Meditation 6

Your mind may move forward to later, when these dishes will be used, clean and fresh, as a result of your energy and the water. Perhaps you will think of how a mug that you are washing will be filled with tea; the tea made of water, too, and how the tea will flow from the mug into your mouth and follow the path of digestion into your body. How once here it will do countless tasks, and then, some of it, will flow out of you.

Where does it go when it leaves your body? Perhaps onto the ground, where it will filter down through the earth carried by rain, more water; or perhaps into a toilet, fed by pipes that carry water from some where, and connected to pipes that carry it elsewhere.

As you continue washing dishes, notice how the water swirls down the drain, through pipes and out. What happens to it then? Soaking into the earth, filtering down to join the water table; rising vapor, up into the air, and condensing as clouds; then rain, and how a part of you, your energy touched this water as it moved by and through you. You come in contact with water again and again during the day; spend a day being present for this contact.

Similarly, "I don't like it" leads to "I don't want it." If we like something, want it, and can't have it, we suffer. If we want something, get it, and then lose it, we suffer. If we don't want it, but can't keep it away, again we suffer. Our suffering seems to stem from the object of our desire or aversion, but that's not so. We suffer because the mind splits into object and subject and becomes involved in wanting or not wanting something.

We often think the only way to create happiness is to try to control the outer circumstances of our lives, to try to fix what seems wrong or to get rid of everything that bothers us. But the real problem lies in our reaction to those circumstances.

Once a family of shepherds lived in Tibet. On a bitterly cold winter day, it was the son's turn to look after the sheep, so his family saved the largest and best piece of meat for him for dinner. Upon his return, he looked at the food and burst into tears. When asked what was wrong, he cried, "Why am I always given the worst meat and the smallest portion?" We have to change the mind and the way we experience reality.

Our emotions propel us through extremes, from elation to depression, from good experiences to bad, from happiness to sadness-a constant swinging back and forth. All of this is the by-product of hope and fear, attachment and aversion.
We have hope because we are attached to something we want.

We have fear because we are averse to something we don't want.

As we follow our emotions, reacting to our experiences, we create karma-a perpetual motion that inevitably determines our future. We need to stop the extreme swings of the emotional pendulum so that we can find a place of equilibrium. When we begin to work with the emotions, we apply the principle of iron cutting iron or diamond cutting diamond. We use thought to change thought. A loving thought can antidote an angry one; contemplation of impermanence can antidote desire. In the case of attachment, begin by examining what you are attached to. You might think that becoming famous will make you happy. But your fame could trigger jealousy in someone, who might try to kill you. What you worked so hard to create could become the cause of greater suffering.

Or you might work diligently to become wealthy, thinking this will bring happiness, only to lose all your money.

The source of our suffering is not the loss of wealth in itself, but rather our attachment to having it.

We can lessen attachment by contemplating impermanence. It is certain that whatever we're attached to will either change or be lost. A person may die or go away, a friend may become an enemy, a thief may steal our money. Even our body, to which we're most attached, will be gone one day. Knowing this not only helps to reduce our attachment, but gives us a greater appreciation of what we have while we have it.

There is nothing wrong with money in itself, but if we're attached to it, we'll suffer when we lose it. Instead, we can appreciate it while it lasts, enjoy it, and share it with others without forgetting that it's impermanent. Then if we lose it, the emotional pendulum won't swing as widely toward sadness. Imagine two people who buy the same kind of watch on the same day at the same shop.

The first person thinks, "This is a very nice watch. It will be helpful to me, but it may not last long."

The second person thinks, "This is the best watch I've ever had. No matter what happens, I can't lose it or let it break." If both people lose their watch, the one who is attached to it will be much more upset than the other. If we are fooled by our experience and invest great value in one thing or another, we may find ourselves fighting for what we want and against any opposition. We may think that what we're fighting for is lasting, true, and real, but it's not. It is impermanent, it's neither true nor lasting, and ultimately it's not even real. We can compare our life to an afternoon at a shopping center. We walk through the shops, led by our desires, taking things off the shelves and tossing them in our baskets. We wander around looking at everything, wanting and longing. We see a person or two, maybe smile and continue on, never to see them again. Driven by desire, we fail to appreciate the preciousness of what we already have.

We need to realize that this time with our loved ones, our friends, our family, and our co-workers is very brief. Even if we lived to a hundred and fifty, we would have very little time to enjoy and make the most of our human opportunity. Young people think their lives will be long; old people think theirs will end soon. But we can't assume these things. Life comes with a built-in expiration date. There are many strong and healthy people who die young, while many of the old, sick, and feeble live on and on. Not knowing when we' ll die, we need to develop an appreciation for and acceptance of what we have rather than continuing to find fault with our experience and incessantly seeking to fulfill our desires. If we start to worry whether our nose is too big or too small, we should think, "What if I had no head? Now that would be a problem!" As long as we have life, we should rejoice. Although everything may not go exactly as we'd like, we can accept this. If we contemplate impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or cremated, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make ourselves or others unhappy. Now we are afflicted by "me-my-mine-itis," a condition caused by ignorance.

Our self-centeredness and self-interest have become very strong habits. In order to change them, we need to refocus. Instead of always concerning ourselves with "I," we must direct our attention to "you," "them," or "others." Reducing self-importance lessens the attachment that stems from it. When we focus beyond ourselves, ultimately we realize the equality between ourselves and all other beings. Everybody wants happiness; nobody wants to suffer.

Our attachment to our own happiness expands to encompass attachment to the happiness of all. Until now, our desires have tended to be transient, superficial, and selfish. If we are going to wish for something, let it be nothing less than complete enlightenment for all beings. That's something worthy of desire. Continually reminding ourselves of what has true worth is an important element of spiritual practice. Desire and attachment won't fall away overnight. But desire becomes less ordinary when we replace our worldly yearning with the aspiration to do everything we can to help all beings find unchanging happiness.

We don't have to abandon the ordinary objects of our desire-relationships, wealth, success-but as we contemplate their impermanence, we become less attached to them. We begin to develop spiritual qualities by rejoicing in our good fortune while recognizing that it won't last. As attachment or aversion arises and disturbs the mind, we can ask, "Why do I feel attachment? Is it of any benefit to myself or others? Is this object of my attachment permanent or lasting?" Or, "Why do I feel aversion? Is it of any benefit? Is this object of my aversion permanent or lasting?"

Through this process, attachment and aversion begin to diminish. We commit fewer of the harmful actions that result from attachment, and so create less negative karma; we generate more fortunate karma, and mind's positive qualities gradually increase. Eventually, as our meditation practice matures, we can try something different from contemplation, from using thought to change thought. We can use an approach that reveals the deeper nature of the emotions as they arise. If you are in the midst of a desire attack-something has captured your mind and you must have it-you won't get rid of the desire by trying to suppress it. Instead, you can begin to see through desire by examining it. When it arises, ask yourself, "Where does it come from? Where does it dwell? Can it be described? Does it have any color, shape, or form? When it disappears, where does it go?" You can say that desire exists, but if you search for the experience, you can't quite grasp it. On the other hand, if you say that it doesn't exist, you're denying the obvious fact that you feel desire. You can't say that it exists, nor can you say that it does not exist. You can't say that it both does and does not exist, or that it neither exists nor does not not exist.

This is the meaning of the true nature of desire beyond the extremes of conceptual mind. Our failure to understand the essential nature of an emotion as it arises gets us into trouble. Once we can simply look clearly at what is taking place, neither repressing nor engaging the emotion, it tends to dissolve. If we set a cloudy glass of water aside for a while, it will settle by itself and become clear. Instead of judging the experience of desire, we "liberate it in its own ground" by looking directly at its nature. Each negative emotion, or mental poison, has an inherent purity that we don' t recognize because we are so accustomed to its appearance as emotion. The true nature of the five poisons is the five wisdoms: pride as the wisdom of equanimity; jealousy as all-accomplishing wisdom; attachment and desire as discriminating wisdom; anger and aversion as mirror-like wisdom; and ignorance as dharmadhatu wisdom, the wisdom of the basic space of phenomena. Just as poison can be taken medicinally to effect a cure, each poison of the mind, worked with properly, can resolve into its wisdom nature and thus enhance our spiritual practice. If while in the throes of desire, you simply relax without moving your attention, that space of the mind is called discriminating wisdom. Without abandoning desire, you can reveal its wisdom nature.

Question: I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "liberating an emotion in its own ground." Response: When an emotion arises, our habit is to become involved in analyzing and reacting to the apparent cause, the outer object. If instead we simply "peel open" the emotion-without attachment or aversion, hatred or involvement-we will reveal and experience its wisdom nature. When we are feeling puffed up and on top of the world, instead of either indulging in our pride or pushing it away, we relax the mind and reveal the essential nature of pride as the wisdom of equanimity. In working with the emotions, we can apply different methods. When our mind is steeped in duality, in object-subject perception, we cut iron with iron: we antidote a negative thought with a positive one, attachment to our own happiness with attachment to the happiness of others. If we are able to relax the dualistic habit of the mind, we can experience the true essence, or "ground," of an emotion and thus "liberate it in its own ground." In this way, its wisdom principle is revealed.

Question: Can you say more about how contemplating impermanence reduces attachment? Response: Imagine a child and an adult on the beach building a sand castle. The adult has never thought of the sand castle as permanent or real, and isn 't attached to it. If a wave washes it away or some children come along and kick it down, the adult doesn't suffer. But the child has begun to think of it as a real house that will last forever, and so suffers when it's gone. Similarly, because we have pretended for so long that our experience is stable and reliable, we have great attachment to it and suffer when it changes. If we maintain an awareness of impermanence, then we are never completely fooled by the phenomena of samsara. It's helpful to contemplate the fact that you don't have long to live. Think to yourself, "In the time that I have left, why act on this anger or attachment, which will only produce more confusion and delusion? In taking so seriously what is impermanent and trying to grasp or push it away, I am imagining as solid something that really isn't. I'm only further complicating and perpetuating the delusions of samsara. I won't do that! I' ll use this attachment or this aversion, this pride or this jealousy, as practice." Spiritual practice doesn't mean just sitting on a meditation cushion. When you're there with the experience of desire or anger, right there where the mind is active, that is where you practice, at each moment, each step of your life.

