On Trying To Be Buddhist

Then and Now

When I began to study and practice Tibetan Buddhism, back in 1976, there was very little available.  The only temple in the New York area that I know of was actually a museum, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art out on Staten Island.  It was a charming place containing a comparitively small personal collection of Tibetan Buddhist artifacts all housed in a stone structure built in the style of a Tibetan gompa, or monastery. 

There was also Geshe Wangyal's center in New Jersey - but it was not readily accessible for a city resident like me without a car. 

My teacher had his own center, with a shrine room, a regular teaching schedule, and ceremonies.  But it was a private center.  There were a few other similar small centers around the city - known mostly to their own members, and nearly invisible to the general public. 

There were very few books in print about the Tibetan traditions of Buddhism.  I read them all, and haunted book stores, looking for new ones. 

That was then. 

This week I'm attending a teaching in a beautiful shrine room in a monastery not far from my home.  I sit there with nearly a hundred other students listening to the lectures of a 10th century great Lama taught and explained by a great 20th century Abbot. 

Thirty years - and now there are public centers all over this country.  Monasteries have been built, and, slowly, monastics and lay practitioners gather in them.   Each morning as I wait for the teaching to begin, I am stunned by this appearance of the Dharma where there was nothing so short a time ago.

Patterns, Meanings.

A decade ago I took a break from Buddhism - not sure how else to describe it.  I'd hit a wall in my study and practice, was exhausted from my day job (which required not only my week-days, but weekends, and sometimes nights; on call 24x7x365; sleeping with my beeper under my pillow;) and I despaired of handling my responsibilities in the sangha to which I belonged, or fulfilling my teacher's expectations.  So I just dropped the Buddhist part.  It was difficult to do - very painful, and not only to me, but a necessary relief. 

For the following months, I explored other options - and rested.  After about a year, something began to become clear to me - very clear, but inarticulable, and quite unexpected.  At first I said (to myself) that being Buddhist over all those years had altered something in me that could not ever be changed back.  That was as far as I could express it.  But it was so clear in its own way that I continued to turn it over in my thoughts, looking for better words.  It was a weight on my tongue, I could taste it....  The next version was, "Before I was ever Susan I was Buddhist."   Still not satisfactory. 

But what I wrote in my previous entry, is it: "The meaning lies in my nature, not my history or actions.  I say, my nature, but my nature is not mine, it is not me - it's what is there when I find that there is no me - " 

And this is my teacher's gift. 

"What Pattern?" Revisited

This morning, the answer to yesterday's question, "What Pattern?", was the first thought in my mind when I woke.  It's this: there is no pattern.  The "meaning of life" (and where do the quotes really belong in that phrase?) lies in my nature, not my history or actions.  I say, my nature, but my nature is not mine, it is not me - it's what is there when I find that there is no me -

What Pattern?

Every morning, over coffee, I think of things I want to say here - and then the day passes without my writing a word.  To some extent this is a good thing.  It does weed out the junk, the half-formed thoughts that should be allowed to fade and not have artificial life pumped into them.  But still, I'm not happy at total silence either.  So today I'll talk about my dreams. 

Lately I've dreamed a lot about people who are long gone.  My father, who died back in the '70's, has been showing up frequently - in a sort of peaceful, family sort of way.  And other relatives have showed up as well.  But last night's dream made the most impression on me.  I was on my way to give my own eulogy - though in fact I was also quite alive in the dream, and there didn't seem to be any inconsistency in that.  I should mention that this whole dream had a strong flavor of my mother's memorial service last October.  In any case, I arrived, with a few elderly friends, at our destination - not a funeral home, but a restaurant.  It was one of those old-fashioned places, and evidently we had a private room, all dark wood paneling,  with dark paintings, mostly portraits, on the walls.  The room was narrow with a long table running the length of it. 

Entering the room, I pass my Grandfather - my mother's father - and stop to talk with him.  (He also died, almost fifty years ago.)  I say that I regret so much not having known him in my adulthood when I might have really seen him as a person, and appreciated him.  Feeling very close to him in that moment, I put my hand out to touch him.   Then I move into the room. 

Many people are milling about - most of whom I barely know, or don't know at all.  When I stand up to speak, many of them continue their conversations, until, by my own silence, I get their attention.   I'm pretty irritated.  I'm speaking extemporaneously, very aware of working to weave the events of my life into some sort of meaningful pattern. 

Well - the dream went on a bit further, but that's enough.  When I woke (this was one of those last dreams that come just before the alarm) what continued to resonate, other than the discomfort of dreaming, yet again, about death, was the business of finding patterns. That sort of thinking has always been my passion.  Of course I'm hardly alone in this, it's what people do.  We're pattern-finders - that's how we survive.  But there's the question - what patterns exist and what ones are just our imposition?  In my dream I wasn't having much success finding the pattern of my life, but I was very aware of my facility at imposing the appearance of one.

