Raccoon Story

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August 2008

For the past few weeks, we’ve been entertained almost every day by a family of raccoons: a mother and five cubs.

The cubs are SO cute! They climb the chicken wire enclosure where the guinea hens used to live, engage in wrestling matches, and wreak general, adorable havoc on the property, as mom looks on to make sure they stay safe. Early one morning one of the cubs picked a green tomato (our only food crop, aside from a few herbs), and one of the retreatants, who happened to be outdoors just before the 6:00 a.m. chanting, hissed at it to discourage further destruction. It hissed back nonchalantly, and carried on.

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Down the Rabbit Hole

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July 2008

Just a few days into three-year retreat, almost seven months ago, I was helping a fellow retreatant polish some shrine bowls. It was during the lunch break, the only time talking is allowed, and we discovered that we had both come up with the same metaphor to describe our experience so far: down the rabbit hole!

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The Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa

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May 2008

In its thirty years of existence, PTC Monastery has hosted many great Lamas, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche (under whose guidance PTC was founded), Chamgon Tai Situ Rinpoche, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Bokar Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and many others. Just to read their names confers blessing!

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Lineage: So What?

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I’ve heard it said that when you meet a prospective spiritual teacher, the most important question to ask is who their teacher is—to make sure they come from a genuine tradition with certified results. Otherwise, you could end up entrusting your innermost well-being to someone who just had an interesting idea…and is testing it out on you!

 Each teacher inevitably puts his or her own stamp on the teachings s/he is transmitting, but it should be a question of style and not content. Even Chamgon Tai Situ Rinpoche (the “Tai Situpa” who has written several excellent books on Buddhist practice), one of the foremost Lamas of the Kagyu Lineage, when he visits the US and teaches at PTC Monastery, always warns us when he is deviating from the traditional explanation of things. He calls these moments “my own rubbish.” They are inevitably very helpful explanations from his own experience, which happens to be firmly rooted in traditions and teachings that go back in an unbroken line for 2,600 years. Calling his personal spin on it “rubbish”—that’s just how careful he is being to keep the traditional teachings completely pure and uncontaminated by someone’s bright idea—even those of a realized master.

People whose techniques don’t have the advantage of a long history of verification are often offended by the concept of lineage, and try to brush it off as some sort of outdated, closed-minded clique mentality. And of course, not having a lineage doesn’t necessarily mean your methods don’t work; they might. We just don’t know yet.

 We live in a culture that seems to reserve its highest esteem for the latest thing. There’s an energy in innovation, a freshness, that is very seductive; and new things do sometimes turn out to be improved as well. But they can also get us into trouble. I spent 15 years as a medical journalist and reported on hundreds of studies of new medications and surgical procedures—some of them worked, some didn’t, and some caused irreparable harm. You don’t know until you’ve tested it out on enough patients for all the flaws to become apparent—which can take years, and leave behind a trail of permanent damage and death. Thalidomide…DES…hormone replacement therapy…Vioxx…lobotomy…if I had Google in retreat, I’d list a lot more. We always assume they’re fine until the damage is done.

 Genuine lineage is insurance that methods have been thoroughly tested and that you are not a guinea pig. There are many spiritual traditions to choose from that come with this sort of quality assurance—that they are very likely to be effective if applied diligently and with the proper guidance, and very unlikely to do any harm.

 And to take it a step further, just because someone claims to be part of or to represent a particular lineage doesn’t mean they do. The teachings urge us to check out a teacher thoroughly before we make a commitment; our spiritual progress and well-being depend on it.

 It could be argued that the Buddha himself had no lineage—he started one. He did study with a number of teachers, but he felt their methods didn’t go far enough, and he had to forge the rest of the path on his own. If you meet a teacher who claims to be doing the same thing, and you are confident that you are putting yourself in the hands of another Buddha: by all means go for it! Meanwhile, I’m sticking with the tried and true, and hope that it continues to be preserved and handed down for many generations to come.

Five Ways to Not Meditate

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  1. It’s a bit chilly, I’d better close the window / put on a sweater.
  2. Darn, I forgot to turn off my cell phone.
  3. Better get a glass of water in case I get thirsty.
  4. That other hand position might be more comfortable.
  5. What a great idea! (Where’s my pen?)

Sitting down to meditate is an invitation to re-initiate the cycle of samsara again and again. Our situation is never quite right at any given moment; there is always a little something we could do to improve it. We are engaged in an endless, bootless quest to perfect our external circumstances, rather than relax and really get to know what’s in front of us right now; and meditation can be just one more arena in which to play out that scenario.

 Lama Norlha Rinpoche told me shortly before three-year retreat began, “If you follow the first thought, the second thought is inevitable.”

 That brings us to a good working definition of meditation: being aware of every thought and impulse that enters our mind, but declining to follow or act on it. From this process we learn something very useful that we can apply throughout our daily life: every thought and impulse fades away automatically if left to its own devices. (How I wish I could remember that all the time!)