Question: In contemplating impermanence, I find my attachment lessening to a certain extent, but wonder how far I should go in dropping things. Response: You need to be discriminating in what you address first. Eventually you may drop everything, but begin by abandoning the mind's poisons-for example, anger. Instead of thinking, "Why wash these dishes, they're impermanent?" let go of your anger at having to do them. Also understand that whatever arises in the mind, sparking your anger, is impermanent. The anger itself is impermanent. If someone's words upset you, remember that they are only words, only sounds, not something lasting. The next thing to drop is attachment to having your own way. When you understand impermanence, it doesn't matter so much if things are going as you think they should. If they are, it's all right. If not, that's all right, too. When you practice like this, the mind will slowly develop more balance. It won't flip one way or the other according to whether or not you get what you want.

Question: Is there anything wrong with being happy or sad, with feeling our emotions?Response: Reminding ourselves when we experience happiness that it's impermanent, that it will eventually disappear, will help us to cherish and enjoy it while it lasts. At the same time, we won't become so attached to or fixated on it, and we won't experience so much pain when it's gone. In the same way, when we experience pain, sorrow, or loss, we should remind ourselves that these things, too, are impermanent; this will alleviate our suffering. So what keeps us balanced is an ongoing awareness of impermanence.

Question: Is the self still involved as we expand the focus of our attachment to the needs of others? Response: If you were bound with ropes tied in many knots, to become free you would have to release the knots, one by one, in the opposite order in which they were tied. First you'd release the last knot, then the second to the last, and so forth, until you undid the first, the one closest to you. We are bound by many knots, including many kinds of attachment. Ideally we would have no clinging at all, but since that is not the case, we use attachment to cut attachment. We begin by untying the last knot: by replacing attachment to our own needs and desires with attachment to the happiness of others. We need to understand that sooner or later selfish attachment will create problems.

If you are attached to your own needs and desires-if you like to be happy and don't like to suffer--when something minor goes wrong, it will seem gigantic. You will focus on it from morning to night, exacerbating the problem. After examination under the microscope of your constant attention, a crack in a teacup will begin to seem like the Grand Canyon. This self-focusing is itself a kind of meditation. Meditation means bringing something back to the mind again and again. Repeating virtuous thoughts and resting in mind's nature can lead to enlightenment. But self-centered meditation will only produce endless suffering. Focusing on our problems may even lead to suicide-we can become so preoccupied with our own suffering that life seems unbearable and without purpose.

Suicide is the worst of solutions because such extreme attachment to death and aversion to human life can close the door to future human rebirth. So we need to begin by reducing our self-focus and self-important thoughts. To do so, we remind ourselves that we aren't the only ones who want to be happy-all beings do. Though others seek happiness, they may not understand how to go about finding it, whereas if we have some understanding of the spiritual path, we can perhaps help and support them in their efforts. We remind ourselves that of course we'll encounter problems. We're human. But when difficulties arise, we mustn't give them any power.

Everyone has problems, many far worse than our own. As we contemplate this, our view expands to encompass the suffering of others. As our compassion deepens, our relentless self-focusing is reduced; we become more intent on helping others and better able to do so. If we are sick, it's useful to be attached to the medicine that will make us well. However, once we're cured, that attachment needs to be cut. Otherwise, the very medicine that cured us could make us sick again. We use attachment to benefiting others like medicine in order to cut our self-attachment: we use attachment to change attachment. Eventually, to attain enlightenment, we must cut attachment itself.

Question: Is there an antidote for the habit of dwelling on the past?

Response: No experience lasts very long. But we sustain it with our concepts and emotions; we hold on to it, turning it over and over in our mind. Whenever this happens, we need to change the direction of our thoughts. If we find ourselves dwelling on the fact that someone once harmed us, we turn the mind toward compassion and think, "He may have hurt me but, lost in the projections of his confused and deluded mind, he actually hurt himself far more and doesn't even know it. He thinks that in harming me he helped himself, but his future suffering will be hundreds of times greater than the suffering he caused me." We also turn the mind toward impermanence. Though someone may have praised or blamed us for something, his words were only like an echo. Like everything else, words simply come and go. Acknowledging their impermanence, we invest them with less solidity and let them go more easily. In this way we change the habit of fixating on past experiences.

It's not enough to redirect the mind only once or twice. We have to do it hundreds of times. Whatever power we give to thoughts of the past, we need to give twice as much to the antidote.

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