Two Approaches

Westerners can approach Buddhism in two different ways - as practitioners and as scholars.  These overlap considerably in that any Westerner who wants to practice Buddhism has to learn a lot about it.  In addition many scholars began as practitioners and their practice is at least part of their continuing motivation.  But even so, at the far ends of the continuum, there are practicing Buddhists who express markedly anti-intellectual attitudes, and scholars who work strictly as academics, without any personal involvement. 

One of the problems I see with this situation arises from the dominance of the uninvolved approach within academia.  Even those professors and teachers who are practitioners have to tread carefully to preserve their standing as objective experts.  But that's a side issue to the one that concerns me - namely that Buddhism, as explored, described, studied, discussed by these academics, often becomes something very abstract, cerebral, and complex.  But in fact, what the Buddha taught, although extremely subtle and deep, was intended for ordinary people.  Granted, many of his early followers became monks - specialists of a sort - but there were also large numbers of lay people who took up his teachings.  Buddhism - the Buddha's teaching based on his own understanding of reality - was intended to help others reach the same understanding that he had, and to alleviate their suffering. 

According to the stories of the Buddha's life, immediately after his enlightenment, he thought to retire to the forest and remain silent because what he had realized was almost beyond expression.  But at the request of his future students he did try to express it and spent the remainder of his life teaching.  Over the centuries since then, his teaching has been subject to extensive philosophical elaboration, in addition to growth as practice.  So there is a large number of scholarly texts on the one hand, and texts accessible to nearly all practitioners on the other. 

In it's migration to the west, Buddhism seems to be developing along these two different paths, the academic, and the practical.  It's the academic that is the most organized, I think, probably because it is taking place within well established colleges and universities.  The founding and growth of independent Buddhist centers is far more haphazard, and dependent often upon individual Gurus and teachers.

So here is the core of my concern.  A lot of the translations of Buddhist texts, and writing about the various traditional teachings and lineages, is taking place on the academic side.  Much of the work is by scholars and/or aimed at a scholarly audience.  But in fact the material involved, the scriptures and practice texts, originally were written for practitioners.  The scholarly approach through which they are being imported into our languages and culture often renders them nearly unapproachable by the very people that their original authors intended them for.

The academic material is wonderful as a support for practice - but we have so much of an either/or mentality, I fear it could instead supplant the practical. 

Not Enough Me

I wish I were six people.  More might be greedy - but less couldn't get the job done.  The job?  Just doing the things that interest me, or that I need to do.  Some of this has to do with aging - with less time ahead of me, I want to get more done in each moment.  Now that I'm retired I do have free time but even so, there's so much more that draws me than I can respond to. 

In Buddhism itself, there is so much to learn.  And at least a bit of western philosophy would help me to understand the Buddhist framing of issues of reality, cosmology, psychology, epistemology.  Modern physics has much to say about this reality that I would like to know.  And then there's the internet universe - so many blogs that richly reward frequent reading - what people all around the world are up to - what they think, value, experience.  There are reference works on nearly every topic imaginable. Last week I came across a new blog initiated by an author whose work I enjoy very much.  She's planning a new novel about a medieval saint, and it brings up some very rich issues - the variety within early Christianity before the Roman rite became dominant for example.  I want to leap in, start reading up on the topic, offer some suggestions.... There is no end.

All of this is fine in its own way - but it involves me in a gluttony only slightly more subtle than the usual.  If I were six people or sixty, I'd find more and more to do - more to enjoy, although more to be concerned about too.  More and more and more.  In the long run, I think Buddhism is really about less and less.  A little adjusting to do here. 

Empathy

Reading through the blogs I check regularly, I came across a link to an article on empathy from Christmas Day's Washington Post. The author is Douglas LaBier, a psychologist, therapist, and writer of considerable standing and experience. 

Half-humorously, LaBier has coined the term, EDD - empathy deficit disorder. He says,

Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society. People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience."   

LaBier thinks this lack of empathy is learned rather than being inborn or the result of an organic imbalance.  He says, "EDD develops when people focus too much on acquiring power, status and money for themselves at the expense of developing those healthy relationships."  Sadly he adds that he sees it all the time. 

However, he also feels that the situation can be changed:

[through] retraining your brain to take advantage of what is known as neuroplasticity....research shows that as you refocus your thoughts, feelings and behavior in the direction you desire, the brain regions associated with them are reinforced. What's more, changing your brain activity reinforces the changes you're making in your thinking. The result is a self-reinforcing loop between your conscious attitudes, your behavior and your brain activity....By focusing on developing empathy, you can deepen your understanding and acceptance of how and why people do what they do and you can build respect for others.

The important point here is that although the process of developing empathy can be spoken of in terms of brain activity, the real action is through thoughts.  We don't directly affect our brain patterns.  Rather, we develop patterns and habits of thinking, which in turn change brain patterns. 

This relates to what I was trying to get at in my previous post on good intentions.  There I wanted to express how much control our intentions give us over our own sense of value and meaningfulness.  What was only implicit was how very much this development of intention involves wishes and desires for the happiness and benefit of others, as well as oneself.

[LaBier's article, linked above is very much worth reading in its entirety.  And I'd like to thank Danny Fisher for including it in his blog.]

Good Intentions

In a recent series of teachings given by Trangu Rinpoche he discusses karma and how it is developed.  In a very simple analysis, he lists all possible combinations of intention and action:

1. White (good) intentions and white actions;
2. White intentions and black (bad) actions;
3. Black intentions and white actions;
4. Black intentions and black actions.

The first two are good - that is, they result in the accumulation of good karma, and the second two result in negative karma.  The first and last are quite obvious - the first being totally good, or positive, and the last totally negative.  The second and third however - the middle pair - are rather interesting.  Looking at them from the Tibetan or Buddhist point of view, there's nothing too startling - it simply means that a good intention produces good results even when it also leads to a negative action - presumably through some sort of mistake or misunderstanding.  And conversely, a bad intention poisons even a good action. 

The interesting part comes from comparing these to Western thinking on the topic.  The phrase that come to mind is, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."  This is evidently a modern outgrowth of something far older.  St. Francis de Sales, wrote of "le proverbe tiré de notre saint Bernard, ‘L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs’."  ["The proverb taken from our St. Bernard, ‘Hell is full of good intentions or desires.’ "]  Later writers quoted this and modified it until it became our familiar cliche. Though no one says it flat out, it seems that to Western minds, good intentions are not enough at all.  Good intentions and bad actions lead very clearly, in our Western understanding, to really bad results - even hell itself.   

This is exactly opposite to the Buddhist view and it points to something very important: a radical difference in our understanding of intention and its role in our actions and lives.  It is the root of fundamental differences in the way we view reality and our ability to affect it. Our Western view seems to be that our actions contribute the dominant value in anything we do - the concrete results are what matter, and it makes no appreciable difference what we meant, or tried to do.  Our intentions, thoughts, and desires in themselves are impotent.  We all know the phrase, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."  This is very deeply ingrained.

There are exceptions - Shakespeare's statement in Hamlet, "There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so;" or Norman Vincent Peale's "power of positive thinking"; or Emile Coue's method of autosuggestion; and, currently, the ideas presented in "The Secret."  But none of these have had enough of an impact to change our basic perspective. 

In contrast, the Buddhist view is very much that "thinking makes it so" and on many levels.  One of the things that makes this view pervasive among Buddhists is that it is part of a coherent system that supports it and makes it understandable.  The basic principles can be expressed very simply, and in that form are usually learned in childhood and shape one's perception and judgment throughout life.  In addition, these concepts also have been examined and expanded philosophically to an extent that satisfy the most brilliant intellectual. 

So - how does this matter?  How does it make a difference in people's lives?  The answer lies in the fact that we cannot completely control the fruit of our actions, but we can learn to perfect our intentions.  If meaning and value are based solely on what actually happens - on events - then only the most powerful people will be able to derive a rich sense of meaning and accomplishment from what they do.  For the rest of us it will always be a mixed bag of accomplishment and failure.  There are limits on actions - only one person can be the best, offer the most, have the finest....for the rest of us it's all second best, or thousandth.  Our lives become an unending competition.  But if our meaning is rooted in our intentions - then each of us can develop excellent intentions.  Whoever comes to understand the real power in wishing and intention can become powerful, no matter what their material situation.   

In Buddhist practice, this understanding is expressed in the prevalence of "wishing prayers", in the practice of generating "bodhicitta" - which means, in part, generating good intentions toward all beings - and making use of many other forms of meditation, prayer, and even associated actions.  There is a great wealth of such methods of changing one's own mind, and, in fact, also changing all of reality.

Be Happy

One of my teachers used to say, especially when I would complain of difficulties, "Be happy.  You have the Dharma."  I interpreted this to mean, "You have this Buddhist teaching; that should (or could) be a source of happiness for you."  More recently I've come to see it a bit differently, as almost a command.  Be happy.  Because I have the Dharma, I have that choice.  It's not that I have something that can make me happy - that would be an indirect - and a slow - process.  Rather, and far more directly, I can just be happy.  Takes a lot of work, a lot of understanding, a lot of practice to reach the point where that simple choice becomes my own.  I certainly have a way to go, but I see the way.  And I see the difference.

A Bad Cold

I've been wanting to write - there are things on my mind, but in a sense, very little mind for them to be on.  I have the worst cold I've had in several years - coughing, sneezing (so hard I almost crack my teeth,) wheezing (tiny conversations happening in my lungs wake me at three AM,) eyes running. 

I'll be back to normal soon I hope.  The bad part is that I'm wasting this chance to practice despite difficulties.