present asopposed to being endlessly distractedby thoughts of the past or the future.The first thing most people learn whenthey begin to meditate is that they are infact easily distracted, that is: they can‟t

just “let the mind rest.” The moment theysit down, the mind is running all over theplace. When beginners try to sit inmeditation they experience theirdistraction first hand and are mostlyhelpless to do anything about it. Theyhave built no meditation habit.

Sitting meditation, while it can be nice initself, is all about building a habit ofbeing in the present. This is why yogiscall their meditation “practice.” We“practice” meditation and that practiceprepares us for the rest of our day, thetime we are not meditating on thecushion. And that rest of the day iswhen we need the habits built throughmeditation the most.

In my opinion many people havemeditation just backward. They believethat the relative calm of ten minutes or ahalf an hour of meditation is why they

meditate, when the reality is that thoseten minutes are our time to „practice‟meditation, the time when we learn tomeditate and the rest of the day is whenput that practice to work.

Unless we have practiced meditation ona cushion long enough to actuallyacquire the habit of being mindful and




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present, we have nothing to help uskeep that awareness the rest of the day.It is a Catch-22. We can‟t just skipmeditation on the cushion and expect tohave its results in our daily life. We soon

just are right back to where we firststarted, in the midst of our distractions

It takes actual time sitting on thecushion to build the habit of beingpresent, of being mindful at the times weare distracted, and then learning to bringour attention back to whatever we aredoing. This habit is especially beneficialduring our post-meditation time, that is:when we are just living life.

I don‟t know about you, but I get carriedaway just all the time. I go too far. I saythings I don‟t mean. And I don‟t alwayscatch myself when I should. Things getout of hand easily for me and I am oftennot aware of it until somewhere downthe road. I lack mindfulness. Sittingmeditation is about building a habit ofmindfulness that alerts me when I amdistracted and allows me to drop thatdistraction and quickly return towhatever I am doing. It is a simple habitthat becomes automatic.

However, like all habits it has to actuallybecome a habit. You can‟t just think itand have it be so. You have to practicemeditation until it works. It is no differentfrom practicing a musical instrument,except here the instrument is your ownmind and attention.

My point is that while sitting on acushion for a short time each day can

be calming and relaxing in itself, that isnot the main reason to meditate. Themain reason is to practice being mindful,to practice recognizing when you aredistracted, and learn to bring yourattention back to whatever you aretrying to do.

This is not to say that you can‟t just sitand mull things over or let the mind coolout and just run like a quiet stream, orlight a candle, some incense, and kickback in the mind. Of course you can.

There are many ways of soothing themind, but the technique I am pointingout here is about being mindful, aboutmindfulness.

Shamata meditation as taught byTibetan and Zen Buddhists is aboutbeing mindful and alert. This takespractice and, like all methods ofpractice, it is not at first relaxing. It takeseffort to meditate effortlessly, if thatmakes sense. And it takes time.

I wish I could tell you that the results ofmeditation practice are instantaneousand appear the first time you sit, but thisis not the case in my experience. Like allhabits, meditation and mindfulness hasto be built through effort and time.Playing music on a guitar is not thesame as practicing scales and fingering.The analogy to meditation is a goodone. Meditation is your practice and itsresults (over time) will affect your wholelife.

I have found this to be true. I have beenmeditating for many years and it hasbeen hard work much of the time. Forme these habits don‟t come easily and Iam a genius at rationalizing on anygiven day why I should wait to practicemeditation until the next day. The onlyone I have harmed is myself. It just tookme much longer than average for the

results of mediation practice to kick in.Enough said.




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What Practice Really IsI want to talk here a little bit aboutpractice. I don‟t mean just dharmapractice, but any kind of practice, likelearning to play a musical instrument orwhatever. Of course it also is true fordharma practice like sitting meditation,tonglen (exchanging yourself for others),and so on. Practice can be boring so itmight help to learn a little more aboutwhat happens when we practice

anything.

I first learned about the true nature ofpractice back in Ann Arbor in the Sixtieswhen I was propelled out of my body byan LSD trip but never came back, orcame back over a period of many years.My mind was pretty open then, actuallyvery open. There was a little church offof South University and Forest Avenue,up near and just south of WashtenawAvenue, which is now a little dogleg. Itmight have been called the “CampusChapel.” Anyway, it was open all nightlong, left open. No one was there,except sometimes me. I would be uplate nights just as I am today up earlymornings.

Anyway, I would go there at times whenall else was closed or when I wanted tobe alone and just play music. In thatchapel they had a small grand piano inthe basement and a real organ console

up in the chapel. I would play those orplay at those. I can‟t really play thepiano but that was not the point thosenights. I wasn‟t playing the piano or organ; I was playing music, music frommy soul. Life was squeezing me andthose late nights I was playing musiclike some animal calling out to life.

I especially loved playing that churchorgan because the many differentvoices and registers would pierce my

mind and set up all kinds of resonancesthat transported me. In fact, I onceowned a large Hammond B3 (jazzorgan) for some time when I lived insmall room. It took up almost my entireroom until they came and repossessed itfor lack of payment. I just ran out ofmoney and was not willing to work atthat time. It was all I could do to monitormy consciousness each day.

Late nights I would go to the chapel andplay my heart out. It really was beautifulmusic (to me), but it might havesounded strange to others. I did this foryears and no one else was ever there. Idid have another and differentexperience at the U. of M. School ofmusic. One time I wandered through themusic school where there were dozensof small practice rooms, each with apiano and most of those rooms wereempty of students.

As I walked through the halls, thesounds of different instruments filled myears. Here was music. And I felt musicwell up within me. I was filled withemotion and feeling. Slipping into one ofthe empty rooms, I closed the doorbehind me and sat down and played as I




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would at the student chapel. Only thistime I was not alone.

I had no real piano technique and wasforced to help my fingers find their wayalong the keyboard. Still, I played very

carefully searching for each note. Iplayed what I was feeling. It came fromdeep inside. I did not stop to think howthis might sound or whether this was insome acceptable music style or another.I just played and poured out myfeelings.

Nor can I say that this was happy music,but how could I measure that? It was themusic of me at the time. With each noteand chord I built a sound image of mymind, at least my state of mind. I amsure the sounds could appearunconventional to anyone listening in asthey were from my heart and fit myfeelings and mind. And sure enough, asluck would have it, there was a listener-in although I was not playing all thatloud. I was jolted out of my mood by aknocking at the tiny glass window in thedoor and then the opening of the dooritself.

It was some kind of woman official forthe school. She asked me what I wasdoing? I said I was just playing thepiano. "We have no time for music ofthat sort in this school. Some of us havework to do. You will have to leave now,"she said. Somehow she was objectingto the „kind‟ of music I was playing or theway I was playing it. Her subtext wasthat the music was disturbing, not

because it was too loud, but because itwas too unorthodox. It was as if I wasnot welcome there because the mental

journey I was on and the music itinduced was troubling to others.Perhaps it was. How she knew I was nota music student I don‟t know. Perhaps itwas because I couldn‟t play the piano.

But I took it that my music (and mind)was hard for others to hear. I left.

I tell this story because I am gettingaround to my topic of practice andpracticing. There is no such thing as

standard electrical voltage. That is whywe have regulators, surge protectors,and all that stuff. Electricity surges. Itebbs and flows and we try to control itas best we can. In a similar way, ourinternal energy moves in spurts and lags- cycles. Much like electricity, life bringsmoments of great clarity when there isenergy for all ideas and action plus alsomoments of drag and darkness. Theenergy grid upon which our being is

based also ebbs and flows. It is anythingbut constant. In fact, change is the orderof the day. We are kind of at the mercyof the energy flow, bobbing around in itsups and downs.

I explored this idea when I began tolearn to play the piano on those latenights back in the 1960s. I also had anupright piano in the narrow hallway tomy room at 114. N. Division. Learning toplay the piano requires practice and lotsof it, but how does practice really work?Is there something more to practice thanthe benefit of rote memory and repeatedactions on the keyboard? I found therewas indeed another factor.

The idea of piano (or any other kind of)practice is nothing more than a methodof practicing and waiting for the will todevelop confidence, for those energysurges I mentioned. What is accidental

almost, we build confidence and willpower about. Energy and insight comein blossoms and streams and are notregulated. I spend the long practice timeand wait for the moments of forwardpush or opening and then cling close tothe new ground that opens into me. Thatis how I learn. During those moments of




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openness I can see to do anything,piano or otherwise. The mind is open inthose surge moments. I have seen intomyself and perhaps learned somethingnew. That is the true result of practice:

taking advantage of open moments todart past where we were before intonew ground, our passageway to thefuture. We build a habit throughpractice. We gain ground by taking upthe slack as we leap ahead throughthose open gaps of insight. We formgood habits through practice.

Just as the practice of waiting for theenergy or spirit-surges can benefit pianoplaying, that same waiting-practice style

can allow us to take advantage of thesenatural gaps or energy surges for otheruses. The same kind of attention that wemight pay to practice piano is worthpaying to our mind-training work - justsitting there being alert. Things happen.Gaps or openings naturally occur andwe are there to note them. That ispracticing, what is more commonlycalled mind practice or meditation.Meditation is just the sort of mind

practice we are discussing here.In basic meditation we sit there andallow the mind to rest. When webecome distracted, we gently bring themind back to rest once more. It can beboring and it is just practicing, but weare building a habit that will benefit us ineverything we do off the cushion. Oncewe have a habit of catching our owndistractions in real life and bringing ourattention back to what we want to beaccomplishing, the merits of meditationbecome clear to us.

It takes time and it takes those momentsor surges of opening during practicewhen resting the mind is easy or easier.The moments of real energy and claritythat come in the normal course of life is

when most real progress is made.Practice is the process of forming ahabit (imprinting) by repetition andtaking advantage of whatever openingsin our mind present themselves. We

leap through those gaps into our ownfuture and lock it down. This is whatpractice is really about, waiting for thosemoments and confirming what we seeand experience when they come. This iswhy and how I practice anything.




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Mind Practice: How to Do It

If you are reading this you want moredetail on how to actually do ShamataMeditation. The sales pitch is over.These are the details for those of youwho cannot find an authentic localcenter.

When to Meditate

It is considered important to meditate

daily or at least with uniform regularityand this is why: regular meditation is liketaking our daily temperature; eachmeditation session, no matter how brief,samples our state of mind. You sampleit. You see how it is. If there is noregularity, then we have no way tomeasure how calm or wild our mind is. Ifwe sit a lot one day and none the nexttwo days it is very difficult to gauge(remember) just how we are doing. And

consistently watching your mind is verymuch a part of meditation. It is the wholepoint here: sampling and getting to knowthe mind.

For me it is best to sit some each day,preferably in the morning, only becauseintervening distracting events of “greatimportance” have not yet arisen and

caused me to skip meditation that day. Iam brilliant at finding excuses to skipmeditation.

How Long to Meditate

Sit for a comfortable length of time. Itcan be as short as five minutes or aslong as you enjoy it. When I say “enjoy”here, I am aware that practicingmeditation is just that, “practice,” andpractice is not always enjoyable. Thepoint here is to not force yourself topractice longer than you can stand so asnot to form a habit of hating yourmeditation sessions. As least think of itas you would schoolwork or having tostudy. Consider the long-term resultsyou are looking to achieve and actaccordingly. You have done this beforein other areas, like schooling, lessons,etc.

I can remember times when I forgot tomeditate and I sat up in bed for a minuteor two before I went to sleep, just tokeep that mind-sampling going, and alsoto keep me going. When I wasbeginning, I typically did two meditation

sessions a day, one in the morning andone in the evening.

Expectations

“Don‟t have any expectations” is easy tosay, but hard to adhere to. The fact isthat you don‟t know what the result of meditation is like, so your expectationsare by definition not going to be correct,so don‟t try to imagine what you can‟tknow yet anyway. I can tell you from

experience that my expectations ofmeditation have been and continue tobe my greatest stumbling block tomaking any progress. They were simple„miss-takes‟ on my part. I do it all thetime.




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Experiences

And the worst thing (most detrimental)of all is to have a really good meditationand then look for that to happen againon the next day, week, month, or years.

That is the killer. It is like having onegood breath and trying to hold it. Sooneror later life will knock the breath out ofyou so you can breathe again. Let it go;breathe out.

Instead, it is far better to acceptwhatever the day brings, even if it isdull, down, and dreary, than to cling tothe past. Meditate with the dullness oranxiety you have on hand rather thancompare what you have to what youonce had before. Meditation is alwaysabout the “now” and never the “then.” Amajor rule is “Don‟t prolong the past.”Forget about it. Comfortably accept justhow it is right-now for you, good or bad,and meditate in those conditions. Youcan‟t have the same meditation twicebecause meditation is not about the“experience” itself, but always aboutyour awareness in the experience, howyou handle it. That is the way to moveforward.

The mind can be seen as a pendulumswinging from being too-excited-to-calm-down on the one hand, to beingtoo-slow-to-wake-up on the other. Thetime you want is right in the middle and“just right” is about zero movement of the pendulum. Progress in meditationinvolves letting that pendulum itself zeroout and come to rest in the middle. That

is letting the mind rest and this takestime. Remember: you are building ahabit. You are practicing here.

Resting the Mind

Before we launch into the ideal detailsfor meditation posture, it is important foryou to be comfortable. If the whole idea

of Shamata Meditation is to let the mindrest naturally, that means you rest. Ittook me at least ten years to understandthat when they said “rest,” they actuallymeant regular-old rest, like: relax. You

have to relax and let your mind rest.Give it up. Here is a poem about that:

The Rest of the Mind

You cannot rest the mind,But you can let the mind rest.Just let go,And don‟t mind the rest.

If you can sit in the perfect yoga posturefor meditation, that is wonderful, but ifyou cannot relax into it, not much will

happen. And you don‟t need a lot of special stuff to meditate. A quiet placewith perhaps a blanket under your legsto protect those sharp ankle bones anda pillow to sit on will do it. If you want toget fancy, you can order a squarezabuton cushion to go under you and azafu (round cushion) to sit on. JustGoogle or go tohttp://www.samadhicushions.com/.

I spent years studying various kinds of

cushions, but I will save that for anotherpost. Just be comfortable. If you aresitting where it is cold or drafty thenwrap a blanket or a shawl around yourback and legs. Sitting on a straight-backchair is perfectly fine too.

The Posture

What follows is the traditional posture,but don‟t let it scare you. You canalways start out by just sitting in a way

that does not take all your attention, butlet‟s you relax. You need your attentionfor the practice. Traditionally there areseven points to the posture, often calledin the Kagyu tradition the “Seven PointPosture of Vairocana (emptiness).” Herethey are:




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(1) Cross-legged: If you are one ofthose rare human beings that can sit in“full lotus” position, with each footresting on the opposite thigh, that isbest. The rest of us can sit cross legged,

but with both legs on the floor, one infront of the other. Again: sitting on astraight back chair is fine also.

(2) Abdomen-In: Pull your belly in a bitand tighten your anal sphincter andurethral muscles for just a few seconds,and then relax them slightly. Thisprevents energy loss.

(3) The Back: Sit up with your lowerback straight and hold that position,gently. There is congruence between astraight spine and the subtle innerenergies that run along the spine. Whenthe spine is straight, the energy flowsmost freely. Do your best.

(4) Hands: If you are a beginner, placeyour thumb on your palm at the base ofyour ring finger and close your hand intoa loose fist. Place fists palm-down onthe corresponding knee and slightlyabove the knee depending on the length

of your arms. Straighten the arms out,but not so much that they hurt.

If you are already accustomed to sittingthen an alternate hand position is toplace your two hands palms up againstyour abdomen and just below the navel,right hand on top of the left, with the tipsof the thumbs barely touching.

(5) The Gaze: Direct your gaze to a spoton the floor a foot or two in front of you.

Hold that gaze, gently.(6) The Chin: Tuck your chin up closeto your throat, just a bit, like you weremaking a double-chin.

(7) Tongue: Place your tongue upagainst the roof of your mouth, justbehind your front teeth. This will help to

control the saliva. The teeth can beslightly closed, but not clenched and thelips very slightly parted.

Sitting in Meditation

That is the posture. Now try to arrangeyourself in that posture and sitcomfortably. It may be a little likerubbing your forehead and patting yourtummy at first, so don‟t strain yourself. If you can‟t do it yet, then relax and just sitnormally until you can manageeverything.

To begin, just sit there for a minute andrelax until you begin to feel thoughtsrise. At that point take a deep slow

breath, breathing in. Follow the air as itcomes in all the way down into yourlower abdomen. And slowly breathe out.Now breathe normally but keep yourattention on the breath going in andgoing out.

Continue breathing like this for theduration of your meditation period.Thoughts will come and you willprobably be distracted. This is not onlynormal, but to be expected. When you

are distracted to the point of beingcarried away, that is, you find that youhave forgotten to focus on the breathbut are thinking of lunch or anappointment you have later on, justcatch yourself and let that thought go.Then, very gently bring your mind backand focus (rest it) on the breath. Don‟tspend one millisecond feeling sorry orworrying that you are not performingproperly, because you are. This is

normal. This is the practice. Gently dropthe thought, any thought about thethought, any worry about your behavior,etc. and refocus on the breath, gently.Continue following the breath.

Try to remain relaxed but not toorelaxed, and certainly not tense. My




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teacher uses the analogy of holding araw egg. If you hold it too tightly it willbreak, and if you hold it too loose it willfall and also break, so you have to holdit just right, tenderly. This is

mindfulness.If you are uncomfortable and havephysical pain, try to ignore it. If itpersists, shift your position to see if thathelps. You are free to find the happymedium, which some days might begiving up and stopping altogether. Youdon‟t want to be a sissy, but you alsodon‟t want to associate meditation withphysical pain. Be reasonable. Thispoem:

Testing the Rest

Learning to rest the mind,Really puts my practice to the test,So sometimes I just need to take abreak,And simply get some rest.

I received my Shamata meditationinstruction from an authentic source(Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche) andI have been given permission by my root

lama to teach this to others, as histeacher did before that all the way backdown the lineage. If and when you can,it is worthwhile to meet a certifiedteacher in person and get theseinstructions and the blessings that gowith the instructions that stretch backover one thousand years or more. Theauthentic blessing is very special, so domake an effort to get it sometime. Youcan find a list of authentic centers at:

Kagyu.org




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Tonglen: What about Hate & Fear?

This is about dealing with what you hateand fear in life -- a superior way to workwith these. It is clear from comments tothese blogs that most of you knowsomething about meditation. It is equallyclear from your notes here that notmany of you have even heard about“Tonglen,” which is a totally different(and equally valuable) Tibetan mind-

training technique from that of sittingmeditation.

Tonglen has to do with your personalmandala, the mini-world you havecreated around yourself and what youinclude in that world, and what youconsider as definitely outside of thatworld. And while tonglen can be donewhile sitting on a cushion (likemeditation), it is most often done off thecushion, while we are walking around

doing our everyday things. You can useit all the time.

Tonglen has to do with the people andthings we don‟t like, whatever comes upon our radar screen that is “other,”awful, threatening, or just different. It isalso an approach to all the suffering in

the world, but I will get to that. Thistechnique is particularly useful when wehate something or are repulsed by aperson, event, or thing. Sound useful? Itis very useful. In fact I am surprised that

more of you don‟t know about it. Along with regular sitting meditation,tonglen is part of the mental toolbox ofevery Tibetan Buddhist. For somereason here in the west most peoplehave never heard of it, much lesslearned how to use it. Let‟s rectify thatnow. I have to warn you that Tonglen is(from a western perspective) a radicaltechnique. In this sense it is advanced.It is so direct that it scared the bejesus

out of me when I first heard about it. Iwanted to run screaming from thethought and I almost did, so be preparedfor something a little different. In fact,here is the story of how a great rinpochepresented Tonglen to me many yearsago.