 So…if you feel a little chilly, what will happen if you don’t get up and put on a sweater? If it’s a minor discomfort, you may find that chilliness is a fleeting feeling; it might disappear, it might come and go; if you put on a sweater, you might even be too hot and have to take it off again! This applies to most feelings of minor discomfort or dissatisfaction that arise in meditation, or in daily life; it’s amazing how many things will take care of themselves, at least in the short term, if you just let go of the thought. (Caution: in cases of significant or persistent physical discomfort or pain, no need to risk illness or injury…go ahead and fix it. Just use the little things to practice on.)

 What about that cell phone—if it rings, will the disturbance invalidate your meditation? My own experience suggests that, on the contrary, the ringing phone may bring you back from a reverie and remind you to go back to your scheduled meditation already in progress. When I lived near a busy street corner in Brooklyn circa 1980, my meditation schedule seemed to be coordinated with that of a regular passerby who, every morning, would stop and linger on that very corner with his boom box (a 1980s word for a very large audiotape player). At first it was annoying, but after awhile I realized that the boom box, which always caught me unawares, was the very reminder I needed—every day—to apply myself to meditation instead of my habitual daydreaming or planning. (I’m not suggesting you leave your cell phone on on purpose…just that it may not be worth getting up to turn it off if you forgot.)

 As for the great idea: that’s one of my personal favorites. The solution to a problem, an idea for an article or project, something you absolutely must not forget at the grocery store…meditation provides just the environment for bringing such treasures to the surface. It becomes a bit less compelling when I ask myself, what use will it be when I am grief-stricken, disabled, or dying? Sticking with my meditation will develop inner resources to help me at those times—long after I’ve forgotten whether I had all the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner.

Four Thoughts That Turn The Mind

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At our meditation study and practice meetings in New Hampshire, we often talked about the Four Thoughts, also known as the Four Reminders. Their full title is the Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind, i.e., redirect it from worldly to spiritual concerns.

 Lama Norlha Rinpoche has always placed a great deal of emphasis on really getting to know these thoughts; he says it is like building the foundation of your house. If you haven’t really internalized these thoughts, your Dharma practice will never be truly stable. (Just before we entered the three-year retreat, he gave a teaching on these same four thoughts.) Whenever you find yourself wavering about whether to do your meditation or go make some popcorn and put in a dvd, you can always come back to the Four Thoughts to remind yourself why the dvd isn’t going to help you when things go wrong.

 Informally expressed, the Four Thoughts are:

 The Precious Human Existence: We need to appreciate what a rare opportunity we have in this life; we have everything we need in order to free ourselves from the otherwise endless cycle of confusion and suffering. We are not gravely impaired or imprisoned in a situation that leaves us no leisure; and we have access to the Buddha’s teachings and to living teachers who can help us apply them. Not everyone has this situation, and we might not have it ourselves the next time around; we need to put it to work for us.

 Impermanence and Death: Darn, there’s that D-word again. Why do Buddhists have to be so morbid? Because it’s the truth: we don’t know how long this opportunity is going to last. Even if we don’t die tomorrow, something could happen that could prevent us from practicing. It could happen any minute (wait, is that the phone?)—so we have to make use of our time right now!

 Karma, Cause and Result: This one is very complicated; even if I understood it, I wouldn’t try to explain it! But Jamgon Kongtrul, the great nineteenth-century Kagyu teacher, says in The Lamp of the Definitive Meaning (aka, The Torch of Certainty, translated by Judith Hanson) that anyone can understand the fundamental underlying law of karma: virtuous-positive-helpful actions lead to future happiness, and unvirtuous-negative-harmful actions lead to future suffering. Part of Dharma practice is to conduct ourselves in the world in such a way that we don’t create more negative conditions for ourselves or others. This isn’t a moralistic edict, it’s completely practical: we are looking out for our own future, which may kick in to some extent in this lifetime, but really takes hold when we die and as we move on to our next life. As Lama Norlha Rinpoche often advises: don’t set yourself up for regrets on your deathbed, because there’s nothing you can do about them then.

 The Disadvantages of Samsara: Samsara is the Sanskrit word (Tibetan kor.wa) for the endless cycle of suffering that goes round and round from lifetime to lifetime. The Buddha taught that it’s all suffering, every atom of it. Even what feels like fun is suffering in disguise: if it doesn’t make you fat or aggravate your asthma, at best it has to end; and if you look at anything in life closely enough, you see that it came to you via a trail of others’ pain and destruction, especially if you believe, as Buddhists do, that even tiny animals count. (How many insects died for your bowl of brown rice or strawberries?)

For a more classical presentation and more detail about the Four Thoughts, some good books are The Torch of Certainty by Jamgon Kongtrul, The Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche, and two books by Kalu Rinpoche: The Writings of Kalu Rinpoche (his first book, available from PTC Monastery) and Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism.