Am I a Tibetan Buddhist?

In response to reports of sexual relationships between a Tibetan lama and several female students at a New York dharma center, Lama Rod Owens shared this commentary.

It's an extraordinary piece because of its depth, vulnerability, and honesty. All Buddhism is based in patriarchy, reflecting the cultures in which it developed. Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes devotion to the guru as the path to realization. By breaking our identification with our small, unhappy, world-of-endurance selves and identifying instead with enlightened beings, under instructions from the guru, we move closer to realization. But this clears a path for abuse. Confused beings taught to revere their gurus will do what they are told to do by the guru, who may be confused himself and act unethically.

This has always bothered me about Tibetan Buddhism and probably figures into why my guru is a woman -- an American woman, at that, who has struggled with the Tibetan Buddhist patriarchy. My practice is Tibetan,  though, and the Tibetan culture in general is elevated. I often wonder why. Yes, this is where the practices originated, but the practices have legs and work outside of that cultural envelope. If we revere all things Tibetan as somehow more spiritually valuable, we're taking on a lot of baggage beyond the practices. (Lama Rod discusses that -- go read his full statement.)

This passage in his statement caught my attention:

Finally this: I do not identify as a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner or teacher any longer. Tibetanism as a cultural influence has been a source of struggle for me. I am currently identifying as a Tantric Buddhist practitioner and lama. I am seeking to understand what Tantra is without the influence of Tibetan culture. 

This is something I will be contemplating.

“No Mud, No Lotus: A Buddhist Perspective on Suffering”

The Buddha said he taught one thing – suffering and its cessation. And he said that it’s possible to end suffering in this lifetime, that the point of life isn’t to suffer now and celebrate in the after-life. All of his teachings – and of the lists and stories and even all of the thousands of talks and books interpreting his teachings – come down to this: You don’t have to suffer.

That doesn’t mean that an enlightened person exists in some kind of bubble where there’s no pain, no grief, where nothing bad ever happens to them. Because the Buddha distinguished between pain and suffering. Pain is a natural and inevitable part of life, he said. Suffering is optional.

It’s obvious what pain is. Specifically, he said, birth is painful, along with being sick, growing old and losing capabilities, and death. Not getting what you want is painful, as is getting what you don’t want.

Suffering, though, is what we layer on top of pain.

The Buddha told a story about the distinction. If you’re shot with an arrow, he said, that’s painful. Then the thoughts that come after that – who shot me, what was their motive, why me, how can I avenge myself – those are suffering. That mental activity, he said, is like being shot by a second arrow because it causes as much stress and discomfort, if not more, as the actual arrow.

An enlightened person, he said, still feels the physical pain from the arrow, but that’s it. An enlightened person doesn’t add suffering to the pain.

The Buddha also taught that suffering isn’t something we do only in response to being shot – we do it all the time. It pervades our lives.

You may be familiar with the Buddha’s first teachings, the Four Noble Truths. The first is commonly translated as the truth of suffering. Everyone suffers.

For some people, hearing that is liberating. Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg had a difficult childhood -- both of her parents died when she was young and she went to live with grandparents who didn't know how to help her process her grief and confusion. When she took an Asian studies class in college, she heard the Buddha’s First Noble Truth. She says a light came on for her. “I knew it to be true. The circumstances of my own life proclaimed it,” she writes in her book “Faith.”

There's a lot of pressure on us to be happy. Consumer society runs on our unhappiness and the idea that

there are things we can acquire that will make us happy. Not just medications but food, drink, cars, gym memberships, vacations, credit cards, clothes. The list is endless. Pretty much every commercial you see is built on our underlying unease or unhappiness and the desire to find the thing that can make that it go away.

Consider also that our Declaration of Independence enshrines "the pursuit of happiness," along with life and

liberty, as an inalienable right. Our nation is founded on the right to pursue happiness. We have to do it.

That's a lot of weight on our shoulders.

So if we're unhappy, if we're suffering, not only are we uncomfortable personally but we are failures as consumers because we haven't found the right thing to buy to make us happy and we're traitors to the principles on which our country was founded.

Talk about stress!

And let's talk about stress. Because many scholars and teachers now think that "suffering" was a bad translation of what the Buddha was trying to communicate. He used the Pali word "Dukkha," which literally refers to an axle, like on a cart, and how a wheel fits onto it – appropriate for someone in an agrarian society. So rather than saying that everyone suffers, with the heavy connotation we may bring to that word, he was saying that everyone experiences times when things don't go right, when the wheel doesn't turn smoothly, when existence is like pushing a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel. Rather than suffering, a lot of Buddhists now use terms like stress, discomfort, unease.

One popular characterization of dukkha is “wanting things to be different than they are.” Thinking that we’d be happier if … the room were warmer or colder, the chairs were softer, the speaker was more interesting. ... That "if" is a sign of the suffering mind speaking up. Or like the farmer in the reading – My wife is great, but she nags me. My farm is good, but sometimes it’s not. The “but” brings in the suffering.

Call it what you will -- suffering, stress, unhappiness, discomfort -- everyone's life has those moments when things don't go according to plan. The car breaks down. The friend doesn't call. Someone you love is sick. Or you are. Someone you love dies. Things aren’t as good as they could be. The neighbor’s grass is the weed-free green you want for yours.

Life is not always comfortable. It can't be. The Buddha's First Noble Truth acknowledges that. But how we respond to that discomfort determines how much we suffer.

We don’t like to be uncomfortable. We don’t like pain. That’s a kind of biological imperative – pain in the body is a sign that something’s wrong. So when we encounter a painful situation, we try to find a way to reduce or end the pain or something to distract us from it – and that’s where we create suffering.

Suffering is largely a mental experience, although it does manifest in the body, in the tight shoulders, headaches, ramped-up heartbeats that come from the stress, anxiety, and depression we can experience. Sam Harris, the outspoken atheist philosopher, who’s a dedicated meditator, told a friend who was going on a silent Buddhist retreat: “Remember, if you’re suffering, you’re thinking.”

Shinzen Young, a former Buddhist monk who now teaches a secularized version of Buddhist teachings, stripped it down to an equation – suffering equals pain times resistance.

How do we resist pain?

We might get angry when we feel pain and look for a way to get rid of it by discharging that energy onto someone or something else. Say you’re walking through your house in the dark and you step on something, maybe a Lego block – one of those small, hard, sharp plastic bricks. You’re first thought is probably ouch. But you might move quickly into …those darned kids, why can’t they pick up their toys, they’re so lazy, I ought to go into their rooms and throw Legos all over the floor so that when the wake up the can see what it feels like! Pain leads to anger leads to ideas for revenge. Meanwhile, you don’t even notice that your foot no longer hurts.

We can do that in bigger, more complicated ways too – being angry at whole groups or people or societies, creating a climate of hate and fear, threatening wars.

Another way of resisting pain is to look for something to distract us from it. Advertising is happy to help here. Feel dissatisfied or lonely or sad? Here’s a new car or a great beer or a sale on this season’s clothes to make you feel better. And it might work – for a while. But satisfying desires doesn’t get rid of the pain. Eating a piece of fine chocolate makes you happy. But if you continually turn to the chocolate, you’re creating another problem. The extreme case of covering over pain by satisfying desires is addiction.

Or you might ignore or deny the pain. You might convince yourself that everything’s fine, even when it’s not. To do that, you have to shut off certain parts of your experience, stop feeling things, and when you do that you’re closing off other parts of your experience. You feel less pain, but you also feel less joy. You simply feel less, and you’re boxing yourself in, putting up walls that shut out life.

Those three – aggression, passion, and ignorance – were named by the Buddha as the three root poisons. In another list, they’re three of the five kleshas, or afflictive emotional states that cause suffering. That list adds jealousy and pride. You can imagine how those work.

Those reactions become habits. Anger at someone else distracts us from our own discomfort so we turn to it again and again. It becomes our default, our way of responding to the world without even considering whether it’s wise or appropriate. And when we react in the same way over and over, we let that define us –we see ourselves as an angry person or a jealous one, someone who is always craving or someone who’s checked out and spacey. Under it all, we’re discontented and stressed.