I had met this wonderful Tibetan lamaand rinpoche during his visit to AnnArbor and Margaret (my wife) and I wereso moved by that meeting that we hadto see him again, but he lived high in themountains above Woodstock, New Yorkand it was the dead of winter. In fact itwas during those weird bardo-like daysafter Christmas and before New Year.You know those days. My wife and Ipiled our three kids (at the time) into ourlittle car and began an 800-mile driveacross the country in a terrible coldspell. Our youngest daughter was onlyabout one year old at the time andnormally we would not take such ayoung child that far away from home inthe bitter cold. But we did. That was howimportant it was for us to meet therinpoche again.

It was a long trip that took two days andby early evening of the second day we




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had reached Woodstock, New York.Darkness had set in and the cold was sointense that then entire front insidewindshield of the car was frosted over; Iwas using a business card to scrape a

tiny hole in the glass to peer out of. Wewere driving up the narrow three-milemountain road to the Buddhist center. Itwas slow going. Finally we pulled into asmall parking lot outside of the largeretreat house. This was before themonastery was built, although they werebeginning to pour the foundation whenwinter set in.

We got out of the car and stood huddledby the door and knocking. A high wind

on the mountain was blowing and sharpas we waited. At last someone cameand the door was opened by a very nicelady; we were invited inside. I guess Ishould tell you now that we had noappointment. No one knew we werecoming. We just had winged it. Even so,the lady (her name was Norvie) wasvery kind and led us into a small waitingroom; she would tell the rinpoche andsee if he was available.

I will spare you the whole story of thatvisit and just cut to the chase to savetime here. Suffice it to say that theRinpoche was very kind but firm. Iwanted to know what I should do inorder to become his student. Margaretfelt similarly. We liked him that much!And pushy me, because I had been anastrologer and done “spiritual” things for many years, I was hoping to place out of“meditation 101” and get right to the

advanced stuff. That tells you howfoolish I was. Rinpoche very gently toldme that he could see that I had neverharmed anyone with my astrology, butthat when it came to learning meditation,because I knew little to nothing about it(and had done little to nothing with it sofar) that it was best if I started at the

very beginning. This was the fastestway. The fastest way?

Well, I had to think twice about that,because my arrogance was being rashagain, but I respected this man so much

that I was willing to do just as he said.OK, I would start at the beginning. Andnow I am getting to the point aboutTonglen here. When we left, Rinpochegave us a small book called “The Torchof Certainty” by a high lama namedJamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche. It turned outto be one of the classic mind-trainingtexts used in the Karma Kagyu Lineage.And I believe Rinpoche pointed out thesection on Tonglen for us to consider,

the technique I want to tell you moreabout here.

When Rinpoche had said goodbye andwas gone, we went outside. In the darkwe could see the bare cement walls ofthe monastery being built and the highwinds were whipping the plasticcovering that was hanging from thenewly poured cement. It was a littleeerie and there were no stars out.Anyway, we drove our little car backdown the mountain and managed to finda motel where we could stay the night.

There we were, crammed into one roomthat had a single (and very small)infrared wall heater that barely kept thebitter cold outside where it belonged.Anyway, we opened this little book andbegan to read the section on tonglen, atechnique we certainly had never heardof before. And it was a shocker.

Maybe it was just the night and the factthat we were huddled together with ourbabies 800 miles from home around atiny heater on one of the most bitterwinter nights. What this book said wasto breathe into yourself all the darknessand suffering in the world and breatheback out whatever good feeling and




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well-being you had. In fact the tonglentechnique is often simply translated as“Exchanging Yourself for Others.”

Well, this suggestion went 180-degreesagainst what every spiritual person and

technique had taught me up to thatpoint. In fact, I had been taught to nottake in anything dark, negative, or fear-filled, and to keep it as far away from meas possible. Psychics had even shownme how to wash my hands after doingan astrology reading and let the harmfuland negative thoughts that mightotherwise accumulate just go down thedrain. So tonglen was saying just theopposite, I mean totally the opposite:

that I was to breathe in the bad stuff andgive others or whatever was out thereany good stuff I had. What?

I know Margaret and I looked each otherin the eye and wondered what had wegotten ourselves into? It was scary andvery hard to get our mind around it. Atfirst my gut feel was to just cut and run,and to get the hell out of there. Yet herewe were shivering together in this tinyhotel room so far from home. There wasno instant solution. But we read on. Wehad nothing else to do.

Gradually we learned that tonglen,despite how it appeared to us at thetime, was an advanced shortcut tocompassion and the handling ofsuffering and negativity. All my life I hadtried to keep as far away from anythingnegative (people and things) as I could.I mean: who wants that? And here was

a technique telling me to do just theopposite, to welcome and breathe allthis bad stuff into me and exchange it inthe outbreath for whatever good stuff,feelings, and thoughts I had. TheseTibetans get right to the heart everytime. It got my attention.

Well, we got through the night, back onthe road, and finally made it all way thehome and with the concept of tonglenstill intact. We would give it a try, and wedid. So there you have the story of how

we came upon tonglen. Now: somethingmore about the technique.

The idea of tonglen is very simple and ithas to do with your personal mandala,what you consider yourself and whatyou consider not yourself – outside you.It has to do with when you encounteranything outside yourself, anythingother, foreign, negative, opposite, „bad‟,scary, horrible, hideous, etc. When yourecognize something as definitely “not-

you,” instead of crossing your fingers atit and trying to keep it at a distance, youdo just the opposite.

Instead of pushing it away, you pull ittoward you; you breathe and take it in.You absorb it willingly, and in returnsend out, breathe out, and let go of allthat is good, kind, loving, fresh, fine,etc., inside you. You send that back inexchange for all that bad stuff. This istrue for anything you consider outsideyourself, especially if it inspires fear,loathing, disgust, hatred, anger, or what-have-you – any “otherness.” Theconcept is easy to grasp.

And you don‟t just breathe in and out just once, but continually until you haveneutralized or normalized or madefriends with whatever is outside. Ofcourse you do this with whateversuffering you see in the world. You take

on the pain and suffering, breathe it in,and breathe out or send your goodwilland kindness back out. And you do thisanytime you find yourself being critical,

judgmental, nasty, mean, and so on tosomething outside yourself, something“not you.” I could go on, but let mesummarize.




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Tonglen is an incredible technique forremoving duality, otherness, andextending your personal mandala orworld view to accept and in factembrace more and more of what has

been shut out by you as “otherness.”Just think about it and (more important)try it. This is a shortcut to greatercompassion and kindness.

As to whether breathing in all thisdarkness, anger, and negativity isphysically harmful? It is not. In fact, itremoves your own negativity by shiftingthe limits of your tolerance in thedirection of greater compassion andacceptance.

Tonglen is taught and used hand-in-hand in Tibetan Buddhist mind trainingalong with sitting meditation. These arethe two main pillars of practice. Tonglenis a brilliant way to gradually removewhatever separates you from the realworld around you. You can do it all daylong wherever you are and wheneveryou encounter anything strange or“other.” You can do tonglen and startright on the spot to make friends withwhatever is out there and perceived asother, alien, or against you.

It is especially good with enemies ornot-so-friends. Instead of shutting themout and taking offence, you open up tothem, take in whatever offends you, andgive out kindness, goodwill, and yourown good energy. You do all of this inyour mind, but physical hugging andkindness is also allowed. Check this

most potent technique out for yourself.Try tonglen.




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Tonglen: Mental Feng Shui

I can see from your previous commentsthat I have to give a little more detailhere about tonglen. Let‟s take anexample that is easy to understand.

Let‟s say I see a small puppy or childbeing hurt or suffering. It is quite naturalfor my heart go out to such an innocentcreature. I am instantly compassionate. Iwish I could lessen the suffering and

take the small creature in my arms andhold it, giving it comfort. Tonglen is likethis.

We recognize and take on the sufferingor pain wherever we find it and sendback all that we have that might becomforting and kind. As mentioned, ourheart goes out in these situations. Thisis the process. And while it is easier toimagine with something like a hurt

puppy, the same transaction can bepracticed with all who suffer. This iswhat tonglen is all about, regardless ofwhether the object is a cute puppy or agnarly old what-have-you? All beingsare deserving of compassion, evenmore so if they are mean and hurtful.

Somewhere in there someone issuffering

And while learning to have compassionwherever suffering is found is wheretonglen shines, it can have other

practical uses throughout our life eachday. It is easy to see where we wouldhave compassion for a hurt child orpuppy, but perhaps less easy to seewhere we ourselves are constantly hurt,often by our own biases and prejudices.

It can be as obvious as the not-so-friendly co-worker that we suddenlymeet as we round an office corner.What is our reaction? You know what itis. There is nothing kind about it and wetend to react with dislike and probablyfear of the unknown. It can be painfulwhen we know someone has singled usout and made a point of not liking us.When they suddenly appear in our day,the tendency is to shrink back and putup defenses. Am I right? Use your ownwords.

Tonglen would have us do just thereverse from reacting in fear or dislike,

rather to open up and take in all that wefear or loathe, breathe it in, and absorbit, and then send back whatever we canmanage that is kind and open in return.It would seem that we are beingvulnerable by doing so, but in fact it iswe who become stronger through theprocess. This is what tonglen is allabout. This is mind training folks!

Our prejudices and biases define theboundary between what we consider

safe (our self) and everything „other‟outside ourselves. When we do tonglenin a situation, we are gradually movingthose boundaries so that they are moreinclusive and embracing of others. Whatwas once „other‟ is slowly weakenedand eventually vanishes, becoming aknown and part of us. We have made




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friends with the „other‟ parts of ourselves. We are more inclusive.

Tonglen is exactly the opposite of beingdivisive or polarizing. It weakens andbreaks down duality rather than

strengthening it. Instead of reinforcingfear and hatred, tonglen graduallyremoves the otherness out theresomewhere and reclassifies it as part ofourselves as something now known. Weare making friends with ourselvesthrough tonglen.

