What's discipline got to do with it?

I hate Dallas. I hate Dallas with a fiery hate equal to the temperature on this August afternoon outside the terminal at Love Field where I'm waiting for an airport-to-hotel shuttle.

I hate Dallas. That's a broad statement, but it's the kind of thing I tend to say, consigning an entire city or category of things to the trash bin of "unpleasant experience." Tofu. Humidity. Feta cheese.

And I don't mean it. It's what Tsoknyi Rinpoche calls "real, but not true." If I look closely at the causes and conditions that give rise to the thought "I hate Dallas," what is there is not a concrete lump of hate for a whole city but discomfort with being hot, hungry, unsure of what will happen next.

Waiting.

Transitioning,

The groundlessness of being in a space that's neither here nor there.

I want to be back at the retreat center I left a few hours earlier. I want to be home with my spouse. I just don't want to be in a 16-hour layover at Dallas-Forth Worth airport, waiting for a shuttle.

I'd been reading Tsoknyi Rinpoche's "Open Heart Open Mind" on the plane that brought me to Dallas, and I'd just read a section on how to work with difficult people. Rinpoche's one-word prescription: Discipline.

It takes discipline, one of the paramitas -- or perfections of the heart -- to stay with the difficult feelings, to accept that they are your feelings, and to see them as the impermanent, ephemeral things they are instead of treating them like a slab of marble, carving a statue, and writing a story that's engraved on a plaque to justify the whole thing.

I don't hate Dallas. I dislike how I feel at the moment, when I happen to be in Dallas.

When I see that, I see space around my feelings, space in which I know everything will be OK. The shuttle will come or I'll walk upstairs and get a cab. The hotel will be air-conditioned. I'll find food.

It's a similar process in working with a difficult person in metta meditation. When you tease out your feelings about this person, about their behavior, from the human being, you can see that they are just  getting through the day. It becomes easier to send lovingkindness -- the wish that they will be safe, happy, healthy, and live with ease -- when you see them as human rather than a monument to their irritating qualities. You don't have to like them or what they do, just see their humanity. Address yourself to their humanity, not their irritating qualities. You may find those qualities become less important and less irritating.

And then you can rest in that space, finding comfort wherever you are.

Do what makes you happy

The Buddha lists discipline as one of the six paramitas, or transcendent actions, that help us move toward enlightenment. It's not one that most people are eager to talk about. Discipline brings up fears of shame, blame, and deprivation. Buddhist teachers say it's not so. In the Shambhala teachings, it's said that discipline bring joy.

New scientific research agrees.

The research, published in the Journal of Personality, concludes: "Self-control positively contributes to happiness through avoiding and dealing with motivational conflict."

Time reports:

Through a series of tests — including one that assessed 414 middle-aged participants on self-control and asked them about their life satisfaction both currently and in the past — and another that randomly queried volunteers on their smartphones about their mood and any desires they might be experiencing, the researchers found a strong connection between higher levels of self-control and life satisfaction. The authors write that “feeling good rather than bad may be a core benefit of having good self-control, and being well satisfied with life is an important consequence.”

Additionally, self-control appears to be linked to mood: Those who reported more self-control experienced fewer bad moods. But that's not because they denied themselves things they wanted.

This didn’t appear to linked to being more able to resist temptations — it was because they exposed themselves to fewer situations that might evoke craving in the first place. They were, in essence, setting themselves up to happy. “People who have good self-control do a number of things that bring them happiness — namely, they avoid problematic desires and conflict,” says the study’s co-author Kathleen Vohs, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota.

 Not only does the study confirm the value of discipline, it also supports the Buddhist idea of renunciation. The precepts, or guidelines, laid out by the Buddha for those who aspire to enlightenment, recommend refraining from a number of unwholesome behaviors: Lying, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, and inebriation.

For monastics, those are rules, and violations can result in dismissal (although different traditions look at them with more or less strictness). For lay people, they are guidelines for measuring whether conduct is beneficial.

They also can be read as promoting the opposite actions: Tell the truth, be sober so that you can stay mindful, don't take advantage of others.

By giving up certain behaviors, we make space for good choices -- or, to quote the study's author, to do the things that bring us happiness.

How to act Like an Enlightened Being

This is Part 2 of a talk given at Unitarian Universalist Society: East on May 26.

Buddhist teacher Noah Levine says that everyone has buddhanature – but few chose to do the work to awaken.  And it is work. We have those glimpses of our enlightened nature all the time, but we don’t live from there.

Much of Buddhist practice – from the simplicity of zazen, or Zen Buddhist meditation, to the elaborate bells and drums and thangka paintings used by Tibetan Buddhists – is designed to help us get in touch with our awakened nature for longer stretches of time and to develop familiarity with that feeling – to “bake it into the bones,” as one of my teachers says – so that it becomes our default setting and we go there more easily during our ordinary lives.

I want to focus on the Paramitas, or the Six Perfections. “Paramita” literally means to cross over. These are the actions of awakened beings – they’re also the actions of unawakened beings. The difference is in the intention. I see them as ways to put our Unitarian-Universalist principles into action.