So … if our traditional ways of reacting to pain aren’t helping to ease the pain but instead are creating suffering, what can we do instead?

The first step is to recognize the pain. Just that. See pain as pain, whether it’s physical, emotional, or mental. Respond to physical pain – pick your foot up off the Lego, bandage the wound from the arrow – but do it with compassion and without leaping ahead mentally to who you can blame for it and whether you can sue them or how much the doctor’s bill will be and whether that means you won’t be able to afford a vacation. You can deal with that later. Simply take care of your pain.

Similarly, with mental or emotional pain, let it be without elaborating on it. Don’t tell yourself a story about what caused it and who’s responsible or worry about when it might reappear. Just sit with it. Thich Nhat Hahn urges us to welcome suffering, to greet it, by saying, Hello, suffering. I see you.

This is why Buddhists sit in meditation, noting thoughts, letting them arise and move on. This practice is called “Shamata,” a Sanskrit word that means “calm abiding.” Sometimes it’s more about abiding than calm.

This is from Buddhist nun Pema Chodron:

Patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don't fuel the rage with your thoughts, you can be very honest about the fact that you long for revenge; nevertheless you keep interrupting the torturous story line and stay with the underlying vulnerability. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability, is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Still, just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless, hot energy—knowing that it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world.

On the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha sat in meditation under the Bodhi tree and was met by his nemesis, Mara. You can see Mara as an actual being or as a mental state. Mara tried to disrupt his calm abiding by sending armies of archers who shot arrows at the Buddha; he turned the arrows into flowers. Next Mara sent dancing girls, objects of desire. The Buddha responded, “I see you, Mara.” He recognized the temptations were trying to pull him out of his clear, calm state and didn’t succumb.

The next step is to accept the pain. Yes, life hurts. Yes, people get sick, loved ones die. Some days we’re sad or lonely or melancholy. There’s nothing wrong with that – it is the natural response to the circumstances of life. Accept that life is not all fun and games, but remember that sometimes it is. There’s a Zen saying that talks about life as 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Life contains both – trying to eliminate sorrow and have only joy is futile.

Note that what you’re accepting here is your pain and your natural response. This doesn’t mean that you should accept circumstances that are causing you pain. Buddhism is not about being a doormat and allowing others to hurt you – it’s about knowing what’s happening and choosing how to respond.

Which leads to the next step, investigate the pain. Does it come from external causes and conditions that you can change? Do you need help from someone else to process this? Is it a mental habit – can you change that? If your response to pain is to blame yourself, to see yourself as inadequate – or if someone tells you that you are – is that true? Or are you actually capable? Buddhism calls for a fearless look at ourselves and our reactions to the world with the idea that we can choose how to respond if we are aware of what we’re doing.

Salzberg says in an interview with Buddhist publication Lion's Roar that meditation practice can help us to regard suffering as a way to see more deeply, to get to know ourselves better, and to discern what really makes us happy. “Why suffer unnecessarily,” she asks, “if it’s distorted thinking that’s bringing forth that feeling?” In seeing our suffering, she says, “we also see that there is always an intact place within us, an open space of awareness where we can hold pain with compassion, without becoming overwhelmed or adding to it.”

And while it’s a very personal process, looking at ourselves and our reactions, this is what connects us with the world. If our life naturally contains pain, all lives naturally contain pain. All people hurt; everyone suffers.

My teacher, Lama TsultrimAllione, was born and raised in New Hampshire and went to India where she was one of the first western women to become a nun in the Tibetan tradition. She later gave back her vows, married, and had children. When one of her twins died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, in her grief she began to search out the stories of women in the Tibetan tradition – they aren’t well known – and went on to build a lineage focused on the divine feminine. A few years ago, her husband died suddenly. She says that she got through that horrible first year of grief only by seeing herself taking on the grief of all those who had lost loved ones. We’re never alone in our pain, although we feel like we are – which is one of the ways we multiple it into suffering.

If we open to our painful emotions, they connect us to others and to the world. It’s not shameful to feel sad – everyone feels sad sometimes. We don’t have to lash out at others or buy a new car or pretend we’re not sad. We can see it, meet it with compassion and care, and let it pass.