Are the others we are doing tonglen for(and with) helped by our action? Theyare certainly not hurt by it and the factthat it makes us a friendlier and morecompassionate being can‟t help but beuseful to all who have to come to knowus. I would say yes it is helpful to othersas well as to us.

Let me summarize please: Many of usare busy; we don‟t manage to findenough time for sitting meditation and/orwe may not have done enoughmeditation to begin to reap the rewardsof doing so. Sitting meditation takes time

until a habit is formed that can really beof use to us. Tonglen is something wecan do at anytime and anywhere. Itdoes not take long and we don‟t have tointerrupt whatever else we are doing.And it works.

Tonglen need not only be a somewhatdrawn-out affair with lots of breathing inand breathing out. We only do tonglenuntil we feel that we have weakened,neutralized, and otherwise softened the

duality we experience, the „us‟ and„them‟ of it, until we make friends withthat other part of ourselves.

It can also be used for smaller andsmaller events like winces, grimaces,and so one, whatever we come acrossin a moment that provokes us. In fact,

tonglen is like mental Feng Shui in thatwhen we encounter something thatdisturbs or upsets us we change itslocation from outside our mandala towithin our mandala. Tonglen allows us

to rearrange our self just as Feng Shuilets us rearrange our home.




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Practicing Meditation

It can be helpful to know somethingabout the difference between meditationpractice and the results of that practice,realization. Many times when a buildingis built, it requires scaffolding tocomplete it and when completed thescaffolding is removed. Meditation is alittle like this.

If we learn to play music, we practice

playing scales and other complex fingerand musical exercises. Yet the scalesand finger exercises are not consideredthe final music. Meditation is also a littlelike this.

As kid we learn to draw the alphabet,but we don‟t write out the alphabet oftenlater on once we have learned it.Meditation is like this too.

In almost every area of life learning,

some practice is involved, but the actualform of the practice is not usuallyequivalent to the final result. It is„practice‟. Meditation is like this. In fact,many call their meditation period eachday “practice,” as in “I just did mypractice.” Please take that word“practice” to heart.

Learning meditation involves practice,but the practice itself is not the result ofmeditation any more than playing scalesis the result or the final music we play. Itis, rather, vice versa. The music is the

result of or enhanced by the practice.Some form of „awareness‟ is the desiredresult of our Shamata meditationpractice.

My point is: don‟t fixate on your practiceof meditation as if it were the result ofmeditation and don‟t expect the FORMof the practice to also be the form of theresult of practice any more than therubbing of two sticks together is the firewe seek. The fire results from rubbing

the two sticks together, but the fire is notitself the process. It is the result of theprocess. Shamata or awarenessmeditation practice is not the same asthe eventual awareness that resultsfrom Shamata meditation.

When we learn to meditate, we don‟t yetknow and cannot possibly have acorrect idea of what that awareness iswithout having the awareness itself. It iseasy to fall into the habit of expectingawareness to somehow be just like ourpractice, only better. Meditation practiceis just that, “practice,” and not theawareness itself that eventually comesfrom practicing. Shamata practice is likethe scaffolding on the building,something that will help shape ourrealization, but that ultimately will beremoved. We won‟t need it, at least aswe know it now.

This is not to be interpreted as “Wedon‟t need to practice.” Without learninghow to practice, we would get nowhereat all. Of course we need to practice, butpractice if too forced can becounterproductive. We need to leavesome room for awareness to grow. Weneed to leave the door open for what we




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do not yet know, and most of all weneed to know that we do not know whatawareness is. We have not experiencedit yet. By definition, we have no idea.Otherwise we would already be aware.

We each know something about whatpractice is, but we do not yet know whatthe result of practice is, so at the veryleast we need to know that we DO NOTknow and also something about whatwe do not know. In that way we leavethe door open for spontaneity andfreshness. At least there is a questionmark in our mind. We don‟t want to paintourselves into a corner with our practiceby assuming we know what the outcome

of our practice is supposed to be,because we don‟t. If we view ourpractice as just that, „practice‟, it helpsus to keep in mind that our practice isnot just going to turn into awareness allby itself. Practice is not awareness, but

just „practice‟ to become more aware.Like the workmen take down thescaffolding when a building iscompleted, a day will come when we willrealize the difference between our

practice and what we are practicing toachieve, the result of practice, someform of awareness. Practice andawareness are related, but not identical.

One of the features of Buddhism is thatit is non-theistic, which to me meansthere is no one else up there pulling thestrings. I have read and been taught thateven if Buddha were here in the sameroom with us he could not enlighten ussimply by touching our forehead. If hecould, Buddha and his followers wouldhave enlightened everyone centuriesago. It would have gone viral. The entiredharma is about Buddha pointing out tous how to do what he did, which was toenlighten himself. We each have to dothe same: enlighten ourselves. No onewill ever come along and save us, do it

to or for us, no matter how long we wait.Our teachers may point out the way, butwe each have to walk the pathourselves. And this especially relates toour meditation practice.

If we are practicing because we havebeen told to practice, feel obligated topractice, or think we should practice, butare not all that personally motivated topractice, nothing much will happen. Wealso have to practice having propermotivation. We know when we aremotivated. Our practice will wait for usas long as it takes for us to do it right,and that includes wanting to practiceinstead of just practicing by rote. If we

are just going through the motions,counting the minutes until practice isover, waiting it out (so to speak) eachday or thinking that tomorrow we will doit better, nothing much will happen.Realization is waiting for us to practicecorrectly, eons if necessary.

Shamata meditation is about resting themind, for sure, but it is also aboutlearning to get to gradually know themind in all of its qualities. We need toinquire into the mind. We need to beinterested, to be alive in our getting toknow the mind. The whole point ofmeditation is awareness of the nature ofthe mind, and we actually have todevelop that awareness ourselves. If wecut corners with our meditation practice,can‟t manage to really get into it or areparalyzed so that we can‟t give it 100%,nothing will happen to us except'nothing‟. Our practice waits for us to do

it properly. This is a real Catch-22. Youcan‟t outwit yourself.

Off the Cushion

Learning to meditate takes time. If youhave trouble practicing, finding the timeto practice, or have run into some of thevarious roadblocks to practicing, there




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are ways to supplement your on-the-cushion practice when you are off-the-cushion during the rest of your day. Thisis called „post meditation‟ practice andwhile not a substitute for your regular

practice, post-meditation practice canaugment your normal practice. It canalso inspire you to practice correctly.

Meditation is all about awareness andmindfulness. Mindfulness is aboutremembering to be aware andawareness is being aware. If we don‟thave enough time in our busy scheduleto devote to meditation or if we are tooself-conscious in our meditation, thereare things we can do at other times that

may augment our practice. In particular,if we spend a lot of time in front of acomputer or on any kind of task thatrequires actual concentration, we maybe able to extend our daily practice.

For example, when you finish yourregular meditation session and return towhatever else you are doing that day,don‟t just turn off your meditation like aswitch, but take whatever awarenessyou may have managed with you. Mixyour meditation with your day-to-daywork. If you are doing any work thatrequires focus and concentration, thereis no reason why you can‟t just practicesome of the same techniques you useon the cushion, like bringing your mindback to whatever you are focusing onwhen you become aware that you havebeen distracted. And while this kind ofexercise may lack some of the qualitiesof on-the-cushion meditation, like theintent to benefit all sentient beingsthrough your practice, there is no reasonwhy you can‟t easily add that towhatever you are doing during the day.

If you have a moment when you catchyourself being aware (have popped outof your routine) it is very easy to make a

simple dedication like “May any meritthat I have accumulated today benefit allsentient beings without exception, andmy I dedicate this merit in the same waythat the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

dedicate merit,” something like that.Then go back to whatever tasks you areinvolved in. Not only is this kind ofrepeated dedication throughout the dayof value to your dharma practice, but thedynamic quality of repeatedly beingaware and taking that awareness toyour work is also very beneficial to yourwork, almost like another form ofbreathing. You are practicing!

As mentioned earlier, meditation is all

about awareness and the more we canbe aware throughout our day in everymoment, the better our meditationpractice will become. Many of us haveonly a short time to spend on thecushion practicing awareness each day.Many folks have maybe twenty minutesto practice, others a half hour. It mightbe rare to have more than one hour offree time a day to meditate. If progressin meditation is measured in terms of

the time we practice, our progress canbe slow. However, if we can enhanceour on-the-cushion practice with variousways of being aware the rest of our day,then we may extend that practiceconsiderably.

I used to tell myself when I was growingup and had to go to church on Sunday,that church once a week was nevergoing to get a rascal like me to heaven.In a similar way meditating for an hour aday is probably not really enough forme. Yet I don‟t have or don‟t seem to allocate any more time to practicemeditation each day. However, as Ibegin to find other moments during mywork day in which I can see that I amaware, and use those moments to re-focus on whatever task is at hand, my




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cumulative practice time actually beginsto extend. My teacher has said thateven the time it takes to raise a teacupto our lips and take a sip is long enoughto have a brief moment of awareness.

There are an untold number of suchmoments in our day. Conscious use ofthese otherwise empty moments tofocus on the fact that at that moment weare aware and then mixing that briefawareness with whatever we have to doat the time can be very beneficial.

Awareness is the very heart ofmeditation. If we generate someawareness during our regular practice ofmeditation, that is of course excellent. If

we can (in addition) begin to fill in thegaps in our awareness through the restof the day that is even better. Buddhawas totally aware all of the time. Forbeginners like us, the effort to remainaware can be just too tiring, as this littlepoem I wrote suggests:

Testing the Rest

Learning to rest the mind,Really puts my practice to the test,

So sometimes I just need to take abreak,And simply get some rest.

You get the idea. All practice requiressome effort, and effort is often counter-productive to free-awareness, so thereis a Catch-22 here as this little poemnotes:

The Rest of the Mind

You cannot rest the mind,

But you can let the mind rest.Just let go,And don‟t mind the rest.