The first is generosity. Nothing new there. Each week we share our gifts during the offering in terms of treasure, and we share our time by being here and our talents in our interactions. Generosity as practiced on the road to enlightenment is a practice of selflessness; we give without reservation or judgment, without wondering whether it’s enough or whether the person sitting next to you saw how much you put in – or whether you put anything in.

“Transcendent generosity is simply a willingness to be open and do whatever is

necessary in the moment, without any philosophical or religious rationale,” writes Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche in his book “Rebel Buddha.” In monetary terms, you give what you can afford and what is appropriate. But you also give reassurance, praise where due, a smile. It’s a generosity of spirit, more than anything.

I see this as connected to our principles of recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all beings, and in promoting justice, equity, and compassion. When we are willing to be with someone simply because we are both human beings, when we give what is needed without regard to how it makes us look or what the reaction will be, when we give because we see that all beings – ourselves and others – share the same nature, we are putting those principles into practice.

The second paramita is discipline. The practice of discipline as a transcendent action is to “maintain a sense of mindfulness and awareness of your actions and the affect of those actions on others,” Ponlop Rinpoche says. He speaks specifically of discipline in

terms of anger – of recognizing when anger is arising in you and stopping before you splatter your anger onto others. In the Vajrayana Buddhist teachings, anger is related to wisdom, so that if you can recognize anger arising, you can see what the wisdom is – an injustice, an insult – and see the wise response that moves the situation toward connection rather than separation.

This connects to the right of conscience and the democratic process. We’ve all seen anger play out in the democratic process in recent years in ways that many of us have found disturbing. Yet that anger is revealing – it’s a fireworks display of internal fears and doubts. If we can be mindful of what we say and how we say it, we can have civilized discourse that allows difference.

The third is patience. Patience, in this light, is not forbearance or endurance. It’s connected with discipline and with the practice of responding rather than reacting. When you react, it’s habitual – you’ve acted that way before. When you respond, you’re in touch with what’s in front of you and acting from that.

Instead of reacting impulsively, Ponlop Rinpoche says, you become curious about the situation. If someone is upset at you, you connect with their emotion – pain, frustration, disappointment -- rather than feeling attacked. “It’s a voice of concern for the pain that is touching you and others equally and the thought of how to relieve it,” he says. 

Again, this practice extends to yourself. When you’re frustrated with your progress, you rely on the practice of patience to stay with the feelings and let the emotion settle so that you can get a clear view of what’s happening. Is something really not working – or are you angry or hurt because you’re not getting instant results? Patience helps you return to balance, brings you back from getting lost in a thicket of emotions or

intellectual thought. In that way, it’s connected to the free and responsible search for truth and to acceptance and encouragement in spiritual growth. Patience says, keep searching. The path is made by walking.

Next is diligence. We may think of diligence as connected with keeping our noses to the grindstone, but Buddhism connects it with delight. It does not mean that we spend all of our time in esoteric practices but that we make all of life our practice. “Diligence is energy, the power that keeps makes everything happen. It’s like the wind, a driving force that keeps us moving along the path. Where does this energy come from? It comes from the enjoyment and satisfaction we experience as we get further into the path.”

This is connected with all the principles as it is with all of life. Do we see the inherent worth and dignity of every being we meet? Do we encourage others to search for truth even if we think we know the answer? Do we support democracy even when we lose?

The fifth paramita is meditation. In Buddhism this is related to specific practices. For

non-Buddhists, though, it means making time for whatever feeds you spiritually, whatever makes you feel whole. If that’s being in nature, make time to do that. If it’s music, carve out time for that. Same for reading, dance, being with others, art, Suduko … only you know what takes you out of your mundane mind and social roles. Do it. In Buddhism, busyness is seen as a form of laziness – you use activity to avoid being with yourself. Setting aside time for what rejuvenates you is as important as attending a committee meeting.

Finally, the last paramita is wisdom or knowledge. This connects with respect for the interdependent web of all existence because that’s the wisdom at work here. Everything is interconnected. That’s what we’ve learned from diligently and consistently working with generosity and patience and mindfulness, from seeing that all of our actions have consequences for ourselves and others. It is a gnosis, a knowing that is beyond words.

Jack Kornfield says that we exist in an interconnected web of “wholeness amidst a sea of Buddhas, visible whenever we open the eyes of love and wisdom.”

He writes:

Years ago, Ram Dass went to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, to ask, “How can I best be enlightened?” His guru answered, “Love people.” When he asked about the most direct path to awakening, his guru answered, “Feed people. Love people and feed people. Serve the divine in every form.” …

Service is the expression of the awakened heart. But whom are we serving? It is ourselves. When someone asked Ghandi how he could so continually sacrifice himself for India, he replied, “I do this for myself alone.” When we serve others, we serve ourselves. The Upanishads call this “God feeding God.”

It’s the same if you say buddhas feeding buddhas. Or humans feeding humans. Our enlightenment happens when we see that all beings are enlightened, in their nature if not their actions, and we meet their enlightened nature with our own.