And when we stop trying to attain momentary happiness, we become more connected to true happiness and joy that isn’t dependent on external conditions. The saying “no mud, no lotus” recognizes that the beautiful lotus flower, a prominent Buddhist symbol, grows in cesspools. When we’re willing to see our dirtiest, stickiest pain, we see also our most beautiful nature, our innate kindness and compassion and joy.

Thich Nhat Hahn is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who lived through terrible conditions for many years during the wars there. He writes:

I wouldn’t want to be in a world without any suffering, because then there would be no compassion and understanding either. If you haven’t suffered hunger, you can’t appreciate having something to eat. If you haven’t gone through a war, you don’t know the value of peace. This is why we should not try to run away from one unpleasant thing after another. Holding our suffering, looking deeply into it and transforming it into compassion, we find a way to happiness.With mindfulness, the feelings that have been difficult and painful transform into something beautiful: the wondrous healing balm of understanding and compassion.

Aspiration

May I act as the mighty earth

Or like the free and open skies

To support and provide the space

Whereby I and all others may grow.

Until every being afflicted by pain

Has reached nirvana's shores,

May I serve only as a condition

That encourages progress and joy. 

Shantideva

Look for the Buddhas

When bad things happen -- as they do with blinding regularity these days -- along with the  news of the latest atrocity, a quote from Fred Rogers comes up often on social media: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

It's good advice. It takes our focus off the pain and suffering, the blame and sadness. It reminds us that while bad things happen, good things also happen. As the Zen saying goes, life contains 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Maybe, these days, the number of sorrows seems larger, seems infinite. But that also raises the number of joys. They may be small joys -- wildflowers growing in a random spot, a sunset that stops you in your tracks, rocks on a beach, a kiss from a child, a smile from a stranger, strong coffee -- but they are there. Make your own list of what brings you joy. Please do. It's important to remember that those things, those people exist.

To put it in Buddhist terms, look for the bodhisattvas, the helpers, the ones who've vowed not to attain enlightenment until everyone can come with them. Look for Buddhas, the awakened beings.

You never know where there might  be a bodhisattva ... so just consider anyone who arouses bodhicitta in you as being a real Buddha, whether a deity, teacher, spiritual companion, or any else. -- Patrul Rinpoche

 Examples of bodhisattvas -- helpers -- and Buddhas, or awakened beings, don't exist only in texts and stories. They are all around. Do you know Naomi Shabib Nye's poem "Gate A-4"? It is a lovely story of how a tense, miserable four-hour flight delay became a veritable party, a event celebrating our shared condition.

Maybe that story resonates with me because I had my own experience of finding an unlikely bodhisattva during what turned out to be an overnight flight delay. There was one woman -- who I'd dismissed early on as an aging sweetheart of Sigma Chi due to her impeccable hair, matching outfit, and sorority luggage tag -- who kept the crowd from turning surly, who turned the energy in a positive direction. After the first announced delay, she learned the gate agents' names, and with each subsequent announcement, as people started to groan, she would loudly thank them, by name, for sharing the information they had. When the delay dragged on and the airline bought pizza for the passengers to share in the gate area, she pronounced it lovely. And when we were told we were being bused to a hotel an hour away and would fly out the next day, she made it seem like an adventure. Yes, it was frustrating and inconvenient. But her attitude kept the crowd from falling into the pit of despair, kept reminding us of our resiliency, our own choice to be miserable or cheerful. Sometimes that's what a situation needs -- an outlier to remind us there's another way to see things.

That's what the Buddhas do -- they help us to see our own enlightened nature, the joy of our interdependence. They remind us that everyone loves something, even if it's cookies (or tortillas). And we can build on that.

As Shahib Nye writes:

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, Thisis the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in thatgate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive aboutany other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

While the world seems dire, look around. Look for the buddhas. Be a buddha. Do what you can to help others see their true compassionate nature instead of condemning them and shutting them out.

Preliminaries are practice

Two years and 11 months ago, I started ngondro, the preliminary practices in vajrayana Buddhism. A week ago, I reached the required number of accumulations of prostrations, offerings, and mantras.