I have found it important to extend mymeditation practice off-the-cushion andthroughout the rest of my day. By doingthis I have gone a long way toward

compensating for my tendency to cutshort my regular meditation periods or tofind some excuse not to practice at alltoday - whatever. I am a genius atrationalization. There is always a little bit

of a war going on inside me when itcomes to anything I „have‟ to do, even if I am the one that said I have to do it.Extending my practice off-the-cushionhas been a wonderful way to actually domore practice and to also to deescalatethe warring factions within myself aboutmy regular practice times.




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Aspirations & Dedication of Merit

I have been meditating for some 37years and in that time I have come upwith scores of reasons to put off untiltomorrow the meditating I just can‟tseem to find time to do today. As busyas I am, I always seem to find time torationalize away my meditation time.What does this say about my meditationor me?

For one, it is never good to get on badterms with my meditation practice, suchthat it is easier for me to avoid it than todo it. Just what is it that I am avoiding?For me, the answer is: all kinds ofthings, for example:

Some days when I approach mymeditation cushion I seem to put on allkinds of baggage that I can avoid by justskipping meditation that day, like the

many layers of arrogance I cansomehow manage, one after another.For example, there is the person ofMichael the „dharma practitioner‟; I getsick of him. And there is the “I am nowgoing to meditate” pose or perhaps Idon‟t want to review the highexpectations that I have set for myself or

compare my last imprinted goodmeditation practice against how I feel atthe moment, or review my lack of anysigns of progress in who knows howlong, etc. The list goes on.

These, then, are just a few reasons it issometimes easier to walk on by the doorto my practice area than to just go on in.In fact, almost anything is preferable tomeditation (like taking out the trash)when I get into this frame of mind. Ofcourse this is just part of meditation, butI tend to forget that.

When I get stingy with my practice, whatis this a sign of? I could point out a lot ofpossible reasons, but the long and theshort of it is that something has comebetween me and my original wish andreasons to practice. What to do? Thefirst thing is not to add insult to injury. Itis bad enough that practicing dharma forme can at times drift into a stalemate orstandoff situation. It is worse if on top ofthat I feel bad about it; this only widensthat division. There are things that I cando.

I am not suggesting you stop yourformal practice, but you may need togive it a break for a day, as if you havenot already given it a break by just notdoing it joyfully or consistently. It is hardto do any kind of “practice” joyfully. Thistoo is just part of meditation practice. By“give it a break,” here I mean give it arest, let it go for today. But usually Ihave already tried that.

Meditation is all about learning to let the

mind rest and if we have managed toget our practice into a bundle so that it isnot restful, than the least we can do isrelax a bit and start over. Remember:when we are distracted, we drop it, andgently bring the mind back to rest on thebreath. Same thing here. In this casethis includes not only allowing yourself




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not to meditate that day (or to shortenyour meditatin), but also not holding thisor your recent lapses against yourself.You have painted yourself into a corner,so take a break and start over, like with

Shamata meditation. There are otherforms of practice that may be easier todo at the moment.

This whole delinquency thing, if you arebeing delinquent, is probably not newwith you. If you are like me, you do itwhenever you have exhausted yourgoodwill on any project and turned whatwas a good thing into just anothersomething to avoid. And on top of thatyou are nagging yourself.

Sometimes I manage to avoid practiceuntil the amount of it I do in a weekamounts to something like only going tochurch on Sunday, one day a week‟sworth (or less). I know that this won‟t getme to „heaven‟ anytime soon, as in: toolittle, too late. The goal is to make ourentire life our practice, but how to getthere. Sitting meditation is all aboutbuilding the tools and habit to do that.Some of us manage to screw up whatwe set out to do by micromanagingourselves right out of the spirit of doinganything at all. I do this. There isanother approach, but it is off-the-cushion or post meditational, so takenote. I am not suggesting that you stopyour daily sitting practice, but ratheraugment in ways that will enhance thatpractice. This method has to do withgaps in our daily life that we can‟t avoidanyway. Put them to work.

An example of a gap is any event thatdistracts us from our normal distractions

– whatever we are doing at the moment.For example: we are busying workingaway at something or other and we getdisturbed. We wake up from that. Itcould be that the doorbell or phone

rings, a door slams, an alarm goes off --you-name-it. Life is filled with theseevents. The point is that whatever theinterruption, it creates a gap in theotherwise smooth flowing of our routine

so that we pause and look around, evenif for a split second or short minute.These kinds of awareness gaps areperfect opportunities for quality dharmapractice. Here is what I do with thesegaps:

First, for starters, you can just rest in thegap for a moment, enjoy the gap. Youare already not doing what you weresupposed to do, so take a mini-break.Here you are, awakened (disturbed) in

the flow of your day and suddenly awareof that. This is an opportunity. Rest inthat moment. By „rest‟ I mean just relaxand let yourself be there in that gap for asecond. And the next part is very easytoo.

Before you resume whatever task youwere just on (and interrupted from),simply dedicate whatever merit you mayhave accumulated up to now doing it(however small that may be) to benefitall sentient beings in some way. If youare a Buddhist, you can dedicate thismerit to all the Buddhas andBodhisattvas (wherever they may be)that they may better assist all beingseverywhere in finding true happinessand enlightenment. Then pick up yourtask and go on. It is a simple as that.And this is a form of dharma practice, soyou have done some today!

And the next time you are interruptedand snap out of your concentration, dothe same thing again. Use that naturalgap, that sudden awareness that youhave in the moment, to dedicate themerit of what you have done up untilthen. This kind of dedication is a veryreal practice and it fits into even the




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busiest schedule. And the spontaneity ofit precludes our „gaming‟ it like we tendto do to our daily sitting practice. Ithappens too fast for that. One momentyou are startled aware, distracted from

your normal distraction, and just in themoment awake. Use that moment to doa very small practice like dedicating themerit to all beings.

What is merit? Ideally merit is somethingyou have managed to do to benefit notonly yourself, but all beings, somethingwholesome and good. When we aredoing mundane business-like tasks,there may not be much of that meritpresent. Still, there is probably some

teeny-tiny bit of merit in whatever we dowell. Dedicate that. You don‟t even haveto know what it is. You just say toyourself “Whatever merit I haveaccomplished, however small, dedicatethat to the welfare of all beings.” That isenough.

And if you can manage it, you can endthe dedication of merit by making asimple ongoing aspiration to yourselfthat whatever you are about to do,continue to do, whatever merit mayeventually be involved in the work youare doing (however miniscule) may it beof some real use to benefit all sentientbeings. Trust me; this very small efforton your part can bring great returns.

I have been studying and practicingmeditation for over 37 years. During thattime I have read in and studied manyhundreds of books and taken literally

many hundreds of teachings. In all ofthose books and teachings the mostprofound secret that I have seenpresented over and over again as amethod for accumulating merit indharma practice is the aspiration wemake before undertaking any work andthe dedication of merit we make after

any work. It is so easy to do when weare interrupted anyway, and only takesa few seconds to do it. Try it.

Of course, this is especially true when itcomes to actual dharma practice, as in

making an aspiration before a dharmapractice session and a dedication afterthat practice. Dharma practice is themost worthy of all tasks we might havebecause if we can become more aware,we can better benefit the beings weencounter in life. However, unless weare openly doing something destructive,there has to be at least some merit inwhatever else we are doing during ourday, hopefully. And when these natural

gaps arise in our workflow, dedicatingeven that tiny bit of merit is, well,meritorious, especially if we dedicate itto the wellbeing and enlightenment of allsentient beings.

This kind of aspiration and dedicationpractice takes only a few seconds hereand there, and it occurs only when weare forced to take a momentary break inour workflow, as in: we wake up fromwhatever we are doing for a moment. Inthat moment, we are free to make thisdedication and aspiration almosteffortlessly.




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Urgency in Dharma Practice

A Dharma “Catch 22”: The idea issimple. I am not yet enlightened yet, butam older now with probably not thatmany years left, am easily distracted,and not much into forced routines. Youtell me: What are my chances ofbecoming enlightened before I die andwhy should I even worry about it?

The very great majority of dharma

practitioners (not to mention everyoneelse) are pretty much in this same boator WILL BE before they realize it. Onething we do know (if we are honest withourselves) is that we are not enlightenedyet no matter how we may rationalize it.If we have to even ask ourselves thequestion, the answer is a firm “No, weare not yet enlightened.”

And we are told by the Tibetan Buddhist

teachings that in the bardo passagesoon after death we either will or will notget another human birth depending onhow we have used our current life, thisone. Sounds biblical and it is. And whileanother human rebirth or life is notguaranteed, we can however easily geta lower birth, one in which the dharma

practice we have put off doing in this lifeis impossible, such as being reborn as abewildered animal, and so on. What athought!

On top of whatever our current will for

practice is (and our hopes forenlightenment), we also have thegrowing pressure of this eventualshowdown in the bardo realm, where(bodiless and without all the things fromthis life) we will have to somehow pilotour mind through (so we are told) whatis said to be (for the majority) a mostterrifying experience. And just howstable are we when terrified?

And we won‟t even have the steeringwheel of the body to guide us. In thebardo we are anything but grounded.We will have lost our body and literallybe senseless! We will have no way toeven come to our senses, because wewill have completely lost our senses.That is worth thinking about.

At the time of death we will be alone (aswe are today when we dream) with ourmind, and even a few moments of

reflection should tell us how disciplinedthat is. Just consider your dharma orspiritual practice and ask yourself: haveyou achieved the results you expected,were looking for, or that you feel youneed? If you are on shaky ground righthere and now, then just imagine whatyou will be like in the midst of the bardopassage.

It will be like trying to control theoutcome of a dream, for we will be one

big mind with no body and no commonsense. Or it could be like trying to drivea car without a steering wheel. Youprobably won‟t be able to point yourself anywhere and just have it go there orthe reverse: whatever comes to yourmind, you WILL go there, including intoyour worst fears. Psychedelic drugs like




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LSD are just an inoculation. This is notme making this up; this is what thedharma texts and teachings actuallysay.