I didn't know I could do this. In fact, two days into the weeklong retreat where I and others learned the ngondro practices, I went up my lama during a break in teachings and told her tearfully that I didn't think I could. She laughed gently and said, "you don't have to do this," pointing out another path of study that I could follow.

I went through the next few days taking notes and doing practices, all the while thinking that I would not be doing them again, thinking I was good with that. Then I met with my mentor, my kalyanamitra, and immediately burst into tears, telling her that I didn't think I could do this.

She also laughed gently. "You can't do it perfectly," she said. "No one can. ... But you can do it."

And so I did it, imperfectly. One hundred thousand prostrations, 100,000 times to stand, slide, lay my body on the ground, and rise back up. One hundred thousand mandala offerings, more than 1 million mantras, sliding mala beads between my thumb and forefinger.

Along the way, I had to give up the idea that I could not do this. I had to give up a lot of ideas about myself: that I was incapable, that I couldn't take this time for myself, that I was not someone to mumble in a foreign language and perform ancient ritual practices I couldn't always parse out.

Over almost three years, I learned to hold my selves much more loosely, to not expect them to perfectly match my own or others' projections. I learned to let go of the things that I thought defined me, to see them washed away without giving myself time or space to explain or justify why they were there, to just let them go. And that meant forgiving the other players in those stories for their parts -- letting go of their storylines freed them to be new people in our relationships.

I learned to sit, to stay when I wanted to get up, to come back to the focus, to offer the mistakes and the errors as gifts of sincere effort, imperfect but genuine. To see the beauty of the imperfect but genuine, which is deeper than the merely lovely. To trust in the process, the map laid out hundreds of years ago, and to keep moving step by step through the fog of confusion until I found clear views again.

I had to prioritize in order to finish in three years; that was the deadline for the program I'm in to move on to the next practices. I don't know that much about what they involve. I'll find out. I'm more comfortable with uncertainty now.

You can learn more about the program here

Right speech means speaking up

On the Buddha's Eightfold Path, right speech is followed by right action. So it's no surprise that hate-filled speech is followed by hateful action. If words are used to demonize people, if laws are proposed to separate them out, to enforce their otherness, it follows -- like the cart follows the horse -- that action will take place.

That seems so clear to me in light of the shootings in Orlando, Florida, in which a gunman killed 50 people and wounded 53 more. Hate leads to more hate, not less.  

That's why it's important, especially now, to look at speech, at the charge it carries, the groundwork it lays, and to consider whether we are speaking wisely. Simply put, does our speech ease suffering or increase it, for ourselves or others?

The Buddha laid out standards for what is considered wise speech. Before saying something, it's suggested the speaker consider whether it is true, whether it is kind, whether this is the right time to say it, and whether the speaker is the right person to say it. And if the answer is not yes, then to be silent.

It seems to me that the time is here for those who are trying to break free from hate to make that clear. Not to engage in hateful speech, by responding to hate-filled rants in kind or by name-calling, but to disagree. Politely, maybe. Pointedly, certainly. But to make it clear that we don't stand with hate.

I read an essay, An Open Letter to a Guy at Work, in which a woman shares her private thoughts after a co-worker comments on the Brock Turner case, in which the former Stanford swimmer received a six-month sentence after being found guilty by a jury of raping an unconscious woman, who had been drinking. "Don't you agree the whole thing could have been avoided if she had just been more responsible?" the co-worker says. The essay ends, after detailing the reasons she disagrees, with, "No, I do not agree." But it's not clear whether she said that to the co-worker or whether her silence left the impression that maybe she did agree.

It is not kind to stay quiet when others make untruthful statements about groups of people. And if we know their remarks are untrue and unkind, this is the time to speak up.

No, I don't agree. I don't think transgender people are weird for wanting to use the bathroom. I don't think Muslims are dangerous. I don't agree with you.

Sometimes we cling to a point of view because no one has ever pointed out a different way of looking at things. No one has said they see it differently. Sometimes that crack in the wall of unanimity is what we need to break our hearts open, to let others in.

I heard a sports announcer, talking about the violence around the Euro Cup matches, say that we're sitting in the embers, and that feels true for more than the soccer world. Hate speech adds fuel to the fire, creates a spark that can become a conflagration. Saying nothing allows it smolder. Pour some truth on it and tamp down the flames.

There's a saying: Practice like your hair is on fire. It's meant to communicate urgency and the need to practice now, not put it off, to make use of this precious human life before impermanence takes over.

But now it's time to practice like your world is on fire.

The world needs you to douse the fires of hatred and delusion. Do it kindly, do it wisely, but do it while you can.


Flower thrower by Banksy

Unbinding from opinions

So what are your thoughts on Trump's latest tweet? Hillary's emails? Bernie's chances? What about the kid who climbed into a gorilla exhibit at the zoo -- whose fault? The zoo? The parents? The kid? Muhammad Ali -- revered icon of empowerment or pathetic victim of aggression? Surely you have thoughts.

Opinions are like assholes, Detective Harry Callahan famously said. Everybody has one.

Even Buddhists, who have vowed to walk a middle way between attraction and aversion without falling into ignorance, have opinions. About political candidates, about animals, about food and movies and music.

There's nothing wrong with having opinions. But they become problematic -- and a cause of suffering -- when we treat them as something solid and unchanging, when we dismiss conflicting opinions without consideration simply because they do not agree with our opinions. And often without consideration for the people who hold those opinions, who may agree with us on most things except this one, overriding, all-important view. I've felt this energy so often in social media in this election cycle that I'm tempted to opt out until the election's over.

The Buddha talks about attachment to opinion in the Yoga Sutta, or the Bondage Sutta:

A person who doesn't see that opinion -- like all things -- stems from causes and conditions and is subject to impermanence will suffer, the Buddha says. The person who does not understand "the arising, the subsiding, the sweetness, the wretchedness, and the leaving behind of modes of opinion; who, with respect to opinion, is obsessed with passion for opinion, delight in opinion, affection for opinion, intoxication with opinion, thirst for opinion, fever for opinion, attachment to opinion, craving for opinion," this person is bound by opinion, he says.

Release from the bondage of opinion is possible, he says, by seeing the arising, the subsiding, the sweetness, the wretchedness, and the leaving behind of those thoughts.

In other words, by holding them more lightly. By opening up, rather than closing down. By knowing them as impermanent and subject to change -- which may come from reconsidering our opinions in a new light, if only we stay open to that.

An essential part of the Buddhist path is accessing wisdom, cultivating the discernment to know what is wise speech and wise action, to see when we're acting out of habit or cultural conditioning or fear -- and on a larger level, to see when institutions are taking actions that are unwise or harmful and to do what we can to counter that.

But that wisdom has to be balanced with compassion. We're all human. We're all just walking each other home -- even if we're carrying different things and in our bags and arguing about the best route to get there. What is "best" after all -- the fastest, the most scenic, the one with the fewest stops, the one with the straightest lines? Who decides best? And do they get to force others to take their route, whether they're wearing the right shoes for the terrain or want to get to the same place?

Maybe what is best for you is only second best or 84th best for someone else.

Maybe the best way now wasn't the best this morning. Or the last time you went that way.

Maybe your opinion has evolved over time. Maybe Leonardo is no longer your favorite Ninja Turtle. Maybe Ninja Turtles are no longer your favorite playthings. Maybe you used to think Pop Tarts were the food of the gods, and now they disgust you. It happens.

Allowing for the possibility that your opinions may change as causes and conditions change, as awareness changes, as more becomes known or seen, doesn't mean that you don't believe in them now.  It just means that you don't use them as a rock to clonk your enemies over the head with. Maybe you don't even see them as enemies, just as humans who see things differently. Which leaves open the possibility of being curious and exploring those differences instead of shutting them out.

Holding tightly to opinions can mean shutting out conflicting information or people. It closes you off. Holding them more lightly frees you from obsession with opinions, passion for opinions, delight in opinions, affection for opinions, intoxication with opinions, thirst for opinions, fever for opinions, attachment to opinions, craving for opinions.

This is the unbinding of the bondage of opinions. This is freedom.