Keep in mind that the outcome of the

bardo experience will determine whetheryou or I have another human body,another chance to learn and practice thedharma or whether we will instead fallinto lower realms where it will be verydifficult to do much of anything at all,certainly nothing like the opportunity wehave now in this life.

Forget about the pain of intrauterine life,the trauma of birth, and all the “slingsand arrows of outrageous fortune” thatShakespeare points out. It gets a littleOld-Testament like. Those of us whohave not managed to enlightenourselves in this life will have no choicebut to try and qualify for yet anotherchance at a human life in the bardo,hoping to somehow keep what we nowhave and to at least come out even, butwith no guarantee.

I am imagining that 99.99% of us are in

roughly the same boat. We will beangling for and hoping for anotherhuman rebirth, another chance on ahuman life, rather than fall into what arecalled the “lower realms.” Many peoplebelieve we don‟t come back at all andthis life is the end of it. If it has beenhard for us to get serious in this life, itmay be almost impossible to practicedharma in the next. Ninety-nine percentis a good percentage, basically like: all

of us.If you have ever wondered why many ofthe Asian Buddhists are into the BuddhaAmitabha and his “Pure Land” Buddharealm called Sukhavati (Tibetan: Dewa-Chen), it is because, of all the buddhas,the Buddha Amitabha has promisedeach of us an easier access to his pure-

land realm, an access that for mostwould take place in the bardo instead ofrebirth – at what otherwise is thechanging of the bodies and perhapsalso changing of realms.

Sukhavati is said to not only allow us toavoid falling into lower rebirths, but alsoto avoid our even taking another humanrebirth whatsoever. According to theteachings, if we merit it, we go directly toSukhavati at death and we becomeenlightened period -- end of births. Thisis due (as the teaching say) to thecompassion of the Buddha Amitabha forsentient beings, in this case we humans.

Obviously, as an unenlightened human Iknow nothing about this Sukhavati realmpersonally, but am only sharing with youwhat the teachings tell us. This option isvery appealing compared to some of thealternatives.

Aside from trying to qualify forSukhavati, the majority of us arepracticing not only to becomeenlightened using the methods theBuddha taught, but also to get our

minds in good-enough shape before wedie so as not to lose our balance in thebardo and fail to obtain at the leastanother human birth complete with all its

joys and sorrows. So there is someextra pressure on many of us, and thatpressure increases with age, as weactually get closer to that decidingmoment. Imagine! Have you?

My only point for even writing this is totake a look at how this urgency to

qualify for yet another chance at humanlife might affect our ongoing ability tobecome enlightened, our will and abilityto practice. Getting another humanrebirth after this life amounts to gettingour foot in the door to do our life all overagain. In itself, a rebirth provides us withnothing more than another chance at




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life, another opportunity to practice thedharma and to work toward ourenlightenment, that is „if ‟ we can beborn in a time and place where dharmais available to us, which is itself not

certain.Whatever skills or imprint we start outwith in our next life will come from ourdharma practice in this current life. It isentirely up to us and now. We set thepace. It all comes down to our actuallyhaving to DO something towardawakening ourselves, becomingenlightened. No one will or can (noteven a Buddha) do it for us, and we cantake all the time in the world to get the

job done, lifetime after lifetime if needed,and so we have up till now.

Nothing will ever change for the better,except as we change it. We are notgoing to somehow stumble on or luck-into enlightenment. If that were true, wewould have done it a long time ago. Weare, as one high rinpoche puts it, the“stragglers,” the ones who have notmanaged to get enlightened in all of thetime in the world up to now - eons.

Fear of the bardo (and attempts to getready for it) remind me a little of beingdistracted and worn out by a low-paying

job while all of our hopes or dreams gounattended. Our fear and worries aboutour future may make that future all themore urgent, but they also can detractfrom our concentration on our dharmapractice. And I don‟t mean to bedisrespectful.

We are told that the most importantthing is to study and practice thedharma and move towardenlightenment, step by step. However,at the same time we have to somehowget ready to pass through the eventualbardo experience if we don‟t reachenlightenment before we die. And most

of us apparently won‟t. This is notsomething we can just ignore orendlessly put off, as there is an end toour current life and then there we willbe: in the bardo.

The two should be the same thing,meaning: if we work hard with ourdharma practice in becoming moreaware, that alone should stand us ingood stead when we enter the bardo atdeath. And if the two are not the same,that is, if our fear of not being readyoverpowers or paralyzes our actualpractice, then the amount of actualdharma practice we did get done takespriority over the fear of what will happen

in the bardo and not vice versa. In otherwords, our fears can inhibit our actualpractice and create a self-fulfillingprophecy.

At the time we die nothing we havedone (with the exception of dharmapractice) will be of any use to us at all.Our money, friends, all our experiences,and any and everything we haveaccomplished in this mundane life willbe totally useless in the bardo realms.We won‟t even have our familiar bodyand, as mentioned, absolutely no senseat all. We will be the „horselessheadman‟, just out there (or in there)alone with our mind, driven about willy-nilly only by whatever discipline weactually have mastered, not by ourintellectual understanding of thedharma. Thinking won‟t help there.

All the dharma talk, hopes, fears,

dreams, and what-not part of ourdharma practice will also be lost to us,leaving only whatever imprints anddharma skills in directing the mind wehave actually acquired up to that point.In the end dharma is about action notwords. All of our clever rationalizationswill add up to nothing and make no




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sense. There will be no sense to make.We will be senseless.

And we will have no one to ask, no oneto guide us, no teacher, no sangha, etc.,other than whatever essence of our

teachers we have recognized andinternalized through our own practice.And even that essence won‟t just rub off on us. We have to acquire or mastereven that for ourselves. Teachers canonly point the way; they can‟t do our practice for us. They can‟t live our livesfor us. In the bardo, we will have tomake up our mind on the spot based onhow our mind is made up, as in: how wemade it up in this life. We won‟t

suddenly be different than we are nowas far as mind training. We will be whatwe have done and how we have lived.We make our own karma.

So, in summary, we seriously have tofigure out how to work on becomingenlightened in this life, while at the sametime live under the pressure and theage-ticking clock to prepare for theinevitable bardo passage. The growingpressure to meet the demands of thebardo can actually inhibit us from doingthe practice needed to be confident inthe bardo, a “Catch-22” if there ever wasone.

Pressure

However, we do have some toolsavailable to us, in particular the “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind to theDharma,” and they traditionally havebeen called the Common Preliminaries,

the very first step and foundation forwhat comes after in our dharmapractice. All Buddhists know them. Andwe can learn from them. Here they are:

Precious Human Life (1st thought)

Life is precious! We all know that andfrom time to time our own life, of course,

may seem most precious to us, but thesame goes for all other life, even that ofthe smallest insect or creature. Allbeings want to be happy and not tosuffer.

And while that is true, the main pointhere is not that all life is precious,although of course it is to each being.The main point is that this human life wehave is most precious and it is preciousnot just because it is our life. The humanlife is precious because it is perhaps theonly opportunity to find and practice thedharma and thereby somehow awakenand move toward enlightenment. Thisopportunity of having a human life to

learn dharma is what is most precious.

It is written that of all the realms, fromlow to high, only the human lifetimeoffers the exact combination we need tomeet and learn the dharma, and so it isoften called the “precious human birth.”In every other realm we are eithersuffering too much to practice dharma orwe are too high on one thing or another(and not down-to-earth enough) topractice dharma. The human birth is theone happy medium. We act like we aregoing to live forever, etc.

Impermanence (2nd thought)

“Impermanence” simply means that wehave a limited opportunity here, one thatlike the dew on the morning grass soonwill be gone. Of the “Four Thoughts,” “impermanence” is the most obvious tous all, if only because life jogs ourmemory every once in a while and

reminds us that we ARE impermanent.We all get a whiff of impermanence fromtime to time, perhaps as those close tous die or when we momentarily realizethat we too are impermanent. I like tocall „impermanence‟, the smelling saltsof the dharma. It wakes us up.




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And Mother Nature has impermanenceon display all the time and the laws ofnature are also clearly working allaround us, not just in the fields andstreams, but in the cities, homes –

wherever we are. And there seem to beseveral aspects to impermanence.

Witnessing the heartbreakingimpermanence nature displays is oneway we are affected, often bringing outcompassion within us for the sufferingthat most animals and beingsexperience. This helps to keep us sober.Then there is the recollection of our ownimpermanence, the fact that we will forsure die. This is harder for us to look at,

so we tend to push it out of ourconsciousness most of the time.

Impermanence can also urge us to notwaste time, because our own life willexpire one day soon and, for all weknow, it could be today. As the Ven.Bokar Rinpoche said to me years agowhen I left his monastery in WestBengal, India, “Michael, Tomorrow orthe next life, whichever comes first.”

Always somewhere in the back of ourmind, rolling around in there, is thesense of our own mortality. Perhaps stillmore distracting and energy consumingis the fact that we know (have beentaught) it would be best if we were notwasting time on what is ultimatelyunimportant, but rather were busy withour practice or at least preparing ourmind in some way for the bardopassage, the confrontation that will

decide what our next rebirth will be,human or some other type.

And meanwhile we all have thepressures of making a living, keepingthis body alive, having food to eat, and aroof over our head. These concerns arenot trivial for most of us.

I want to differentiate here (for my ownclarity) the urgency we have in generalto use this human life we have efficiently(while we have it) and the fear orpressure that is connected with our

upcoming bardo passage, thedetermination if we do or do not getanother human rebirth.

To me, it seems that there are two kindsof worries here, one the urgency ofimpermanence in general and thesecond, the urgency whether we will orwon‟t have another chance at a humanlife in the near future, and of course theyare related. In my own life, I add still athird worry, which is that the worry about

whether the bardo decision (next humanlife or not) may be so strong that it willseriously detract from the ongoingprocess of finding a dharma practicethat will move us toward enlightenment.

Keep in mind that it is only the searchfor a dharma practice (that will work forus) that will successful sway theoutcome of the bardo passage in thefavor of another precious human life oreven enlightenment. We need to be ascalm and careful as we can in dharmapractice, have our mind as clear andrelaxed as possible, and hopefully notbe too distracted by the urgency of theintra-bardo decision.

Karma (3rd thought)

Understanding karma is like tastingsome fine cheese or food where there isan aftertaste, a taste and then a littlelater, an after-taste. In this analogy, the

taste is pretty obvious: action and result.You do something in life and it provokesa reaction or result.

The aftertaste (with understandingkarma in my experience) is that as youget more into looking at karma, youbegin to realize that not just the big




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decisions or actions bring results, butthat ALL actions (everything we do)brings some reaction, lay down theirown track or cast some fine shadow.And if we repeat that action, good or

bad for us, the track only deepens.It took me a while for this to really sinkin. In other words, we would be bestserved if we were very, very careful ineverything we do, careful in everyaction, no matter how trivial it mightappear on the surface. It reminds me ofone of the most common images usedto illustrate chaos theory in modernphysics, the image of the flapping of abutterfly‟s wing in South America

serving to modify the weather in Iceland – something like that. Little things canmean a lot.

Karma is not only about committing baddeeds and paying for them, but alsoabout shaping our lives almost invisiblyby every small action we do. This isperhaps best celebrated in themethodical care and gentleness shownby some of the great Zen masters inevery move they make, like thetraditional tea ceremony. The more wework our way into the practice ofdharma, the more careful we become inour every thought, word, and deed. Weare on tiptoe.

Samsara – This World (4th thought)

The fourth of the “Four Thoughts” is theconsistent undependability of this world,also sometimes called “the r evulsion ofSamsara,” Samsara being this world

that you and I live in. We live in a stateof change that itself is changing or as Ilike to say it: I will never be able to quiteget all of my ducks in a row. I alwaysbelieve I will, but I never have yet, andthe teachings suggest it ismathematically impossible.

Like the gambling casinos, it is only ourown gullibility that keeps us betting onpermanency, thinking we can actuallygame the system. Others can‟t, butgiven enough time, we think we are

different; we can do it. This is the sameattitude or carrot that has led us from lifeto life through beginningless time.

Only when we are severely struck byimpermanence do we actually sickenand become nauseas with life as weknow it; only then does it turn empty ofmeaning for us. Otherwise, we keep ithopping at all times.

These four thoughts: the precioushuman life, impermanence, karma, andthe sheer undependability of life havebeen said to be the four friends that helpto keep us awake, keep us from utterlyabandoning ourselves to the deep sleepof distractions, bewilderment, andconfusion.

Summary

We are juggling at least a couple of ballshere. On the one hand we have thedharma practice we have been given or

have discovered works for us. And wemay or may not have any great signsthat it is working yet. Then, on the otherhand we have to fight against time to getat least to somewhere with our practicethat will help us to influence theoutcome of our upcoming bardoexperience.

As mentioned earlier, these two aspectsare not only related, but should be

working hand in hand. However, it is alltoo easy for them to get out of phasewith one another, so that the urgency ofthe bardo confrontation becomesdominant and distracts us from ourdharma practice enough so that wesomehow manage not to get that jobdone with the result that our mind will




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not be ready to meet the bardo. Thisvicious cycle is not uncommon.

As mentioned earlier, the propersequence is that with the help of aqualified teacher the true nature of the

mind is introduced to us, studied, andpointed out, leading to our ownrecognition and the subsequent steps indharma practice toward realization. If wecan sustain that, we automatically willbe ready for the bardo and need haveno fear.

However, if due to advancing age orlack of faith in the techniques or teacher,the urgency to get the mind in orderoverpowers the calm and steadinessneeded to make progress in mindtraining, we have a problem. The tail iswagging the dog.

The Answer

As you see, this can be a serioussubject, one well worth being aware of.The point of this „fire and brimstone‟ talkis not to imbue you with still morepressure, and not to force you to forceyourself to practice harder, but hopefully

to encourage you to practice smarter.

When the meditation teachings say to“rest the mind,” they actually mean„rest‟, not push or force anything. Theeventual outcome of all this (the bardoafter death) is of crucial importance tous and yet mindlessly forcing ourselvesforward is not restful. Althoughoxymoronic, we are in a hurry to rest themind, if that makes any sense. And

forcing yourself to rest is difficult to do, just as trying to get to sleep when youhave insomnia is difficult. “Hurry up andrest!” does not work.

The ancient metaphor of holding a rawegg in your hand comes to mind. Toomuch pressure and the egg breaks, toolittle and the egg falls and breaks. Only

mindfulness protects the egg frombreaking.

If we force ourselves to practice toomuch, we get nowhere, and if we are solax we hardly practice, we get nowhere.

Like holding the egg, it takes just theright amount of pressure to makeprogress. So it can be helpful toexamine our practice to see if at thepresent we are forcing it or not doing itenough. Proper practice is not a switchyou can just turn on or off, butsomething that requires constantattention and vigilance. That is thewhole idea of mindfulness andmeditation, remaining aware all the time,

learning to do that.

Ultimately, most of our practice is justthat, “practice,” and not the real thing.We are going through the steps andmotions perhaps for years untilsomething clicks and we actually get theidea of what we have been trying to doall that time.

The Function of the Teacher

Both the Zen tradition and the Tibetan

Buddhist tradition teacher‟s function is topoint out to the student the true natureof the mind and how it works. Everythingelse is secondary and not essential.Once that job is done, once the teacherhas pointed out to the student the truenature of the mind, and the student hasrecognized it, the teacher‟s work isdone. Period. Perhaps the mostcommon obstacle to recognizing theactual nature of the mind is the hope

and expectation of the student.Invariably we build up an idea of whatrecognition or enlightenment is, basedon books, teachings, and our ownimagination. We „think‟ we know whatwe are looking for, when by definitionwe don‟t or we would already have it.




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That is why the teacher must disappointthose expectations, using whatevermeans necessary. This is perhaps mostclear in the Zen tradition, where themaster employs laughter, comedy,

force, surprise, a stick, etc. to upset theapplecart of the student long enough forthem to let go of their fixed expectationsand let some light and air come in.

It is at that moment of recognition of themind‟s nature that the student stopsguessing, expecting, and wondering,and instead just gets it, notenlightenment, but we simplyunderstand for the first time the actualnature of mind we have been trying to

figure out all this time. And by seeingthe problem, we simultaneously see thesolution and know how to deal with it.

The Student

In other words, recognizing the truenature of the mind brings its ownresponse, the chief hallmark of which isliterally becoming responsible for ourown dharma practice. In that instant ofrecognition the torch passes from the

teacher to the student, not becauseanything has really been transmitted,but because the student is no longerlooking outward to the teacher andworld for direction, but suddenly seeshow to direct his or her own practice forthe first time.

In that moment of recognition it isobvious to the student what needs to bedone and recognition is not anexperience that will pass, but a simple

“Aha, I get it now!” It is like those figure-ground paintings where you look andlook and suddenly you see the imagewithin the image. You recognize what itis and can see it at will from that timeforward. A simple recognition, not anexperience that comes and goes.

We no longer need a teacher when wefinally see the problem ourselves andinstantly know how to deal with it, and itis also clear to us that only we can do itbecause: we each have to enlighten

ourselves. No one else can do it for us,not even a Buddha.

And while this initial recognition of theactual nature of the mind is notrealization and certainly notenlightenment, it marks a clear turningpoint on the dharma path and thebeginning of really effective practice. Inrecognizing the true nature of the mind,the student also recognizes that theyalready have everything needed to

practice properly and that in fact no oneelse could do it for them. There isnothing further that we need from thatpoint onward except the time to actuallyand finally practice properly.

In summary, once we recognize thenature of the mind, that is, the way themind actually works, we no longer needa teacher for we finally see that it iscompletely up to us. Once we see thenature of the mind, we see what it is andit is obvious how to deal with it. We thenrespond naturally and are eager topractice, because we clearly see whatneeds to be done. It is not that we havebeen all of this time obstinate orunwilling to put in the effort. The simpletruth is we did not know what to do.Before this recognition, we had no realidea of what the task was or how to doit. We were practicing, but not yetaware.

In the last analysis, only we canenlighten ourselves, but we don‟t knowhow to do that. A teacher can point outhow that is to be done, but it may takesome time to find a teacher that we arein synch with enough to actually takedirection.




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Not even a Buddha can do this for us,because enlightenment by definition issomething we each have to experiencefor ourselves. After all, that is the wholepoint: to experience enlightenment. But

to be able to get on the path, we have toknow how the mind works and that iswhat all the years of meditation practiceand sadhanas are all about, to prepareus to recognize the true nature of themind.

So, in closing, if any of the above strikesa note, then the very first step, no matterhow old you already are, is to seek outproper meditation instructions and getstarted. And by meditation, I don‟t mean

the guided meditation of losing yourselfin some inner dream-like realm, but Imeant the sit-up-and-take-notice kind ofawareness meditation as taught by theTibetan and Zen Buddhists, and manyother groups.

It is never too late to begin while wehave life and breath. And although mostbeginnings may be a little humiliatingand involve fumbling and not knowingwhat we are doing for a while,beginnings will soon pass into actuallearning something about how the mindworks and working with it.

My point here is that an effort will haveto be made on our part and that only wecan do it. We can wait forever, but noone will ever do it for us. I started verylate in life and almost did not learn tomeditate properly at all, because Iwanted to place out of Meditation 101

due of all my previous years of spiritualwork. I was gently told by my meditationteacher that I would have to start at thebeginning, not because I had notinvolved myself in spiritual work, butbecause if I was honest with myself, Ireally didn‟t know how to meditate. Ialmost turned away and said forget-

about-it for this lifetime. I am so gladsome little part of me was able to knowthe truth and agree to start at thebeginning with meditation.

A list of centers where you can learn the

proper mediation at no charge can befound at www.Kagyu.org. I am surethere are other centers that areauthentic, but these I have actuallychecked out and worked with.

May this be of some small benefit tothose who read it.




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Mother Nature and Compassion

I was fortunate to be introduced to theworld of nature at an early age, thanksto the kindness of a woman namedPeggy Dodge, a graphic artist and afriend of the family. My mother and Mrs.Dodge would meet with a small group oflocal artists at the Dodge farm whichwas located in a rural area that includeda small pond, meadows, and fields.

Mom would take me along. PeggyDodge also had a true love of natureand all its creatures, a love which shewas kind enough to share with me whenI visited. I was six years old.

From that age (until I was about sixteen)I studied nature with an intense passionpretty much all the time. School was loston me, for I was way too busy thinkingand planning what I would do eachafternoon out in nature when school was

over for the day. I had my own mini-nature museum in my room where I keptall kinds of animals, insects, snakes,and you-name-it, including rattlesnakes,copperheads, skunks, spiders, boaconstrictors, and anything I couldmanage to keep alive. I had insectcollections, rock collections, leaf

collections, fossil collections, shellcollections, and so on. It would be trueto say that any real education I got (atleast what actually sank in) came fromwhat I learned from observing nature.

And it never occurred to me thateveryone else was not getting this sameeducation!

Let me begin by pointing out that Irealized quite early-on that there arereal differences between natural law andhuman-made laws. Human laws aremade by people and they can be bent,twisted, and even broken at times. Thisis of course what lawyers do so well. Yetnature‟s laws cannot be broken. If we

break them, they break us. No onedefies the law of gravity with impunity.What goes up, comes down. What isborn eventually dies. We all know this,at least in principle.

Because I grew up with my eyes gluedon natural law, that was the law that Icame to revere as the „truth‟ – thebottom line. Society‟s laws were far lessconsistent and frequently just plainconfusing for me. But it is only in recentyears that I have realized what a greatteacher nature was to me and how luckyit is that I put my trust in what I saw innature rather than only in the variousrules and laws society wanted me tolearn, which often seemed to contradictone another.

There is something wonderful aboutconsistency, especially when one isyoung and trying to get a handle on life

and, if nothing else, Mother Nature isconsistent. Her laws are always thesame and there are no arbitraryvariations and no exceptions. What yousee is what you get. There are nobehind-the-scene or backroom dealsbeing made. Nature demonstratesperfect equanimity. Everyone and




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everything is treated equally. This factalone avoids the confusion that society‟slaws can instill in us. In nature, a roseactually is a rose, is a rose…

And nature keeps no secrets. She

openly shares the facts of life and deathwith anyone who cares to observe.Unlike society, where death, dying,sickness, and all of the suffering-side oflife is for the most part either sanitizedor swept under the carpet, nature neverblinks. It is all right there for us to see, ifwe will just take a peek. I am not sayinghere that what nature shows us isalways a pretty sight, but with natureyou never have to figure out what is real

and what is not. It is obvious. For a littlekid (or even an adult!) this can be anextreme act of kindness. What societydoes not care to discuss with us, natureis only too ready to reveal. And naturehas other messages for us as well.

Impermanence

I can‟t say for those of you reading this,but in my experience too much of thetime the sheer business of my life

causes me to forget many of the moreimportant things. I am ashamed to saythat it takes some really sobering eventlike the death of someone close for meto snap me out of my busybody tranceand take even a day or so of time toreally consider life itself. And while Inever expect or welcome such events, Ido very much appreciate the time out atthose special times to consider thebigger picture and the ability to

remember deeply once again what isreally important.

Nature on the other hand is a constantreminder of how impermanent this lifewe are all living is. I can never forget thetime I was traveling through India andwas saying goodbye to a great Tibetanmeditation teacher, who said to me:

“Tomorrow, or next life, Michael,whichever comes first.” His words wokeme up a bit and the message was muchlike the one that nature is consistentlyoffering us: awareness of our own

impermanence. None of us are about tolive forever and we might keep that inmind at least once in a while.

Nature points out impermanence to usall the time. It is hard for me to take amorning walk along a country road inthe early morning dew and see thethousands of earthworms and slugstrying to cross the tarmac before thefierce summer sun rises and fries themto a crisp. These creatures made a bad

decision to cross the road just at thattime and, though sometimes I try to pickthem up and carry them to the grass onthe roadside, it is almost impossible tosave them all. I just can‟t do it. Andsome of them are crawling in the traveldirection of the road itself, so they willnever make it! This is just one instanceof the kind of impermanence naturedemonstrates. It is all around us.

And, as mentioned earlier, nature neverblinks. We blink. Nature shows usprecisely how cause and effect works,what the Asians call „karma‟ - action andthe results of that action. And theequanimity of it all! No one breaks thelaw of gravity, neither person norcreature. All are treated to the sameresult if we break that law. Naturebrooks no lawyers.

And as we get closer to nature, as we

take time to actually look, we see thatevery form of life, every sentient being,is not unlike ourselves. Every creatureout there wants to be happy (to just live)and no creature that I have ever seenwants to willingly suffer, unless it‟s ahuman being. We each seek happinessand we try real hard to avoid suffering.




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Every sentient being feels the sameway. We have that kinship with allsentient beings.

Nature reminds us that life is in factimpermanent and that all life is indeed

precious, and at least that those whohave life don‟t want to lose it. And innature, it is easy to see that our everyact has consequences, real results thatwe would be well advised to keep inmind. And all of the above is ongoing, infact seemingly endless. Nature is notabout to change and the only actualchange we can expect will be our ownattitude, how „we‟ receive or take what isgiven, how we accept what is already

there. Nature is the perfect teacherwhen it comes to attitude adjustment.She proves that we might well adjust ourattitude to her laws and how, if we donot, we will pay a very dear price. And Ihave forgotten perhaps the mostimportant message that nature teachesus, and that is about love andcompassion. It does exist in nature.

In what I have written so far, there isseemingly no compassion in nature.She is merciless, inexorably preciseabout what she exacts from us andwhen. There are no sentimental tearsshed by Mother Nature. She is indeed aharsh mistress. But she does have onesoft spot and it is important for each ofus to discover what that is.

If we look for compassion and kindnessin nature, it is nowhere to be found,unless we could agree that her laws

themselves are kind. Love andcompassion are only to be found in therelationship between a mother and herchildren. True love and real compassion(and a willingness to do anything foranother being) is pretty much limited tothe way a mother feels about her child,and what she is willing to do for that

child. And you see this all throughnature, not just with human moms. Thelove of a mother for her child is the onebright spot in what otherwise mayappear as the ferocity of nature‟s nature.

It would seem from observation thatmost natural creatures live in perpetualterror of being killed and eaten, while atthe same time hunting, killing, andeating something else themselves. Iknow this is not 100% true, but ingeneral nature is not a peaceful place atall, and most sentient beings do not livein serenity. My point is that the onlyplace in nature that we find some loveand compassion is in the relationship of

a mother to her children. This is a rulethat is remarkably constant throughoutall natural realms – the love of motherand child. Can you even imagine if itwere not there? We wouldn‟t be here.

And it is interesting to me that all of thereligions of the world appear to beworking very hard to have us treat eachother as a mother naturally treats herchild, to get us to go beyond family love(the love family members share) andextend that same love to others, tothose outside of our immediate family.The Buddhists would have us extendthat love to all sentient beings, and not

just to humans. Christians say “Do ontoothers, as you would have them do ontoyou” and the Buddhists would agreewith that, but they would add: and youmake the first move! Reach out withkindness.

In nature, compassion is always local,limited to that very special relationshipbetween a mother and her children.Fathers share in that too, of course, butit is with mother and child that true loveand compassion seem to be most pureand present. In this way, Mother Natureis a great teacher. She does not




obscure or perfume the way things are.Truth is revealed for what it is in nature

– straight out. In nature we can seeimpermanence clearly, not obscured orsanitized as it is most of the time in

society. It is clear through nature that lifeis indeed precious, and is not somethingguaranteed to go on forever. And it isclear that our choices, our every action,bring consequences. And the situationthat nature presents is not only the waythings are right now, but the way thingswill continue to be on into the future.The way things are is the way thingshave always been and will always be. Itis up to each of us to respond to these

very clear facts, something that in mostsocieties we never have a chance to do.Instead, most of us ignore all of this andwillingly prefer to remain ignorant.

The only light in this otherwise fiercedarkness is, as I pointed out, the veryreal love, care, and compassion that amother has for her children. Thankheaven for that! That love has been abeacon of light to all of us virtuallyforever. There is nothing else like it on

earth. The Buddhists have tried to tell usfor centuries that every person we meet,even every sentient being, has been ourmother in some past lifetime, and thatevery last sentient being has also beenour child. Perhaps this is an attempt tomake clear to us that we should treateach other with the same kindness,endless love, and compassion a motherwill show her child. This may be thebridge we as a human race have been

forever unable to cross, the key not onlyto Mother Nature, but to our own nature,the two being the same anyway!

The question is how can we do this?How can we learn to treat each otherwith the kindness that our own mother

Well the Christian, Buddhist, and otherreligions have been trying for thousandsof years to show us how, to point out theway, and they all seem to agree (at leastthe Buddhists) that it involves treating

ALL sentient beings as a mother treats achild, with that same endless care,kindness, and compassion, a universalremedy that is much easier to say thanto do in real life.

And it would seem that this will nothappen until the kind of compassionarises in each us for all sentient life aswe find in the way a mother loves herchild. And last, it seems that many of usdon‟t get really serious about all this

unless something upsetting happens tous. Exposing ourselves to the truth ofnature a little at a time helps to makethat possible by gradually softening ourobscurations and giving us opportunitiesto feel compassion for all beings. Ourgreatest teachers (saints, priests, lamas,etc.) have shown us what this might looklike, but not enough of us have beenable to have that realization.

May that kind of compassion awaken inall of us and may we share that kind ofexperience with one another.

Michael [email protected]

MacroStop.comAsrologyLand.comMichaelErlewine.com

mailto:[email protected]



training the mind: a brief guide to dharma practice

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